taught others, and become a convert. Beza said that he did not despair of salvation in his own Church. The saint then, seeing that his heart was made of stone, left him, under a promise of returning soon again to visit him; but this was not in his power, for the Genevese put guards to watch their minister, and determined to put St. Francis to death if he ever came again. Some say that Beza was anxious to see him again, and that he retracted his errors, and that on that account his friends gave out that the violence of his sickness deranged his mind; but we know nothing of this for certain, and it is most probable that he died as he lived. The writer of St. Francis's life says, also, that Des Hayes, Governor of Montargis, being in Geneva, and conversing familiarly one day with Beza, asked him why he remained in his new sect? He pointed out to him a young woman in his house, and said, this is what retains me; and it is supposed that this was his second wife, whom he married when he was seventy years old.

In the

76. We have now to speak of the French Calvinists, or Huguenots, as they are generally called, as is supposed, from the Castle of Hugon, near Toulouse, close by which they had their first conventicle, and of the desolation they caused in France. Volumes would not suffice to relate all the destruction caused by Calvin and his followers, not only in France, but in many other countries. I will only then give a sketch of them, to show how much harm one perverse heresiarch may occasion. During the reigns of Francis I. and his son, Henry II., though both zealous Catholics, and ever prosecuting the Calvinists with the utmost rigour, even condemning many of them to the stake, still this heresy was so spread through every province of the kingdom, that there was not a city or town but had its temple or ministers of the new sect. year 1559, however, when Henry was succeeded by his son, Francis II., only sixteen years of age, it broke forth like a torrent, and overwhelmed the whole kingdom with errors, sacrileges, sedition, and bloodshed (7). Jeane, Queen of Navarre, was the chief promoter of all this; she used all her endeavours to extinguish the Faith; she encouraged the heretics to take up arms, and when they were worsted, she was always ready to assist them. She encouraged Louis Bourbon, Prince of Conde, too, at his first presentation to her, to take up arms in the cause of the Reformation, and she was the head of the conspiracy of Amboise, which, however, did not succeed according to her wishes (8). The Huguenots, however, are blamed for the death of the young King, Francis II., who, it is said, was poisoned by a Huguenot surgeon, at the age of seventeen, by putting poison into his car while treating him for an abscess (9).

(7) Van Ranst, Hist. sec. 16, p. 322. (8) Van Ranst, loc. cit. vide Her. t. 2, c. 272. (9) Spondan. ad an. 1560, n. 7.

77. A royal decree was published in the reign of Charles IX., granting leave to the Calvinists to hold meetings, and preach outside the cities, and on this occasion, nothing could equal the disturbances they caused. The first outbreak took place in Vassey, in Champagne, where seventy Calvinists were killed; the Prince of Conde immediately put himself at the head of the Calvinistic party, and they declared war against their king and country. They took several cities, and destroyed the churches, broke open the tombs of saints, and burned their relics. Many battles were subsequently fought, in which the rebels were beaten, though not conquered. The first was fought in Dreux, in the Venassain, in which Conde was taken prisoner by Francis of Guise, who commanded the Catholics, and Anthony, King of Navarre, who commanded the royal army, was so severely wounded, that he died shortly after, leaving an only son Henry, who was afterwards the famous Henry IV., King of France. In the following year, 1563, while the Duke of Guise, commander of the royal troops, was besieging Orleans, he was treacherously wounded by one John Poltroze, employed by Beza; the wound proved mortal, and the QueenMother made a treaty of peace with the heretics, most hurtful to the Catholic interests, but which was subsequently modified by another edict (10).

78. The Calvinists went to war again in 1567, and were again beaten, and in the year 1569, the Catholics gained the battle of Jarnac, in which the Prince of Conde, leader of the Calvinists, was killed (11). In the year 1572, a great number of Calvinists were killed on St. Bartholomew's day, and it is thought that not less than a hundred thousand Calvinists perished in this war; such were the hellish fruits of the doctrines Calvin taught. It is terrifying to read the details of the excesses committed by the Calvinists against the churches, the priests, the sacred images, and especially the Holy Eucharist. It is related in the Annals of France, in the year 1563, (12), that a Huguenot went into the Church of St. Genevieve, and, possessed by a diabolical spirit, snatched the Sacred Host out of the hands of the officiating priest; he paid dearly, however, for the sacrilege, as he was immediately taken, his hand was cut off, he was then hanged, and his body burned. As an atonement for this irreverence, the same month, the king, his mother, the princes of the blood, and the Parliament, went in procession from the Chapel Royal to the Church of St. Genevieve, bearing lighted torches in their hands. About this time, also, the Huguenots burned the body of St. Francis a Paula, which was preserved incorrupt for fifty years, in the Church of St. Gregory of Tours, in the suburbs of Tours. Louis XIV. used every means, by sending preachers

(10) Nat. Alex. t. 19, c. 11, art. 9, n. 3, & 4. (11) Nat. Alex. n. 5; Hermant, t. 2, c. 306. (12) Apud Gotti, c. 111, s. 4, n. 15.

among these sectaries, to convert them, and finally adopted such rigorous measures against them, that a great many returned to the Faith, and those who refused compliance left the kingdom. Innocent XI., in the year 1685, wrote him a letter, praising his zeal (13). 79. Would to God, however, that the plague never spread further than France, and never tainted any other kingdom. The Low Countries were likewise infected by it, and the chief reason of its spreading there was on account of the Lutheran and Calvinistic troops, maintained by the house of Austria to oppose France; both sects rivalled each other in making proselytes there, but Calvin sent many of his disciples to Flanders, and the Calvinists, therefore, remained the most numerous. The Flemings, also, felt themselves aggrieved by the Spanish Governors, and succeeded with Philip II., in obtaining the recall of Cardinal Granville, who had been sent as Counsellor of Mary, Queen of Hungary, and sister of Charles V., Regent of the Low Countries. This was a most fatal blow to the Catholic cause, for this great prelate, by his vigorous measures, and his zealous administration of his Inquisitorial powers, kept the heretics in check, but after his departure, in 1556, they broke out into open insurrection, wrecked the churches of Antwerp, broke the altars and images, and left the monasteries heaps of ruins, and this sedition spread through Brabant and other provinces, already infected with heresy, so that the Regent felt herself obliged to grant them a provisional license for the exercise of their false religion. King Philip refused to ratify this concession, and the heretics again took up arms; the King then sent the Duke of Alva with a powerful army to chastise them, but the Prince of Orange, though under many obligations to the King of Spain, proclaimed himself chief of the rebels and Calvinists, and led an army of thirty thousand Germans into the Low Countries (14). The scale of victory inclined sometimes to one side, sometimes to another, but the whole province was in rebellion against the King of Spain and the authority of the Catholic Church. The best authority to consult regarding this war of the Netherlands is Cardinal Bentivoglio. Although the Calvinists were most numerous in Holland, it is now divided between a thousand sects-Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Socinians, Arians, and the like. There are, likewise, a great number of Catholics; and, although they do not enjoy the free exercise of their religion, still they are tolerated, and allowed to have private chapels in the cities, and in the country towns and villages they enjoy greater freedom (15).

(13) Gotti, loc. cit. n. 16, c. 17. (14) Varillas, t. 2, 1. 27, dalla p. 441, Jovet Storia della Relia, t. 1, p. 95. (15) Jovet, loc. cit. p. 105.

*N.B.-This was written in 1770. At present the Catholic Hierarchy is retablished.

80. Calvinism spread itself also into Scotland, and totally infected that kingdom. Varillas (16) gives the whole history of its introduction there; we will give a sketch of it. The perversion of this kingdom commenced with John Knox, an apostate priest of dissolute morals, who was at first a Lutheran, but afterwards residing some time in Geneva, and being intimate with Calvin, became one of his followers, and so ardent was he in his new religion, that he promised Calvin that he would risk everything to plant it in Scotland; soon after he quitted Geneva and came to Scotland to put his design into execution. The opportunity was not long wanting. Henry VIII., King of England, strove to induce his nephew, James V., King of Scotland, to follow his example, and establish a schism and separate himself from the Roman Church, and invited him to meet him at some place where they could hold a conference and discuss the matter. King James excused himself under various pretexts, and the upshot of the matter was that Henry went to war with him. James gave the command of his army to a favourite of his, Oliver Sinclair, whom the nobility obeyed with the greatest reluctance, as he was not of noble birth, and the consequence was that the Scots were beaten, and James died of grief (17), leaving an infant, only eight days old, to inherit his throne, Mary Stuart. Now this was exactly what Knox wanted; a long regency was just the thing to give him an opportunity to establish his opinions, and he unfortunately succeeded so well that he substituted Calvinism for Catholicity. The infant Mary, being now Queen of Scotland, Henry VIII. asked her in marriage for his son Edward, afterwards the sixth of that name, and then only five years old. This demand raised two parties in the kingdom. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, then all-powerful in Scotland, and Governor of the kingdom, favoured Henry's wishes, gained over by Knox, who had already instilled heretical opinions into his mind; and one great reason he alleged was, that it would establish a perpetual peace between the two kingdoms. On the contrary, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, David Beatoun (18), afterwards Cardinal, and the Catholics, gave it all the opposition in their power, as tending to make Scotland a province of England, but the chief cause of their opposition to it was the injury to religion, for this marriage would draw Scotland

into schism.

81. Meanwhile, the Regent, who was a friend of the heretics, permitted the Calvinists to disseminate their doctrines, and gave liberty to every one in private or in public to pray as he liked, or, in other words, to choose whatever religion he pleased. The archbishop opposed this concession, but the Calvinists rose in arms against him, and imprisoned him, and made him promise to favour

(16) Varillas, Hist. Her. t. 2, l. 28, dalla p. 471; Hermant, Histor. de Concil. t. 2, c. 265. (17) Varillas, p. 475. (18) Varillas, loc. cit.

the English alliance. In this, however, they did not succeed, for previous to her departure for England, the cardinal, with consent of the Queen-Mother, Mary of Lorrain, sister to the Prince of Guise, proposed to Francis I., King of France, to marry Mary to the Dauphin, son of Henry II. The King of France was very well pleased with the proposal, and sent a large body of troops into Scotland, which kept the Calvinists in check, and enabled the Queen Regent to send her daughter to France, and so Mary was sent, before she completed her seventh year, to be brought up in the family of Henry II., and in time to be married to his son, Francis II. On the death of Francis I. and Henry II., Mary was married to Francis II., but was soon left a widow, and the marriage was not blessed with children. Queen Mary then returned to Scotland, where she found religious affairs in the greatest confusion. The Calvinists assassinated the archbishop in his very chamber, and afterwards hanged his body out of the window (19).

82. The rebels, likewise, in this sedition, destroyed the churches, and obliged the Queen-Mother to grant them the free exercise of Calvinism. Such was the miserable state of the kingdom when the Queen returned to it from France; and she immediately set about remedying these religious disorders. About the year 1568 she married Henry Darnley (20), who was afterwards assassinated in the King's house by Earl Bothwell, leaving one son, afterwards James VI. (21). Bothwell, blinded with love of the Queen, engaged a body of conspirators, seized her as she was returning from visiting her son at Stirling, brought her to a castle, and obliged her to marry him. On hearing this the Calvinists immediately broke out into rebellion against her, and accused her of being privy to the murder of her former husband, since she married his murderer, but the principal cause of their hatred to her was her religion. Bothwell himself, however, who had to fly to Denmark from this outbreak, declared before his death that the Queen was perfectly innocent of Henry Darnley's murder. The Calvinists, however, glad of a pretext to persecute the Queen, became so bold at last, that they took her prisoner and confined her in a castle, and the perfidious Knox advised that she should be put to death. The rebels did not go so far as that, but they told her that she should consent to be banished either into France or England, and should renounce the crown in favour of her son, and on her refusal they threatened to throw her into the lake, and one of them had the cowardice to hold a dagger to her breast. Under fear of death she then took the pen and signed the deed making over the kingdom to her son, then thirteen months old (22).

83. The poor Queen was still detained in prison, notwithstand

(19) Varill. t. 28, l. 2, p. 426. (22) Varill. p. 502, 503.

(20) Varill. p. 479.

(21) Varill. p. 500.