Avenge,
O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that
Mother with infant down the rocks.
Their
The vales redoubl'd to the hills, and
To Heav'n.
Their martyr'd blood and ashes sowO'er all th' Italian fields where still doth
The triple tyrant; that from these may growA hundred-fold, who having learnt thy
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
The Waldensians or Vaudois were Protestants who had long lived in the territories of the Roman Catholic rulers of Piedmont, and were thought of by Protestants of Milton's day as having preserved a simple scriptural faith from earlier times.
Confined by treaty to certain mountain valleys, they had gradually intruded into the plain of Piedmont.
Ordered to retire, they had been pursued into the mountains and there massacred by the Piedmontese soldiery in April 1655.
In documents penned by Milton as Latin secretary,
Cromwell strongly protested against such treachery and cruelty.
Later in the year, possibly after Morland returned with his report (see below, 7-8 note),
Milton wrote his sonnet, first published in Poems, 1673. 3-4.
This suggests Milton's acceptance of the idea of pure, unidolatrous worship preserved by the Vaudois from primitive times (see above, introductory note). 5. thy book refers to the books to be consulted at the Judgment (Revelation 20:12). 7-8.
The incident is narrated, with an accompanying plate, in the History of the Evangelical Churches in the Valleys of Piedmont (1658), by Sir Samuel Morland,
Cromwell's emissary, who may well have given Milton the details on his return. 9. redoubled: re-echoed. 10-14.
The reader is expected to remember Tertullian's famous phrase, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" and the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-9) where the seed that fell on good ground brought forth as much as a hundredfold.
Such was to be the blood of these martyrs sown where the Pope (triple tyrant in his mitre with its three crowns) still rules:
It was to make converts who, having learned God's truth, would renounce the idolatry of Rome (figured, as Protestants believed, by the Babylon of Revelation 16:19, etc.) and thus escape the woe of God's punishment upon it.------'Among our author's state letters there are several in Cromwell's name address'd to the Duke of Savoy, and other potentates and states, complaining of this persecution of the protestants.
His letter to the Duke of Savoy begins thus. --"Redditae sunt nobis Geneva &c. Letters have been sent us from Geneva, as also from the Dauphinate, and many other places bordering upon your territories, wherein we are given to understand, that such of your Royal Highness's subjects as profess the reform'd religion, are commanded by your edict and by your authority, within three days after the promulgation of your edict, to depart their native seats and habitations, upon pain of capital punishment, and forfeiture of all their fortunes and estates, unless they will give security to relinquish their religion within 20 days, and embrace the Roman catholic faith.
And that when they apply'd themselves to your Royal Highness in a most suppliant manner, imploring a revocation of the said edict, and that being receiv'd into pristin favor, they might be restored to the liberty granted them by your predecessors, a part of your army fell upon them, most cruelly slew several, put others in chains, and compell'd the rest to fly into desert places and to the mountains cover'd with snow, where some hundreds of families are reduced to such distress, that it is greatly to be feared, they will in a short time all miserably perish, thro' cold and hunger. &c."These letters are dated in May 1655, and about the same time it is probable this sonnet was compos'd, which was added in the edition of 1673. (line 1:
Avenge,
O Lord, &c):
Nor was this prayer in behalf of the persecuted protestants entirely without effect.
For Cromwell exerted himself in their favor, and his behaviour in this whole transaction is greatly to his honor, even as it is related by an historian, who was far from being partial to his memory. "Nor would the Protector be backward in such a work, which might give the world a particular opinion of his piety and zeal for the protestant religion; but he proclaim'd a solemn fast, and caused large contributions to be gather'd for them throughout the kingdom of England and Wales.
Nor did he rest here, but sent his agents to the Duke of Savoy, a prince with whom he had no correspondence or commerce, and the next year so engag'd the Cardinal of France, and even terrify'd the Pope himself, without so much as doing any favor to the English Roman catholics, that that Duke thought it necessary to restore all that he had taken from them, and renew'd all those privileges they had formerly enjoy'd. So great was the terror of his name; nothing being more usual than his saying, that 'his ships in the Mediterranean should visit Civita Vecchia, and the sound of his cannon should be heard in Rome.'" See Echard.
Vol. 2.'~ Th.
Newton,
Milton's Works, 2nd edition, 1753.
