Henry M. Baird · 98 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · Persecution to atone for moral blemishes.

It may at first sight appear somewhat incongruous that a king and court thus given up, the former to flagrant immorality, the latter to the unbridled pursuit of riches and honors, should early have exhibited a disposition to carry forward in an aggravated form the system of persecution initiated in the previous reign. The secret of the apparent inconsistency may be found in the fact that the courtiers were not slow in perceiving, on the one hand, the almost incalculable gains which the confiscation of the goods of condemned heretics might be made to yield, and, on the other, the facility with which a monarch of a disposition naturally gentle and humane could be persuaded to countenance the most barbarous cruelties, as the supposed means of atoning for the dissoluteness of his own life. The observance of the strict precepts of the moral law, they argued, was of less importance than the purity of the faith. The title of "Very Christian" had been borne by some of his predecessors whose private lives had been full of gallantries. His claim to it would be forfeited by the adoption of the stern principles of the reformers; while the Pontiff who conferred it would never venture to remove the honorable distinction, or refuse to unlock the gates of paradise to him who should prove himself an obedient son of the church and a persecutor of its enemies. To fulfil these conditions was the easier, as the persons upon whom were to be exercised the severities dictated by heaven, plotted revolutions and aspired to convert France into a republic, on the pattern of the cantons of Switzerland. Lending a willing ear to these suggestions, Henry the Second no sooner began to reign than he began to persecute.