Page:History of Freedom.djvu/172

 128

ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

The belief was common at the time, and is ).11ot yet extinct, that the massacre had been promoted and sanctioned by the Court of Rome. No evidence of this complicity, prior to the event, has ever been produced; but it seemed consistent with what was supposed to have occurred in the affair of the dispensation. The marriage of Margaret of Valois \vith the I(ing of Navarre was invalid and illicit in the eyes of the Church; and it was known that Pius V. had s\vorn that he would never per- mit it. When it had been celebrated by a Cardinal, in the presence of a splendid court, and no more was heard of resistance on the part of Rome, the \vorld concluded that the dispensation had been obtained. De Thou says, in a manuscript note, that it had been sent, and was aftenvards suppressed by Salviati; and the French bishop, Spondanus, assigns the reasons which induced Gregory XII1. to give \vay.1 Others affirmed that he had yielded \vhen he learned that the marriage \vas a snare, so that the massacre was the price of the dispensation. 2 The Cardinal of Lorraine gave currency to the story. As he caused it to be understood that he had been in the secret, it seemed probable that he had told the Pope; for they had been old friends. s In the commemorative inscription which he put up in the Church of St. Le\vis he spoke of the King's gratitude to the Holy See for its assistance and for its advice in the matter-" consiliorum ad earn rem datorum." It is probable that he inspired the narra- tive \\'hich has contributed most to sustain the imputation. Among the Italians of the French faction who made it their duty to glorify the act of Charles IX., the Capilupi family was conspicuous. They came from Mantua, and appear to have been connected with the French interest through Lewis Gonzaga, who had become by marriage Duke of Nevers, and one of the foremost personages in France. Hippolyto Capilupi, Bishop of Fano, and formerly Nuncio at Venice, resided at Rome, busy \vith

1 Annal, Baronii Contino ii. 734 ; Bossuet says: .. La dispense vint telle qU'OD la pouvoit désirer" (Histoire de .France, p, 820). 2 Ormegregny, Réflexions sur la Politique de France, p. 121. 3 De Thou, iv. 537.