THE BARTHOLOMEW LEGACY
Remembering the Martyrs
But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now.
(Galatians 4: 29)
Dr Alan C. Clifford
Introduction
No,
this is not about Bartholomew’s maps, nor about Barts Hospital in
London. Neither can we aim to provide a biblical character study about
the Apostle Bartholomew. Indeed, nothing at all is said about him in the
New Testament apart from listing him among the apostles. Yet, during
the early twentieth century, his name was known outside the circles of
cartographers, tourists and medics.
One can imagine
a scenario somewhere in the West of England in 1923, where a Sunday
school teacher tried to introduce his or her pupils to the twelve
apostles. On declaring that the Bible tells us absolutely nothing about
Bartholomew, an observant lad interjected with “I saw Saint Bartholomew a
few days ago!” “Oh where?” To which the lad replied to the startled
teacher, “Saint Bartholomew came through with the Cheltenham Flyer
express” [the GWR’s new prestige train]. Our young train-spotting
scholar then added excitedly, “I got the number - 2915!”
Yes, we know
more about G. J. Churchward’s famous Great Western Railway 2-cylinder,
4-6-0 Saint Class steam locomotives than we know for sure about the
‘saint’ himself. (Incidentally, 2914 was Saint Augustine and 2917 was
Saint Bernard, not to ignore that 2923, 2913, 2920 and 2927 were Saints
George, Andrew, David and Patrick respectively). Sadly, the superstition
of ‘patron saints’ survives long after the last of these engines were
scrapped in 1953. For the record (with some thematic link to our
subject), Saint class 2903 Lady of Lyons (built in 1907) is credited
with an unconfirmed 120 mph on a trial run. (One wonders if the current
rebuild of a Saint at the GWR centre at Didcot might lead to a challenge
to Mallard’s 1938 world speed record for steam of 126 mph). Whether or
not the actual ‘Lady of Lyons’ was a saint (unlike 2904 Lady Godiva),
the city of Lyons is associated with early persecution of Christians
(177 AD) and later martyrdoms of Huguenots (1553, 1572).
Apart from
legends about his mission to India and Armenia, and his eventual
horrific martyrdom (it is said he was flayed alive before being
beheaded, miraculous healing properties being later claimed for his
skin, hence the link with medicine), nothing is known for sure about the
Apostle Bartholomew. Not to forget that imperial Rome was sacked by
Alaric the Goth on 24 August 410, the medieval Roman Church appointed
this calendar day for the Festival of St Bartholomew. Ironically, it was
the later persecuting activities of the Roman Catholic Church that
associated St Bartholomew with a most appalling atrocity that bears his
name.
TWO BLACK BARTHOLOMEWS
During
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, following the Protestant
Reformation, two outrages were committed against good and faithful
Christian people on 24 August. The first - in 1572 - was against French
Huguenots (Reformed Christians, Calvinists), thousands of whom were
butchered by Roman Catholics in Paris and beyond. This terrible event is
known as the St Bartholomew Massacre. Queen Elizabeth I went white as
she heard the news.
The second - in
1662 - was against English Puritans or Nonconformists (Reformed
Christians, Calvinists), when around 2,000 godly pastors were ejected
from their churches by the then recently-restored Church of England.
Queen Elizabeth’s church (in the hands of ‘secret Catholic’ King Charles
II) repeated the intolerance of the Pope’s church. Both atrocities led
to much suffering and injustice.
These two
expressions of ‘politically-correct’ religious tyranny (Roman Catholic
and Anglican) reveal the darker side of Christian history. In the long
battle between the Light and darkness, it has always been ‘right forever
on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne’. Yet, in His sovereign
wisdom and providence, Almighty God uses such atrocities to promote His
everlasting kingdom, as surely as the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son
brought salvation to the world.
THE FRENCH BARTHOLOMEW
First, the facts:
1. The spread of the Reformation in
France saw numerous conversions among the nobility as well as the
general population. Among John Calvin’s numerous correspondents was
Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France.
2. After a
decade of religious war (following the massacre of a Reformed
congregation near Vassy by soldiers of the Catholic Duke of Guise), a
peace-promoting marriage between the Protestant Henry of Navarre (the
future Henry IV of France) and Margaret of Valois, sister of King
Charles IX took place at Notre-Dame, Paris on 18 August 1572.
3. The
Protestant aristocracy were invited for the occasion, including Admiral
Coligny. Much admired by the young Charles IX, he proposed policies
which advanced the interests of both the French monarchy and the French
Reformed Church.
4. Jealous and
fearful of this influence, the Duke of Guise and the queen mother
Catherine de Medici hired an assassin to kill Coligny. An attempt while
the Protestant leader was walking the streets of Paris failed, only
leaving him wounded. Gravely concerned, Charles IX promised an
investigation and punishment for the plotters.
5. The king’s
sympathy created panic among the Catholics, who did all they could to
counter Coligny’s influence. Catherine, the Duke and Henri de Anjou
(later Henri III) managed - after prolonged psychological pressure - to
persuade the feeble-minded monarch that Coligny was really a threat to
royal power. On Saturday evening, 23 August, confused Charles lost his
temper: “If you want to kill Coligny, I agree, but then kill all the
other Huguenots, so that no one will be able to blame me on account of
his death!”
6. At 3 am, the
Duke and his men surprised and assassinated Admiral Coligny at his
lodging. Mortally wounded, he was thrown from his window, his head being
kicked on the ground by the Duke. All the other Protestant leaders were
killed by the royal guard. Sadly, the young Henry of Navarre instantly
professed to be a Catholic to avoid death. While returning to the
Reformed party soon afterwards (his evangelical convictions yet
doubtful), this was sadly a ‘conversion’ he repeated in later years to
gain the crown of France.
7. Urged on by
priests and nuns, the Paris mob attacked Huguenots in their homes for
three consecutive days. In the ensuing horror, it is estimated that at
least ten thousand lost their lives in the city. The streets flowed with
blood and dead bodies were thrown into the Seine. Urged on by Charles
and Catherine, the atrocity spread to the provinces. The total number of
victims is hard to estimate accurately - 30, 000 might be a
conservative figure. It should be said that the Bishop of Lisieux forbad
such killing in his diocese. But he was a rare exception.
Second, who were the guilty?
Charles
IX surely. He was no match for all the intrigue surrounding him. Yet
clearly overwhelmed with remorse, this weak individual suffered acutely.
Two years later he died in agony, seeing blood everywhere. Refusing to
see his mother at his death bed, he found a measure of comfort through
his faithful Huguenot nurse. Catherine herself, a political schemer, had
been married to an unfaithful Henri II. An Italian Catholic, and
disciple of Machiavelli, she ruthlessly retained her influence. She
hated Henri of Navarre and the Protestants, yet died unhappy and almost
unnoticed in 1589. Providing the real dynamic behind the Bartholomew
massacre, the Duke of Guise was a fanatical Catholic. His partner in the
crime, Henri de Anjou, later Henri III, eventually turned against the
Duke, having him assassinated at Blois in 1587. Then there’s the Paris
mob. Hating their Protestant neighbours for their godly and prosperous
life-style, they were stirred up by fanatical priests to kill and
plunder. With all restraint gone, the basest human instincts took over.
The Roman
Catholic hierarchy was the chief culprit in the atrocity. Always in
favour of persecution, the Vatican viewed religious toleration as an
unpardonable sin. Pope Pius V had written accordingly to King Charles IX
in 1569:
Your majesty
must consider as certain that this (namely the restoration of public
order) will never take place, as long as the whole kingdom will not
accept unanimously and keep faithfully the one and same Catholic
religion. In order to reach that goal with God’s help, it is necessary
that Your Majesty act without mercy against God’s enemies, his own
rebellious subjects, and punish them with the rightful pains and
torments stated by the law (cited in Jules M. Nicole, ‘Black
Bartholomew’, Christian Graduate, December 1972 (25: 4), 111).
Although Pope
Pius V had died by the time of the Bartholomew massacre, his successor
Gregory XIII welcomed news of the event, ordering Te Deums to be sung in
all the churches. He also had an infamous medal struck to commemorate
the Church‘s triumph over ‘heresy’.
Naturally, King
Philip II of Spain rejoiced that Protestantism had been thus suppressed
in France. His own scheme to humble Queen Elizabeth I and Protestant
England found eventual fruition in the Spanish Armada of 1588, a scheme
which, in the merciful providence of Almighty God, ended in ruin.
Not all
Catholic princes rejoiced. The Emperor Maximilian II, Charles IX’s
father-in-law expressed deep sorrow over the cruelty displayed. Even
Charles’ wife, daughter of the emperor, the devoutly-Catholic Elizabeth
of Austria pleaded tearfully with her husband that some Protestants who
had taken refuge in her room might be spared. The liberal and tolerant
Chancellor of France, Michel de l’Hospital was so overwhelmed with grief
that he died shortly after the massacre.
Third, what effect did the massacre have on the Lord’s Reformed people in France?
Having
observed that over many years the French Reformed churches had provided
‘a vast multitude of most zealous and faithful martyrs, far more in
number and quality of sufferers for the Gospel, than in any one of the
Reformed Christian nations in Europe’, the English Presbyterian
historian of the Huguenots, John Quick (1636-1706) provides a judicious
and moving assessment of the aftermath:
The churches
after the Parisian massacre were at a stand. That deluge of Protestant
blood, which was then shed had exhausted their best spirits. Multitudes
were frighted out of their native land, ... and others were frighted out
of their religion. In such a dreadful hurricane as that was, no wonder
if some leaves, unripe fruit, and rotten withered branches fell to the
earth, and were lost irrecoverably. However, a remnant escaped, and,
which was no less than a miracle, generally the ministers, God reserving
them to gather in another harvest. And the churches in many places
revived. God staying the rough wind in the day of His east wind, and
giving them a breathing time, a little reviving under their hard bondage
(Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, 1692, i, p. lx).
John Quick goes
on to outline the sad effects of Henri of Navarre’s ‘Paris is worth a
mass’ apostasy by which he obtained the throne of France as Henri IV in
1593 . Yet never entirely forgetting his former Protestant friends, he
granted them the tolerant provisions of the Edict of Nantes in April
1598. In the decades that followed, the Reformed churches of France
flourished until further persecution descended on them during the reign
of King Louis XIV. However, we may conclude that this history assures us
beyond all doubt the truth of our Saviour’s words that, despite all the
persecution of all the ages, ‘the gates of hell will never prevail
against His Church’ (see Matt. 16: 18), the true Church of the
Reformation and all who faithfully profess the pure truth of the
everlasting Gospel.
THE ENGLISH BARTHOLOMEW
Following
the end of the Cromwellian era, pent up resentment and revenge burst on
the heads of the Puritans. Their attempts to complete the English
Reformation proved a disappointment. The restoration of Church and
Monarchy prompted appallingly brutal persecution. The regicides were
arrested and disembowelled. The Act of Uniformity, coming into force on
St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662, drove around two-thousand puritan
clergy from their livings. Many were to experience imprisonment. The day
was known as ‘Black Bartholomew’. Clearly the date was deliberately
chosen, an intimidating reminder of the French Bartholomew massacre
ninety years earlier. J. C. Ryle said of the Act of Uniformity:
Taking all
things into consideration, a more impolitic and disgraceful deed never
disfigured the annals of a Protestant Church. ... To show the spirit of
the ruling party in the Church, they actually added to the number of
apocryphal lessons in the Prayer Book calendar at this time. They made
it a matter of congratulation among themselves that they had thrust out
the Puritans, and got in Bel and the Dragon (‘Richard Baxter’ in Light from Old Times, 1890, 1902 rep. 316-7).
Led by Richard
Baxter and others, the Presbyterians made up around two-thirds of this
godly company. They were the ‘cheated party’. Being honourable
monarchists and moderate revolutionaries did not shield them from the
wrath of King and Bishop. They had the misfortune to trust the word of a
King who had few of his father’s virtues but several of his vices.
Having promised ‘liberty to tender consciences’ at Breda in 1660,
Charles soon forgot such seeming magnanimity by the time he reached
London. However, with the Restoration, the fruits of the Puritan
Revolution were not entirely lost. The new monarchy was never to have
the power of the old. The Star Chamber and the High Commission were
never revived. Taxation was never again levied without parliamentary
consent.
If England was
safe from anarchy, she was not secure from the relentless intrigue of
the Roman Catholic Church. While Puritans suffered for nearly thirty
years, England’s Protestantism remained threatened. However, even the
Cavalier Parliament was too strongly Protestant for King Charles II
whose sympathies for popery were known. Indeed, in 1670, the King
entered into a treaty with Louis XIV of France to curb the aspirations
of the Dutch Calvinist, William of Orange.
Unknown to Charles’ protestant ministers, the secret clause of the shameful Treaty of Dover
(1670) was signed by the Catholic members of the Cabal, Lords Arlington
and Clifford. Louis hereby promised to supply Charles with French
troops and money if, at an opportune time, Charles would declare himself
a Roman Catholic. The article’s chilling words actually read: ‘The King
of Great Britain being convinced of the truth of the Catholic Faith, is
determined to declare himself a Catholic...as soon as the welfare of
his realm will permit.’
CONCLUSION
If
Englishmen had retreated from the anarchy and repression of the
revolutionary era, they were not about to forget the danger of Romanism.
Parliament maintained the necessity of a protestant church and a
protestant monarchy. Roman Catholic influence in the persons of Charles
II and James II - the sons of Henrietta Maria - was firmly checked.
After the failure of the ill-fated Monmouth rebellion of 1685, it was
the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 that finally ensured a protestant
constitution and succession when William and Mary ascended the throne.
Constitutional monarchy thus replaced Stuart absolutism. Protestant
safeguards were enshrined in the Bill of Rights (1689) and later in the
Act of Settlement (1701). With the passing of the Toleration Act (1689),
persecuted Nonconformists became legally-worshipping Protestant
Dissenters.
With the aid of
Huguenot regiments formed from refugees driven out of France at the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), William of Orange finally
rescued this country from the popish menace when he defeated James II at
the battle of the Boyne in 1690. During the eighteenth century,
England’s Protestantism was reinforced by the Methodist Revival. Until
the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the restoration of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850 (after which Cardinal
Manning effectively declared war on protestant England), one may say
that the zealous Protestantism of Puritan England continued to exert its
liberating power.
Three centuries
later, in an age of ecumenical and multi-faith apostasy, we must ensure
by God's grace that the essential protestant legacy of the puritan
period is maintained. We dare not imagine that the Church of Rome has
changed: as surely as she meddled in British politics in the seventeenth
century, so she is active in the heart of Europe today. In view of the
UK visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, we cannot deny that these dark
forces are still at work. Let us never forget the significance of 24
August. May all who name Christ as Lord and Saviour (and others who
value religious liberty) be careful to honour His godly servants of the
Reformation era, determined still to ‘contend earnestly for the faith
which was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3).
POSTSCRIPT
Dr Edmund Calamy (1671-1732) published An
Abridgement of Mr Baxter’s History of His Life and Times with An
account of the Ministers...who were Ejected after the Restoration of
King Charles II (1702). Integral with his ministry, Calamy clearly
felt called of God to transmit the heroic faith of Baxter and his
brethren: “To let the Memory of these Men Dye is injurious to
Posterity”. His Abridgement involved great courage, and it provoked a
storm. At a time of continuing Anglican-inspired hostility to the heirs
of the Puritans, this inspiring material marked out Edmund Calamy as
‘the Champion of Nonconformity’.
Apart from
modest attention from nonconformist scholars, Dr Calamy is a largely
unsung hero of a depressing period in English church history. While he
never had the impact of his hero Richard Baxter (and how many could
claim that until George Whitefield appeared in 1735?), Calamy shared
most of Baxter’s convictions, a good deal of his piety and an
equally-strong pastoral and evangelistic commitment. In addition,
besides documenting the sacrifice of the ejected ministers of 1662, he
perhaps more than any other preacher and theologian transmitted Baxter’s
wonderful legacy to the eighteenth century and beyond.
