Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/221

 n s. XL MAR. is, IMS.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

211

" SIR ANDREW.'' In Tom Hood's ' Ode to Rae Wilson, Esq.,' occurs the line

You say Sir Andrew and his love of law. Who was Sir Andrew ?

ROLAND AUSTIN.

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Is the statement, sometimes made, that she was born at Lichfield capable of proof ?

S. A. GRUNDY-NEWMAN.

Walsall.

AMALAFRIDA IN PROCOPIUS. Will any -courteous fellow-reader having access to Procopius ('Vandal.,' 1. i. c. 8, 9) kindly furnish me with the particulars therein relating to Amalafrida, sister of Theodoric the Great, and wife of Thrasimond, King of the Vandals ? M L.

18, Horton Road, Platt Fields, Manchester.

PHOTOGRAPH OF DICKENS. I wonder if ^any of your readers could tell me where a good photograph of the late Charles Dickens can now be obtained. W. M. C.

Devonshire Club.

MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW MEDAL.

(11 S. v. 475; xi. 168.)

IN answer to your correspondent A., I send ome further notes as to the St. Bartholomew Massacre medal, using also a valuable illustrated pamphlet entitled ' Papal Numis- matic and Pictorial Memorials of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day,' by Charles Poyntz Stewart, F. S.A.Scot., 1911, 'which is a reprint of his article in the Pro- ceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, vol. ix. No. 3.

J. E. T., the gentleman who gave me the medal at Rome in 1903, now informs me that they have not teen struck since 1870. However, Mr. Isaacson remarks : " Through all the last five centuries hardly a year has passed without some fresh medals from the Papal mint" ('Story of the Later Popes,' 1906, p. 294). Pope Gregory XIII. un- doubtedly caused a medal to be struck to commemorate the massacre of the Huguenots in Paris, 1572. This medal is described by Father Bonanni in ' Numis. Pont.,' 1699, vol. i. p. 300. Father Du Molinet, a Canon and numismatist, gives an engraving of it, and says :

" Gregory appears by this medal to have

approved and praised it This is typified in the

medal by the angel taking the vengeance of celestial wrath against the enemies of the Cross of Christ." ' Historia Summorum Pontificum per eorum Xumismata,' Paris, 1679.

Maximilien Misson says that Gregory XIII. " had moreover medals struck, on which is his effigy and ' Gregorius XIII. Pont. Max. An. I.,' and on the reverse an exterminating angel, who in one hand bears a cross, and in the other a sword with which he strikes vigorously, and the words ' Ugonottorum strages, 1572.' These medals have become very rare, but my friends have obtained some for me." ' Nouveau Voyage en Italie,' 1731.

In ' L'Art de verifier les Dates,' by the Benedictine monks, vol. iv. p. 432, the editor says :

" Medals were struck to commemorate the event ; a picture was painted wherein the chief scenes of this horrible massacre were represented."

The medal is also described in the ' Tresor de Numismatique et de Glyptique,' 1839, vol. i.

In the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, is a silver-gilt specimen of this medal, supposed (says Mr. Stewart, p. 8) to be the one pre- sented by the Pope to Charles IX., also two bronze copies. And he adds :

" Precisely similar bronze ones are in our British Museum, and the writer of these pages has in his possession two originals exactly like them, even to a flaw in one corner."

The Protestant Alliance, 430, Strand, have possessed one of these medals so long that how and when it was obtained is forgotten, and upon comparing it with mine I saw it was precisely a duplicate ; it is engraved in one of their pamphlets.

Mr. Stewart says :

" A medal was struck by His Holiness, of which the authenticity has been often denied by ignorant zeal. Even the Ultramontane Univers in Paris wrote in November, 1875 :

" ' The medal is not proved to have been struck by the Pope's permission a medal is not a coin ; every private person can have a com- memoration medal struck of any event with the effigy of the reigning sovereign, and probably some zealous underling of the Vatican, or some too enthusiastic Frenchman, had this medal engraved, or perhaps it was struck by some enemy of the Papacy who desired to throw the odium of these sanguinary reprisals on religion.'

" The combination of childishness and ignor- ance here exhibited has rarely been surpassed. It is not true that any mint in Europe would strike ' any medal inquired by a private indi- vidual, and place thereon the effigy of the sove- reign ' ; it is not true that ' an enemy of the Papacy struck it,' as Mr. Loth suggests." Pp. 7, 8.

About 1851 an imitation of this medal was struck in London, rather larger than