The massacre with which they were overwhelmed at the outbreak of the war against them in 1572, and which was then supposed to have entirely ruined them, when known in Rome was a cause of great joy to their enemies in that city. When the letters of the Pope’s legate residing at the Court of Charles IX., were read in the assembly of the cardinals, by which he assured the Pope that all was transacted by the express will and command of the French king, it was immediately decreed that the pope should march with his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, and in the most solemn manner give thanks to God for so great a blessing conferred on the See of Rome and the “Christian World;” and that on the Monday after, solemn mass should be celebrated in the church of Minerva, at which Gregory XIII., and the cardinals were present; and that a jubilee should be published throughout the whole of “Christendom,” and the cause of it declared to be, to return thanks to God for the extirpation of the enemies of the truth and the church in France. In the evening, the cannon of St. Angelo were fired to testify the public joy; the whole city illuminated with bonfires; and no one sign of rejoicing omitted that was usually made for the greatest victories obtained in favor of the Roman church. In addition to this medals were struck com
memorative of the joyous event. A copy of it is before me in Elliot’s work, taken from Sir. W. Cockbum’s work on the massacre. It is about two inches and five eighths diameter. On one face is the bust of the Roman deity, Gregory XIII; and on the obverse a winged angel with an uplifted cross in the left hand, and a drawn two-edged sword in the right, symbolizing the papal destroyers of “the earth” in France. Men, women, and children are before the angel dead, dying, falling, and about to fall by his sword; while in the background is a woman, with uplifted arms supporting a mantle, and looking complacently upon the massacre, symbolizing the Catholic church. On the margin is the legend, “Ugonottorum Strages, 1572” — The Massacre of the Huguenots, 1572. These medals were for free distribution to one another commemorative of the death blow inflicted upon the hitherto unconquered enemies of the catholic idolatry. Thus was fulfilled the tenth verse of this eleventh chapter, saying, “They that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them and make merry, and shall send gifts (of medals) one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.”
The conquest and symbolic death of the witnessing prophets, then, was illustrated by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Oct. 23, A.D. 1685. This was the conviction of the whole anti-papal world at the time. The poor sufferers in France especially who survived, were of opinion that these unequalled persecutions were the slaying of the witnesses; and they were, therefore, in high expectation looking for the end of the