History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

Interference of the Archbishop of Cambray.

The incident itself was of trifling importance, for the Huguenot minister was promptly given up to the baron of the village where he had been captured, and was taken by his orders to Cambray. But it led to serious consequences. Threatened by the archiepiscopal city, the Protestants of Cateau, afraid to go to the French preaching-places, sent for Monsieur Philippe, minister of Tupigny, and held the reformed services just outside of their own walls. Alarmed at the progress of Protestant doctrines in his diocese, the Archbishop convened the estates of Cambray, and, on the eighteenth of August, 1566, sent three canons of the cathedral to persuade his subjects of Cateau to return to the Papal Church, and to threaten them with ruin in case of refusal. Neither argument nor menace was of any avail. The Protestants, who had studied their Bibles, were more than a match for the priests, who had not; and, as for the peril, the Huguenots quaintly replied: "Rather than yield to your demand, we should prefer to have our heads placed at our feet." When asked if they were all of this mind, they reiterated their determination: "Were the fires made ready to burn us all, we should enter them rather than accede to your request and return to the mass." These were brave words, but the sturdy Huguenots made them good a few months later.

The images and pictures overthrown.

Scarcely a week had passed before the news reached Cateau (on the twenty-fifth of August) that the "idols" had been broken in all the churches of Valenciennes, Antwerp, Ghent, Tournay, and elsewhere. Although stirred to its very depths by the exciting intelligence, the Protestant population still contained itself, and merely consulted convenience by celebrating Divine worship within the city walls, in an open cemetery. Unfortunately, however, the minister whom the reformed had obtained was ill-suited to these troublous times. Monsieur Philippe, unlike Calvin and the great majority of the ministers of the French Protestant church, was rash and impetuous. Early the next morning he entered the church of St. Martin, in company with three or four other persons, and commenced the work of destruction. Altars, statues, pictures, antiphonaries, missals, graduals—all underwent a common fate. From St. Martin's the iconoclasts visited in like manner the other ecclesiastical edifices of the town and its suburbs. Upon the ruins of the Romish superstition the new fabric arose, and Monsieur Philippe preached the same day in the principal church of Cateau, to a large and attentive audience.

The Protestant claims.

And now began an animated interchange of proclamations on the one hand, and of petitions on the other. The archbishop demanded the unconditional submission of his subjects, and gave no assurances of toleration. The Protestants declared themselves ready to give him their unqualified allegiance, as their temporal sovereign, but claimed the liberty to worship God. Maximilian referred to the laws and constitutions of the Empire of which they formed an integral part. The burgesses answered by showing that they had always been governed in accordance with the "placards" issued by the King of Spain for his provinces of the Netherlands, and that, whenever they had appealed in times past to the chamber of the Empire, as for example at Spires, they had not only been repelled, but even punished for their temerity.[409] They claimed, therefore, the benefit of the "Accord" made by the Duchess of Parma at Brussels a few days previously, guaranteeing the exercise of the reformed religion wherever it had heretofore been practised;[410] while the archbishop, when forced to declare himself, plainly announced that he would not suffer the least deviation from the Roman Catholic faith. In their perplexity, the Protestants had recourse to the Count of Horn, at Tournay, by whom they were received with the utmost kindness. The count even furnished them with a letter to the archbishop, entreating him to be merciful to them.[411]

The Archbishop's vengeance.

But nothing was further from the heart of Maximilian than mercy. He was the same blind adherent of Cardinal Granvelle and his policy, whom, a year or two before, Brederode, Hoogstraaten, and their fellow-revellers had grievously insulted at a banquet given to Egmont before his departure for Spain; the same treacherous, sanguinary priest who wrote to Granvelle respecting Valenciennes: "We had better push forward and make an end of all the principal heretics, whether rich or poor, without regarding whether the city will be entirely ruined by such a course."[412] On Monday, the twenty-fourth of March, 1567, the troops of the archbishop appeared before Cateau, and the same day the place was surrendered by the treachery of some of the inhabitants. At once Cateau became a scene of bloody executions. All that had taken part in the Protestant worship were brought before a tribunal, which often tried, condemned, and punished with death upon one and the same day. Monsieur Philippe, the rash preacher, and one of his deacons seem to have been the first victims. There was no lack of food for the gallows. To have been present at the "preachings," to have partaken of the communion, to have maintained that the Protestant was better than the Roman Catholic religion, to have uttered a jest or drawn a caricature reflecting upon the Papal Church and its ceremonies—any of these was sufficient reason for sending a man to be hung or beheaded. The duchess's "moderation" had effected thus much, that no one seems to have been burned at the stake. And so, at last, by assiduous but bloody work, the Reformation was completely extirpated from Cateau Cambrésis. It was, at least, a source of mournful satisfaction that scarce one of the sufferers failed to exhibit great constancy and pious resignation in view of death.[413]

The idea of toleration is not understood.