We shall here remark that the same Pius V. who, to avenge some articles of the Catholic faith, armed Christian against Christian, wrote to the Persians and to the Arabs, that in spite of the diversity of worship, a common interest ought to unite Europe and Asia to combat the Mussulmans. This apparent contradiction should surprise no one: we know that in religious dissensions, hatred is proportionately lively as the sentiments recede least from each other.
Gregory XIII. crowned pope the 25th of May, 1572, three months before the too celebrated St. Bartholomew’s day, no sooner heard of this massacre than he caused cannon to be discharged, and kindled fires, for joy: he returned thanks to heaven in a religious ceremony; and history records a picture which attested the formal approbation bestowed by the pontiff on the assassins of Coligny: “Pontifex Colignii necem probat.” In 1584, Gregory also sanctioned the league, on the exposé of the Jesuit Mathieu, who was deputed to Rome for this purpose. “For the rest,” writes this Jesuit, “the pope does not think it proper to attempt the life of the king; but if they can secure his person, and give him those who will hold him in rein, he will approve it much.” Gregory even avoided signing any writing which the league could take advantage of; he assisted them only with the ‘small money’ of the Holy See, said the Cardinal of Este: now this money consisted of indulgences.
The dissensions which distracted France at this time had without doubt various causes, but among them the abolition of the ‘pragmatic’ and the establishment of the concordat were not sufficiently noted. On one side, so fatal an alteration in the discipline, in scaring people’s minds, had disposed them to receive new doctrinal opinions disapproved by the court of Rome; on the other, the ultramontane maxims that the concordat had introduced, and that Catherine de Medicis had propagated, inspired sentiments of intolerance in those who remained in the communion of the Holy See: the ‘pragmatic’ would have preserved France both from heresy and from persecuting zeal. Under the reign of the concordat, these two seeds of discord, rendering each other fruitful, had enveloped with their horrible fruits, the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. The new interests which the concordat gave to the clergy of France, rendered them devoted to the court of Rome, and weakened more and more the ties which ought to have held them to the state. They applied themselves so to the maintenance and renewal of the maxims of the middle age, that Gregory ventured, in this enlightened age, a new publication of the decree of Gratian; but the pope, in reforming the calendar, performed a service which the people separated from the Romish communion had, for a long time, the folly not to profit by.