[1151] See a table in White, Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 461.
[1152] Narrative appended to Capilupi, Stratagema di Carlo IX. (1574). The cardinal's adulatory letter to Charles IX., on receipt of the king's missive, is strongly corroborative of the view to which everything forces us, that the massacre was not long definitely premeditated. "Sire," he said, "estant arrivé le sieur de Beauville avecques lettres de Vostre Majesté, qui confirmoyent les nouvelles des tres-crestiennes et héroicques délibération et exéquutions faictes non-seulement à Paris, mais aussi partout voz principales villes, je m'asseure qu'il vous plaira bien me tant honorer ... que de vous asseurer que entre tous voz très humbles subjects, je ne suis le dernier à an (en) louer Dieu et à me resjouir. Et véritablement, Sire, c'est tout le myeus (mieux) que j'eusse osé jamais désirer ni espérer. Je me tienz asseuré que des ce commencement les actions de Vostre Majesté accroistront chacung jour à la gloire de Dieu et à l'immortalité de vostre nom," etc. Card. Lorraine to the king, Rome, Sept. 10, 1572, MSS. Nat. Library, apud Lestoile, éd. Michaud et Poujoulat, 25, 26, note.
[1153] Conjouissance de Mr. le Cardinal de Lorraine, au nom du Roy, faicte au Pape, le vije jour de sept. 1572, sur la mort de l'Admiral et ses complices. Correspondance diplom. de La Mothe Fénélon, vii. 341, 342. Also Jean de Serres (1575) iv., fol. 56, and in a French translation appended to Capilupi, Lo stratagema di Carlo IX. (1574), 111-113, and reproduced in Mém. de l'estat, Arch, cur., vii. 360.
[1154] "Literis romanis aureis majusculis descriptum, festa fronte velatum, ac lemniscatum, et supra limen aedis Sancti Ludovici Romæ affixum."
[1155] The genuineness of this medal, in spite of the clumsy attempts made to discredit it, is established beyond all possible doubt. The Jesuit Bonanni, in his "Numismata Pontificum" (2 vols. fol., Rome, 1689), has figured and described it as No. 27 of the medals of Gregory XIII. A translation of his account and a facsimile of the medal may be seen in the Bulletin de la Société de l'hist. du prot. français, i. (1852) 240-242. It is also admirably represented in the Trésor de Numismatique (Delaroche, etc., Paris, 1839), Médailles des papes, plate 15, No. 8. The late Alexander Thomson, Esq., of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, purchased at the papal mint in the city of Rome, in 1828 or 1829, among other medals for which he applied, not less than seven copies of this medal, six of them struck off expressly for him from the original die still in possession of the mint. See his own account, given in his Memoir by Professor Smeaton, and reproduced in the New York Evangelist of October 17, 1872.
[1156] Recueil des lettres missives de Henri IV., i. 36.
[1157] See Pistolesi, Il Museo Vaticano descritto ed illustrato (Roma, 1838) vol. viii. 97. There are three paintings, of which the first represents "the King of France sitting in parliament, and approving and ordering that the death of Gaspard Coligny, Grand Admiral of France, and declared to be head of the Huguenots, be registered." "The mischance of Coligny is delineated in the following picture in a spacious square, among many heads of streets (capistrade) and façades of temples. The admiral, clothed in the French costume of that period, is carried in the arms of several military men; although lifeless (estinto, read rather, faint), he still preserves in his countenance threatening and terrible looks." The third is the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day itself, in which the beholder scarcely knows which to admire most, the artistic skill of the painter, or his success in bringing into a narrow compass so many of the most revolting incidents of the tragedy—the murder of men in the streets, the butchery of helpless and unoffending women, the throwing of Coligny's remains from the window of his room, etc. Dr. Henry White gives a sketch of this painting, taken from De Potter's Lettres de Pie V. Of the fresco representing the wounding of Coligny there is an engraving in Pistolesi, ubi supra, vol. viii. plate 84. By an odd mistake, both the text and the index to the plates, make this belong to the reconciliation of Frederick Barbarossa and the pontificate of Alexander III.—on what grounds it is hard to imagine. The character of the wound of the person borne in the arms of his companions, indicated by the loss of two fingers of his right hand, from which the blood is seen to be dropping, leaves no doubt that he is the Admiral Coligny. Unfortunately, Pistolesi's splendid work is disfigured by other blunders, or typographical errors, equally gross. In describing other paintings of the same Sala Regia (pp. 95, 96), he assigns, or is made by the types to assign, various events in the quarrel of Barbarossa and Adrian IV. and Alexander III., to the years 1554, 1555, 1577, etc.
[1158] Ferralz to Charles IX., Rome, Sept. 11, 1572, apud North British Review, Oct., 1869, p. 31.
[1159] Prospero Count Arco to the emperor, Rome, Nov. 15, 1572, ubi supra.
[1160] "Il pontefice, e universalmente tutta d'Italia grandemente se ne rallegrò, facendo pardonare cotale effetto al Re e alla Reina, che molte cose avevano sostenuto di fare in benefizio di quella parte." G. B. Adriani, Istoria de' suoi tempi, ii. 378.