Note 4 — Chapter I · A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JOHN CALAS.

I know of but two instances in history of fathers having murdered their children on the score of religion; the first is the father of St. Barbara, as she is called; it seems he had ordered two windows to be made in his bathing-room. St. Barbara in his absence took it into her head to make a third in honor of the Holy Trinity; she also with the end of her finger made the sign of the cross upon the marble pillars, which remained deeply impressed thereon; her father, in a violent fury to have his room thus marked, runs after her with his sword in his hand with an intention to kill her; she flies towards a mountain, which very complaisantly opens upon her approach to give her a passage. Her father finds himself obliged to go round about, and at length gets hold of his fugitive daughter, whom he strips and prepares to scourge; but God envelops her with a white cloud; however, after all, her father caused her head to be struck off. This is the story as we find it related in the book called “The Flower of Saints.” The second instance is of Prince Hermenegildus, who raised a rebellion against the king, his father, and gave him battle in the year 584, but was himself defeated and slain by one of his father’s generals; however, he has been placed among the martyrs, because his father was an Arian.