Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617 — John Shaqi
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617Motley, John Lothrop
History
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617
Motley, John Lothrop
Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van, 1547-1619; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648
Thus the great chiefs of Catholicism and of Protestantism amicably
disported themselves in the last days of the year, while their respective
forces were marshalling for mortal combat all over Christendom. The
Elector certainly loved neither Matthias nor Ferdinand, but he hated the
Palatine. The chief of the German Calvinists disputed that Protestant
hegemony which John George claimed by right. Indeed the immense
advantage enjoyed by the Catholics at the outbreak of the religious war
from the mutual animosities between the two great divisions of the
Reformed Church was already terribly manifest. What an additional power
would it derive from the increased weakness of the foe, should there be
still other and deeper and more deadly schisms within one great division
itself!
"The Calvinists and Lutherans," cried the Jesuit Scioppius, "are so
furiously attacking each other with calumnies and cursings and are
persecuting each other to such extent as to give good hope that the
devilish weight and burthen of them will go to perdition and shame of
itself, and the heretics all do bloody execution upon each other.
Certainly if ever a golden time existed for exterminating the heretics,
it is the present time."
The Imperial party took their leave of Dresden, believing themselves to
have secured the electoral vote of Saxony; the Elector hoping for
protection to his interests in the duchies through that sequestration to
which Barneveld had opposed such vigorous resistance. There had been
much slavish cringing before these Catholic potentates by the courtiers
of Dresden, somewhat amazing to the ruder churls of Saxony, the common
people, who really believed in the religion which their prince had
selected for them and himself.
And to complete the glaring contrast, Ferdinand and Matthias had scarcely
turned their backs before tremendous fulminations upon the ancient church
came from the Elector and from all the doctors of theology in Saxony.
For the jubilee of the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation was
celebrated all over Germany in the autumn of this very year, and nearly
at the exact moment of all this dancing, and fuddling, and pig shooting
at Dresden in honour of emperors and cardinals. And Pope Paul V. had
likewise ordained a jubilee for true believers at almost the same time.
The Elector did not mince matters in his proclamation from any regard
to the feelings of his late guests. He called on all Protestants to
rejoice, "because the light of the Holy Gospel had now shone brightly in
the electoral dominions for a hundred years, the Omnipotent keeping it
burning notwithstanding the raging and roaring of the hellish enemy and
all his scaly servants."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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