Nor did the clergy in France take any part. No bishop shared in the council, no priest or religious roused the minds of the people. They figure, indeed, in romances, but history is silent. Even in the most virulent pamphlets of the time only three are ever mentioned, the Bishop of Troyes, Sorbin, king's confessor at Orleans, and Father Edmond Auger, at Bordeaux. The Bishop of Troyes is charged with having approved the massacre there, but White does not even name the bishop in connection with the murders at that place, and says they were done by a drunken mob, and "filled the humane Catholics with horror."
At Orleans, White reduces the 1850 of the Martyrologe to 1400, and gives details, but is silent as to any action of Sorbin, or the terrible Franciscan who insulted the Huguenots, received their abjuration, and said Mass for them. Evidently, White found the charges against these clergymen too frivolous even for a stray allusion.
He attributes the massacre at Bordeaux to the preaching of Father Auger, but cites no authority. Fortunately, Auger is not an unknown man. His life has long been in circulation. He was a missionary, known for years among the Protestants, amid whom he had prosecuted his labors. He had suffered imprisonment for the faith; he had even been led to the gallows by order of the Baron des Adrets. So notorious were his charity, his virtue, and his merit, that the voice of Protestant and Catholic alike was raised to save him. Are we to believe on the vaguest of grounds that such a man suddenly became a monster of intolerance? White blushed to give his authority; he should have been ashamed to make the charge.
But it would scarcely do to let his book go forth without lugging in at least one priest. Of the proceedings at Rome he makes more capital. After stating what was done, and mistranslating a Latin phrase to make Charles IX. an angel, he says: "With such damning evidence against the Church of Rome, a recent defender of that church vainly contends that the clergy had no part in the massacre, and that the rejoicings were over rebels cut off in the midst of their rebellion, and not heretics murdered for their religion." The logic of this is admirable. The pope and cardinals ordered rejoicings on receiving despatches from the King of France, announcing that, having discovered a plot against his life and throne, he had put the rebels to the sword; therefore the Catholic clergy had a part in the massacre.
Apply the same to Drogheda. Parliament thanked God for Cromwell's massacre of the Irish after granting quarter, and rewarded a captain for throwing prisoners overboard at sea; therefore the Puritan clergy had a part in the massacre, and the evidence is damning.
The labors of Mr. White, however, on the whole, will do good. The wild assertions that fill our school-books and popular histories must give place to statements that will be justified by his work. It gives a standard to which we may appeal, and, if not all that we would claim, is so far on the way to impartiality that we may feel thankful for it.
It is not little to have wrung from the London Athenaeum the admission that the common view of St. Bartholomew is "one of the great historical errors which has been transmitted from teachers to taught during a long course of years."
From the French of Erckmanm and Chatrian.