[972] Pius V was elected pope January 17, 1566 (see Hilliger, Die Wahl Pius V zum Päpste, 1907). He had been grand inquisitor before his elevation, and imparted a ferocious zeal to the holy office (see Bertelotti, Martiri di Libero Pensero e Vittime della Sta. Inquisizione nei Secoli, XVI, XVII, e XVIII, Rome, 1892). The violence of his character and his bigotry led to his committing several acts injurious to the Catholic cause, but it was due to him that the Spanish, Venetian, and papal fleets defeated the Turks at Lepanto. He wrote on March 28, 1569 to Catherine de Medici: “Si Votre Majesté continue, comme elle a fait constamment, dans la rectitude de son âme? et dans la simplicité de son cœur, à ne chercher que l’honneur de Dieu toutpuissent, et à combattre ouvertement et ardemment les ennemis de la religion catholique, jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient tous massacrés (ad internecionem usque), qu’elle soit assurée que le secours divin ne lui manquera jamais, et que Dieu lui préparera, ainsi qu’au roi, son fils, de plus grandes victoires: ce n’est que par l’extermination entière des hérétiques (deletis omnibus haeritics) que le roi pourra rendre à ce noble royaume l’ancien culte de la religion catholique.”—Potter, Pie V, 35; letter of the Pope to Catherine de Medici, March 28, 1569. The original Latin version of this letter, the salient words of which are in parentheses above, is in Epistola SS. Pii V, ed. Gouban, III, 154, Antwerp, 1640. The editor was secretary to the marquis de Castel-Rodrigio, ambassador of Philip IV to the Holy See. An abridged edition was published by Potter, Lettres de St. Pie V sur les affaires religieuses de son temps en France, Paris, 1826. The letter is one of congratulation written to Catherine de Medici upon the Catholic victory of Jarnac and the death of the prince of Condé. (Cf. the letter of April 13, 1569, on p. 156 to the same effect.) Nevertheless, even the Pope regarded the total destruction of the French Protestants as a result more devoutly to be wished for than practicable. Pope Pius V, however, was not the first advocate of destruction, for as early as 1556 François Lepicart gave the same advice to Henry II: “Le roy devroit pour un temps contrefaire le luthérien parmi eux [the Protestants], afin que, prenant de là occasion de s’assembler hautement partout, on pût faire main-basse sur eux tous, et en purger une bonne fois le royaume.”—Bayle’s Dictionary, art. “Rose.”
The doctrine of assassination for heresy originally proceeded from the mediaeval church, in which it can be traced back as far as the beginning of the Crusades. Urban II asserted that it was not murder to kill an excommunicated person, provided it was done from religious zeal. (“Non enim eos homicidas arbitramur quod adversus excommunicatos zelo catholicae matris ardentes, eorum quoslibet trucidasse contigerit.”—Migne, Epistolae Urbani, CLI, No. 122; Mansi, XX, 713; the same words are used by Ivo of Chartres, X, 331, and by Gratian in the Decretum [causa 32, quaestio 2, canon: De neptis].) The passage stands in the revised edition, to which Gregory XIII prefixed the injunction that nothing should be omitted, and the gloss gives the following paraphrase: “Non putamus eos esse homicidas qui zelo justitiae eos occiderunt.”
In 1208 Innocent III proscribed the count of Toulouse (Teulet, Trésor des Chartes, I, 316), and in the same pontificate the Fourth Lateran Council declared that the Pope might depose anyone who neglected the duty of exterminating heresy and might bestow his state on others (Harduin, Concilia, VII, 19). The same canon reappears in the Decreta of Gregory IX (Lib. iv, tit. 7. cap. 13). St. Thomas Aquinas declared that the loss of political rights was incurred by excommunication (Summa [ed. 1853], III, 51). The teaching that faith need not be kept with a heretic was well established by the church in the thirteenth century. It was pleaded by the Emperor in the case of Huss—“quoniam non est frangere fidem ei qui Deo fidem frangit.”—Palacky, Documenta Joannis Hussi, I, 540.
The spirit of this teaching survived in the sixteenth century. In 1561 some citizens of Lucca, having embraced the Protestant belief, were obliged to flee from the city. The government of the republic, under suggestion from Rome, passed a law on January 9, 1562, that whoever killed one of these refugees, though he had been outlawed, yet would his outlawry be reversed; and that if he himself needed not this privilege, it could be transferred to another (Archivio storico italiano, X, app. 176, 177). On January 20, Pope Pius IV wrote to congratulate the city on this pious legislation: “Legimus pia laudabiliaque decretaque civitatis istius Generale Consilium nuper fecit ad civitatem ipsam ab omni heresum labe integram conservandam.... Nec vero quicquam fieri potuisse judicamus, vel ad tuendum Dei honorem sanctius, vel ad conservandam vestre patrie salutem prudentius.”—Ibid., 178, 179.
When Henry of Valois made oath to respect liberty of conscience in Poland he was informed that it would be sin to observe the oath, but that if he broke it, the sin of making it would be regarded as a venial offense: “Minor fuit offensio, ubi mens ea praestandi quae pelebatur, defuit.”—Hosii, Opera, II, 367.
The Ridolfi plot, it may be added, casts a very clear light upon the teaching and conduct of Pius V.
[I owe some of the information given above to a curious accident. In 1899, among a number of books which I purchased in London, I found a number of fragmentary notes dealing with this question. There is nothing to indicate their authorship, but in recognition of the assistance of some scholar to me unknown this acknowledgment is made. It may be added that the books purchased dealt with France in the fourteenth century].
[973] This was Montluc’s idea, which he broached both to the cardinal of Lorraine and Philip II, in the form of an edict which he himself improvised, and which we know that the king of Spain actually read (Commentaires et lettres de Montluc, IV, 359-62). There are two Spanish translations of the first document in the Archives nationales. Philip indorsed the letter to Bardaxi in his own handwriting: “la carta para el cardinal de Lorena.”—Ibid., IV, 362, note.
[974] Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, IX, 306; Gachard, Correspondance de Philippe II sur les Pays-Bas, I, 368; letter of Margaret of Parma to Antonio Perez, September 27, 1565.
[975] The monotony of life and the tyranny of Spanish etiquette must have borne hard upon the little queen of Spain. But in the midst of the miseries of this “royal slavery,” as M. le comte de la Ferrière calls it, it was a crowning humiliation to be condemned to be the instrument of Philip’s political intrigues. That her young spirit rebelled, though hopelessly, against the situationis evident, from a pitiful letter written by her to her brother’s ambassador in Spain (La Ferrière, Rapport, 28).