Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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the brothers Rudolf and Pompeius Planta, the Knight Jacob Robustelli, and
other influential Catholics were banished, and the property of the Plantas
was confiscated.
These unrighteous measures created general indignation. The exiles
fostered revenge, and were assured of Spanish aid. Robustelli returned,
after his banishment, to the Valtellina, and organized a band of about three
hundred desperate bandits from the Venetian and Milanese territories for
the overthrow of the government of the Grisons and the extermination of
Protestantism.
This is the infamous “Valtellina Massacre (Veltliner Mord) of July, 1620. It
may be called an imitation of the Sicilian Vespers, and of the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew. It was the fiendish work of religious fanaticism
combined with political discontent. The tragedy began in the silence of the
night, from July 18th to 19th, by the murder of sixty defenceless adult
Protestants of Tirano; the Podesta Enderlin was shot down in the street,
mutilated, and thrown into the Adda; Anton von Salis took refuge in the
house of a Catholic friend, but was sought out and killed; the head of the
Protestant minister, Anton Bassa of Poschiavo, was posted on the pulpit of
the church. The murderers proceeded to Teglio, and shot down about the
same number of persons in the church, together with the minister, who was
wounded in the pulpit, and exhorted the hearers to persevere; a number of
women and children, who had taken refuge in the tower of the church,
were burnt. The priest of Teglio took part in the bloody business, carrying
the cross in the left, and the sword in the right hand. At Sondrio, the
massacre raged for three days. Seventy-one Protestants, by their
determined stand, were permitted to escape to the Engadin, but one
hundred and forty fell victims to the bandits; a butcher boasted of having
murdered eighteen persons. Not even the dead were spared; their bodies
were exhumed, burnt, thrown into the water, or exposed to wild beasts.
Paula Baretta, a noble Venetian lady of eighty years, who had left a
nunnery for her religious conviction, was shamefully maltreated and
delivered to the Inquisition at Milan, where a year afterward she suffered
death at the stake. Anna of Libo fled with a child of two years in her arms;
she was overtaken and promised release on condition of abjuring her faith.
She refused, saying, “You may kill the body, but not the soul;” she pressed
her child to her bosom, and received the death-blow. When the people saw
the stream of blood on the market-place before the chief church, they
exclaimed: “This is the revenge for our murdered arch-priest Rusca!” He