[797] "N'abhorrissant riens tant que la voye de rigeur." Ibid., ubi supra.
[798] "Y assí vos no lo consentais, ni yo lo consentiré tan poco." Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. I. p. 439.
[799] "Pero no conviene que esto se entienda allá, ni que vos teneis esta órden mia, sino es para lo de agora, pero que la esperais para adelante, no desesperando ellos para entonces dello." Ibid., ubi supra.
[800] Correspondance de Marguerite d'Autriche, pp. 106, 114.
[801] "Comme il ne l'a pas fait librement, ni spontanément, il n'entend être lié par cette autorisation, mais au contraire il se réserve de punir les coupables, et principalement ceux qui ont été les auteurs et fauteurs des séditions." Correspondance de Philippe II, tom. I. p. 443.
One would have been glad to see the original text of this protest, which is in Latin, instead of M. Gachard's abstract.
[802] Strada, De Bello Belgico, tom. I. p. 236.
Among those who urged the king to violent measures, no one was so importunate as Fray Lorenzo de Villacancio, an Augustin monk, who distinguished himself by the zeal and intrepidity with which he ventured into the strongholds of the Reformers, and openly denounced their doctrines. Philip, acquainted with the uncompromising temper of the man, and his devotion to the Catholic Church, employed him both as an agent and an adviser in regard to the affairs of the Low Countries. where Fray Lorenzo was staying in the earlier period of the troubles. Many of the friar's letters to the king are still preserved in Simancas, and astonish one by the boldness of their criticisms on the conduct of the ministers, and even of the monarch himself, whom Lorenzo openly accuses of a timid policy towards the Reformers.
In a memorial on the state of the country, prepared, at Philip's suggestion, in the beginning of 1566, Fray Lorenzo urges the necessity of the most rigorous measures towards the Protestants in the Netherlands. "Since your majesty holds the sword which God has given to you, with the divine power over our lives, let it be drawn from the scabbard, and plunged in the blood of the heretics, if you do not wish that the blood of Jesus Christ, shed by these barbarians, and the blood of the innocent Catholics whom they have oppressed, should cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance on the sacred head of your majesty!... The holy king David showed no pity for the enemies of God. He slew them, sparing neither man nor woman. Moses and his brother, in a single day, destroyed three thousand of the children of Israel. An angel, in one night, put to death more than sixty thousand enemies of the Lord. Your majesty is a king, like David; like Moses, a captain of the people of Jehovah; an angel of the Lord,—for so the Scriptures style the kings and captains of his people;—and these heretics are the enemies of the living God!" And in the same strain of fiery and fanatical eloquence he continues to invoke the vengeance of Philip on the heads of his unfortunate subjects in the Netherlands.
That the ravings of this hard-hearted bigot were not distasteful to Philip may be inferred from the fact that he ordered a copy of his memorial to be placed in the hands of Alva, on his departure for the Low Countries. It appears that he had some thoughts of sending Fray Lorenzo to join the duke there,—a project which received little encouragement from the latter, who probably did not care to have so meddlesome a person as this frantic friar to watch his proceedings.