CHASTEL.

John Chastel, son of a woollen draper, in Paris, made a wicked attempt at the life of Henry IV. on the 27th December, 1594. That prince having taken a journey towards the frontiers of Artois, and being in the apartment of his mistress, at the Hotel de Boucage, as he was coming forward to embrace Montigny, he received a blow with a knife in his under lip, which broke one of his teeth. John Chastel, who gave the blow, and who aimed at the king’s throat, was but eighteen or nineteen years of age. Having missed his aim, he let fall his knife and retired amidst the crowd, and in the astonishment he had nearly escaped, until his wild looks betrayed him to some of

the company, who seized him at a venture. The king commanded the captain of the guards, who had secured him, to let him go, and afterwards, understanding that he was a disciple of the Jesuits, exclaimed, “ Must then the Jesuits be convicted by my mouth?” This parricide, being carried to the prison of Fort l’Evêque, confessed there that he had a long time determined on this blow, and although he here failed in the attempt, he would repeat it if within his power, as he deemed it to be for the service of religion. Being examined as to his quality, and where he had studied, he said that it was principally among the Jesuits, with whom he had been three years, and the last time under father John Gueret, the Jesuit, whom he had seen the Friday or Saturday before, having been carried to him by his father, Peter Chastel on a case of conscience; that the case in question originated in his despair of the mercy of God, on account of the great sins he had committed; that he had been inclined to commit many enormous sins against nature, of which he had several times made confession; that, to expiate these sins, he was persuaded that he ought to perform some signal action; that he had often had an inclination to kill the king, and had discovered his disposition to his father; on which his said father had declared, that it would be a wrong action.

Such was his answer, when he was examined before the prevost de l'hostel: what he replied the next day to the officers of parliament is as follows. Being asked what the signal action was, which he said he had thought himself obliged to perform, to expiate the great crimes with which he felt his conscience burthened, he said,— that, believing himself forgotten of God, and being convinced he should be damned as much as Antichrist, he was willing of two evils to avoid the worst, and, being damned, he had rather it should be “ut quatuor,” than “ut octo.” Being asked

whether, falling into this despair, he expected to be damned, or to save his soul by this wicked act, he said,—that he believed the performance of this act would serve to lessen his punishment, being convinced that he should be more punished if he died without having attempted to kill the king, and less so, if he should make an effort to take away his life: insomuch, that he thought the least degree of punishment was a kind of salvation, in comparison of the most grievous. Being asked where he had learned this new divinity, he said that he had acquired it through philosophy. Being interrogated whether he had studied philosophy in the Jesuit’s College, he said yes, and that under Father Gueret, with whom he had been two years and a half. Being asked whether he had not been in the Chamber of Meditations, into which the Jesuits carry the greatest sinners, who there see the figures of several devils, in divers frightful shapes, under pretence of bringing them back to a better life, to deter them, and to excite them by such admonitions to the performance of some great action, he said, that he had been often in that Chamber of Meditations. Being asked, by whom he had been persuaded to kill the king, he said, he had heard in several places, that it ought to be held as a true maxim that it was lawful to kill the king, and that they who said so called him a tyrant. Being asked, whether the discourse about killing the king was not common among the Jesuits, he said, he had heard them say that it was lawful to kill the king, and that he was out of the church, and that he was not to be obeyed or held as king, till he should be approved of by the pope. Being again examined in the great chamber, the presidents, and counsellers thereof, and of the Tournelle, being assembled, he gave the same answers, and laid down and maintained this maxim; That it was lawful to kill kings, even the reigning king, who was not within the church, because, as he said, he was not approved of by the pope.

He was condemned to death by an arrêt of parliament, the twenty-ninth of December, 1594, and suffered by torch light on the 29th December, 1594. To know the particulars of the punishment to which he was condemned, you must read what follows. “ The court has condemned, and does condemn the said John Chastel, to make the amende honorable before the principal gate of the church of Paris, naked, in his shirt, holding a lighted wax candle of two pounds weight, and there, on his knees, to say and declare that, wickedly and traitorously, he had attempted the said most inhuman and abominable parricide, and wounded the king in the face with a knife; and that, through false and damnable instructions, he had said, during the said process, that it was lawful to kill kings, and that King Henry IV., now reigning, is not within the church, till he procures the approbation of the pope: of which he repents, and asks pardon of God, of the king, and of justice. This done, to be led and conducted in a sledge to the Grève: there the flesh of his arms and thighs to be torn off with pincers, and his right hand, holding the knife with which he attempted to perpetrate the said parricide, to be cut off; afterwards his body to be torn and dismembered by four horses, his body and limbs thrown into the fire and burned to ashes, and the ashes to be cast into the air. It has declared and does declare all his goods forfeited to the king. Before which execution, the said John Chastel shall be put to the torture, both ordinary and extraordinary, to discover the truth of his accomplices, and of any circumstances resulting from the said process.”

The same arrêt banished all the Jesuits from France, and the father of John Chastel and the Jesuit, Gueret, under whom the assassin had performed his

course ofphilosophy, were tried on the 10 th January ensuing. The sentence passed upon them was as follows:

“The court has banished and does banish the said Gueret and Peter Chastel from the kingdom of France; to wit, the said Gueret for ever, and the said Chastel for the term and space of nine years, and for ever from the city and suburbs of Paris; has enjoined them to observe their exile on pain of being hanged and strangled without other form or manner of process. It has declared and does declare all and every the goods of the said Gueret confiscated to the king, and has condemned and does condemn the said Peter Chastel to a fine of two thousand crowns to the king, to be applied to purchase bread for the prisoners of the Conciergerie, to be imprisoned till the full payment of the said sum, and the time of banishment not to commence till the day when the said sum shall be paid. The said court orders, that the house in which the said Peter Chastel lived shall be pulled down, demolished, and razed, and the place applied to the public, never to be again built on: in which place, to perpetuate the memory of the wicked and detestable parricide, attempted on the person of the king, shall be erected a high pillar of free stone, with an inscription containing the causes of the said demolition and erection of the said pillar, which shall be raised with the money arising from the demolition of the said house.” The historian, whom I copy, immediately adds,—“ This arrêt was accordingly executed, and the house pulled down; in the room of which was set up a pillar, on the four faces of which were engraved on tables of black marble, in letters of gold, viz. on one the sentence of John Chastel and the Jesuits, and on the three other faces, verses and other inscriptions. This pillar has been since pulled down, and, to the place where it stood, they have brought a spring, as I shall

observe in the continuation of my History of the peace.” Cayet. Chron. Noven. ad ann. 1594. ⁸⁸

This writer has forgotten one circumstance, which ought not to have been omitted; to wit, that Gueret was put to the torture, and confessed nothing.

The first arrêt of the parliament of Paris was put at Rome in the index of prohibited books, not, as an apologist remarks, that it was censured absolutely, for answer was sent from Rome to the late king, that the censure related only to the matter of right, not the matter of fact; assuring him that they detested the attempt of Chastel, as much as France itself, but that there was in the arrêt a clause, definitive of heresy, which they looked upon as belonging to the cognizance and determination of the church: and this was the subject of the censure.

We shall give a short analysis of a work intitled “ An Apology for John Chastel, of Paris, put to death, and for the Fathers and Scholars of the Society of Jesus, banished the kingdom of France, against the arrêt of parliament, given against them at Paris, the twenty-ninth of December, anno 1594. Divided into’ five parts. By Francis de Verone Constantine.”

The first part contains seven chapters, which tend to undeceive those, who judge of things only by the exterior conformity which one often sees between good and bad. If you consider the bare action of John Chastel, and the appearance of the persons, you will find him to have committed a most abominable parricide; for you will believe, that a private person attempted to cut the throat of his lawful prince: “ But whoever shall see likewise (adds the author) Apology for John Chastel. Part 1, chap. vii. page 21. ⁸⁹ not what is said, but what actually is, and with the judgment, not of prejudiced judges but of thechurchand the estates, and of all laws,divine as well as

human, and the fundamental ones of the kingdom, received, published, revered, practised, and held, time out of mind, in France, to wit, an excommunicated, heretical, and relapsed prince, a profaner of things sacred, a declared public enemy, an oppressor of religion, and as such excluded from all right of coming to the crown; and therefore a tyrant instead of a king, a usurper instead of a natural lord, a criminal instead of a lawful prince; will take care (if he have not lost all sense and apprehension of humanity, and love towards God, thechurch, and his country) to affirm no otherwise, than that an attempt to rid the world of him is agenerous, virtuous, and heroic act, comparable to the greatest and most praise-worthy to be met with in ancient history, both sacred and profane: there being but one thing to be said against it, that it was not accomplished, to send the wicked to his own place like Judas, whose followers, which are the Calvinists, he supports. And whereas the blow failed, the former will say, that it was a manifest favour of heaven, and that whoever doubts it is an atheist (as some prating fellow has written): the latter will likewise say, and with too much judgment, that it is a demonstration, not of favour, but of wrath; not of compassion, but of the indignation of God against his people, over whom he would not yet cause the rod of Assur to cease, (whom he hath otherwise cursed) nor break the yoke of his burthen, nor the staff’ of his shoulder, nor the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. And, as for the tyrant himself, it is not so much preservation, as deferring to a proper season and hour, which God has chosen, to punish him more severely in another world, when the measure of his guilt shall be full, and the people chastised.” At ch. xii. part 5, p. 249, he gives hopes, that another assassin will succeed better: “ if, what lately happened, (says he), the first blow, given to the prince of the beggars, (he speaks of William prince of Orange) aimed only at the jaw, the second has not failed afterwards. Of which the first was the presage, as the same will happen to the person that has been smitten on the same place.” My reader will hereby perceive, that this writer builds his apology only on the supposition, that Henry IV. was not a king, but a tyrant and usurper.

He endeavours to prove in the second part, that the action of Chastel is a just one. He grants that the persons of kings are sacred; but he maintains, that “ the intention of Chastel was not to offend or kill a king, though in his own account such, and in whom is the semblance of a king no farther than the gravity and merit of the person, at least his being reputed as sprung from the blood of the kings of France, and being served as king; although otherwise he is by no means one, as being an inheritor neither of the faith nor the virtue, nor the merit of the kings of France. And that, being on that account, that is to say on account of his impiety and heresy, most justly excluded by the church and the states, he cannot be so at all, except in fact and not in right; which is called tyranny, and tyranny in the highest sense.” He says, that the pretended conversion of Henry IV cannot confer on him the title of king, in prejudice of the excommunication as well of right as fact, which holds him ever bound, and which always works its effect, in order to deprive him of the royalty. He even affirms, that the absolution of the Pope would not be sufficient to reinstate a person, who has been condemned not only by the church, but likewise by the states; for the Pope can remit ecclesiastical condemnation, but not civil. He goes farther, he disputes his right of succession: he cites various examples, which prove, that even in France, the immediate heirs of the crown have been excluded, to make way for the election of the most distant. “ And as to the special regulation of the succession, (adds he,)

when we consider, that, by the confession of doctors, all right of consanguinity ceases at the tenth degree, we may judge how weak, yea, how null is his right, who claims but from the twenty-second degree.” He reckons differently from Mr de Perefixe, who places but ten or eleven degrees of distance between Henry III and Henry IV, as I have said elsewhere. He says in chap. 11, that superior commands set aside inferior, and that according to this rule, if it be forbidden in general to kill, yet that it is lawful to do it, as to certain persons, and particularly heretics and tyrants. He cites hereupon some passages of scripture and canon-law: and he maintains in chap. 12, that heretics ought to be executed by private persons, if it cannot be otherwise done. He alleges an arrêt of parliament of the year 1560, pronounced by the late president le Maître against the Huguenots, by which any one is permitted to kill them. And this not without thoroughly considering that there is no beast more dangerous than that which devours souls; no thief more pernicious than he who robs men of their faith and religion; no aspic more venomous than that, which in fawning, goes directly to the heart; nor a more dangerous prisoner than he who corrupts the waters of Jacob’s well, (which is the word of God or the Scripture), as did formerly the Philistines. In the thirteenth chapter he collects together what has been said by various authors on the lawfulness of killing tyrants.“The heretics themselves,” continues he, “though they change their discourse according to the success of their affairs, and according as they have a prince, contrary or favourable to them, have filled their books with it. Witness the author of the questions under the name of Junius Brutus: George Buchanan, in his book de Jure Regni, &c. where he ranks tyrants among savage beasts, and who ought to be treated as such: Bodin likewise in his republic, who condemns a tyrant using violence, to undergo the law Valeria, which orders such persons to be executed without form or manner of process; and in consequence, the executions, which, on that account, they have done on great part of the nobles in France, Scotland, England, and Germany, by the advice of ministers, on pretence of their being tyrants, because they were Catholics; and even on the persons of kings, as Charles IX, and particularly the eulogium of Beza, which canonizes Poltrot, and makes a saint of him, for the murder committed by him on the person of the great Francis of Lorrain, duke of Guise, whom above all they style tyrant: there being, in this respect, no difference between them and us, except as to the particular determination of a tyrant, to know who is and who is not one.” He ends this second part with a long detail of the particular advantages of this enterprize of John Chastel; and thereupon he throws out the most satirical and extravagant reflections on Henry IV.

He maintains in the third part, that the action of Chastel is heroic. He raises him above Ehud, and Phineas, and Matathias; and he forgets not to compare his courage with that of the two assassins of the prince of Orange, and that of James Clement. Nor does he forget the pious poet, Cornelius Musius, martyred in Holland, whose executioner, adds he, de Lumay, was afterwards paid as he deserved, being torn to pieces and eaten by his own dogs. Our apologist describes particularly the constancy of Chastel in his confession, his examination, the torture, the amende honorable, and his death. He was pressed to declare at the time of the amende honorable, that he repented, and asked pardon of God; but all maimed as he was by the torture he had endured, he said, that “he cried to God for mercy for all the sins he had committed in the whole course of his life, and particularly that he had not accomplished his design of delivering the world from the worst

enemy the church has at present upon earth.” A deplorable thing! that assassins of this sort should discover as much constancy, as the most illustrious martyrs of the primitive church.

In the fourth part, he criticises the arrêt of the parliament of Paris against John Chastel, and he pretends to discover in it some notorious falsehoods, and a manifest heresy, and impertinences in the censure of the fact, and the condemnation to the amende honorable and the prohibition to speak of the designs of John Chastel. He insists that they are neither scandalous nor seditious, nor contrary to the word of God.

The fifth part is taken up in shewing the vices and impertinences which he pretends to find in the arrêt against the Jesuits. He maintains that there are calumnies and impostures in this arrêt, launches out in praise of the Jesuits, and replies to the plea of Antony Arnauld. He takes pains to vindicate the two Jesuits, one of whom was put to the torture, and the other hanged, making a martyr of the latter. He concludes his book with a forcible exhortation to exterminate the enemy of God and his church.

This apology of John Chastel was printed in the year 1595. Somebody reprinted it in the year 1610, after the tragical death of Henry the Great. This second edition has not prevented it from becoming very scarce, for which reason I believe my readers would be pleased with the foregoing analysis.

The publisher in 1610, asserts, that what principally induced him thereto, was, among other things, that the world might clearly see, that it is from the school of the Jesuits, that assassins, such as Ravaillac, proceed. He says, that this parricide was confirmed in the design of assassinating his king, following, among others, the damnable doctrine of this apology of John Chastel, in which it is impudently denied, that Henry IV, even though he were absolved, could be

king; and besides it is taught in express terms, that heretics and their abettors, doomed to death by divine and human laws, and principally relapsed heretics, may be executed by private persons, if it can no otherwise be done, as may be seen in chap. viii. and following of the second part. He observes, that “ the Jesuits had found out an expedient to cover and suppress the said apology, not through shame or repentance, which they might have on account of such abominable crimes and parricides, but only lest the horror, which kings and princes might thence conceive against them, should hinder them from entering into their courts and councils, to execute there the will of the pope.” The author of the Anti-Coton affirms, that the apology of John Chastel came from the Jesuits’ forge; but the latter maintain that it was an imposture, and that no Jesuit had a hand in it.“Every one knows such are the words of Richeome), that the Jesuits are by no means the authors of a book, ‘De Justa Henrici Tertii Abdication,’ nor of ‘Verone Constantine’s Apology for John Chastel and the late king, being fully satisfied as to our innocence, would not listen to any of the calumniators who accused us before his majesty.”

It is highly probable, that those two books were composed by John Boucher, who, as has been seen in his article, was the most seditious and furious preacher that ever breathed a spirit of revolt against the lawful powers. The manner in which the first reigning Bourbon fell a victim to this detestable fanaticism, and the still more detestable priestcraft which directed it, makes the anxiety of the last of them to restore that “ wise order,” as the present laureat calls the Jesuits, still more remarkable.—Ed. ⁹⁰—Art.Chastel.