The Fruits of the Catholic Church

Ye shall know them by their fruits.

1st-19^th Century – Catholic clerical sexuality, homosexuality, sodomy, and child sex abuse. See The Roman Catholic Church: A Centuries Old History of Awareness of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (from the First to the 19th Century) By Faisal Rashid

185-253CE Origen of Alexandria was a layman who was ordained directly to the presbyterate. This is an example of how some of the supposed “Church Fathers” were unqualified to teach. (Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity)

197CE-387CE

Medieval traditions of anti-Jewish hostilities evolved from the Adversus Judaeos teachings of the Catholic Church. Tertullian, John Chrysostom, and other Catholic Church Fathers planted these seeds of antisemitism. During the crusades, Catholic mobs massacred Jewish communities. Jews were accused of killing Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes and bringing about the Black Death. The image of the demonic Jew became a feature of the Catholic Church. Jews were accused of satanic activities and viewed as a sub-species of the human race. The belief that the Jewish population could work miracles against the Christian community inflamed the Catholic church and served as the basis for accusations that the Jews desecrated the Host and committed acts of ritual murder.

236CE Fabian was a layman who was made Pope in 236CE. Another example of how many supposed “Popes” were unqualified to to lead or teach. (Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity)

270-275CE Emperor Aurelian made the Cult of Sol Invictus the official religion of Rome. It included a priesthood. The priests received high positions called Pontifices. The high priest is called Pontifex Maximus, which means Supreme Pontiff. Aurelian created the College of Pontifices. The annual festival of Sol Invictus was known as “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti,” and it is celebrated on December 25^th. It was officially recognized by Emperor Aurelian in 274CE. December 25^th is celebrated as the Birthday of Sol Invictus. “Dies Natalis Invicti Sol” means the Day of Birth of the Unconquered Sun. A radiant crown is associated with Sol Invictus. The radiant cross above the Sun is the Sign of Sol Invictus.

321CE Emperor Constantine ordered the Roman Empire to observe the Day of the Sun, or Sunday, as the official Day of Rest for the Roman Empire. Sunday became the ordered Day of Rest on March 7, 321CE. Sol Invictus has a halo or glowing circle that is often depicted around his head. This halo is his radiant crown. He is portrayed as a young man with long hair wearing a radiant crown or halo and wearing a cloak. He is sometimes shown driving a chariot across the sky or holding a globe with rays of light emanating from his head. It is telling that Clement of Alexandria in the 2^nd century stated that “Jesus Christ drives His chariot across the sky.” During the December 25^th celebration, the temple was decorated with lights, garlands, and offerings of food and drink to Sol Invictus.

300-340CE

Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, was very antisemitic. He was only a catechumen (one who is receiving rudimentary instructions in the doctrines of Christianity) when made Bishop of Caesarea in 314CE. He authored one of the very first “blood libels” against the Jews, claiming that he “had proof that Jews of every community of the world kidnapped a Christian boy each Easter and crucified him in a ritual killing.” Ever since then, this slander has appeared repeatedly throughout history. He also said, “Jews are always cursed by God and thus doomed to perpetual punishment.” He also said, “It is because you killed Christ. It is because you stretched out your hand against the Lord. It is because you shed the precious blood that there is no restoration, no mercy anymore, and no defense…This is why you are being punished worse than in the past.” “Because of impiety, their kingdom was utterly destroyed, the Torah abrogated, and their worship uprooted. Their royal metropolis burned with fire…” Also, he slandered the Jews by saying, “In the Roman Persian War, the Jews purchased 90,000 Christian prisoners for the mere pleasure of killing them.” There has never been any support for these slanderous lies.

306CE

Canon 16: Prohibition of marriage and all social intercourse between Jews and Christians; parents allowing children to marry Jews were excommunicated for 5 years.

Canon 49: Landholders forbidden to sell produce to Jews lest Jews say a blessing over it (i.e., not allowed to give or sell food or wine to Jews).

306-373CE

St. Ephraim is thought to be the son of a pagan priest. Starting in 363Ce, he authored a great body of liturgical hymns, a number of which carried maligning references to the Jews. He is quoted as saying, “synagogue was a harlot and was given a bill of divorce from God because she was wanton between the legs.”

315CE

Emperor Constantine: Any Jew who “dares to attack with stones or some other manifestation of anger towards another who has fled their dangerous sect, he must be speedily given to the flames.”

325CE- Council of Nicaea

Established the date of the pagan Easter in place of the Biblical Passover.

Emperor Constantine: “It was declared particularly unworthy for this, the holiest of festivals, to follow the custom of the Jews who had soiled their hands with the most fearful of crimes…We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews.”

330CE-379CE – St. Basil (330–379 C.E) stated: “A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys…is to be publically flogged…For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement… and he shall never again associate with youths in private conversation nor in counseling them.”

330-395CE

St. Gregory of Nyssa was antisemitic and slandered the Jews by calling them, “Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies of God, haters of God, adversaries of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith, advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men of darkened minds, leaven of the Pharisees, congregation of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners, and haters of goodness.” He was also greatly influenced by the writings of Plato.

331CE- Council of Trullo

Strengthened the effort to divorce Easter from YHWH’s Passover.

“If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.” (So, if a Christian wants to obey YHWH rather than sinful men, then he is to be punished.)

339-397CE

St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, “was baptized, went through the various clerical ranks and was consecrated Bishop of Milan all within eight days.” (Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity) After St. Ambrose heard that Catholics set fire to a synagogue after one of his antisemitic sermons, he said: “I declare that I set fire to the synagogue, or at least that I ordered those who did it that there might not be a place where Christ is denied. If it be objected to me that I did not set the synagogue on fire here, I answer that it began to be burnt by the judgment of God.” He also told Emperor Theodosius I, “that people who burned down a synagogue should not be punished; that synagogues contain nothing of value, what could the Jews lose by the fire?”

340-420CE St. Jerome was a layman who was ordained directly to the presbyterate. (Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity) Jerome was also very antisemitic. In his writings, he calls Jews “serpents and haters of all men.” Ke said their image is Judas and their prayers are the “braying of donkeys.” Jerome mistranslated the Hebrew word keren in Exodus 34:29 as horns when it should have been translated as light-rays. Because of this mistranslation, it became a tradition in art to paint Moses with horns instead of Moses with rays of light. It became known as the “Horned Moses.” This was due to antisemitism.

344-407CE

St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, was known as the “high priest of early Christian antisemitism.” His antisemitic sermons had a great influence for centuries. He was banished by the Eastern Roman emperor for his outspokenness. All previous denunciations of the Jews are dwarfed by the rage in his sermons and writings. Here are just some of his quotes in Homilies Against the Jews: “The place where you find a harlot is called a brothel; or rather the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theatre…but a wild beast’s den.” “They live only for their belly, their mouths always gaping; they behave no better than pigs or goats in their gross lasciviousness and excessive gluttony. They know only one thing, namely, how to gorge themselves and fill themselves with drink.” “Christians are to shun them like filth and like a universal plague.” “They are sex-crazed stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.” “Jewish worship is genuinely divine in origin and worthy of respect, but now everything the Jews do is a grotesque joke, at once laughable and disgusting.” “Jews sacrifice their sons and daughters to devils. Jews are worse than wild beasts. Jews are forever and eternally under God’s curse. Not only every synagogue, but every individual Jew as well is a temple of the devil; and I would have to say the same thing about their souls.” “The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ, and for killing God there is no expiation possible…Christians must never cease vengeance, and the Jews must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews, and whoever has intercourse with Jews will be rejected on Judgment Day. It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews.” “So, whenever a Jew tells you: ‘It was men who made war on us, it was men who plotted against us’, say to him ‘Men would certainly not have made war unless God permitted them’…” “The Jews are the most worthless of all men; they are lecherous, greedy, rapacious; they are perfidious murderers of Christians; they worship the Devil; their religion is sickness…”

354-430CE

St. Augustine popularized allegorically based teachings into a theology that would dominate the Catholic church for over a thousand years. The literal understanding of the Scriptures was trumped by the allegorical. Augustine said the Jews’ failure and humiliation by society symbolized the triumph of the Church over the Synagogue. The policy of the Church, therefore, was to allow small Jewish communities to survive in conditions of degradation and impotence. In his Tract Against The Jews, he said Jews are incapable of understanding the true nature of the Bible and believe the divine promises are meant for them, but are, in fact, enemies of God. “The true image of the Hebrews is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jews can never spiritually understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus because their fathers killed the Savior.” “The Jews held Him, the Jews insulted Him, the Jews bound Him, they crowned Him with thorns, dishonored Him by spitting on Him; they hung Him upon a tree, they pierced Him with a lance.” “Like Cain, the Jews carry a sign (circumcision) but are not to be killed. As in the Scriptures, the older brother will serve the younger.” Augustine’s stance was that the Jews were to be a ‘witness’ to the truth of Christianity; their humiliation was to prove the triumph of the Church over Synagogue, they were to be condemned to perpetual servitude, and they are unintelligent, but they possess intelligent books.

363CE- Synod of Laodicea

Canon 38: “It is unlawful to receive unleavened bread from the Jews, thus, to partake of their impiety.” (i.e., Passover celebration of YHWH outlawed)

388CE

Marriage between Jews and Christians was prohibited: Penalty was the same as adultery – death in some cases, loss of property, and exile in other cases. (Elaborated on in 1935, Nazi: “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor”)

408CE- Theodosian Code

It was the law of Rome in most of the East and West until 534CE. Continued in the west until the 12^th century. Permitted Jews some autonomy and protected their religious rights (thus Jews were to be a reminder to Christians of the “sin” of rejecting Jesus).

Jews were forbidden to proselytize either slaves or free persons. This was all enforced in the Nazi laws of 1933.

423CE – Laws prohibited the establishment of new synagogues.

438CE – Jews forbidden to serve in imperial administration or hold government offices.

451CE – Council of Chalcedon

Christian “readers” and “singers” are prohibited from marrying Jews.

465CE- Synod of Vennes or Vannes (Venetia)

Canon 12: Prohibited Christian clergy from eating with Jews.

476CE

Walter M. Montano, a former Catholic priest, asserts in his book, Behind the Purple Curtain, that it has been estimated that fifty million people died for their faith during the twelve hundred years of the Dark Ages. (Citing Walter M. Montano, Behind the Purple Curtain, Cowman Publications, 1950, page 91.) 8 — The Shadow of Rome, by John B. Wilder; Zondervan Publishing Co., 1960, page 87.

476CE

This great anti-Christian power robbed the church of its gospel light and plunged the world into the Dark Ages. It put to death and thus took away the lives of from fifty to one hundred million of the saints of the Most High. — Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, 1950, p. 170.

476CE

One thousand years covers the crest of the persecutions, when from 50,000,000 to 150,000,000 martyrs died of the sword, at the stake, in dungeons, and of starvation because of the confiscation of their earthly possessions. — Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, 1950, p. 185.

493CE

During its rise to power, the Papacy also essentially exterminated the Heruli shortly after 493 A.D., the Vandals soon after 533 A.D., and the Ostrogoths in 554 A.D, all of whom were asserted to hold to the Arian belief. However, Limborch (The History of the Inquisition, p. 95) doubts that Arius held the views attributed to him.

517CE Synod of Epaon

Laymen (as well as clergy) are forbidden to eat with Jews.

533CE

―It is reckoned that during the reign of Justinian, Africa lost five million inhabitants; thus Arianism was extinguished in that region, not by any enforcement of conformity, but by the extermination of the race which had introduced and professed it.‖ – History of the Christian Church, J.C. Robertson, Vol. 1, p. 521. — Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, p. 101.

534CE- Justinian Code (Eastern Roman Empire)

Enacted Orthodox Christianity into law. Deadly consequences of the alliance of church and state began to emerge. Jews and other non-Christians are no longer considered Roman citizens. Continued the laws against the establishment of new synagogues.

535CE- Synod at Carthage

No intermarriage with Jews allowed. Jews were forbidden to be a judge, or a tax collector, or own slaves (this kept them from owning agricultural land).

538CE- Synod of Orlean

Confirmed the rules that Christians are forbidden to eat with Jews.

581CE- Synod of Macon

Jews were not allowed to be seen on the street during “Holy Week” (the week before Easter).

606CE

“From the birth of Popery in 606 to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians that more than fifty million of the human family have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of popery.” — “History of Romanism,” pp. 541, 542. New York: 1871.

633CE- Synod of Toledo

Prohibited converted Jews from visiting any of their Jewish relatives or friends; children of a union between a Jew and a Christian were forced to convert to Christianity.

681CE- Synod of Toledo

Renews antisemitic laws against Jews. Jews were forbidden to celebrate Passover, conduct circumcisions, or divert a Christian from his beliefs. Jews were forbidden to celebrate YHWH’s Sabbath or any of His festivals. Jews were forbidden to work on the counterfeit “sabbath” aka Sunday. Jews were not to make any distinctions among foods (i.e., kosher vs. non-kosher, mixing of milk and meat dishes, or refraining from eating pork). Slaves of Jews were to be freed if they converted to Christianity.

692CE- Council of Trullo or Quinisext Council

Canon 11: Christians must not only refuse to eat unleavened bread (matzah) but must also avoid “familiar intercourse with them” (Jews), “nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them…”

Canon 129: The right to appear in court and accuse citizens of a crime was denied the Jews.

“If any bishop, presbyter, deacon, or anyone of the list of clergy keeps fasts or festivals with the Jews or receives from them any of the gifts of their feasts, such as unleavened bread, or any such things; let them be deposed. If he is a layman, let him be excommunicated.”

694CE- Synod of Toledo

Ruled that Jews should be robbed of their fortunes. Ruled that Jewish children should be removed from them in their seventh year and later married to Christians. False accusations were brought against the Jews, such as saying Jews were guilty of all sorts of crimes such including they are trying to overthrow the “fatherland” (Spain) and must be punished accordingly.

843CE

An edict was issued under the regency of Theodora, which decreed that the Paulicians should be exterminated by fire and sword, or brought back to the Greek church. … It is affirmed by civil and ecclesiastical historians that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death. — Andrew Miller, Short Papers on Church, London, Chapter 16.

883CE- Synod of Toulouse

Jews were accused of bringing “Saracens” (Muslims) to France. Therefore, every Christmas, Good Friday, and Ascension Day, a Jew was to be given a powerful slap in the face in front of the church door and made to shout three times: “It is just that the Jews must bend their neck under the beating of Christians, as they are unwilling to submit to Christ.”

896CE

Pope Stephen VI: Stephen VI (d. 897) is best known for putting his dead predecessor on trial. This was not at all a symbolic trial; the body was dug up and brought before the court. The deceased Pope Formosus, unable to speak for himself, was instead spoken for by a deacon and was ultimately found guilty of accepting the papacy while also holding the office of bishop. The corpse was stripped of its vestments, dressed as a pauper, and thrown into a shallow grave, but not before three of his fingers were cut off.

This did not seem like enough of a punishment, so the corpse was dug up again and thrown into the Tiber. The so-called Cadaver Synod of 897 led directly to the demise of Stephen VI. He was stripped of his title and strangled to death a year later.

896CE-897CE

Pope Stephen 6 turned his back on the previous Pope Formosus, who ruled from 891 to 896. He exhumed his corpse, put papal vestments on it, put it on the papal throne, and put it on trial on charges of perjury. Pope Stephen found Pope Formosus guilty, cut off his fingers, and cast his corpse into the Tiber River. Stephen was deposed, imprisoned, and strangled.

9^TH Century

Catholics have always persecuted the true church long before the Protestant Reformation.

Archbishop Agobard wrote, “Things have reached a stage where ignorant Christians claim that the Jews preach better than our priests…some Christians even celebrate the Sabbath with the Jews and violate the holy repose of Sunday…Men of the people, peasants, allow themselves to be plunged into such a sea of errors that they regard the Jews as the only people of God and consider that they combine the observance of the pure religion and a truer faith than ours.”

904CE

Pope Sergius III: Nepotism and Murder…Sergius III (860-911) spent his reign as pope under the influence of the powerful Theophylact of Tusculum. Before becoming pontiff, he actively participated in the Cadaver Synod, and upon assuming power, he reportedly had his two predecessors murdered in prison.

During the remainder of his pontificate, he promoted family members and friends to positions of power, allegedly fathered an illegitimate son (who would later become Pope John XI), and participated in acts unbecoming of a pope. Today, he is remembered as a ferocious man crippled by his desire to hold power and a malignant blight on the history of the papacy.

920CE: Christians were forbidden to use the Old Church Slavonic translation of the Bible by John X.

904CE-911CE

Pope Sergius III marched on Rome and deposed Pope Christopher and had him imprisoned and murdered. Pope Sergius III had an affair with a 15-year-old girl and got her pregnant. Her mother was Theodora. In 911CE, Pope Sergius III was deposed and suffocated.

911CE-972CE

These 61 years are known as the Papal Pornocracy. The papacy itself lost all independence and dignity and became the prey of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes. Pope followed Pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder. The “Roman Amazons”, Theodora and Marozia, combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty & wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power & pleasure, turned the Catholic Church into a den of robbers and the papal residence into a harem. They were glorified in their shame. Hence, this infamous period is called the Papal Pornocracy.

955CE

Pope John XII, A Philandering Catholic Pope: Last but not least is John XII (930-964), whose papacy was known for its worldliness and depravity. He was also related to the powerful house of Tusculum, but despite his powerful connections, he was unable to control Rome’s nobility. His dual roles as head of the church and secular prince made him unpopular with many nobles. He was characterized as an immoral man who drank, hunted, and had many sexual liaisons. The papal residence was described as a brothel, and legend has it that John XII was defenestrated (thrown out of a window) for sleeping with a married woman. It is clear that his princely inclinations were much stronger than any spiritual office that he held, and modern scholars are in agreement that he was an unfit Pope.

955CE

The Notorious Reign of Pope John XII Pope John XII, one of the earliest and most infamous figures examined in “The Bad Popes,” holds a particularly egregious reputation in the annals of papal history. His reign from 955 to 964 AD is marked by scandal, abuse of power, and moral debasement. Ascending to the papacy at a mere 18 years old, John XII, born Octavian, was thrust into a position of significant religious and political influence, which he wielded with little regard for the sanctity and responsibilities of his office. John XII’s papacy is notorious for its flagrant disregard for clerical celibacy and moral conduct. Contemporary accounts, albeit sometimes exaggerated, depict a pontiff more preoccupied with hedonistic pleasures than with spiritual or administrative duties. He reportedly transformed the Lateran Palace into a setting for debauchery, indulging in numerous illicit liaisons and even violent crimes. The Lateran Palace, instead of being a symbol of piety and religious leadership, became synonymous with vice under his tenure. Perhaps even more troubling than his personal misconduct were John XII’s political machinations and abuses of ecclesiastical power. His papacy is noted for instances of simony, where church offices and privileges were sold, undermining the integrity of religious appointments and fostering widespread corruption within the Church’s hierarchy. This devaluation of spiritual roles for monetary gains eroded the moral fabric of the Church and disillusioned many of the faithful.

955CE

Pope John 12- Disgraced the Tiara for 8 years. He was one of the most immoral and wicked popes. A Roman Synod charged him with almost every crime of which a depraved human nature is capable and deposed him as a monster of iniquity. He appeared constantly armed with a sword, lance, helmet, and breastplate. He made a 10-year-old boy a Bishop, ordained a Bishop in a horse stable, mutilated a priest, set houses on fire, committed murder, committed adultery, violated virgins & widows repeatedly, lived with his father’s mistress, converted the Pontifical Palace into a brothel, drank to the health of the devil, invoked the help of Jupiter, Venus, &n other Demons at the gambling table.

1012CE – Catholic Germans expel Jews.

1032CE

Pope Benedict IX: Also known as one of the youngest popes in history and the only pope to hold the title three times, Benedict IX (1012-1056) became pontiff at the age of 20. He was appointed due to his family’s connections: his immediate predecessor was his uncle, John XIX, and his wealthy father ensured his successful election through bribery. He was also extremely unpopular.

Described as a demon from hell, Benedict IX supposedly murdered, raped, and sodomized victims wherever he went. He was even accused of bestiality and of hosting orgies. Due to this lifestyle, he was forced out of Rome, and a new pope was elected, Sylvester III.

This is not where his story ends, however. He returned to Rome, and with the help of his supporters, he ousted Sylvester and reinstated himself as pope. Then, he had some second thoughts: he decided to resign so that he could marry his cousin. He became the only pope in history to sell the papacy when he agreed to let his godfather, Gregory VI, take over in exchange for reimbursement.

One would think that it would end there, but no, he soon regretted his decision and retook the papacy. Three popes now claimed to be in power: Sylvester, Gregory, and Benedict. This caused such turmoil that the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III was asked to intervene and decided to start from scratch by electing a new pope, Damasus II. Benedict IX refused to appear before the courts on charges of simony, i.e., selling the papacy, and was excommunicated instead. He eventually died in obscurity.

1049CE – St. Peter Damien in his letter (31:38) addressed to Pope Leo IX in 1049 AD as Any cleric or monk who seduces young men or boys, or who is apprehended in kissing a woman shall be publicly flogged … he shall be disgraced by spitting in his face, bound in iron chains, wasted by six months of close confinement, and for three days each week put on barley bread given him toward evening. Following this period, he shall…[live] in a small segregated courtyard in custody of a spiritual elder, kept busy with manual labor, subjected to vigils and prayers, forced to walk at all times in the company of two spiritual brothers, never again allowed to associate with young men.

1050CE-1115CE:

Peter the Hermit was a charismatic Catholic preacher of the First Crusade. He was one of the most anti-Semitic clergymen involved in the First Crusade.

1059CE: Christians were forbidden to use the Old Church Slavonic translation by the Lateran Synod of 1059, with the synod being confirmed by Nicholas II and Alexander II.

1080CE: In a letter to Duke Vratislaus II of Bohemia dated 2 January 1080, Pope Gregory VII refused to re-establish the earlier permission to use the Slavonic language liturgy, including the scripture reading.

1095CE The First Crusade begins. Terrible massacres of Jewish communities took place along the way to Jerusalem in France, Germany, and Bohemia.

1088CE-1099CE

Pope Urban 2 offered the abomination of indulgences to crusaders who died battling Muslims and others. All their sins were remitted both here and in purgatory.

1099CE – the Catholic Crusaders capture Jerusalem. Some Jews were sold as slaves, and the rest were herded into the Great synagogue of Jerusalem and burned alive. The catholic crusaders marched around the synagogue singing, “Christ We Adore Thee.”

11^th Century

The beginning of the 11^th century saw the ‘first fruits” of ecclesiastical propaganda. The anti-Jewish violence that accompanied the First Crusade in 1096 seems to be the critical turning point in medieval Jewish history. The centuries of misguided sermons about Jews and the religious frenzy preceding the departure of the Crusades soon brought cries for the blood of the “Christ-killers.”

1144CE The Second Crusade – a few hundred Jews were killed.

1147CE

A. D. 1147, Henry of Thoulouse, being deemed their most eminent preacher, they were called Henericians; and as they would not admit of any proofs relative to religion, but what could be deduced from the scriptures themselves, the popish party gave them the name of apostolics. At length, Peter Waldo, or Valdo, a native of Lyons, eminent for his piety and learning, became a strenuous opposer of popery; and from him the reformed, at that time, received the appellation of Waldenses or Waldoys.

Pope Alexander III, being informed by the bishop of Lyons of these transactions, excommunicated Waldo and his adherents, and commanded the bishop to exterminate them, if possible, from the face of the earth; and hence began the papal persecutions against the Waldenses.

The proceedings of Waldo and the reformed occasioned the first rise of the inquisitors, for Pope Innocent III. authorized certain monks as inquisitors, to inquire for, and deliver over, the reformed to the secular power. The process was short, as an accusation was deemed adequate to guilt, and a candid trial was never granted to the accused.

The pope, finding that these cruel means had not the intended effect, sent several learned monks to preach among the Waldenses and to endeavour to argue them out of their opinions. Among these monks was one Dominic, who appeared extremely zealous in the cause of popery. This Dominic instituted an order, which, from him, was called the order of Dominican friars; and the members of this order have ever since been the principal inquisitors in the various inquisitions in the world. The power of the inquisitors was unlimited; they proceeded against whom they pleased, without any consideration of age, sex, or rank. Let the accusers be ever so infamous, the accusation was deemed valid; and even anonymous information, sent by letter, was thought sufficient evidence. To be rich was a crime equal to heresy; therefore, many who had money were accused of heresy, or of being favourers of heretics, that they might be obliged to pay for their opinions. The dearest friends or nearest kindred could not, without danger, serve anyone who was imprisoned on account of religion. To convey to those who were confined, a little straw, or give them a cup of water, was called favoring of the heretics, and they were prosecuted accordingly. No lawyer dared to plead for his own brother, and their malice even extended beyond the grave; hence, the bones of many were dug up and burnt, as examples to the living. If a man on his deathbed was accused of being a follower of Waldo, his estates were confiscated, and the heir to them defrauded of his inheritance; and some were sent to the Holy Land, while the Dominicans took possession of their houses and properties, and, when the owners returned, would often pretend not to know them. These persecutions were continued for several centuries under different popes and other great dignitaries of the catholic church.

1160CE

From A.D. 1160-1560, the Waldensians who dwelt in the Italian Alps were visited with 36 different fierce persecutions that spared neither age nor sex (Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists, “Post-Apostolic Times – The Waldensians,” 1890).

1171CE – Catholics falsely accused Jews of “Blood Libels,” which resulted in the mass burning alive of all the Jews in the city of Blois, France.

1177CE

The Waldenses in Italy under Peter Waldo (1140-1218) taught that the Bible was the ultimate authority and whatever was not found in Scripture was not to be believed by Christians. They rejected the masses and prayers for the dead as unscriptural, denied purgatory, and refused to venerate the “Saints.” Pope Lucius 3^rd ordered Catholics to punish the Waldenses. The Waldenses were condemned and excommunicated. Pope Lucius ordered the Waldenses to be crushed, their property confiscated, and to be burned at the stake.

1179CE

The Albigenses were people of the reformed religion who inhabited the country of Albi. They were condemned on the score of religion, in the council of Lateran, by order of Pope Alexander III. Nevertheless, they increased so prodigiously that many cities were inhabited by persons only of their persuasion, and several eminent noblemen embraced their doctrines. Among the latter were Raymond Earl of Thoulouse, Raymond Earl of Foix, the Earl of Beziers, &c.

A friar, named Peter, having been murdered in the dominions of the earl of Thoulouse, the pope made the murder a pretext to persecute that nobleman and his subjects. To effect this, he sent people throughout all Europe to raise forces to act coercively against the Albigenses and promised paradise to all who would come to this war, which he termed a Holy War, and bear arms for forty days. The same indulgences were likewise held out to all who entered themselves for such as engaged in crusades to the Holy Land. The brave earl defended Thoulouse and other places with the most heroic bravery and various successes against the pope’s legates and Simon Earl of Montfort, a bigoted catholic nobleman. Unable to subdue the earl of Thoulouse openly, the king of France, and queen mother, and three archbishops, raised another formidable army, and had the art to persuade the earl of Thoulouse to come to a conference, when he was treacherously seized upon, made a prisoner, forced to appear bare-footed and bare-headed before his enemies, and compelled to subscribe an abject recantation. This was followed by a severe persecution against the Albigenses, and expressed orders that the laity should not be permitted to read the sacred scriptures. In the year 1620, the persecution against the Albigenses was also very severe. In 1648, a heavy persecution raged throughout Lithuania and Poland. The cruelty of the Cossacks was so excessive that the Tartars themselves were ashamed of their barbarities. Among others who suffered was the Rev. Adrian Chalinski, who was roasted alive by a slow fire, and whose sufferings and mode of death may depict the horrors which the professors of Christianity have endured from the enemies of the Redeemer.

1184CE

Alexander Campbell, well known religions leader of the nineteenth century, stated in debate with John B. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati, in 1837 that the records of historians and martyrologists show that it may be reasonable to estimate that from fifty to sixty-eight millions of human beings died, suffered torture, lost their possessions, or were otherwise devoured by the Roman Catholic Church during the awful years of the Inquisition. Bishop Purcell made little effort to refute these figures. (Citing A Debate on the Roman Catholic Religion, Christian Publishing Co., 1837, p. 327.)

1184CE

Mede has calculated from good authorities that in the war with the Albigenses and Waldenses there perished of these people, in France alone, 1,000,000. ‖ — Christ and Antichrist, by Samuel J. Cassels, 1846, page 257.

1187CE – Third Crusade: Jews in England were slaughtered, especially in Lynn, Norwich, Stamford, and York.

1199: Pope Innocent III, writing in a letter to the bishop of Metz about Waldensians, banned secret meetings (which he labeled as occultisconventiculis, or “hidden assemblies”) in which the Bible was freely discussed.

12^TH Century – Jews denied admittance to Catholic Guilds in Europe.

100’2-WWII – Catholics forced Jews to wear badges, patches, hats, capes, aprons, stripes, bells, and veils of various colors such as yellow or red to mark them as Jews so they could be persecuted

1200CE

Clark ‘s Martyrology counts the number of Waldensian martyrs during the first half of the 13th century in France alone at two million.

1205CE

When the reformed religion began to diffuse the gospel light throughout the church. He accordingly instituted several inquisitors, or persons who were to make inquiry after, apprehend, and punish, heretics, as the reformed were called by the papists.

At the head of these inquisitors was one Dominic, who had been canonized by the pope, to render his authority the more respectable. Dominic and the other inquisitors spread themselves into various Roman catholic countries, and treated the protestants with the utmost severity. In the process of time, the pope, not finding these roving inquisitors so useful as he had imagined, resolved upon the establishment of fixed and regular courts of inquisition. After the order for these regular courts, the first office of inquisition was established in the city of Toulouse, and Dominic became the first regular inquisitor, as he had before been the first roving inquisitor.

Courts of inquisition were now erected in several countries, but the Spanish inquisition became the most powerful, and the most dreaded of any. Even the kings of Spain themselves, though arbitrary in all other respects, were taught to dread the power of the lords of the inquisition; and the horrid cruelties they exercised compelled multitudes, who differed in opinion from the Roman catholics, carefully to conceal their sentiments.

The most zealous of all the popish monks, and those who most implicitly obeyed the church of Rome, were the Dominicans and Franciscans:[70] these, therefore, the pope thought proper to invest with an exclusive right of presiding over the different court of inquisition, and gave them the most unlimited powers, as judges delegated by him, and immediately representing his person: they were permitted to excommunicate, or sentence to death whom they thought proper, upon the most slight information of heresy. They were allowed to publish crusades against all whom they deemed heretics, and enter into leagues with sovereign princes, to join their crusades with their forces.

1208CE

For professing faith contrary to the teachings of the Church of Rome, history records the martyrdom of more then one hundred million people. A million Waldenses and Albigenses [Swiss and French Protestants] perished during a crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III in 1208. — Brief Bible Readings, p. 16.

1209CE

One can also list the Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229) with one to two million killed. Newman [A Manual of Church History by Albert Henry Newman

1209CE

Another source writes The Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 12091229), under Popes Innocent III., Honorius III., and Gregory IX., was one of the bloodiest tragedies in human history. … The number of Albigenses that perished in the twenty-year war is estimated at from one to two million. — Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XIV.

1209CE-1229CE

Albigensian Crusade – Between 1 million and 4 million Cathars were brutally persecuted and murdered. Men, women, and children were brutally slaughtered by burning and other means. 140 Cathar clerics were burned alive. Pope Innocent offered indulgences to those who murdered Cathars. Cathars had their noses, ears, and lips cut off. Pope Innocent, from 1209-1229, led the 20 years of destructive warfare in which the power of the southern nobility was shattered and cities and provinces were devastated.

1216CE

Concerning the figure of two million killed, Bourne writes Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the 3 faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the crusaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two million of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France. — Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403. In only one crusade, two million Albigenses were killed. How many must there have been altogether, and how many millions more must have been killed during the entire Middle Ages!

1217CE-1219CE – French Catholics ordered Jews to wear a badge called a “Rota.”

1218CE – Jews were ordered to follow the Papal decisions of wearing a badge. Wealthy Jews and Jewish communities had to pay to be exempted.

1227CE – Church Council of Narbonne ordered Jews to wear badges.

1229CE

Council of Toulouse, which prohibited vernacular Bibles for the laity. Decreed that the laity could not possess Bibles in the vernacular tongue, persecuting those who did.

1229CE

The Council of Toulouse sanctioned burning at the stake.

1231CE – Church Council of Rouen ordered Jews to wear badges.

1232CE

But the country in which the Inquisition has reached its most flourishing estate is Spain. This tribunal was first introduced into Catalonia in 1232 and spread throughout all of Spain. It was re-established in greater pomp and terror in 1481 by Ferdinand and Isabella, chiefly for the spiritual good of the Jews, then numerous in Spain. The bull of Sixtus V. instituted a grand inquisitor-general and supreme council to preside over the working of the Holy Office; and under that bull commenced that system of juridical extermination which is said to have cost Spain upwards of five millions of her citizens, who either perished miserably in the dungeon, or expired amid the flames of the public auto da fe. Rev. J.A. Wylie, LL.D, Genius and Influence of the Papacy, Book III – Chapter III.

1233CE

Pope Gregory 9 appointed Franciscans and Dominicans to carry out interrogations, trials, and punishments against supposed heretics. They persecuted, stripped naked, and burned alive hundreds of supposed heretics. They hunted down the Waldenses in Bohemia and Poland. Some of the Waldenses were able to escape to the mountains of northern Italy and survive until the Protestant Reformation. The Cathars were finally wiped out, and many were burned alive by the 14^th century.

1234CE – The Church Council of Aries ordered Jews to wear badges.

1234CE: At the provincial Second Council of Tarragona (Conventus Tarraconensis) in 1234, the Spanish bishops, according to a decree of King James I of Aragon, declared that it was forbidden to anyone to own a Romance language translation of books of the Old and New Testament. This had to be burned within eight days; otherwise, they would be suspected as heretics.

1235CE – Jews were persecuted and killed in Fulda, Germany by Catholics.

1235CE – As an example of such persecution, Morant writes [Morant, Philip, The cruelties and persecutions of the Romish church display’d …. James and John Knapton, London, 1728, p. 52], ―Again, in the year 1235, an army of the Albigenses was entirely defeated near Spain, so that not one of them escaped. Likewise, in Germany, an infinite number of them were killed.

1240CE – Pope Gregory 9^th ordered the burning of Jewish Talmuds and other Jewish literature.

1243CE – Jews falsely accused by Catholics of profanation of a wafer used in the Catholic ceremony of the Eucharist in Berlitz, Germany, where many Jews were burned at the stake because of this false charge.

1243CE-1254CE

Pope Innocent 4^th issued a papal bull authorizing the use of brutal torture for the “confession of heretics,” confiscation of property, trials, torture, and burning at the stake. Citizens began to turn in other citizens. Just a false accusation was enough to suffer such brutality. Here is the order that such brutality was carried out: 1) First comes the accusation 2) If the “heretic” denies the accusation, then they are tried 3) Then they are threatened with death 4) Then imprisoned 5) then pressed by others 6) then tortured 7) many are martyred 8) exhumed corpses of “heretics” were burned.

Rome canonized many of these inquisitions. The catholic church ordered witch hunts to torture and murder innocent people based on rumors. Many outcasts of society were included.

1244CE

In 1244, their power was further increased by the emperor Frederic the Second, who declared himself the protector and friend of all the inquisitors, and published the cruel edicts, viz., 1. That all heretics who continued obstinately should be burnt. 2. That all heretics who repented should be imprisoned for life.

This zeal in the emperor, for the inquisitors of the Roman catholic persuasion, arose from a report which had been propagated throughout Europe, that he intended to renounce Christianity, and turn Mahometan; the emperor therefore, attempted, by the height of bigotry, to contradict the report, and to show his attachment to popery by cruelty.

The officers of the inquisition are three inquisitors, or judges, a fiscal proctor, two secretaries, a magistrate, a messenger, a receiver, a jailer, an agent of confiscated possessions; several assessors, counsellors, executioners, physicians, surgeons, doorkeepers, familiars, and visitors, who are sworn to secrecy.

The principal accusation against those who are subject to this tribunal is heresy, which comprises all that is spoken or written against any of the articles of the creed, or the traditions of the Roman church. The inquisition likewise takes cognizance of such as are accused of being magicians, and of such who read the bible in the common language, the Talmud of the Jews, or the Alcoran of the Mahometans.

Upon all occasions the inquisitors carry on their processes with the utmost severity, and punish those who offend them with the most unparalleled cruelty. A protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a Jew, who turns christian, is far from being secure.

A defence in the inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger. The principal part of the inquisitors’ cruelties is owing to their rapacity: they destroy the life to possess the property; and, under the pretence of zeal, plunder each obnoxious individual.

A prisoner in the inquisition is never allowed to see the face of his accuser, or of the witnesses against him, but every method is taken by threats and tortures, to oblige him to accuse himself, and by that means corroborate their evidence. If the jurisdiction of the inquisition is not fully allowed, vengeance is denounced against such as call it in question for if any of its officers are opposed, those who[71] oppose them are almost certain to be sufferers for their temerity; the maxim of the inquisition being to strike terror, and awe those who are the objects of its power into obedience. High birth, distinguished rank, great dignity, or eminent employments, are no protection from its severities; and the lowest officers of the inquisition can make the highest characters tremble.

When the person impeached is condemned, he is either severely whipped, violently tortured, sent to the galleys, or sentenced to death; and in either case the effects are confiscated. After judgment, a procession is performed to the place of execution, which ceremony is called an auto de fe, or act of faith.

1246CE – Church Council of Beziers ordered Jews to wear badges.

1246: At the synod of Béziers (Concilium Biterrense) in 1246[g ], it was also decided that the laity should have no Latin and vernacular and the clergy no vernacular theological books.

1253CE – Catholic King Henry III ordered Jews to wear a badge called the ‘tabula.”

1254CE – Church Council of Albi ordered Jews to wear badges.

1255CE – After being falsely accused by Catholics of “Blood Libels,” 18 leading Jews in Lincoln were publicly hanged, 20 others were imprisoned in London and freed only after a huge ransom was paid to King Henry III, and their property was confiscated.

1275CE – Catholic King Edward I stipulated that Jews wear a yellow badge.

1286CE – Jews were persecuted and killed in Munich, Germany by Catholics.

1290CE-1650CE – Catholic England expels Jews.

1290CE – Jews falsely accused by Catholics of profanation of a wafer used in the Catholic ceremony of the Eucharist in Paris, France, where many Jews were massacred because of this false charge.

1298CE – Over a period of 6 months, mobs of Catholics worked their bloody way through Germany and Austria. 146 Jewish communities were wiped out and over 100,000 Jews were slain.

13^th century until WWII – Catholics forced Jews to live in ghettos.

13^th century

There were Medieval inquisitions against the Cathars, Waldenses, and others. Cathars were Christians who simply believed the pure word of God.

13^th to the 19^th centuries: The Inquisition enforced restrictions, leading to the confiscation and destruction of Bibles in various European languages.

1306CE-1789CE – Catholic France expels Jews.

1318CE: The provincial Council of Tarragona of 1318 introduced bans on Bibles for the Beguines.

1337CE-1338CE Jews falsely accused by Catholics of profanation of a wafer used in the Catholic ceremony of the Eucharist in Deggendorf, Bavaria, where many Jews were massacred because of this false charge.

1343CE – Jews were persecuted and killed in Moravia, Germany by Catholics.

1348CE – 1349CE – Catholics massacred Jews in Provence and Catalonia.

1349CE- Catholics massacre Jews in 58 European communities.

1348CE-1350CE Catholics forced expulsion of Jews from Germany and other parts of Europe.

1348CE-1350CE

Catholics accused Jews of bringing about the Black Death by poisoning wells throughout Europe. More than 350 Jewish communities were destroyed because of this false accusation. 10,000s of Jewish people were massacred including women and children because of this false accusation.

1350CE – Catholics in Truburg burn 600 Jews at the stake.

1367CE – Jews falsely accused by Catholics of profanation of a wafer used in the Catholic ceremony of the Eucharist in Barcelona, Spain, where many Jews were massacred because of this false charge.

1369CE: Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, issued an edict against German interpretations of Scripture at the request of Pope Urban V 1369 in Lucca.

1370CE – Jews falsely accused by Catholics of profanation of a wafer used in the Catholic ceremony of the Eucharist in Belgium, where Jews were completely exterminated because of this false charge.

1377CE – Jews falsely accused by Catholics of profanation of a wafer used in the Catholic ceremony of the Eucharist in Teruel and Huesca, Spain, where many Jews were massacred because of this false charge.

1378CE

Pope Urban VI: The Church at War…Described by some historians as the antithesis of what a Christian should be, Urban VI was violent, arrogant, quick to anger, and imprudent. Although he had a knack for business, his ecclesiastical decisions were disastrous and failed to rectify the Great Western Schism. Not only was he battling for control with the French antipope, but his papacy was also marred by war, and he drained church resources in order to fund the War of the Eight Saints. His election caused the Great Western Schism, which lasted 40 years. He excommunicated and had Queen Joanna of Naples removed from office, which led to her being imprisoned and murdered. He also had 6 cardinals brutally tortured and murdered.

This was a conflict between Florentine-led provinces and the papal states, and although he was moderately successful, he died of injuries sustained when falling from his mule. Some suspected he had been poisoned as well.

14th-16^th Centuries – Catholics expel Jews from Germany and Northern Italy.

14^th To The 20^th Centuries- Gerhard Falk, in The Jew In Christian Theology, says these “attitudes toward the Jews were maintained in the form of law for 1600 years and culminated in the Holocaust.” These beliefs were as follows: 1) That Christianity as supplanted Judaism. 2) The Jews are instruments of the Devil. 3) The Jews deliberately alter the texts of the Bible. 4) The Jews are themselves to blame for all their misfortunes. 5) The Jews are God killers. 6) There can be no salvation for the Jews. 7) The Jewish Scriptures are referred to as “Old” or the Old Testament. 8) The Jews are disinherited. 9) The Jews deserve legal disabilities. 10) God hates the Jews, and they are cursed by Him. 11) The Jews serve as an example to unbelievers. 12) The Jews are less than human.

1415CE – In Segovia, Spain, confiscation of synagogues and execution of leading Jews. There is still an occasion of the great local feast of Corpus Christi because of this slaughter.

1420CE

As an illustration of the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Protestants in Bohemia, Robbins [Ecclesiastical Megalomania, The Trinity Foundation, 1999, p. 134] writes ―Two centuries after Thomas, Martin V (1417-1431) ordered the King of Poland to exterminate the Hussites. The pope wrote to the king: Know that the interests of the Holy See, and those of your crown, make it a duty to exterminate the Hussites. Remember that these impious persons dare proclaim principles of equality; they maintain that all Christians are brethren and that God has not given to privileged men the right of ruling the nations; they hold that Christ came on Earth to abolish slavery; they call the people to liberty, that is to the annihilation of kings and priests. While there is still time, then, turn your forces against Bohemia; burn, massacre, make deserts everywhere, for nothing could be more agreeable to God, or more useful to the cause of kings, than the extermination of the Hussites.

1421CE – Catholics expel jews from Vienna and Linz.

1424CE – Catholics expel Jews from Cologne.

1439CE – Catholics expel Jews from Augsburg.

1442CE-1450CE – Catholics expel Jews from Bavaria and Moravia.

1460CE

Concerning persecutions in Bohemia before the 24 Reformation, Southwell [Southwell, Henry, The new book of martyrs; or complete Christian martyrology. Containing an authentic and genuine historical account of the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ, in all parts of the world, … Imprint London : printed for J. Cooke, [1765?]] writes, ―In the year 1460, the king of Bohemia published a very severe edict against all protestants; commanding the Bohemian nobility and magistrates, not only to seize them wherever they could find them on their estates, and within their districts, but to pursue them to their retreats, to hunt them in their recesses, and to do every thing they possibly could toward their extirpation.‖ [p. 184]

1464CE: Pope Paul II (pontificate 1464–1471) allegedly[k ] confirmed the decree of James I of Aragon on the local prohibition of Bibles in Spanish vernacular languages.

1471CE

Pope Sixtus IV: Founder of the Inquisition…Sixtus IV (1414-1484) is mostly known as a patron of the arts. Under his rule, the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Library were constructed, and he ordered the creation of Uppsala University in Sweden — the first Scandinavian university.

Although his accomplishments ushered in the Early Renaissance, he also founded the Spanish Inquisition, which led to the torture, execution, and expulsion of thousands of Jews and Muslims if they did not convert to Catholicism. In addition to violent conversion, Sixtus IV was known for nepotism and made sure that positions of power were held by trusted friends and family. He even participated in a plot to depose the powerful Medici family in Florence.

1478CE

Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had Pope Sixtus 4^th issue a papal bull to start the Spanish Inquisition to deal harshly with the Jews, Muslims, and Protestants. Dominicans were ordered to carry out the inquisition in gloomy dungeons. They were responsible for arresting, imprisoning, and burning people. In 1482 and 1483, the inquisitions continued. Any accusation resulted in a tribunal, wealth confiscation, detention, imprisonment, interrogation, torture, waterboarding, the rack, hearings, trials, sentencing, or burning at the stake until the late 18^th century. The inquisition was the most severe in Spain, but it was also carried out elsewhere. In Portugal, from 1536 until 1767, there were over 45,000 trials.

1478CE

Now let us consider in particular the Spanish inquisition. Quoting Schmucker, According to Llorente, this fearful tribunal [the inquisition] cost Spain alone 2,000,000 of lives, and the amount of torments suffered by these, and the other victims of papal persecution, was probably greater than that of all the generations that ever lived and died in God‘s appointed way, by natural death.

1481CE

But the country in which the Inquisition has reached its most flourishing estate is Spain. This tribunal was first introduced into Catalonia in 1232, and propagated over all Spain. It was re-established in greater pomp and terror in 1481 by Ferdinand and Isabella, chiefly for the spiritual good of the Jews, then numerous in Spain. The bull of Sixtus V. instituted a grand inquisitor-general and supreme council to preside over the working of the Holy Office; and under that bull commenced that system of juridical extermination which is said to have cost Spain upwards of five millions of her citizens, who either perished miserably in the dungeon, or expired amid the flames of the public auto da fe. Rev. J.A. Wylie, LL.D, Genius and Influence of the Papacy, Book III – Chapter III.

1481CE-1834CE – Catholic Spanish Inquisition burned more than 32,000 people at the stake.

1483CE-1498CE – Catholic Father Tomas de Torquemada had more than 2000 Jews burned at the stake and more than 100,000 imprisoned and ruined.

1484CE

The Hussites were also nearly exterminated: [footnote, speaking of Innocent VIII] Yet on the papal throne he played the zealot against the Germans, whom he accused of magic, in his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, etc., and also against the Hussites, whom he well nigh exterminated. — Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian‘s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 643.

1490CE – Many Jews in Spain were tortured by Catholics and made to confess that “Jews assembled in a cave, crucified a child, and cursed him to his face as was done to Jesus.”

1490CE: In 1490 a number of Hebrew Bibles and other Jewish books were burned in Andalucía at the behest of the Spanish Inquisition.

1490CE-1510CE – Catholics expel Jews from Geneva, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Halle, Magdeburg, Lower Austria Styrie, Corinthea, Wurtenburg, & Salzburg.

1492CE

Pope Alexander VI: Corrupt and Salacious…Hailing from the noble Borgia family, Alexander VI (1431-1503) was known for having many mistresses, and he openly recognized several children as his own. Besides breaking his vows of celibacy, Alexander VI’s name became synonymous with nepotism. He made sure that family members held key positions of power, and he annulled marriages in exchange for alliances. This is how he secured the military support of French King Louis XII. He was fickle, however, and made sure to ally himself with whoever would benefit him the most. During the war between Spain and France, Alexander VI offered papal troops to Spain in exchange for Siena, Pisa, and Bologna, but he also agreed to help France in exchange for Sicily. Alexander VI was also the subject of many salacious rumors; however, none have been proven to be true. One such rumor was that he hosted the “Banquet of Chestnuts,” a supper purportedly held in the Papal Palace during which clergymen were encouraged to sleep with Rome’s most desirable courtesans.

These courtesans apparently stripped naked and crawled on their hands and feet, picking up chestnuts that attending guests threw on the ground. The only source is from Johann Burchard, who deeply disliked Pope Alexander. Whether or not Alexander VI actually participated in such sinful acts may never be known, but all of his other deeds have earned him the title of most corrupt pope.

1492CE

In 1492, persecution was begun against the Jews, of whom 500,000 were expelled from Spain and their wealth confiscated. In seventy years the population of Spain was reduced from 10,000,000 to 6,000,000 by the banishment of Jews, Moors and Morescoes (―Christianized‖ Moors), the most wealthy and intelligent of the inhabitants of that country. — Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XV.

1492CE

For example, referring to Bishop of Chiapa’s account of the cruelty of the Spaniards in America, Grosvenor [Grosvenor, B., Persecution and cruelty in the principles, practices, and spirit of the Romish Church, 1735, p. 16] writes 40 … truly they went a great way to make this remark literally true with regard to the new world, when first found out: for, according to the account of one of their own bishops, in the space of forty years they destroyed fifty millions of people.

1492CE: Under Isabella I of Castile and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, the printing of vernacular Bibles was prohibited in the Spanish state law.

1492CE-1497CE – Catholic Spain expels Jews. 100,000s

1497CE: The Spanish Inquisition , which they instituted, ordered the destruction of all Hebrew books and all vernacular Bibles in 1497. This was five years after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

1495CE – Catholics expel Jews from Lithuania.

15^th century

The Catholics started the Spanish Inquisition against Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and others.

1503CE

Pope Julius II: The Angry Pope…Also known as the Warrior Pope, Julius II (1443-1513) did not choose his papal name in honor of Pope Julius I, but rather to honor Julius Caesar, whom he wanted to emulate. A fiercely efficient pope, he spearheaded the Italian Wars, the creation of the Vatican Museums, and the reconstruction of St Peter’s Basilica. Although he is remembered for his patronage of the arts, he had characteristics that were very un-Christian. He had a violent temper and treated his subordinates and servants very badly. He fathered several children before becoming pope and was accused of sexual misconduct.

Philosopher and Dutch theologian Erasmus even wrote a satire called Julius Excluded from Heaven that focuses on his sexual misconduct. Julius II is described as a drunken pope trying (and failing) to persuade Saint Peter to open the gates of heaven for him. Julius II tries to bribe him with money, and when that does not work, he resorts to threatening him with armies, just as he had done on earth. St Peter is disgusted and ultimately turns him away.

1506CE

Pope Julius promised indulgences to anyone who paid money to him to get loved ones out of purgatory. This money was used to finance the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. People took advantage of indulgences and sin willfully, thinking it was okay since all they had to do was give money to the Catholic Church and be forgiven of their sins.

1510CE – 38 barbarous executions and expulsions of Jews from Brandenburg and Berlin, Germany.

1510CE

1513CE

Pope Leo X: Born in 1475 to the illustrious Medici family, Pope Leo X was known for being a reckless spender. He led a costly war in order to secure power, and granted indulgences in exchange for money to reconstruct St Peter’s Basilica. An indulgence is when a person’s sin is lessened in exchange for good deeds, donations to charitable organizations, saying specific prayers, and pilgrimage. However, as in the case of Leo X, this practice was often abused by church officials, who lined their pockets with the money donated.

This practice was so controversial that it eventually led to Martin Luther writing his Ninety-five Theses.

1518CE

Some have computed, that, from the year 1518 to1548, fifteen million of Protestants have perished by war and the Inquisition. This may be overcharged, but certainly the number of them in these thirty years, as well as since is almost incredible. To these we may add innumerable martyrs, in ancient, middle, and late ages, in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, France, England, Ireland, and many other parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. (from the commentary on the book of Revelation in Wesley‘s ―Explanatory Notes on the New Testament,‖ fifth edition, 1788)

1518CE

1519CE

Within the space of thirty-eight years after the edict of Charles V against the Protestants, fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, or burned alive for heresy. — Brief Bible Readings, p. 16.

1521CE

Also, in 1521 Luther was pronounced a heretic and punishments against him and his followers were decreed. In 1522 Hadrian the Sixth incited the princes of Germany to root out the teachings of Luther. Soon afterwards Lutheranism spread over almost the whole of Europe [Garrido, Fernando, and C. B. Cayley, A history of political and religious persecutions : from the earliest days of the Christian church, London, 1870?, p. 499].

1523CE

Germany was miserably torn and rent to pieces by the cruelties and severities which they inflicted in order to extinguish the light of the gospel. … In the year 1523 the pope excited the emperor Charles V. to destroy all the protestants as heretics, and allowed him 200,000 crowns to raise soldiers for that purpose …. [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779]

1523CE

Speaking of Siebenbuergen, Newman [p. 305] writes, In 1523 and 1525 rigorous imperial laws were promulgated against the spread of the new doctrine. ―All Lutherans are to be extirpated from the kingdom, and wherever they may be found are to be freely seized and burned, not only by ecclesiastical but also by secular persons‖ (Diet of Pesth, 1525). 30 Siebenbuergen is known in English as Transylvania and is a geographical region of Romania near the Hungarian border.

1523CE

With so many persons accepting Protestantism, the total number killed would have been large. Kurtz [History of the Church , p. 162] says, ―In Hungary the number of Protestants was reduced one-half, by various intrigues and enticements.‖ Freeman [p. 281] writes, ―Meanwhile, at the other end of Ferdinand‘s dominions, the Protestants of Hungary revolted, and for a while turned him out of that kingdom also.‖ Also, [p. 303] ―The Emperor Leopold meanwhile, besides the wars with France, had much to do in his kingdom of Hungary, both with the wars against the Turks and with the revolts of the Hungarians, who were stirred up by his cruel persecutions of the Protestants.‖

1524CE

In the year 1524, at a town in France, called Melden, one John Clark set up a bill on the church door, wherein he called the pope Anti-christ. For this offence he was repeatedly whipped, and then branded on the forehead. Going afterward to Mentz, in Lorraine, he demolished some images, for which he had his right hand and nose cut off, and his arms and breasts torn with pincers. He sustained these cruelties with amazing fortitude, and was even sufficiently cool to sing the 115th psalm, which expressly forbids idolatry; after which he was thrown into the fire, and burnt to ashes.

Many persons of the reformed persuasion were, about this time, beaten, racked, scourged, and burnt to death, in several parts of France but more particularly at Paris, Malda, and Limosin.

A native of Malda was burnt by a slow fire, for saying that mass was a plain denial of the death and passion of Christ. At Limosin, John de Cadurco, a clergyman of the reformed religion, was apprehended, degraded, and ordered to be burnt.

1525CE

In 1525 Clement the Seventh urged the senate of Paris to punish the Lutheran heresy that had sprung up among them. Also, In Germany, after the victories of Charles V [about 1546], against the Lutherans, there ensued a very bitter persecution in many places, authority armed with laws and vigorous malice striving against simple verity. Both ministers and people, some were tossed from place to place; some exited out of their native countries, others driven into the woods, and forced to live in caves; some tormented upon the rack, and others burnt with fire and faggot. [The true spirit of popery, or, The treachery and cruelty of the Papists exercis‘d against the Protestants …, London : Printed for Richard Baldwin …, 1688, p. 22]

1525CE

For this, G. H. Orchard in A Concise History of the Baptists, 1855, chapter 2, section 11 estimates that there were over 3 million persons possessing evangelical views in northern Italy in 1260, and mentions another authority as giving an estimate twice as large. He states that the number eventually ―quadrated,‖ which may imply that it became four times as large, that is, 12 million or possibly 24 million persons, whom he calls Anabaptists. Almost all of these were presumably killed in persecutions.

1540CE

Beginning from the establishment of the Jesuits in 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed.– Brief Bible Readings, p. 16.

1540CE

Halley‘s Bible handbook, 1965 estimates 900,000 Protestants killed from 1540 to 1570 in the persecution of the Waldenses.

1540CE

They were almost completely destroyed as a people and most of their literary record was erased from the face of the earth. From the year 1540 to 1570 “it is proved by national authentic testimony, that nearly one million of Protestants were publicly put to death in various countries in Europe, besides all those who were privately destroyed, and of whom no human record exists” (J.P. Callender, Illustrations of Popery, 1838, p. 400).

1545-1564CE The Council of Trent placed the Bible on its list of prohibited books and forbade any person to read the Bible without a license from a Roman Catholic bishop or inquisitor. The Council added these words: “that if anyone should dare to read or keep in his possession that book without such a license, he shall not receive absolution till he has given it up to his ordinary.”

1545CE

Francis Bribard, secretary to cardinal de Pellay, for speaking in favour of the reformed, had his tongue cut out, and was then burnt, A. D. 1545. James Cobard, a schoolmaster in the city of St. Michael, was burnt, A. D. 1545, for saying “That mass was useless and absurd;” and about the same time, fourteen men were burnt at Malda, their wives being compelled to stand by and behold the execution.

1546 Council of Trent, which required a license to possess Bibles. Bible translators and distributors were imprisoned and killed during this period, while many vernacular Bibles were confiscated and destroyed.Declared that the “indiscriminate distribution of Scriptures” could cause more harm than good and required a written license from Catholic authorities to possess a Bible.In 1546, in an early session of the Council of Trent, Spanish Cardinal Pedro Pacheco alarmed his peers by suggesting a blanket ban on vernacular Bibles.

1546CE

A. D. 1546, Peter Chapot brought a number of bibles in the French tongue to France, and publicly sold them there; for which he was brought to trial, sentenced, and executed a few days afterward. Soon after, a cripple of Meaux, a schoolmaster of Fera, named Stephen Polliot, and a man named John English, were burnt for the faith.

1547CE

―The emperor Charles V, in the year 1547, ordered that all the decrees of the council of Trent, against the protestants, should be put in force with the utmost rigour, in every part of his extensive dominions. This severe order occasioned a most dreadful persecution throughout the greatest part of Europe; for as the emperor‘s power was very extensive, so the cruelties practiced were almost innumerable. None, however, suffered more than the protestants of Bohemia…. The poor, who had no money to pay by way of mitigation, for thinking and acting right, were [here the passage becomes very explicit, so those who are sensitive should NOT read the rest of it] Racked, Burnt, Sawn asunder, Thrown from rocks, Torn by wild horses, Cut to pieces, Hanged, Drowned, Stabbed, Boiled in oil, Immured and starved, Beheaded, had boiling lead poured down their throats, were thrown on spears, hung up by the ribs, or crucified with their heads downwards.‖ [Southwell, op. cit., p. 185] [Speaking of Germany after 1517] ―Indeed, the pope was so terrified at the success of that courageous reformer [Luther], that he determined to engage the emperor, Charles the Fifth, at any rate, in the scheme to attempt their extirpation…. Thus prompted and supported, the emperor undertook the extirpation of the protestants….‖ [Speaking of the defeat of the protestants in battle in 1547] ―This fatal blow was succeeded by a horrid persecution, the severities of which were such, that exile might be deemed a mild fate, and concealment in a dismal woods pass for happiness…. Those who were taken experienced the most cruel tortures that infernal imaginations could invent; and by their constancy evinced, that a real Christian can surmount every difficulty, and despise every danger, to acquire a crown of martyrdom.‖ [Southwell, op. cit., p. 195]

1547CE

The duke of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse stood up for the protestants, and were taken prisoners in the year 1547. Wherever the papists prevailed all sorts of 28 cruelties … pursued the protestants, so that all Germany was as it were in a flame and combustion at once, some flying, and others suffering death on every side for their conscience and religion. [p. 39] [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779]

1548CE

Monsieur Blondel, a rich jeweller, was, A. D. 1548, apprehended at Lyons, and sent to Paris; where he was burnt for the faith, by order of the court

1549CE

A. D. 1549. Herbert, a youth of nineteen years of age, was committed to the flames at Dijon; as was Florent Venote, in the same year.

1554CE

In the year 1554, two men of the reformed religion, with the son and daughter of one of them, were apprehended and committed to the castle of Niverne. On examination, they confessed their faith, and were ordered for execution; being smeared with grease, brimstone, and gunpowder, they cried, “Salt on, salt on this sinful and rotten flesh!” Their tongues were then cut out, and they were afterward committed to the flames, which soon consumed them, by means of the combustible matter with which they were besmeared.[57]

1555CE

Catholic historian Vergerius admits gleefully that during the Pontificate of Pope Paul IV (1555-1559) “the Inquisition alone, by tortures, starvation, or the fire, murdered more than 150,000 Protestants.”

1555CE

Pope Paul IV: Censorship and Anti-Semitism…As with all the other popes on this list Paul IV (1476-1559) was elected due to his powerful connections. Known as the worst pope of the 16th century, he was out of touch with the artistic and intellectual progress of the day, often suggesting that the Sistine Chapel be whitewashed, and introducing harsh censorship that banned certain books that he deemed erroneous. His biggest crime, however, was establishing the Roman Ghetto, a poverty-stricken place to which Jews were confined.

Jews were restricted to low-paying jobs, paid a yearly tax to live in the ghetto, performed humiliating acts for Christians, and were only allowed to bet on low numbers in the lottery. In exchange for the so-called “privilege” of staying in Rome, a Rabbi had to pay homage to the chief of the city councilors by being kicked on the bottom. When traveling outside of the ghetto, Jewish men were forced to wear yellow hats, and Jewish women had to wear yellow veils — a color traditionally worn by prostitutes. The walls of the ghetto were only torn down in 1888.

During his reign, the people of Rome suffered greatly, and they held him accountable. When word spread that he was on his deathbed, mobs gathered and started rioting, tearing down his statues or placing yellow hats on top of them. They tore down his family emblem all around the city and sang songs mocking him. After his death, his family had to rush the rituals and burials for fear that the body and grave would be decimated.

1560CE

1562CE

Estimates for the number killed in the Huguenot wars in France range as high as 4 million, and probably almost all of these were killed by Catholics. Pierre Miquel [Les guerres de religion, Paris : Fayard, c1980, p. 396] writes, Henri IV n’était pas plus riche. Son royaume était dévasté: en quarante ans de guerres civiles étrangères, la France avait sans doute perdu plusiers millions d’hommes et de femmes (4 millions, selon Mariéjol).

1562CE

Some two millions of lives had perished since the breaking out of the civil wars. — James A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism, Vol. 2, Book 17, Chapter 19.

1567CE

Eighteen thousand more perished during the administration of the Duke of Alva in five and a half years. .– Brief Bible Readings, p. 16.

1572CE

On the 22d of August, 1572, commenced this diabolical act of sanguinary brutality. It was intended to destroy at one stroke the root of the protestant tree, which had only before partially suffered in its branches. The king of France had artfully proposed a marriage between his sister and the prince of Navarre, the captain and prince of the protestants. This imprudent marriage was publicly celebrated at Paris, August 18, by the cardinal of Bourbon, upon a high stage erected for the purpose. They dined in great pomp with the bishop, and supped with the king at Paris. Four days after this, the prince, as he was coming from the council, was shot in both arms; he then said to Maure, his deceased mother’s minister, “O my brother, I do now perceive that I am indeed beloved of my God, since for his most holy sake I am wounded.” Although the Vidam advised him to fly, yet he abode in Paris, and was soon after slain by Bemjus; who afterward declared he never saw a man meet death more valiantly than the admiral. The soldiers were appointed at a certain signal to burst out instantly to the slaughter in all parts of the city. When they had killed the admiral, they threw him out at a window into the street, where his head was cut off, and sent to the pope. The savage papists, still raging against him, cut off his arms and private members, and, after dragging him three days through the streets, hung him up by the heels without the city. After him they slew many great and honourable persons who were protestants; as count Rochfoucault, Telinius, the admiral’s son-in-law, Antonius, Clarimontus, marquis of Ravely, Lewes Bussius, Bandineus, Pluvialius, Burneius, &c. &c. and falling upon the common people, they continued the slaughter for many days; in the three first, they slew of all ranks and conditions to the number of 10,000. The bodies were thrown into the rivers, and blood ran through the streets with a strong current, and the river appeared presently like a stream of blood. So furious was their hellish rage, that they slew all papists whom they suspected to be not very staunch to their diabolical religion. From Paris the destruction spread to all quarters of the realm.

At Orleans, a thousand were slain of men, women, and children, and 6000 at Rouen.

At Meldith, two hundred were put into prison, and brought out by units, and cruelly murdered.

At Lyons, eight hundred were massacred. Here children hanging about their parents, and parents affectionately embracing their children, were pleasant food for the swords and blood-thirsty minds of those who call themselves the catholic church. Here 300 were slain only in the bishop’s house; and the impious monks would suffer none to be buried.

At Augustobona, on the people hearing of the massacre at Paris, they shut their gates that no protestants might escape, and searching diligently for every individual of the reformed church, imprisoned and then[58] barbarously murdered them. The same cruelty they practised at Avaricum, at Troys, at Thoulouse, Rouen and many other places, running from city to city, towns, and villages, through the kingdom.

As a corroboration of this horrid carnage, the following interesting narrative, written by a sensible and learned Roman catholic, appears in this place, with peculiar propriety.

“The nuptials (says he) of the young king of Navarre with the French king’s sister, was solemnized with pomp; and all the endearments, all the assurances of friendship, all the oaths sacred among men, were profusely lavished by Catharine, the queen-mother, and by the king; during which, the rest of the court thought of nothing but festivities, plays, and masquerades. At last, at twelve o’clock at night, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, the signal was given. Immediately all the houses of the protestants were forced open at once. Admiral Coligni, alarmed by the uproar jumped out of bed; when a company of assassins rushed in his chamber. They were headed by one Besme, who had been bred up as a domestic in the family of the Guises. This wretch thrust his sword into the admiral’s breast, and also cut him in the face. Besme was a German, and being afterwards taken by the protestants, the Rochellers would have bought him, in order to hang and quarter him; but he was killed by one Bretanville. Henry, the young duke of Guise, who afterwards framed the catholic league, and was murdered at Blois, standing at the door till the horrid butchery should be completed, called aloud, ‘Besme! is it done?’ Immediately after which, the ruffians threw the body out of the window, and Coligni expired at Guise’s feet.

“Count de Teligny also fell a sacrifice. He had married, about ten months before, Coligni’s daughter. His countenance was so engaging, that the ruffians, when they advanced in order to kill him, were struck with compassion; but others, more barbarous, rushing forward, murdered him.

“In the meantime, all the friends of Coligni were assassinated throughout Paris; men, women, and children, were promiscuously slaughtered; every street was strewed with expiring bodies. Some priests, holding up a crucifix in one hand, and a dagger in the other, ran to the chiefs of the murderers, and strongly exhorted them to spare neither relations nor friends.

“Tavannes, marshal of France, an ignorant, superstitious soldier, who joined the fury of religion to the rage of party, rode on horseback through the streets of Paris, crying to his men, ‘Let blood! let blood! bleeding is as wholesome in August as in May.’ In the memoirs of the life of this enthusiastic, written by his son, we are told, that the father, being on his death-bed, and making a general confession of his actions, the priest said to him, with surprise, ‘What! no mention of St. Bartholomew’s massacre?’ to which Tavannes replied, ‘I consider it as a meritorious action, that will wash away all my sins.’ Such horrid sentiments can a false spirit of religion inspire![59]

“The king’s palace was one of the chief scenes of the butchery: the king of Navarre had his lodgings in the Louvre, and all his domestics were protestants. Many of these were killed in bed with their wives; others, running away naked, were pursued by the soldiers through the several rooms of the palace, even to the king’s antichamber. The young wife of Henry of Navarre, awaked by the dreadful uproar, being afraid for her consort, and for her own life, seized with horror, and half dead, flew from her bed, in order to throw herself at the feet of the king her brother. But scarce had she opened her chamber-door, when some of her protestant domestics rushed in for refuge. The soldiers immediately followed, pursued them in sight of the princess, and killed one who had crept under her bed. Two others, being wounded with halberds, fell at the queen’s feet, so that she was covered with blood.

“Count de la Rochefoucault, a young nobleman, greatly in the king’s favour for his comely air, his politeness, and a certain peculiar happiness in the turn of his conversation, had spent the evening till eleven o’clock with the monarch, in pleasant familiarity; and had given a loose, with the utmost mirth, to the sallies of his imagination. The monarch felt some remorse, and being touched with a kind of compassion, bid him, two or three times, not to go home, but lie in the Louvre. The count said, he must go to his wife; upon which the king pressed him no farther, but said, ‘Let him go! I see God has decreed his death.’ And in two hours after he was murdered.

“Very few of the protestants escaped the fury of their enthusiastic persecutors. Among these was young La Force (afterwards the famous Marshal de la Force) a child about ten years of age, whose deliverance was exceedingly remarkable. His father, his elder brother, and himself were seized together by the Duke of Anjou’s soldiers. These murderers flew at all three, and struck them at random, when they all fell, and lay one upon another. The youngest did not receive a single blow, but appearing as if he was dead, escaped the next day; and his life, thus wonderfully preserved, lasted four score and five years.

“Many of the wretched victims fled to the water-side, and some swam over the Seine to the suburbs of St. Germaine. The king saw them from his window, which looked upon the river, and fired upon them with a carbine that had been loaded for that purpose by one of his pages; while the queen-mother, undisturbed and serene in the midst of slaughter, looking down from a balcony, encouraged the murderers and laughed at the dying groans of the slaughtered. This barbarous queen was fired with a restless ambition, and she perpetually shifted her party in order to satiate it.

“Some days after this horrid transaction, the French court endeavoured to palliate it by forms of law. They pretended to justify the massacre by a calumny, and accused the admiral of a conspiracy, which no one believed. The parliament was commanded to proceed against the memory of Coligni; and his dead body was hung in chains[60] on Montfaucon gallows. The king himself went to view this shocking spectacle; when one of his courtiers advising him to retire, and complaining of the stench of the corpse, he replied, ‘A dead enemy smells well.’—The massacres on St. Bartholomew’s day are painted in the royal saloon of the Vatican at Rome, with the following inscription: Pontifex Coligni necem probat, i. e. ‘The pope approves of Coligni’s death.’

“The young king of Navarre was spared through policy, rather than from the pity of the queen-mother, she keeping him prisoner till the king’s death, in order that he might be as a security and pledge for the submission of such protestants as might effect their escape.

“This horrid butchery was not confined merely to the city of Paris. The like orders were issued from court to the governors of all the provinces in France; so that, in a week’s time, about one hundred thousand protestants were cut to pieces in different parts of the kingdom! Two or three governors only refused to obey the king’s orders. One of these, named Montmorrin, governor of Auvergne, wrote the king the following letter, which deserves to be transmitted to the latest posterity.

“Sire—I have received an order, under your majesty’s seal, to put to death all the protestants in my province. I have too much respect for your majesty, not to believe the letter a forgery; but if (which God forbid) the order should be genuine, I have too much respect for your majesty to obey it.”

At Rome the horrid joy was so great, that they appointed a day of high festival, and a jubilee, with great indulgence to all who kept it and showed every expression of gladness they could devise! and the man who first carried the news received 1000 crowns of the cardinal of Lorrain for his ungodly message. The king also commanded the day to be kept with every demonstration of joy, concluding now that the whole race of Huguenots was extinct.

Many who gave great sums of money for their ransom were immediately after slain; and several towns, which were under the king’s promise of protection and safety, were cut off as soon as they delivered themselves up, on those promises, to his generals or captains.

At Bordeaux, at the instigation of a villanous monk, who used to urge the papists to slaughter in his sermons, 264 were cruelly murdered; some of them senators. Another of the same pious fraternity produced a similar slaughter at Agendicum, in Maine, where the populace at the holy inquisitors’ satanical suggestion, ran upon the protestants, slew them, plundered their houses, and pulled down their church.

The duke of Guise, entering into Bloise, suffered his soldiers to fly upon the spoil, and slay or drown all the protestants they could find. In this they spared neither age nor sex; defiling the women, and then murdering them; from whence he went to Mere, and committed the same outrages for many days together. Here they found a minister named Cassebonius, and threw him into the river[61].

At Anjou, they slew Albiacus, a minister; and many women were defiled and murdered there; among whom were two sisters, abused before their father, whom the assassins bound to a wall to see them, and then slew them and him.

The president of Turin, after giving a large sum for his life, was cruelly beaten with clubs, stripped of his clothes, and hung feet upwards, with his head and breast in the river: before he was dead, they opened his belly, plucked out his entrails, and threw them into the river; and then carried his heart about the city upon a spear.

At Barre great cruelty was used, even to young children, whom they cut open, pulled out their entrails, which through very rage they knawed with their teeth. Those who had fled to the castle, when they yielded, were almost all hanged. Thus they did at the city of Matiscon; counting it sport to cut off their arms and legs and afterward kill them; and for the entertainment of their visiters, they often threw the protestants from a high bridge into the river, saying, “Did you ever see men leap so well?”

At Penna, after promising them safety, 300 were inhumanly butchered; and five and forty at Albin, on the Lord’s day. At Nonne, though it yielded on conditions of safeguard, the most horrid spectacles were exhibited. Persons of both sexes and conditions were indiscriminately murdered; the streets ringing with doleful cries, and flowing with blood; and the houses flaming with fire, which the abandoned soldiers had thrown in. One woman, being dragged from her hiding place with her husband, was first abused by the brutal soldiers, and then with a sword which they commanded her to draw, they forced it while in her hands into the bowels of her husband.

At Samarobridge, they murdered above 100 protestants, after promising them peace; and at Antisidor, 100 were killed, and cast part into a jakes, and part into a river. One hundred put into prison at Orleans, were destroyed by the furious multitude.

The protestants at Rochelle, who were such as had miraculously escaped the rage of hell, and fled there, seeing how ill they fared who submitted to those holy devils, stood for their lives; and some other cities, encouraged thereby, did the like. Against Rochelle, the king sent almost the whole power of France, which besieged it seven months, though, by their assaults, they did very little execution on the inhabitants, yet, by famine, they destroyed eighteen thousand out of two and twenty. The dead being too numerous for the living to bury, became food for vermin and carnivorous birds. Many taking their coffins into the church yard, laid down in them, and breathed their last. Their diet had long been what the minds of those in plenty shudder at; even human flesh entrails, dung, and the most loathsome things, became at last the only food of those champions for that truth and liberty, of which the world was not worthy. At every attack, the besiegers met with such an intrepid reception, that they left 132 captains, with a proportionate number of men, dead in the[62] field. The siege at last was broken up at the request of the duke of Anjou, the king’s brother, who was proclaimed king of Poland, and the king, being wearied out, easily complied, whereupon honourable conditions were granted them.

It is a remarkable interference of Providence, that, in all this dreadful massacre, not more than two ministers of the gospel were involved in it.

The tragical sufferings of the protestants are too numerous to detail; but the treatment of Philip de Deux will give an idea of the rest. After the miscreants had slain this martyr in his bed, they went to his wife, who was then attended by the midwife, expecting every moment to be delivered. The midwife entreated them to stay the murder, at least till the child, which was the twentieth, should be born. Notwithstanding this, they thrust a dagger up to the hilt into the poor woman. Anxious to be delivered, she ran into a corn loft; but hither they pursued her, stabbed her in the belly, and then threw her into the street. By the fall, the child came from the dying mother, and being caught up by one of the catholic ruffians, he stabbed the infant, and then threw it into the river.

1586CE

Also, Robert Bellarmine, a Roman Catholic scholar, write sometime in the period 1586-1593 that ―almost infinite numbers were either burned or otherwise killed‖ by the Catholic Church [Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei Adversus Hujus 38 Temporis Haereticos (Disputations about the Controversies of the Christian faith Against the Heretics of this Time), Tom. ii, Lib. III, cap. XXII].

1600CE

Lest anyone think that these people were fleeing to other countries, it is important to recall that the objective of the Jesuits was to eliminate Protestants and not to push them from one country to another. Thus the Jesuits would have attempted by every means to prevent their escape. In support of this, Halley [pp. 780-781] writes, ―In Spain, Netherlands, South Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and other countries, they [the Jesuits] led in the Massacre of Untold Multitudes. By these methods they Stopped the Reformation in Southern Europe and virtually saved the Papacy from ruin.‖ Also, Halley [p. 790] writes, In Bohemia, by 1600, in a population of 4,000,000, 80 per cent were Protestant. When the Hapsburgs and Jesuits had done their work, 800,000 were left, all Catholics. In Austria and Hungary half the population Protestant, but under the Hapsburgs and Jesuits they were slaughtered. In Poland, by the end of the 16th century, it seemed as if Romanism was about to be entirely swept away, but here too, the Jesuits, by persecution, killed Reform. In Italy, the Pope‘s own country, the Reformation was getting a real hold; but the Inquisition got busy, and hardly a trace of Protestantism was left. Also, [Halley, page 792] ―… under the brilliant and brutal leadership of the Jesuits [Rome] regained much of the lost territory; South Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Belgium, and crushed the Reformation in France.‖

1600CE

Also, Wesley in his diary of January 16, 1760 quotes Sir John Davis in his ―Historical Relations Concerning Ireland‖ as stating that ―from 1600 to 1641, the general massacre, with the ensuing war, again thinned their numbers; not so few as a million of men, women, and children, being destroyed in four years’ time.‖ The rebellion in 1641 killed more than 150,000 Protestants in Ireland, by the priests‘ own computations, and many others died later.

1617CE

Burton [Burton, Robert, Martyrs in flames: or, the history of Popery, Bettesworth and Batley, London, 1729, p. 107] notes that as a result of the persecutions in Bohemia, the Jesuits obtained vast possessions in that country. Also, ―In the year 1617, Ferdinand II was obtruded upon the Bohemians, who joined with the papists, and raised up a terrible persecution against the protestants, which was the cause of the election of Frederic, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, to be king of Bohemia, upon which there followed those cruel wars and troubles in that country, wherein many godly ministers, and other pious, holy, and good men, suffered such barbarities and inhumanities from the popish soldiers, that the ear of a Christian cannot bear, nor his tongue relate them without the greatest abhorrence and indignation…. In the year 1621 all the ministers were banished out of the kingdom of Bohemia…. Not long after an edict was published in Bohemia for banishing all Protestants in general, and that their children should be taken from them and brought up in the popish religion…. Upon this there followed a cruel persecution, so that almost in every city, town, or village the protestants suffered great torments and barbarities.‖ [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779, pp. 37-38]

1618CE

The Thirty Years War had started as a Religious War; it ended as a Political War; it resulted in the deaths of 10,000,000 to 20,000,000. Jesuit educated Ferdinand II started it with the purpose of crushing Protestantism. Halley, Henry H., Pocket Bible Handbook, Chicago, 13th edition, 1939, p. 418.

1618CE

Furthermore, in a footnote speaking of the thirty years‘ war which started in Bohemia where the Hussites originated, Krus and Webb write The intensity of that conflict surpassed that of other types of armed confrontations. In Bohemia, for instance, there were whole sections of the country in which nobody was left to bury the dead. The total population of Bohemia decreased in the 17th century from about 3 million to 500,000. These population changes are representative of other areas of Central Europe afflicted by the Thirty Years War. — Krus, D.J., & Webb, J.M. (1993) Quantification of Santayana’s cultural schism theory. Psychological Reports, 72, 319-325.

1618CE

The following quotation is from The Glorious Reformation by S. S. SCHMUCKER, D. D., Discourse in Commemoration of the Glorious Reformation of the Sixteenth Century; delivered before the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, by the Rev. S. S. Schmucker, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. Published by Gould and Newman. 1838. Need I speak to you of the thirty years‘ war in Germany, which was mainly instigated by the Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protestants of the right of free 4 religious worship, secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? Or of the Irish rebellion, of the inhuman butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by the Spanish papists? In short, it is calculated by authentic historians, that papal Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight millions of the human race in order to establish her unfounded claims to religious dominion (citing Dr. Brownlee‘s ―Popery an enemy to civil liberty‖, p. 105).

1618CE

Estimates range up to 7 to 12 million for the number who died in the thirty years‘ war, and higher: This was the century of the last religious wars in ―Christendom,‖ the Thirty Years‘ War in Germany, fomented by the Jesuits, reducing the people to cannibalism, and the population of Bohemia from 4,000,000 to 780,000, and of Germany from 20,000,000 to 7,000,000, and making Southern Germany almost a desert, … — Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

1618CE

For example, concerning the Thirty Years‘ War, Newman [pp. 410-411] writes, The extent of the destruction of life through the Thirty Years‘ War cannot be estimated. If we take into account the multitudes who died of starvation and exposure, the hundreds of thousands of women and children who were slain in the sacking and destroying of the towns and cities, the fearful waste of life that must have been involved in camp-following, the deaths caused by the war would amount to many millions. In Bohemia, at the beginning of the war, there was a population of two million, of whom about eight-tenths were Protestant; at the close of the war there were about eight hundred thousand Catholics and no Protestants. Taking Germany and Austria together, we may safely say that the population was reduced by one-half, if not by two-thirds. And the deaths were in most cases the result of untold sufferings and as horrible as we can conceive. [Speaking of the persecutions in Germany after 1630] ―The cruelties used by the Imperial troops, under count Tilly in Saxony, are thus enumerated: [here the passage becomes very explicit, so those who are sensitive should NOT read the rest of it] Hanging, Stifling, Roasting, Stabbing, Frying, Racking, Ravishing, Ripping open, Breaking the bones, Rasping off the flesh, Tearing with wild horses, Drowning, Strangling, Burning, Boiling, Crucifying, Immuring, Poisoning, Cutting off tongue, nose, ears, etc., Sawing off the limbs, Hacking to 35 pieces, Drawing by the heels through the streets. Theses enormous cruelties will be a perpetual stain on the memory of count Tilly, who not only permitted, but even commanded his troops to put them in practice. Wherever he came, the most horrid barbarities, and cruel depredations ensued … so that the full result of his conquests were murder, poverty, and desolation.‖ [Southwell, op. cit., p. 197]

1620CE

In some places they shut up the people in the church, and forced them to receive in one kind, and if they would not kneel before the host, they used to beat their legs with clubs till they fell down; others they gagged, and when they had propped their mouths wide open, they thrust the host down their throats. Others were detained in prisons and bonds so long till they died, and particularly one was kept in a loathsome dungeon so long till his feet rotted off. If any, to avoid this tyrrany, fled to the woods or other private places for shelter, edicts were published forbidding all to entertain them, upon pain of forfeiting great sums of money for every night‘s entertainment. The country people were fetched out of their houses; nay, out of their very beds, by troops of soldiers, who drove them before them like beasts in the sharpest of cold and bitter weather. And with these poor creatures they filled the common prisons, towers, cellars, stables; nay, and hog-sties too, where they were killed with hunger, cold, and 33 thirst. Marriage, burial and baptism were forbidden to the Protestants, and if they did it privately, they were imprisoned, or else put to great fines. … In some places the heretics were shut up in privies, to the end that they might be poisoned with the stench. And these were the charitable ways, by which the Bohemian Catholics endeavored to reclaim such as were revolted from the tyrrany of the Pope. [The true spirit of popery, or, The treachery and cruelty of the Papists exercis‘d against the Protestants …, London : Printed for Richard Baldwin …, 1688, pp. 17-18]

1620CE

As additional evidence that only a few people emigrated from Bohemia, James A. Wylie [The History of Protestantism Volume Third – Book Nineteenth, Chapter 10] writes, Of the common people not fewer than 36,000 families emigrated. There was hardly a kingdom in Europe where the exiles of Bohemia were not to be met with. Scholars, merchants, traders, fled from a land which was given over as a prey to the disciples of Loyola, and the dragoons of Ferdinand. Of the 4,000,000 who inhabited Bohemia in 1620, a miserable remnant, amounting not even to a fifth, were all that remained in 1648. Furthermore, Bohemia had its population reduced from three million to seven hundred and eighty thousand, and there were parts of the continent where unburied corpses lay so thick that the regions had to be avoided until nature had done its work with the putrefying bodies of the dead. 32 Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter XXIX The Jesuits: Religious Rogues, 1929. Kurtz [p. 162] writes, ―It [the Protestant church] was wholly exterminated in Bohemia.‖ Newman [pp. 400-401] writes, Ferdinand Extirpates Protestantism. It need scarcely be said that Ferdinand followed up his victories in the Austro-Hungarian Empire by vigorous measures for the extirpation of Protestantism. The Jesuits were on hand in full force to aid in the terrible work. This is not the place to describe the process by which Protestants, who in Bohemia at the beginning of the war constituted eighty per cent of the population, were in an incredibly short time almost wholly exterminated. The Counter-Reformation did its work here with an amazing thoroughness. Roman Catholicism had an opportunity here to exhibit itself in its true character. The time for expediency had ended. The rigid carrying out of the principles of the body now had place.

1620CE

Speaking of Germany and Austria after 1620, Newman [p. 388] writes, Within a few years Protestantism had been almost completely exterminated throughout the Hapsburg domains, multitudes having been slaughtered, and the rest banished or forcibly converted. The Jesuits were the instigators and the chief agents in this horrible work.

1620CE

In addition to the Jesuit or Catholic atrocities of this century already enumerated with some particulars, they massacred 400 Protestants at Grossoto, in Lombardy, July 19th, 1620; are said to have destroyed 400,000 Protestants in Ireland, in 1641, by outright murder, and cold, and hunger, and drowning; … — Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

1641CE

Concerning the Irish rebellion, John Temple’s True Impartial History of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, written in 1644, puts the number of victims at 300,000, but other estimates are much smaller. Some estimates are larger.

1648CE

After describing the persecutions in Germany in the Thirty Years‘ War, R.B. states [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779, p. 41] ―the same cruelties were also committed in the kingdom of Hungary and in other countries ….‖ Concerning Poland, ―In lower Poland … In the year 1654 the papists put to death all the Protestants they could find by most exquisite tortures‖ [R.B, op. cit., p. 42]. Also, [Speaking of Poland in 1655] ―The Romish clergy having thus awakened the suspicions, and appealed to the passions of the people, the latter took it for granted that the protestants were guilty, and began a most furious persecution. Every city, town, and village, presented scenes of horror and cruelty; no inhumanity was left unthought of, no barbarity unpracticed. Age, sex, or rank, made no distinction; all protestants fell alike the undistinguished victims of bigoted rage.‖ [Here some specifics of the persecutions are given.] [Southwell, op. cit., p. 226] [Speaking of the Polish nobility with their papist army in 1655] ―In what manner they would have used the refugee citizens who fled [from Lesna], but more 34 especially the pastors, they showed by their heroic conduct to those remaining; and in other places, by the most savage slaughtering of divers ministers of the church, and other faithful members of Christ of both sexes; for of all that they laid hold on, they gave no quarter, but cruelly put every one to death with most exquisite tortures….‖ [Southwell, op. cit., p. 236]

1654CE

1671CE – Edict signed banishing all New Christians(converted Jews) from the country of Portugal.

1682CE

The following is an account of an auto de fe, performed at Madrid in the year 1682.

The officers of the inquisition, preceded by trumpets, kettle-drums, and their banner, marched on the 30th of May, in cavalcade, to the palace of the great square, where they declared by proclamation, that, on the 30th of June, the sentence of the prisoners would be put in execution.

Of these prisoners, twenty men and women, with one renegade Mahometan, were ordered to be burned; fifty Jews and Jewesses, having never before been imprisoned, and repenting of their crimes were sentenced to a long confinement, and to wear a yellow cap. The whole court of Spain was present on this occasion. The grand inquisitor’s chair was placed in a sort of tribunal far above that of the king.

Among those who were to suffer, was a young Jewess of exquisite beauty, and but seventeen years of age. Being on the same side of the scaffold where the queen was seated, she addressed her, in hopes of obtaining a pardon, in the following pathetic speech: “Great queen, will not your royal presence be of some service to the in my miserable condition! Have regard to my youth; and, oh! consider, that I am about to die for professing a religion imbibed from my earliest infancy!” Her majesty seemed greatly to pity her distress, but turned away her eyes, as she did not dare to speak a word in behalf of a person who had been declared a heretic.

Now mass began, in the midst of which the priest came from the altar, placed himself near the scaffold, and seated himself in a chair prepared for that purpose.

The chief inquisitor then descended from the amphitheatre, dressed in his cope, and having a mitre on his head. After having bowed to the altar, he advanced towards the king’s balcony, and went up to it, attended by some of his officers, carrying a cross and the gospels, with a book containing the oath by which the kings of Spain oblige themselves to protect the catholic faith, to extirpate heretics, and to support with all their power and force the prosecutions and decrees of the inquisition: a like oath was administered to the counsellors and whole assembly. The mass was begun about twelve at noon, and did not[72] end till nine in the evening, being protracted by a proclamation of the sentences of the several criminals, which were already separately rehearsed aloud one after the other.

After this, followed the burning of the twenty-one men and women, whose intrepidity in suffering that horrid death was truly astonishing. The king’s near situation to the criminals rendered their dying groans very audible to him; he could not, however, be absent from this dreadful scene, as it is esteemed a religious one; and his coronation oath obliges him to give a sanction by his presence to all the acts of the tribunal.

What we have already said may be applied to inquisitions in general, as well as to that of Spain in particular. The inquisition belonging to Portugal is exactly upon a similar plan to that of Spain, having been instituted much about the same time, and put under the same regulations. The inquisitors allow the torture to be used only three times, but during those times it is so severely inflicted, that the prisoner either dies under it, or continues always after a cripple, and suffers the severest pains upon every change of weather. We shall give an ample description of the severe torments occasioned by the torture, from the account of one who suffered it the three respective times, but happily survived the cruelties he underwent.

At the first time of torturing, six executioners entered, stripped him naked to his drawers, and laid him upon his back on a kind of stand, elevated a few feet from the floor. The operation commenced by putting an iron collar round his neck, and a ring to each foot, which fastened him to the stand. His limbs being thus stretched out, they wound two ropes round each thigh; which ropes being passed under the scaffold, through holes made for that purpose, were all drawn tight at the same instant of time, by four of the men, on a given signal.

It is easy to conceive that the pains which immediately succeeded were intolerable; the ropes, which were of a small size, cut through the prisoner’s flesh to the bone, making the blood to gush out at eight different places thus bound at a time. As the prisoner persisted in not making any confession of what the inquisitors required, the ropes were drawn in this manner four times successively.

The manner of inflicting the second torture was as follows: they forced his arms backwards so that the palms of his hands were turned outward behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched, and stood exactly parallel to each other. In consequence of this violent contortion, both his shoulders became dislocated, and a considerable quantity of blood issued from his mouth. This torture was repeated thrice; after which he was again taken to the dungeon, and the surgeon set the dislocated bones.

Two months after the second torture, the prisoner being a little recovered, was again ordered to the torture-room, and there, for the last time, made to undergo another kind of punishment, which was[73] inflicted twice without any intermission. The executioners fastened a thick iron chain round his body, which crossing at the breast, terminated at the wrists. They then placed him with his back against a thick board, at each extremity whereof was a pulley, through which there ran a rope that caught the end of the chain at his wrists. The executioner then, stretching the end of this rope by means of a roller, placed at a distance behind him, pressed or bruised his stomach in proportion as the ends of the chains were drawn tighter. They tortured him in this manner to such a degree, that his wrists, as well as his shoulders, were quite dislocated. They were, however, soon set by the surgeons; but the barbarians, not yet satisfied with this species of cruelty, made him immediately undergo the like torture a second time, which he sustained (though, if possible, attended with keener pains,) with equal constancy and resolution. After this, he was again remanded to his dungeon, attended by the surgeon to dress his bruises and adjust the part dislocated, and here he continued till their Auto de Fe, or jail delivery, when he was discharged, crippled and diseased for life.

1685CE

The persecutions occasioned by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, took place under Louis XIV. This edict was made by Henry the Great of France in 1598, and secured to the protestants an equal right in every respect, whether civil or religious, with the other subjects of the realm. All those privileges Louis the XIII. confirmed to the protestants by another statute, called the edict of Nismes, and kept them inviolably to the end of his reign.

On the accession of Louis XIV. the kingdom was almost ruined by civil wars. At this critical juncture, the protestants, heedless of our Lord’s admonition, “They that take the sword, shall perish with the sword,” took such an active part in favour of the king, that he was constrained to acknowledge himself indebted to their arms for his establishment on the throne. Instead of cherishing and rewarding that party who had fought for him, he reasoned, that the same power which had protected could overturn him, and, listening to the popish machinations, he began to issue out proscriptions and restrictions, indicative of his final determination. Rochelle was presently fettered with an incredible number of denunciations. Montaban and Millau were sacked by soldiers. Popish commissioners were appointed to preside over the affairs of the protestants, and there was no appeal from their ordinance, except to the king’s council. This struck at the root of their civil and religious exercises, and prevented them, being protestants, from suing a catholic in any court of law. This was followed by another injunction, to make an inquiry in all parishes into whatever the protestants had said or done for twenty years past. This filled the prisons with innocent victims, and condemned[63] others to the galleys or banishment. Protestants were expelled from all offices, trades, privileges and employs; thereby depriving them of the means of getting their bread: and they proceeded to such excess in their brutality, that they would not suffer even the midwives to officiate, but compelled their women to submit themselves in that crisis of nature to their enemies, the brutal catholics. Their children were taken from them to be educated by the catholics, and at seven years made to embrace popery. The reformed were prohibited from relieving their own sick or poor, from all private worship, and divine service was to be performed in the presence of a popish priest. To prevent the unfortunate victims from leaving the kingdom, all the passages on the frontiers were strictly guarded; yet, by the good hand of God, about 150,000 escaped their vigilance, and emigrated to different countries to relate the dismal narrative.

All that has been related hitherto were only infringements on their established charter, the edict of Nantes. At length the diabolical revocation of that edict passed on the 18th of October, 1685, and was registered the 22d in the vacation, contrary to all form of law. Instantly the dragoons were quartered upon the protestants throughout the realm, and filled all France with the like news, that the king would no longer suffer any Huguenots in his kingdom, and therefore they must resolve to change their religion. Hereupon the intendants in every parish (which were popish governors and spies set over the protestants) assembled the reformed inhabitants, and told them, they must without delay turn catholics, either freely or by force. The protestants replied, “They were ready to sacrifice their lives and estates to the king, but their consciences being God’s, they could not so dispose of them.”

Instantly the troops seized the gates and avenues of the cities, and placing guards in all the passages, entered with sword in hand, crying, “Die, or be catholics!” In short, they practised every wickedness and horror they could devise, to force them to change their religion.

They hung both men and women by their hair or their feet, and smoked them with hay till they were nearly dead; and if they still refused to sign a recantation, they hung them up again and repeated their barbarities, till, wearied out with torments without death, they forced many to yield to them.

Others, they plucked off all the hair of their heads and beards with pincers. Others they threw on great fires, and pulled them out again, repeating it till they extorted a promise to recant.

Some they stripped naked, and after offering them the most infamous insults, they stuck them with pins from head to foot, and lanced them with penknives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers they dragged them by the nose till they promised to turn. Sometimes they tied fathers and husbands, while they ravished their wives and daughters before their eyes. Multitudes they imprisoned in the most[64] noisome dungeons, where they practised all sorts of torments in secret. Their wives and children they shut up in monasteries.

Such as endeavoured to escape by flight were pursued in the woods and hunted in the fields, and shot at like wild beasts; nor did any condition or quality screen them from the ferocity of these infernal dragoons: even the members of parliament and military officers, though on actual service, were ordered to quit their posts, and repair directly to their houses to suffer the like storm. Such as complained to the king were sent to the Bastile, where they drank of the same cup. The bishops and the intendants marched at the head of the dragoons, with a troop of missionaries, monks, and other ecclesiastics, to animate the soldiers to an execution so agreeable to their holy church, and so glorious to their demon god and their tyrant king.

In forming the edict to repeal the edict of Nantes, the council were divided; some would have all the ministers detained and forced into popery as well as the laity: others were for banishing them, because their presence would strengthen the protestants in perseverance: and if they were forced to turn, they would ever be secret and powerful enemies in the bosom of the church, by their great knowledge and experience in controversial matters. This reason prevailing, they were sentenced to banishment, and only fifteen days allowed them to depart the kingdom.

The same day the edict for revoking the protestant’s charter was published, they demolished their churches, and banished their ministers, whom they allowed but twenty-four hours to leave Paris. The papists would not suffer them to dispose of their effects, and threw every obstacle in their way to delay their escape till the limited time was expired which subjected them to condemnation for life to the galleys. The guards were doubled at the seaports, and the prisons were filled with the victims, who endured torments and wants at which human nature must shudder.

The sufferings of the ministers and others, who were sent to the galleys, seemed to exceed all. Chained to the oar, they were exposed to the open air night and day, at all seasons, and in all weathers; and when through weakness of body they fainted under the oar, instead of a cordial to revive them, or viands to refresh them, they received only the lashes of a scourge, or the blows of a cane or rope’s end. For the want of sufficient clothing and necessary cleanliness, they were most grievously tormented with vermin, and cruelly pinched with the cold, which removed by night the executioners who beat and tormented them by day. Instead of a bed, they were allowed, sick or well, only a hard board, eighteen inches broad, to sleep on, without any covering but their wretched apparel; which was a shirt of the coarsest canvass, a little jerkin of red serge, slit up each side up to the arm-holes, with open sleeves that reached not to the elbow; and once in three years they had a coarse frock, and a little cap to cover their heads, which were always kept close shaved as a mark of their infamy. The allowance of provision was as[65] narrow as the sentiments of those who condemned them to such miseries, and their treatment when sick is too shocking to relate, doomed to die upon the boards of a dark hold; covered with vermin, and without the least convenience for the calls of nature. Nor was it among the least of the horrors they endured, that, as ministers of Christ, and honest men, they were chained side by side to felons and the most execrable villains, whose blasphemous tongues were never idle. If they refused to hear mass, they were sentenced to the bastinado, of which dreadful punishment the following is a description. Preparatory to it, the chains are taken off, and the victims delivered into the hands of the Turks that preside at the oars, who strip them quite naked, and stretching them upon a great gun, they are held so that they cannot stir; during which there reigns an awful silence throughout the galley. The Turk who is appointed the executioner, and who thinks the sacrifice acceptable to his prophet Mahomet, most cruelly beats the wretched victim with a rough cudgel, or knotty rope’s end, till the skin is flayed off his bones, and he is near the point of expiring; then they apply a most tormenting mixture of vinegar and salt, and consign him to that most intolerable hospital where thousands under their cruelties have expired.

1685CE

Writing about the Jesuits, Lord states They are accused of securing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,– one of the greatest crimes in the history of modern times, which led to the expulsion of four hundred thousand Protestants from France, and the execution of four hundred thousand more. — John Lord, Beacon Lights of History, volume VI, p. 325.

1731CE: As part of a program of persecution against the Salzburg Protestants, in 1731, Leopold Anton von Firmian – Archbishop of Salzburg as well as its temporal ruler as Count, ordered the wholesale seizure and burning of all Protestant books and Bibles.

1747CE: On May 27, 1747, Jakob Schmidlin (“Sulzijoggi”) was hanged as a leader of a pietist movement with seditionist Lutheran sympathies, in the canton of Lucerne in Galgenwäldli on the Emme. The charges included distributing forbidden (i.e., Lutheran) material. His corpse was burned along with a Luther Bible.^[^{citation needed}^] He is considered the last Protestant martyr of Switzerland. 82 co-defendants were also punished, mostly with perpetual banishment. Since the Bible was at the center of this movement and violations of censorship rules against the use and possession of Bibles was one of the offenses committed by the convicted, after the trial the authorities issued a decree that included a general prohibition on laymen having Bibles.

1761CE

We pass over many other individual martyrdoms to insert that of John Calas, which took place so lately as 1761, and is an indubitable proof of the bigotry of popery, and shows that neither experience nor improvement can root out the inveterate prejudices of the Roman catholics, or render them less cruel or inexorable to protestants.

John Calas was a merchant of the city of Thoulouse, where he had been settled, and lived in good repute, and had married an English woman of French extraction. Calas and his wife were protestants, and had five sons, whom they educated in the same religion; but Lewis, one of the sons, became a Roman catholic, having been converted by a maid-servant, who had lived in the family about thirty years. The father, however, did not express any resentment or ill-will upon the occasion, but kept the maid in the family and settled an annuity upon the son. In October, 1761, the family consisted of John Calas and his wife, one woman servant, Mark Antony Calas, the eldest son, and Peter Calas, the second son. Mark Antony was bred to the law, but could not be admitted to practise, on account of his being a protestant; hence he grew melancholy, read all the books he could procure relative to suicide, and seemed determined to destroy himself. To this may be added, that he led a dissipated life, was greatly addicted to gaming, and did all which could constitute the character of a libertine; on which account his father frequently reprehended him and sometimes in terms of severity, which considerably added to the doom that seemed to oppress him.

On the 13th of October, 1761, Mr. Gober la Vaisse, a young gentleman about 19 years of age, the son of La Vaisse, a celebrated[66] advocate of Thoulouse, about five o’clock in the evening, was met by John Calas, the father, and the eldest son Mark Antony, who was his friend. Calas, the father, invited him to supper, and the family and their guest sat down in a room up one pair of stairs; the whole company, consisting of Calas the father and his wife, Antony and Peter Calas, the sons, and La Vaisse the guest, no other person being in the house, except the maid-servant who has been already mentioned.

It was now about seven o’clock; the super was not long; but before it was over, Antony left the table, and went into the kitchen, which was on the same floor, as he was accustomed to do. The maid asked him if he was cold? He answered, “Quite the contrary, I burn;” and then left her. In the mean time his friend and family left the room they had supped in, and went into a bed-chamber; the father and La Vaisse sat down together on a sofa; the younger son Peter in an elbow chair; and the mother in another chair; and, without making any inquiry after Antony, continued in conversation together till between nine and ten o’clock, when La Vaisse took his leave, and Peter, who had fallen asleep, was awakened to attend him with a light.

On the ground floor of Calas’s house was a shop and a ware-house, the latter of which was divided from the shop by a pair of folding-doors. When Peter Calas and La Vaisse came down stairs into the shop, they were extremely shocked to see Antony hanging in his shirt, from a bar which he had laid across the top of the two folding-doors, having half opened them for that purpose. On discovery of this horrid spectacle, they shrieked out, which brought down Calas the father, the mother being seized with such terror as kept her trembling in the passage above. When the maid discovered what had happened, she continued below, either because she feared to carry an account of it to her mistress, or because she busied herself in doing some good office to her master, who was embracing the body of his son, and bathing it in his tears. The mother, therefore, being thus left alone, went down and mixed in the scene that has been already described, with such emotions as it must naturally produce. In the mean time Peter had been sent for La Moire, a surgeon in the neighbourhood. La Moire was not at home, but his apprentice, Mr. Grosle, came instantly. Upon examination, he found the body quite dead; and by this time a papistical crowd of people were gathered about the house, and, having by some means heard that Antony Calas was suddenly dead, and that the surgeon who had examined the body, declared that he had been strangled, they took it into their heads he had been murdered; and as the family was protestant, they presently supposed that the young man was about to change his religion, and had been put to death for that reason.

The poor father, overwhelmed with grief for the loss of his child, was advised by his friends to send for the officers of justice to prevent his being torn to pieces by the catholic multitude, who supposed he had murdered his son. This was accordingly done, and David, the[67] chief magistrate, or capitoul, took the father, Peter the son, the mother, La Vaisse, and the maid, all into custody, and set a guard over them. He sent for M. de la Tour, a physician, and MM. la Marque and Perronet, surgeons, who examined the body for marks of violence, but found none except the mark of the ligature on the neck; they found also the hair of the deceased done up in the usual manner, perfectly smooth, and without the least disorder; his clothes were also regularly folded up, and laid upon the counter, nor was his shirt either torn or unbuttoned.

Notwithstanding these innocent appearances, the capitoul thought proper to agree with the opinion of the mob, and took it into his head that old Calas had sent for La Vaisse, telling him that he had a son to be hanged; that La Vaisse had come to perform the office of executioner: and that he had received assistance from the father and brother.

As no proof of the supposed fact could be procured, the capitoul had recourse to a monitory, or general information, in which the crime was taken for granted, and persons were required to give such testimony against it as they were able. This recites, that La Vaisse was commissioned by the protestants to be their executioner in ordinary, when any of their children were to be hanged for changing their religion; it recites also, that, when the protestants thus hang their children, they compel them to kneel, and one of the interrogatories was whether any person had seen Antony Calas kneel before his father when he strangled him; it recites likewise, that Antony died a Roman catholic, and requires evidence of his catholicism.

But before this monitory was published, the mob had got a notion that Antony Calas was the next day to have entered into the fraternity of the White Penitents. The capitoul therefore caused his body to be buried in the middle of St. Stephen’s church. A few days after the interment of the deceased, the White Penitents performed a solemn service for him in their chapel; the church was hung with white, and a tomb was raised in the middle of it, on the top of which was placed a human skeleton, holding in one hand a paper, on which was written, “Abjuration of heresy,” and in the other a palm, the emblem of martyrdom. The next day the Franciscans performed a service of the same kind for him.

The capitoul continued the persecution with unrelenting severity, and, without the least proof coming in, thought fit to condemn the unhappy father, mother, brother, friend, and servant, to the torture, and put them all into irons on the 18th of November.

From these dreadful proceedings the sufferers appealed to the parliament, which immediately took cognizance of the affair, and annulled the sentence of the capitoul as irregular, but they continued the prosecution, and, upon the hangman deposing it was impossible Antony should hang himself as was pretended, the majority of the parliament were of the opinion, that the prisoners were guilty, and therefore ordered them to be tried by the criminal court of Thoulouse.[68] One voted him innocent, but after long debates the majority was for the torture and wheel, and probably condemned the father by way of experiment, whether he was guilty or not, hoping he would, in the agony, confess the crime, and accuse the other prisoners, whose fate therefore, they suspended.

Poor Calas, however, an old man of 68, was condemned to this dreadful punishment alone. He suffered the torture with great constancy, and was led to execution in a frame of mind which excited the admiration of all that saw him, and particularly of the two Dominicans (father Bourges and father Coldagues) who attended him in his last moments, and declared that they thought him not only innocent of the crime laid to his charge, but an exemplary instance of true christian patience, fortitude, and charity. When he saw the executioner prepared to give him the last stroke, he made a fresh declaration to father Bourges, but while the words were still in his mouth, the capitoul, the author of this catastrophe, and who came upon the scaffold merely to gratify his desire of being a witness of his punishment and death, ran up to him, and bawled out, “Wretch, there are the fagots which are to reduce your body to ashes! speak the truth.” M. Calas made no reply, but turned his head a little aside, and that moment the executioner did his office.

The popular outcry against this family was so violent in Languedoc, that every body expected to see the children of Calas broke upon the wheel, and the mother burnt alive.

Young Donat Calas was advised to fly into Switzerland: he went, and found a gentleman who, at first, could only pity and relieve him, without daring to judge of the rigour exercised against the father, mother, and brothers. Soon after, one of the brothers, who was only banished, likewise threw himself into the arms of the same person, who, for more than a month, took every possible precaution to be assured of the innocence of the family. Once convinced, he thought himself obliged, in conscience, to employ his friends, his purse, his pen, and his credit, to repair the fatal mistake of the seven judges of Thoulouse, and to have the proceedings revised by the king’s council. This revision lasted three years, and it is well known what honour Messrs. de Grosne and Bacquancourt acquired by investigating this memorable cause. Fifty masters of the Court of Requests unanimously declared the whole family of Calas innocent, and recommended them to the benevolent justice of his majesty. The duke de Choiseul, who never let slip an opportunity of signalizing the greatness of his character, not only assisted this unfortunate family with money, but obtained for them a gratuity of 36,000 livres from the king.

On the ninth of March, 1765, the arret was signed which justified the family of Calas, and changed their fate. The ninth of March, 1762, was the very day on which the innocent and virtuous father of that family had been executed. All Paris ran in crowds to see them come out of prison, and clapped their hands for joy while the tears streamed from their eyes.[69]

This dreadful example of bigotry employed the pen of Voltaire in deprecation of the horrors of superstition; and though an infidel himself, his essay on toleration does honour to his pen, and has been a blessed means of abating the rigour of persecution in most European states. Gospel purity will equally shun superstition and cruelty, as the mildness of Christ’s tenets teaches only to comfort in this world, and to procure salvation in the next. To persecute for being of a different opinion, is as absurd as to persecute for having a different countenance: if we honour God, keep sacred the pure doctrines of Christ, put a full confidence in the promises contained in the holy scriptures, and obey the political laws of the state in which we reside, we have an undoubted right to protection instead of persecution, and to serve heaven as our consciences, regulated by the gospel rules, may direct.

1816CE: In 1816, Pius VII sent two breves concerning the Bible societies, one to the Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland (Nimio et Acerbo, June 29), and another to the Archbishop of Mohilev (Magno et acerbo, September 3[71 ]). Both breves are very strongly against the translations in vernacular of the Bible which were not approved by the Catholic Church and letting untrained laypeople read the bible.

1820CE

Also, Berg [Lectures on Romanism, p. 258] writes, When the inquisition was thrown open in 1820, by order of the Cortes of Madrid, of the twenty one prisoners who were found in it, not one of whom knew the name of the city in which he was, some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused. One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered the following day. His punishment was to be death by the pendulum.

1827CE: The first New Testament translation into Breton was published in 1827 by Protestants after the Catholic Church refused its publication.

1829CE

The following is from W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, p. 102: The following is from the Jesuit Confession of Faith imposed on papists in Hungary, published in German, at Berlin, 1829 ; and translated in The London Protestant Journal of 1831. “We also swear, that we will persecute this cursed evangelical doctrine, as long as we have a drop of blood in our bodies; and. we will eradicate it secretly and publicly; violently and deceitfully, with words, and with deeds; the sword not excluded.” Land. Prot. Jour. p. 210.

1844CE: Gregory XVI His encyclical letter Inter praecipuas of 1844 spoke out against the unauthorized vernacular Bibles of the Bible societies.

1846CE: Pius IX wrote in 1846 his encyclical Qui pluribus against “the most impudent Bible societies, which renewed the ancient artifice of the heretics and translated the books of the Divine Scriptures, contrary to the most sacrosanct rules of the Church, into all national languages.

1849CE: 3,000 copies of a Catholic Italian translation of the Bible were confiscated and burned under the orders of , the Archbishop of Florence.

1849CE

When the papal government was temporarily suspended in 1849 by the Roman Republic, the Inquisition was found in active operation, and it was restored the moment the Pope returned to Rome. The various horrors of the place,–its iron rings, its subterranean cells, its skeletons built up in the wall, its trap-doors, its kiln for burning bodies, with parts of humanity remaining still unconsumed,–were all exposed at the time. These partial disclosures may convince us, perhaps, that it is better that the veil which conceals the full horrors of the Inquisition should remain unlifted till that day when the graves shall give up their dead. Wylie, op. cit.

1851CE: In 1851, services in Italian were outlawed. The possession of a Protestant Italian Bible alone was considered sufficient evidence for conviction. The most prominent prisoner was Count Piero Guicciardini, who was arrested with six others. They had met on May 7, 1851, the day before his voluntary departure for religious exile, and read the Scriptures together. He was therefore sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for blasphemy, which was then converted into exile.

1901CE: In 1901, a series of riots in Athens over the publication of a Gospel in modern spoken Greek in a newspaper culminated in 8 deaths. The Greek Orthodox Church reacted by banning any translation of the Bible into any form of modern Demotic Greek and by forbidding the employment of Demoticist teachers.

1930CE-2004CE – Accusations of large-scale sex crimes in Ireland’s Catholic institutions go back decades, with the number of underage victims estimated at nearly 15,000 between 1970 and 1990 alone. Several bishops and priests accused of covering up abuse have been punished. The official Ryan Commission report in 2009 found widespread abuse of children in Catholic-run institutions between the 1930s and the 1970s. It said church-run orphanages and industrial schools were places of fear, neglect and endemic sexual abuse. The 2009 Murphy report into the Dublin archdiocese said that between 1975 and 2004 the Church had “obsessively” concealed abuse. And after another highly critical report in 2011, into the Cloyne diocese, the Vatican recalled its ambassador after the then Irish premier accused it of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests.

1941CE “The Croatian Disaster” Concentration camps in Yugoslavia were run by Catholic Priests. A fascist government was formed, called the Independent State of Croatia. The government was run by the Ustaše. The Ustaše were ultra-conservative Catholics. They decided to do some ethnic cleansing by murdering a third of the population, expelling a third, and assimilating a third. 800,000 people were murdered in both camps and villages.

1950CE-2002CE – Over 10,667 accounts of sexual abuse by priests to children under 18 years old in The United Sates.

1950CE-2010CE – After a series of scandals, in 2013 Australia’s government set up a Royal Commission, a top-level inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse. The commission said in February 2017 that most of the abuse took place in churches, with seven percent of Catholic priests accused of abusing children in Australia between 1950 and 2010. It said allegations were almost never investigated. It found that 4,444 alleged incidents of child sexual abuse had been reported to Church authorities.

1950CE-2020CE – 216,000 victims of sexual abuse carried out by the French Catholic Church’s clergy between 1950 and 2020.

1960s-1970s – In the 1960s and ’70s, almost an entire generation of Alaska Native children in the village of St. Michael were sexually abused by Catholic priests and church workers. Here’s information on the history of the abuse, legal actions taken by the survivors, and how the child abuse crimes in Alaska fits into the larger story of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

1975CE-2018CE – In June, Pope Francis rejected an offer by top German bishop Reinhard Marx to resign over the Church’s “institutional and systemic failure” in handling child sexual abuse in the western city of Cologne.It revealed that 314 minors, mostly boys under the age of 14, were sexually abused there between 1975 and 2018.A German Bishops’ Conference study in 2018 had previously revealed widespread sexual abuse by German clergy. It found that 1,670 clergymen had committed some type of sexual attack against 3,677 minors, mostly boys under 13, between 1946 and 2014, while saying this was almost certainly an underestimate.Most perpetrators have not been punished and the church grants compensation on a case-by-case basis, without transparency.

2025CE

The Pope and the Catholic church set up an entire prayer room to a false god, Allah, of the Muslims.

REFERENCES:

*FOXE’S BOOK OF MARTYRS

*ANTISEMITISM AND THE CHURCH by Monica L. McMillan 1996

*THE BAD POPES by E.R. Chamberlin 1969

* Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity

*The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors By Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950—2002.

Yahweh is Truth

Helping Truth Seekers Dispel the Darkness and Find the Light

The Fruits of the Catholic Church