Replies

both sides did wrong things, both had blood on their hands.

No, Rome's attempt at moral equivalency is a lie proven by history.

Protestants argue with their enemies and try to persuade them by the weight of the Scriptures.

Rome murders those who disagree with Rome.

Hundreds of thousands slaughtered during the Inquisitions, the St. Batholomew's Day Massacre, the Albigensian Crusade, the Crusades against the Eastern Orthodox church, the reformers who dared to preach from the Bible...the list is endless.

And to that we can add the 800,000 Protestant Tutsis who were hacked to death by the Roman Catholic Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.

What a racket. Rome pretends to be Barry Fitzgerald when in fact it is much closer to Barry Soetoro.

Calvin and Persecution

" Calvin and Persecution " Why the Silence!

"...that an end could be put to their machinations in no other way than cutting them off by an ignominious death" (John Calvin).

H.R Pike writes, "It was Scripture plus the sword of the state, hangings, burning at the stake, prison, tortures..." (The Other Side of John Calvin, p. 54).

Below is evidence that this is not overstatement!

Most who call themselves Calvinist say very little about the famous Reformer having a persecuting side. This reflects a selective silence that began quite early. Foxe, a contemporary and friend of Calvin (he outlived Calvin by 23 years), gives not one paragraph to the many persecutions that took place at Calvin's Geneva and elsewhere across Europe. Only those who suffered at the hand of Rome are mentioned (Pike, n.122).

CHRONOLOGY OF CALVIN'S LIFE

1521 -- Placed on church payroll as a "benefice."

1523 -- Sent to the University of Paris to study for the priesthood. Begins to be attracted to anti Romanist views.

1528 -- His father and older brother are excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Leaves Paris to study law at Orleans and then at Bourges. Comes under the influence of the reformer Melchoir Wolmar.

1531 -- After death of father he returns to Paris to study Greek and Hebrew, but shortly after resumes law studies at Orleans. There he receives a doctorate with highest honours.

1533 -- Comes under the influence of a cousin, Olivetan, a Waldensian pastor and translator of the Bible into French. Makes final break with the Catholic Church and declares himself a Protestant. His writings do not give a clear testimony of his own salvation experience (Pike, pp.7-9).

1533-36 -- Flees Paris, takes up residence in Basel. Finishes first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

1536 -- Arrives in Geneva, a city that had recently declared itself free from the Catholic Church. Is persuaded by William Farel to develop a church-state system for Geneva. All in the city are required to attend the Reformed Church. All must give an oath of allegiance to a code of faith and discipline on fear of banishment from the city. In less than two years Calvin and Farel are forced to flee Geneva because of the harshness of their system.

1538 -- Oversees a church of French refugees in Strasbourg. Comes under the influence of Martin Bucer. Revises his Institutes. Writes a commentary on Romans. Does all in his power to oppose the Anabaptists.

CALVIN'S STATEMENTS SUPPORTING PERSECUTION

Prefatory Address in his Institutes to Francis, King of the French, 1536. "But when I perceived that the fury of certain bad men had risen to such a height in your realm, that there was no place in it for sound doctrine, I thought it might be of service if I were in the same work both to give instruction to my countrymen, and also lay before your Majesty a Confession, from which you may learn what the doctrine is that so inflames the rage of those madmen who are this day, with fire and sword, troubling your kingdom. For I fear not to declare, that what I have here given may be regarded as a summary of the very doctrine which, they vociferate, ought to be punished with confiscation, exile, imprisonment, and flames, as well as exterminated by land and sea. This, I allow, is a fearful punishment which God sends on the earth; but if the wickedness of men so deserves, why do we strive to oppose the just vengeance of God?"
Letter to William Farel, February 13, 1546. "If he [Servetus] comes [to Geneva], I shall never let him go out alive if my authority has weight."
Letter to the Lord Protector of Somerset, adviser to King Edward VI, October 22, 1548. "[They] well deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you, seeing that they attack not the King only, but God who has seated him upon the throne, and has entrusted to you the protection as well of His person as of His majesty."
Letter of August 20, 1553, one week after Servetus arrest. "I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death."
Defense of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, published in early 1554. "Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority; it is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for his Church. It is not in vain that he banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts; that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease; in a word, that he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is so implacable a severity exacted but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honour, unless the piety that is due to him be preferred to all human duties, and that when his glory is to be asserted, humanity must be almost obliterated from our memories? Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face."
Preface to Commentaries, July 22, 1557. "To these irreligious characters. and despisers of the heavenly doctrineŠ. I think that there is scarcely any of the weapons which are forged in the workshop of Satan, which has not been employed by them in order to obtain their object. And at length matters had come to such a state, that an end could be put to their machinations in no other way than cutting them off by an ignominious death; which was indeed a painful and pitiable spectacle to me. They no doubt deserved the severest punishment, but I always rather desired that they might live in prosperity, and continue safe and untouched; which would have been the case had they not been altogether incorrigible, and obstinately refused to listen to wholesome admonition."
Comments on Ex. 22:20, Lev. 24:16, Deut. 13:5-15, 17:2-5. "Moreover, God Himself has explicitly instructed us to kill heretics, to smite with the sword any city that abandons the worship of the true faith revealed by Him."
Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."

PERSECUTIONS AT CALVIN'S GENEVA

The Minutes Book of the Geneva City Council, 1541-59 (translated by Stefan Zweig, Erasmus: The Right to Heresy):

"During the ravages of the pestilence in 1545 more than twenty men and women were burnt alive for witchcraft.
From 1542 to 1546 fifty-eight judgements of death and seventy-six decrees of banishment were passed.
During the years 1558 and 1559 the cases of various punishments for all sorts of offences amounted to four hundred and fourteen.
One burgher smiled while attending a baptism: three days imprisonment.
Another, tired out on a hot summer day, went to sleep during a sermon: prison.
Some workingmen ate pastry at breakfast: three days on bread and water.
Two burghers played skittles: prison.
Two others diced for a quarter bottle of wine: prison.
A blind fiddler played a dance: expelled from the city.
Another praised Castellio's translation of the Bible: expelled from Geneva.
A girl was caught skating, a widow threw herself on the grave of her husband, a burgher offered his neighbour a pinch of snuff during divine service: they were summoned before the Consistory, exhorted, and ordered to do penance.
Some cheerful fellows at Epiphany stuck a bean into the cake: four-and-twenty hours on bread and water.
A couple of peasants talked about business matters on coming out of church: prison.
A man played cards: he was pilloried with the pack of cards hung around his neck.
Another sang riotously in the street: was told 'they could go and sing elsewhere,' this meaning he was banished from the city.
Two bargees had a brawl: executed.
A man who publicly protested against the reformer's doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
A book printer who in his cups [columns] had railed at Calvin, was sentenced to have his tongue perforated with a red-hot iron before being expelled from the city.
Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite.
Each offence, even the most paltry, was carefully entered in the record of the Consistory, so that the private life of every citizen could unfailingly be held up against him in evidence." (See Pike, pp. 61-63).

Sources quoted in Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, vol. 8:

"The death penalty against heresy, idolatry and blasphemy and barbarous customs of torture were retained. Attendance at public worship was commanded on penalty of three sols. Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured and warned, or to be handed over to the Council for severer punishment."
Several women, among them the wife of Ami Perrin, the captain-general, were imprisoned for dancing.
A man was banished from the city for three months because on hearing an ass bray, he said jestingly 'He prays a beautiful psalm.'
A young man was punished because he gave his bride a book on housekeeping with the remark: 'This is the best Psalter.'
Three men who laughed during a sermon were imprisoned for three days.
Three children were punished because they remained outside of the church during the sermon to eat cakes.
A man who swore by the 'body and blood of Christ' was fined and condemned to stand for an hour in the pillory on the public square.
A child was whipped for calling his mother a thief and a she-devil.
A girl was beheaded for striking her parents.
A banker was executed for repeated adultery.
A person named Chapuis was imprisoned for four days because he persisted in calling his child Claude (a Roman Catholic saint) instead of Abraham.
Men and women were burnt to death for witchcraft. (See Pike, pp. 55,56).

From Other Sources:

Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
Martin Luther said of Calvin's actions in Geneva, "With a death sentence they solve all argumentation" (Juergan L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought, vol. I, p. 285).
"About the month of January 1546, a member of the Little Council, Pierre Ameaux, asserted that Calvin was nothing but a wicked man - who was preaching false doctrine. Calvin felt that his authority as an interpreter of the Word of God was being attacked: he so completely identified his own ministry with the will of God that he considered Ameaux's words as an insult to the honour of Christ. The Magistrates offered to make the culprit beg Calvin's pardon on bended knees before the Council of the Two Hundred, but Calvin found this insufficient. On April 8, Ameaux was sentenced to walk all round the town, dressed only in a shirt, bareheaded and carrying a lighted torch in his hand, and after that to present himself before the tribunal and cry to God for mercy" (F. Wendel, Calvin, pp. 85, 86).

"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" James 3:11.

Compiled by Jack Moorman
www.BibleForToday.org

Calvin and Persecution

" Calvin and Persecution " Why the Silence!

"...that an end could be put to their machinations in no other way than cutting them off by an ignominious death" (John Calvin).

H.R Pike writes, "It was Scripture plus the sword of the state, hangings, burning at the stake, prison, tortures..." (The Other Side of John Calvin, p. 54).

Below is evidence that this is not overstatement!

Most who call themselves Calvinist say very little about the famous Reformer having a persecuting side. This reflects a selective silence that began quite early. Foxe, a contemporary and friend of Calvin (he outlived Calvin by 23 years), gives not one paragraph to the many persecutions that took place at Calvin's Geneva and elsewhere across Europe. Only those who suffered at the hand of Rome are mentioned (Pike, n.122).

CHRONOLOGY OF CALVIN'S LIFE

1521 -- Placed on church payroll as a "benefice."

1523 -- Sent to the University of Paris to study for the priesthood. Begins to be attracted to anti Romanist views.

1528 -- His father and older brother are excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Leaves Paris to study law at Orleans and then at Bourges. Comes under the influence of the reformer Melchoir Wolmar.

1531 -- After death of father he returns to Paris to study Greek and Hebrew, but shortly after resumes law studies at Orleans. There he receives a doctorate with highest honours.

1533 -- Comes under the influence of a cousin, Olivetan, a Waldensian pastor and translator of the Bible into French. Makes final break with the Catholic Church and declares himself a Protestant. His writings do not give a clear testimony of his own salvation experience (Pike, pp.7-9).

1533-36 -- Flees Paris, takes up residence in Basel. Finishes first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

1536 -- Arrives in Geneva, a city that had recently declared itself free from the Catholic Church. Is persuaded by William Farel to develop a church-state system for Geneva. All in the city are required to attend the Reformed Church. All must give an oath of allegiance to a code of faith and discipline on fear of banishment from the city. In less than two years Calvin and Farel are forced to flee Geneva because of the harshness of their system.

1538 -- Oversees a church of French refugees in Strasbourg. Comes under the influence of Martin Bucer. Revises his Institutes. Writes a commentary on Romans. Does all in his power to oppose the Anabaptists.

CALVIN'S STATEMENTS SUPPORTING PERSECUTION

Prefatory Address in his Institutes to Francis, King of the French, 1536. "But when I perceived that the fury of certain bad men had risen to such a height in your realm, that there was no place in it for sound doctrine, I thought it might be of service if I were in the same work both to give instruction to my countrymen, and also lay before your Majesty a Confession, from which you may learn what the doctrine is that so inflames the rage of those madmen who are this day, with fire and sword, troubling your kingdom. For I fear not to declare, that what I have here given may be regarded as a summary of the very doctrine which, they vociferate, ought to be punished with confiscation, exile, imprisonment, and flames, as well as exterminated by land and sea. This, I allow, is a fearful punishment which God sends on the earth; but if the wickedness of men so deserves, why do we strive to oppose the just vengeance of God?"
Letter to William Farel, February 13, 1546. "If he [Servetus] comes [to Geneva], I shall never let him go out alive if my authority has weight."
Letter to the Lord Protector of Somerset, adviser to King Edward VI, October 22, 1548. "[They] well deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you, seeing that they attack not the King only, but God who has seated him upon the throne, and has entrusted to you the protection as well of His person as of His majesty."
Letter of August 20, 1553, one week after Servetus arrest. "I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death."
Defense of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, published in early 1554. "Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority; it is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for his Church. It is not in vain that he banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts; that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease; in a word, that he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is so implacable a severity exacted but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honour, unless the piety that is due to him be preferred to all human duties, and that when his glory is to be asserted, humanity must be almost obliterated from our memories? Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face."
Preface to Commentaries, July 22, 1557. "To these irreligious characters. and despisers of the heavenly doctrineŠ. I think that there is scarcely any of the weapons which are forged in the workshop of Satan, which has not been employed by them in order to obtain their object. And at length matters had come to such a state, that an end could be put to their machinations in no other way than cutting them off by an ignominious death; which was indeed a painful and pitiable spectacle to me. They no doubt deserved the severest punishment, but I always rather desired that they might live in prosperity, and continue safe and untouched; which would have been the case had they not been altogether incorrigible, and obstinately refused to listen to wholesome admonition."
Comments on Ex. 22:20, Lev. 24:16, Deut. 13:5-15, 17:2-5. "Moreover, God Himself has explicitly instructed us to kill heretics, to smite with the sword any city that abandons the worship of the true faith revealed by Him."
Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."

PERSECUTIONS AT CALVIN'S GENEVA

The Minutes Book of the Geneva City Council, 1541-59 (translated by Stefan Zweig, Erasmus: The Right to Heresy):

"During the ravages of the pestilence in 1545 more than twenty men and women were burnt alive for witchcraft.
From 1542 to 1546 fifty-eight judgements of death and seventy-six decrees of banishment were passed.
During the years 1558 and 1559 the cases of various punishments for all sorts of offences amounted to four hundred and fourteen.
One burgher smiled while attending a baptism: three days imprisonment.
Another, tired out on a hot summer day, went to sleep during a sermon: prison.
Some workingmen ate pastry at breakfast: three days on bread and water.
Two burghers played skittles: prison.
Two others diced for a quarter bottle of wine: prison.
A blind fiddler played a dance: expelled from the city.
Another praised Castellio's translation of the Bible: expelled from Geneva.
A girl was caught skating, a widow threw herself on the grave of her husband, a burgher offered his neighbour a pinch of snuff during divine service: they were summoned before the Consistory, exhorted, and ordered to do penance.
Some cheerful fellows at Epiphany stuck a bean into the cake: four-and-twenty hours on bread and water.
A couple of peasants talked about business matters on coming out of church: prison.
A man played cards: he was pilloried with the pack of cards hung around his neck.
Another sang riotously in the street: was told 'they could go and sing elsewhere,' this meaning he was banished from the city.
Two bargees had a brawl: executed.
A man who publicly protested against the reformer's doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
A book printer who in his cups [columns] had railed at Calvin, was sentenced to have his tongue perforated with a red-hot iron before being expelled from the city.
Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite.
Each offence, even the most paltry, was carefully entered in the record of the Consistory, so that the private life of every citizen could unfailingly be held up against him in evidence." (See Pike, pp. 61-63).

Sources quoted in Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, vol. 8:

"The death penalty against heresy, idolatry and blasphemy and barbarous customs of torture were retained. Attendance at public worship was commanded on penalty of three sols. Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured and warned, or to be handed over to the Council for severer punishment."
Several women, among them the wife of Ami Perrin, the captain-general, were imprisoned for dancing.
A man was banished from the city for three months because on hearing an ass bray, he said jestingly 'He prays a beautiful psalm.'
A young man was punished because he gave his bride a book on housekeeping with the remark: 'This is the best Psalter.'
Three men who laughed during a sermon were imprisoned for three days.
Three children were punished because they remained outside of the church during the sermon to eat cakes.
A man who swore by the 'body and blood of Christ' was fined and condemned to stand for an hour in the pillory on the public square.
A child was whipped for calling his mother a thief and a she-devil.
A girl was beheaded for striking her parents.
A banker was executed for repeated adultery.
A person named Chapuis was imprisoned for four days because he persisted in calling his child Claude (a Roman Catholic saint) instead of Abraham.
Men and women were burnt to death for witchcraft. (See Pike, pp. 55,56).

From Other Sources:

Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
Martin Luther said of Calvin's actions in Geneva, "With a death sentence they solve all argumentation" (Juergan L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought, vol. I, p. 285).
"About the month of January 1546, a member of the Little Council, Pierre Ameaux, asserted that Calvin was nothing but a wicked man - who was preaching false doctrine. Calvin felt that his authority as an interpreter of the Word of God was being attacked: he so completely identified his own ministry with the will of God that he considered Ameaux's words as an insult to the honour of Christ. The Magistrates offered to make the culprit beg Calvin's pardon on bended knees before the Council of the Two Hundred, but Calvin found this insufficient. On April 8, Ameaux was sentenced to walk all round the town, dressed only in a shirt, bareheaded and carrying a lighted torch in his hand, and after that to present himself before the tribunal and cry to God for mercy" (F. Wendel, Calvin, pp. 85, 86).

"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" James 3:11.

Compiled by Jack Moorman
www.BibleForToday.org

John Calvin: Facts and extensive reading list
Perhaps not only irritability but also self-importance were exposed in 1545 when John Calvin by letter solicited Luther’s opinion on what John had written. Luther refused, arguing that his responses by letter were often carried around and exploited independent of Luther’s main writings. John was enraged. In a fury he wrote:

[Luther] allows himself to be carried beyond all due bounds with his love of thunder...in the Church we must always be upon our guard, lest we pay too great a deference to men...If this specimen of overbearing tyranny has sprung forth already as the early blossom in the spring-tide of a reviving Church, what must we expect in a short time...Let us therefore bewail the calamity of the Church...

Calvin’s rage was unwise. In 1545 Luther was not only a dying man but one often immobile from excruciating bouts with kidney stones. Yet in 21st Century eyes even John’s self-important rage pales beside his intolerance of opposing views. For Calvin the persecuted became Calvin the persecutor. He particularly disliked a man named Servetus for his expressed views on Christian doctrines. In a letter to a friend John warned:

Servetus lately wrote to me and coupled with his letter a long volume of his delirious fancies...He would like to come here if it is agreeable to me. But I do not wish to pledge my word for his safety. For, if he comes, I will never let him depart alive, if I have any authority...

That grim warning—‘I will never let him depart alive’—was not just rhetoric. Foolishly, Servetus did show up in Geneva. And John Calvin did have some ‘authority’. Servetus was arrested and condemned to die. Genevans feared no interference because the Catholics in France had also given Servetus a death sentence. Just what was John Calvin’s part in the execution? Could he have prevented it? It seemed his mercy extended only to recommending beheading instead of burning. Genevans burned Servetus to death in 1553.

[Sources: T.H.L. Parker, John Calvin: a biography. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975, and Jules Bonnet, editor, Letters of John Calvin. UK: Banner of Truth Trust, abbreviated English translation of 1855-57 edition in French, 1980.]

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Persecution by Calvinists

In the fall of 1561 the Calvinists of France, well supplied with money, took arms under Conde' and Coligny and began marching through the country to mobilization points, often under the leadership of preachers armed to the teeth.

While these men thundered against the Scarlet Women of Babylon and preached slaughter with a fervor more becoming to Mohammedans than to men who called themselves Christians... they had begun to sack bishop's houses and churches, to destroy altars and images of Christ and of the saints, and to deprive Catholics of their arms.

The storm of hate, which had so long been gathering, burst in all its fury. Almost simultaneously, as if by a concerted signal, well-organized bands of Calvinists fell upon the Catholic churches, convents, schools and libraries. At Montpellier they sacked all the sixty churches and convents, and put one hundred-fifty priests and monks to the sword. At Nimes they made a great pile of statues and relics in front of the Cathedral, danced around it while the flames arose, yelled that they would have no more Mass or idolaters, and then wrecked and plundered the churches. At Montauban they dragged the Poor Clare from their convent, exposed them half-naked to the jibes of the paid mob, shouted insults at them and told them to get married. At Castres, in December, a Reformed Consistory or Sanhedrin, ordered the city officials to take every one found on the streets to Huguenot sermons. Priests were dragged from the altars, the Poor Clare were scourged at the whip's end, peasants were driven with blows to hear the preachers inveigh with their peculiar nasal intonation against the Mass, Confession, the Pope. The fields and vineyards around Catholic villages where the people refused to listen to the preaching were burned or cut down.

Within a year the Calvinists, according to one of their own estimates, "murdered 4,000 priests, monks and nuns, expelled or maltreated 12,000 nuns, sacked 20,000 churches, and destroyed 2,000 monasteries " (Novuvelle Collection de memoires relatif a l'histoire de France, Ch. XI, p. 512)with their priceless libraries and works of art. The rare manuscript collection of the ancient monastery of Cluny was irreparably lost, with many others. Sacred vessels from the churches were melted into money to pay German mercenaries, who were urged to be ruthless.

Coligny took an active part in many of the atrocities. He displayed such cold and vindictive cruelty, especially to priests and nuns, that Catholics came to call him Holofernes.(21) In some places the entrails of the victims were plucked forth, stuffed with straw, and given to the horse of the Huguenot troopers to eat. Hundreds of cities and villages were burned. Lyons and its prosperous commerce were ruined.

This ancient fury, deliberately cultivated, spared not even the dead. Not only was the tomb of William the Conqueror destroyed, but the venerated bodies of holy men and women who had spent their lives in the service of God and of the poor were dragged from their resting-places, trampled, burned, thrown into rivers. A mob cast down the statue of Saint Joan from the bridge at Orleans. Other fanatics threw the remains of Saint Irenaeus and Saint Martin of Tours into the Loire. In Poiters they destroyed the relics of Saint Hilary and precious books written by his hand. Breaking into the tomb of Saint Francis of Paula at Plessis-les-Tours, they found the body whole and incorrupt after more than half a century; instead of being awed by the phenomenon, they dragged it at the end of a rope thought the streets, and burned it. A few of the saint's bones were found afterward by Catholics and preserved in various church of the Order of Minims.

Not only those who had laid down their lives for Christ, but Christ Himself, seemed a special object of hatred to these men who called themselves Christians and taught the damnation of infants and the predestination of many souls to Hell. As in all anti-Christian revolutions, statues of the Savior were spat upon, knocked down and demolished. The Body of Christ was often injured and reviled in the Blessed Sacrament. At Nimes, in Paris and others places, the tabernacles were broken open, and the Host thrown out and trampled upon, both by men and by horses.

Although these atrocities were perpetrated by a small minority in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, all the forces of the national and local governments seemed paralyzed and impotent for the moment. The Calvinists had majority in the States-General and friends in the Parliament of Paris. There seemed to be men everywhere in important positions to protect them and to sidetrack any attempt to punish them.

Catherine, inspired by L' Hopital, issued and edict in January, 1562, giving the Calvinists the right to worship as they pleased outside the cities, provided the churches were restored and both sides abstained from violence. This was intended to mollify the Calvinists. It had no such effect. Taking if for the surrender it was, the Calvinists rejoiced over the first breach of the union of Church and State in France. They promptly destroyed the Cathedral in Beza's city, and drove away all the clergy. In part of Gascony no priest could be found within forty miles. More nuns were dragged form convents, more tabernacles opened and profaned. In February, just after the opening session of the Council of Trent (with French delegates present, thanks to the determination of their leader, the Cardinal of Lorraine) seventy Calvinist preachers met in solemn synod at Nimes and deliberately planned to destroy all the Catholic churches in the city and the diocese. They promptly proceeded to put the plan into execution, burned the Cathedral, and drove away all the priests. The reign of terror was not the impassioned unthinking work of an ignorant mob, but a carefully engineered program of spoliation, destruction and assassination.

WIki books "The Christian polity of John Calvin

Over taking over of Roman churches, abolishing the Mass and profaning the Host, persecution of CAtholics, conversion of towns into Huguenot fiets, assassinations, ...

Frightful outrages perpetrated by the Huguenots in France

Persecution of Catholics by Huguenots In the areas of France they controlled, Huguenots at least matched the harshness of the persecutions of their Catholic opponents. Atrocities A, B, and C, depictions that are possibly exaggerated for use as propaganda, are located by the author in St. Macaire, Gascony. In scene A, a priest is disemboweled, his entrails wound up on a stick until they are torn out. In illustration B a priest is buried alive, and in C Catholic children are hacked to pieces. Scene D, alleged to have occurred in the village of Mans, was "too loathsome" for one nineteenth-century commentator to translate from the French. It shows a priest whose genitalia were cut off and grilled. Forced to eat his roasted private parts, the priest was then dissected by his torturers so they can observe him digesting his meal.

This passage has been most improperly abused by the Anabaptists, and by others like them, to take from the Church the power of the sword. But it is easy to refute them; for since they approve of excommunication, which cuts off, at least for a time, the bad and reprobate, why may not godly magistrates, when necessity calls for it, use the sword against wicked men? They reply that, when the punishment is not capital, there is room allowed for repentance; as if the thief on the cross (Luke 23:42) did not find the means of salvation. I shall satisfy myself with replying, that Christ does not now speak of the office of pastors or of magistrates, but removes the offense which is apt to disturb weak minds, when they perceive that the Church is composed not only of the elect, but of the polluted dregs of society.

(Harmony of the Gospels; commentary on Matthew 13:39 [parable of the wheat and the tares], written in 1555)

Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority; it is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for his Church. . . . Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that I would like to kill again the man that I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.

(Defense of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, written in 1554; in Philip Schaff, History of the Reformation, [New York, 1892], vol. 2, p. 791; cited in Stanford Rives, Did Calvin Murder Servetus?, Infinity, 2008, pp. 348-349)

Honour, glory, and riches will be the reward of your pains. Above all do not fail to rid the country of all those zealous scoundrels that stir up the people to make head against us. Such monsters should be smothered, as I have done here by Michel Servetus the Spaniard.

-- John Calvin

(Letter to the Marquis du Poet, Grand Chamberlain of the Queen of Navarre, 30 September 1561)

Tooo frightfully true.