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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1561 62
This kind of work, which went on daily, did not increase the love of the
people for the inquisition or the edicts. It terrified many, but it
inspired more with that noble resistance to oppression, particularly to
religious oppression, which is the sublimest instinct of human nature.
Men confronted the terrible inquisitors with a courage equal to their
cruelty: At Tournay, one of the chief cities of Titelmann's district,
and almost before his eyes, one Bertrand le Blas, a velvet manufacturer,
committed what was held an almost incredible crime. Having begged his
wife and children to pray for a blessing upon what he was about to
undertake, he went on Christmas-day to the Cathedral of Tournay and
stationed himself near the altar. Having awaited the moment in which the
priest held on high the consecrated host, Le Blas then forced his way
through the crowd, snatched the wafer from the hands of the astonished
ecclesiastic, and broke it into bits, crying aloud, as he did so,
"Misguided men, do ye take this thing to be Jesus Christ, your Lord and
Saviour?" With these words, he threw the fragments on the ground and
trampled them with his feet.
[Histoire des Martyrs, f. 356, exev.; apud Brandt, i. 171,172.
It may be well supposed that this would be regarded as a crime of
almost inconceivable magnitude. It was death even to refuse to
kneel in the streets when the wafer was carried by. Thus, for
example, a poor huckster, named Simon, at Bergen-op-Zoom, who
neglected to prostrate himself before his booth at the passage of
the host, was immediately burned. Instances of the same punishment
for that offence might be multiplied. In this particular case, it
is recorded that the sheriff who was present at the execution was so
much affected by the courage and fervor of the simple-minded victim,
that he went home, took to his bed, became delirious, crying
constantly, Ah, Simon! Simon! and died miserably, "notwithstanding
all that the monks could do to console him."]
The amazement and horror were so universal at such an appalling offence,
that not a finger was raised to arrest the criminal. Priests and
congregation were alike paralyzed, so that he would have found no
difficulty in making his escape. Ho did not stir, however; he had come
to the church determined to execute what he considered a sacred duty,
and to abide the consequences. After a time, he was apprehended.
The inquisitor demanded if he repented of what he had done. He
protested, on the contrary, that he gloried in the deed, and that he
would die a hundred deaths to rescue from such daily profanation the name
of his Redeemer, Christ. He was then put thrice to the torture, that he
might be forced to reveal his accomplices. It did not seem in human
power for one man to accomplish such a deed of darkness without
confederates. Bertrand had none, however, and could denounce none.
A frantic sentence was then devised as a feeble punishment for so much
wickedness. He was dragged on a hurdle, with his mouth closed with an
iron gag, to the market-place. Here his right hand and foot were burned
and twisted off between two red-hot irons. His tongue was then torn out
by the roots, and because he still endeavored to call upon the name of
God, the iron gag was again applied. With his arms and legs fastened
together behind his back, he was then hooked by the middle of his body to
an iron chain, and made to swing to and fro over a slow fire till he was
entirely roasted. His life lasted almost to the end of these ingenious
tortures, but his fortitude lasted as long as his life.
In the next year, Titelmann caused one Robert Ogier, of Ryssel, in
Flanders, to be arrested, together with his wife and two sons. Their
crime consisted in not going to mass, and in practising private worship
at home. They confessed the offence, for they protested that they could
not endure to see the profanation of their Saviour's name in the
idolatrous sacraments. They were asked what rites they practised in
their own house. One of the sons, a mere boy, answered, "We fall on our
knees, and pray to God that he may enlighten our hearts, and forgive our
sins. We pray for our sovereign, that his reign may be prosperous, and
his life peaceful. We also pray for the magistrates and others in
authority, that God may protect and preserve them all." The boy's simple
eloquence drew tears even from the eyes of some of his judges; for the
inquisitor had placed the case before the civil tribunal. The father and
eldest son were, however, condemned to the flames. "Oh God!" prayed the
youth at the stake, "Eternal Father, accept the sacrifice of our lives,
in the name of thy beloved Son."--"Thou liest, scoundrel!" fiercely
interrupted a monk, who was lighting the fire; "God is not your father;
ye are the devil's children." As the flames rose about them, the boy
cried out once more, "Look, my father, all heaven is opening, and I see
ten hundred thousand angels rejoicing over us. Let us be glad, for we
are dying for the truth."--" Thou liest! thou liest !" again screamed
the monk; "all hell is opening, and you see ten thousand devils thrusting
you into eternal fire." Eight days afterwards, the wife of Ogier and his
other son were burned; so that there was an end of that family.
Such are a few isolated specimens of the manner of proceeding in a single
district of the Netherlands. The inquisitor Titelmann certainly deserved
his terrible reputation. Men called him Saul the persecutor, and it was
well known that he had been originally tainted with the heresy which he
had, for so many years, been furiously chastising. At the epoch which
now engages our attention, he felt stimulated by the avowed policy of the
government to fresh exertions, by which all his previous achievements
should be cast into the shade. In one day he broke into a house in
Ryssel, seized John de Swarte, his wife and four children, together with
two newly-married couples, and two other persons, convicted them of
reading the Bible, and of praying in their own doors, and had them all
immediately burned.
Are these things related merely to excite superfluous horror? Are the
sufferings of these obscure Christians beneath the dignity of history?
Is it not better to deal with murder and oppression in the abstract,
without entering into trivial details? The answer is, that these things
are the history of the Netherlands at this epoch; that these hideous
details furnish the causes of that immense movement, out of which a great
republic was born and an ancient tyranny destroyed; and that Cardinal
Granvelle was ridiculous when he asserted that the people would not open
their mouths if the seigniors did not make such a noise. Because the
great lords "owed their very souls"--because convulsions might help to
pay their debts, and furnish forth their masquerades and banquets--
because the Prince of Orange was ambitious, and Egmont jealous of the
Cardinal--therefore superficial writers found it quite natural that the
country should be disturbed, although that "vile and mischievous animal,
the people," might have no objection to a continuance of the system which
had been at work so long. On the contrary, it was exactly because the
movement was a popular and a religious movement that it will always
retain its place among the most important events of history. Dignified
documents, state papers, solemn treaties, are often of no more value than
the lambskin on which they are engrossed. Ten thousand nameless victims,
in the cause of religious and civil freedom, may build up great states
and alter the aspect of whole continents.
The nobles, no doubt, were conspicuous, and it was well for the cause of
the right that, as in the early hours of English liberty, the crown and
mitre were opposed by the baron's sword and shield. Had all the
seigniors made common cause with Philip and Granvelle, instead of setting
their breasts against the inquisition, the cause of truth and liberty
would have been still more desperate. Nevertheless they were directed
and controlled, under Providence, by humbler, but more powerful agencies
than their own. The nobles were but the gilded hands on the outside of
the dial--the hour to strike was determined by the obscure but weighty
movements within.
Nor is it, perhaps, always better to rely upon abstract phraseology, to
produce a necessary impression. Upon some minds, declamation concerning
liberty of conscience and religious tyranny makes but a vague impression,
while an effect may be produced upon them, for example by a dry,
concrete, cynical entry in an account book, such as the following, taken
at hazard from the register of municipal expenses at Tournay, during the
years with which we are now occupied:
"To Mr. Jacques Barra, executioner, for having tortured, twice, Jean
de Lannoy, ten sous.
"To the same, for having executed, by fire, said Lannoy, sixty sous.
For having thrown his cinders into the river, eight sous."
This was the treatment to which thousands, and tens of thousands, had
been subjected in the provinces. Men, women, and children were burned,
and their "cinders" thrown away, for idle words against Rome, spoken
years before, for praying alone in their closets, for not kneeling to
a wafer when they met it in the streets, for thoughts to which they had
never given utterance, but which, on inquiry, they were too honest to
deny. Certainly with this work going on year after year in every city
in the Netherlands, and now set into renewed and vigorous action by a man
who wore a crown only that he might the better torture his fellow-
creatures, it was time that the very stones in the streets should be
moved to mutiny.
Thus it may be seen of how much value were the protestations of Philip
and of Granvelle, on which much stress has latterly been laid, that it
was not their intention to introduce the Spanish inquisition. With the
edicts and the Netherland inquisition, such as we have described them,
the step was hardly necessary.
In fact, the main difference between the two institutions consisted in
the greater efficiency of the Spanish in discovering such of its victims
as were disposed to deny their faith. Devised originally for more
timorous and less conscientious infidels who were often disposed to skulk
in obscure places and to renounce without really abandoning their errors,
it was provided with a set of venomous familiars who glided through every
chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside. The secret details of
each household in the realm being therefore known to the holy office and
to the monarch, no infidel or heretic could escape discovery. This
invisible machinery was less requisite for the Netherlands. There was
comparatively little difficulty in ferreting out the "vermin"--to use the
expression of a Walloon historian of that age--so that it was only
necessary to maintain in good working order the apparatus for destroying
the noxious creatures when unearthed. The heretics of the provinces
assembled at each other's houses to practise those rites described in
such simple language by Baldwin Ogier, and denounced under such horrible
penalties by the edicts. The inquisitorial system of Spain was hardly
necessary for men who had but little prudence in concealing, and no
inclination to disavow their creed. "It is quite a laughable matter,"
wrote Granvelle, who occasionally took a comic view of the inquisition,
"that the King should send us depositions made in Spain by which we are
to hunt for heretics here, as if we did not know of thousands already.
Would that I had as many doubloons of annual income," he added, "as there
are public and professed heretics in the provinces." No doubt the
inquisition was in such eyes a most desirable establishment. "To speak
without passion," says the Walloon, "the inquisition well administered is
a laudable institution, and not less necessary than all the other offices
of spirituality and temporality belonging both to the bishops and to the
commissioners of the Roman see." The papal and episcopal establishments,
in co-operation with the edicts, were enough, if thoroughly exercised and
completely extended. The edicts alone were sufficient. "The edicts and
the inquisition are one and the same thing," said the Prince of Orange.
The circumstance, that the civil authorities were not as entirely
superseded by the Netherland, as by the Spanish system, was rather a
difference of form than of fact. We have seen that the secular officers
of justice were at the command of the inquisitors. Sheriff, gaoler,
judge, and hangman, were all required, under the most terrible penalties,
to do their bidding. The reader knows what the edicts were. He knows
also the instructions to the corps of papal inquisitors, delivered by
Charles and Philip: He knows that Philip, both in person and by letter,
had done his utmost to sharpen those instructions, during the latter
portion of his sojourn in the Netherlands. Fourteen new bishops, each
with two special inquisitors under him, had also been appointed to carry
out the great work to which the sovereign had consecrated his existence.
The manner in which the hunters of heretics performed their office has
been exemplified by slightly sketching the career of a single one of the
sub-inquisitors, Peter Titelmann. The monarch and his minister scarcely
needed, therefore, to transplant the peninsular exotic. Why should they
do so? Philip, who did not often say a great deal in a few words, once
expressed the whole truth of the matter in a single sentence: "Wherefore
introduce the Spanish inquisition?" said he; "the inquisition of the
Netherlands is much more pitiless than that of Spain."
Such was the system of religious persecution commenced by Charles,
and perfected by Philip. The King could not claim the merit of the
invention, which justly belonged to the Emperor. At the same time, his
responsibility for the unutterable woe caused by the continuance of the
scheme is not a jot diminished. There was a time when the whole system
had fallen into comparative desuetude. It was utterly abhorrent to the
institutions and the manners of the Netherlanders. Even a great number
of the Catholics in the provinces were averse to it. Many of the leading
grandees, every one of whom was Catholic were foremost in denouncing its
continuance. In short, the inquisition had been partially endured, but
never accepted. Moreover, it had never been introduced into Luxemburg or
Groningen. In Gelderland it had been prohibited by the treaty through
which that province had been annexed to the emperor's dominions, and it
had been uniformly and successfully resisted in Brabant. Therefore,
although Philip, taking the artful advice of Granvelle, had sheltered
himself under the Emperor's name by re-enacting, word for word, his
decrees, and re-issuing his instructions, he can not be allowed any such
protection at the bar of history. Such a defence for crimes so enormous
is worse than futile. In truth, both father and son recognized
instinctively the intimate connexion between ideas of religious and of
civil freedom. "The authority of God and the supremacy of his Majesty"
was the formula used with perpetual iteration to sanction the constant
recourse to scaffold and funeral pile. Philip, bigoted in religion, and
fanatical in his creed of the absolute power of kings, identified himself
willingly with the Deity, that he might more easily punish crimes against
his own sacred person. Granvelle carefully sustained him in these
convictions, and fed his suspicions as to the motives of those who
opposed his measures. The minister constantly represented the great
seigniors as influenced by ambition and pride. They had only disapproved
of the new bishoprics, he insinuated, because they were angry that his
Majesty should dare to do anything without their concurrence, and because
their own influence in the states would be diminished. It was their
object, he said, to keep the King "in tutelage"--to make him a "shadow
and a cipher," while they should themselves exercise all authority in the
provinces. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of such suggestions
upon the dull and gloomy mind to which they were addressed. It is easy,
however, to see that a minister with such views was likely to be as
congenial to his master as he was odious to the people. For already, in
the beginning of 1562, Granvelle was extremely unpopular. "The Cardinal
is hated of all men," wrote Sir Thomas Gresham. The great struggle
between him and the leading nobles had already commenced. The people
justly identified him with the whole infamous machinery of persecution,
which had either originated or warmly made his own. Viglius and
Berlaymont were his creatures. With the other members of the state
council, according to their solemn statement, already recorded, he did
not deign to consult, while he affected to hold them responsible for the
measures of the administration. Even the Regent herself complained that
the Cardinal took affairs quite out of her hands, and that he decided
upon many important matters without her cognizance. She already began to
feel herself the puppet which it had been intended she should become;
she already felt a diminution of the respectful attachment for the
ecclesiastic which had inspired her when she procured his red hat.
Granvelle was, however, most resolute in carrying out the intentions of
his master. We have seen how vigorously he had already set himself to
the inauguration of the new bishoprics, despite of opposition and
obloquy. He was now encouraging or rebuking the inquisitors in their
"pious office" throughout all the provinces. Notwithstanding his
exertions, however, heresy continued to spread. In the Walloon provinces
the infection was most prevalent, while judges and executioners were
appalled by the mutinous demonstrations which each successive sacrifice
provoked. The victims were cheered on their way to the scaffold. The
hymns of Marot were sung in the very faces of the inquisitors. Two
ministers, Faveau and Mallart, were particularly conspicuous at this
moment at Valenciennes. The governor of the province, Marquis Berghen,
was constantly absent, for he hated with his whole soul the system of
persecution. For this negligence Granvelle denounced him secretly and
perpetually to Philip, "The Marquis says openly," said the Cardinal,
"that 'tis not right to shed blood for matters of faith. With such men
to aid us, your Majesty can judge how much progress we can make." It was,
however, important, in Granvelle's opinion, that these two ministers at
Valenciennes should be at once put to death. They were avowed heretics,
and they preached to their disciples, although they certainly were not
doctors of divinity. Moreover, they were accused, most absurdly, no
doubt, of pretending to work miracles. It was said that, in presence of
several witnesses, they had undertaken to cast out devils; and they had
been apprehended on an accusation of this nature.
["Histoire des choses les plus memorables qui se sent passees en la
ville et Compte de Valenciennes depuis le commencement des troubles
des Pays-Bas sons le regne de Phil. II., jusqu' a l'annee 1621."--
MS. (Collect. Gerard).--This is a contemporary manuscript belonging
to the Gerard collection in the Royal Library at the Hague. Its
author was a citizen of Valenciennes, and a personal witness of most
of the events which he describes. He appears to have attained to a
great age, as he minutely narrates, from personal observation, many
scenes which occurred before 1566, and his work is continued till
the year 1621. It is a mere sketch, without much literary merit,
but containing many local anecdotes of interest. Its anonymous
author was a very sincere Catholic.]
Their offence really consisted in reading the Bible to a few of their
friends. Granvelle sent Philibert de Bruxelles to Valenciennes to
procure their immediate condemnation and execution. He rebuked the
judges and inquisitors, he sent express orders to Marquis Berghen to
repair at once to the scene of his duties. The prisoners were condemned
in the autumn of 1561. The magistrates were, however, afraid to carry
the sentence into effect. Granvelle did not cease to censure them for
their pusillanimity, and wrote almost daily letters, accusing the
magistrates of being themselves the cause of the tumults by which they
were appalled. The popular commotion was, however, not lightly to be
braved. Six or seven months long the culprits remained in confinement,
while daily and nightly the people crowded the streets, hurling threats
and defiance at the authorities, or pressed about the prison windows,
encouraging their beloved ministers, and promising to rescue them in case
the attempt should be made to fulfil the sentence. At last Granvelle
sent down a peremptory order to execute the culprits by fire. On the
27th of April, 1562, Faveau and Mallart were accordingly taken from their
jail and carried to the market-place, where arrangements had been made
for burning them. Simon Faveau, as the executioner was binding him to
the stake, uttered the invocation, "O! Eternal Father!" A woman in the
crowd, at the same instant, took off her shoe and threw it at the funeral
pile. This was a preconcerted signal. A movement was at once visible in
the crowd. Men in great numbers dashed upon the barriers which had been
erected in the square around the place of execution. Some seized the
fagots, which had been already lighted, and scattered them in every
direction; some tore up the pavements; others broke in pieces the
barriers. The executioners were prevented from carrying out the
sentence, but the guard were enabled, with great celerity and
determination, to bring off the culprits and to place them in their
dungeon again. The authorities were in doubt and dismay. The
inquisitors were for putting the ministers to death in prison, and
hurling their heads upon the street. Evening approached while the
officials were still pondering. The people who had been chanting the
Psalms of David through the town, without having decided what should be
their course of action, at last determined to rescue the victims. A vast
throng, after much hesitation, accordingly directed their steps to the
prison. "You should have seen this vile populace," says an eye-witness,
"moving, pausing, recoiling, sweeping forward, swaying to and fro like
the waves of the sea when it is agitated by contending winds." The
attack was vigorous, the defence was weak--for the authorities had
expected no such fierce demonstration, notwithstanding the menacing
language which had been so often uttered. The prisoners were rescued,
and succeeded in making their escape from the city. The day in which the
execution had been thus prevented was called, thenceforward, the "day of
the ill-burned," (Journee des mau-brulez). One of the ministers,
however, Simon Faveau, not discouraged by this near approach to
martyrdom, persisted in his heretical labors, and was a few years
afterwards again apprehended. "He was then," says the chronicler,
cheerfully, "burned well and finally" in the same place whence he had
formerly been rescued. [Valenciennes MS.]
This desperate resistance to tyranny was for a moment successful,
because, notwithstanding the murmurs and menaces by which the storm had
been preceded, the authorities had not believed the people capable of
proceeding to such lengths. Had not the heretics--in the words of
Inquisitor Titelmann--allowed themselves, year after year, to be taken
and slaughtered like lambs? The consternation of the magistrates was
soon succeeded by anger. The government at Brussels was in a frenzy of
rage when informed of the occurrence. A bloody vengeance was instantly
prepared, to vindicate the insult to the inquisition. On the 29th of
April, detachments of Bossu's and of Berghen's "band of ordonnance" were
sent into Valenciennes, together with a company of the Duke of Aerschot's
regiment. The prisons were instantly filled to overflowing with men and
women arrested for actual or suspected participation in the tumult.
Orders had been sent down from the capital to make a short process and a
sharp execution for all the criminals. On the 16th of May, the slaughter
commenced. Some were burned at the stake, some were beheaded: the number
of victims was frightful. "Nothing was left undone by the magistrates,"
says an eyewitness, with great approbation, "which could serve for the
correction and amendment of the poor people." It was long before the
judges and hangmen rested from their labors. When at last the havoc was
complete, it might be supposed that a sufficient vengeance had been taken
for the "day of the ill-burned," and an adequate amount of "amendment"
provided for the "poor people."