But it was Pope Gregory XIII. above all who manifested the
keenest satisfaction. He had a medal struck to commemorate the
happy event,[2] ordered joy-fires to be lit and cannon fired,
celebrated several masses, and sent for the painter Vasari to
depict on the walls of the Vatican the principal scenes of
carnage. Further, he sent to the King of France an ambassador
instructed to felicitate that monarch upon his fine action. It
is historical details of this kind that enable us to comprehend
the mind of the believer. The Jacobins of the Terror had a
mentality very like that of Gregory XIII.



[2] The medal must have been distributed pretty widely, for the
cabinet of medals at the Bibliotheque Nationale possesses
three examples: one in gold, one in silver, and one in copper.
This medal, reproduced by Bonnani in his Numism. Pontific.
(vol. i. p. 336), represents on one side Gregory XIII., and on
the other an angel striking Huguenots with a sword. The exergue
is Ugonotorum strages, that is, Massacre of the Huguenots.
(The word strages may be translated by carnage or massacre, a
sense which it possesses in Cicero and Livy; or again by
disaster, ruin, a sense attributed to it in Virgil and Tacitus.)



Naturally the Protestants were not indifferent to such a
hecatomb, and they made such progress that in 1576 Henri III. was
reduced to granting them, by the Edict of Beaulieu, entire
liberty of worship, eight strong places, and, in the Parliaments,