king its
enemies, and following the rash counsels of ambitious men.[173] This
was the opinion of their chief, Theodore Beza, himself. Six weeks
before, he wrote that they were gaining in numbers but losing in
quality, and he feared lest, after destroying superstition, they should
destroy religion: "Valde metuo ne superstitioni successerit
impietas."[174] And afterwards he declared that nobody who had known the
state of the French Protestants could deny that it was a most just
judgment upon them.[175]

Beza held very stringent doctrines touching the duty of the civil
magistrate to repress religious error. He thought that heresy is worse
than murder, and that the good of society requires no crime to be more
severely punished.[176] He declared toleration contrary to revealed
religion and the constant tradition of the Church, and taught that
lawful authority must be obeyed, even by those whom it persecutes. He
expressly recognised this function in Catholic States, and urged
Sigismund not to rest until he had got rid of the Socinians in
Poland;[177] but he could not prevail against the vehement resistance of
Cardinal Hosius. It was embarrassing to limit these principles when they
were applied against his own Church. For a moment Beza doubted whether
it had not received its death-blow in France. But he did not qualify the
propositions which were open to be interpreted so fatally,[178] or deny
that his people, by their vices, if not by their errors, had deserved
what they had suffered.

The applause which greeted their fate came not from the Catholics
generally, nor from the Catholics alone. While the Protestants were
ready to palliate or excuse it, the majority of the Catholics who were
not under the direct influence of Madrid or Rome recognised the
inexpiable horror of the crime. But the desire to defend what the Pope
approved survived sporadically, when the old fierceness of dogmatic
hatred was extinct. A generation passed without any perceptible change
in the judgment of Rome. It was a common charge against De Thou that he
had condemned the blameless act of Charles IX. The blasphemies of the
Huguenots, said one of his critics, were more abominable than their
retribution.[179] His History was put on the Index; and Cardinal
Barberini let him know that he was condemned because he not only
favoured Protestants to the detriment of Catholics, but had even
disapproved the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.[180] Eudaemon-Johannes, the