Florida's true martyrs: massacred by “holy Catholic faith”; “evangelical catholicity”?, Part 2

      Continued from Part 1. Pastor Piepkorn, after his introductory remarks, now gives his summary of the history of these "Lutheran Martyrs" of Florida. Afterwards we will compare it to the report by C.F.W. Walther 68 years earlier:

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The Lutheran martyrs of Florida [1] were members of a naval mission sent by the king of France [2] upon the urging of Admiral de Coligny to colonize the east coast of Florida in the name of the French crown, and a settlement was established at the mouth of St. John’s River [Ft. Caroline].

Philip II of Spain sent Captain General Pedro Menéndez to destroy the colony, and in 1565 he established a base at St. Augustine. Taking the offensive to ward off this threat to the peace of the French colony, Jean Ribault of Dieppe endeavored to attack St. Augustine by sea, but was prevented from achieving victory by the tide and by the outbreak of a violent storm, which shipwrecked his flotilla off the coast. Menéndez immediately attacked the French settlement by land and destroyed it. The shipwrecked French sailors landed on an island near St. Augustine, where Menendez succeeded in inducing about 215 to surrender unconditionally. Ordering them bound, he demanded that they declare their faith. Ten confessed themselves to be Roman Catholics and were spared, along with a few artisans whose services were required by the Spaniards. The remainder, having refused to renounce their Lutheran belief, [1] were ferried to the mainland in small groups and marched northward. As they reached a line which Menendez had drawn in the sand they were set upon and murdered in cold blood.

Kill Lutherans
and Lutheranism in America.

A fortnight later, on Oct. 12, an additional seventy-five, among them Ribault himself, were similarly dispatched in a repetition of the gory tragedy. In recording the event, the Rev. Fr. Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, the chaplain of Menendez’s expedition, notes in his chronicle that the martyrs of Florida “were executed because they were Lutherans and enemies of our holy [Roman] Catholic faith.” [3]

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Notes:

1. Piepkorn offers no explanation, as Walther does in 1872, that Ribault's French party did not call themselves Lutherans but Huguenots – essentially Calvinists – a separated sect from Lutheranism.
2. The "king of France" was Charles IX of France, also the namesake of Florida's Fort Caroline.
3. Piepkorn omits a detail that Walther covered in 1872, a juicy postscript revealing that 2 years after this massacre the French harshly avenged this crime, but not as Lutherans, rather as Frenchmen.

What gives this history notoriety is that the one who gave witness to the true reason for the massacre was not a Frenchman or any “Protestant”, but the Roman Catholic priest.
      When one just begins to research the history of this incident on the Internet, one is bombarded with web sites that cover not these martyrs executed as Lutherans, but rather the "La Florida martyrs", or Roman Catholic "martyrs" who were put to death by native Americans and Carolina Colony soldiers (Colony history). They do not speak of the French retaliation that followed 2 years after this massacre.  But it was the Roman Catholics who first made their intentions clear for the "holy Catholic faith" in America, that those Lutherans or any who were considered to be harboring the faith of the Lutheran Reformation were targets to be executed, nay, massacred. —

      However the reason why I am publishing this essay is not so much to bring the Florida massacre to memory again, since Walther already did that 68 years before this essay, but to highlight the irony of the writer of this essay, Arthur Carl Piepkorn.
      Today's defenders of Piepkorn and his "evangelical catholicity" may interject that his account of this incident was not so different from Walther's in 1872.  That may be true to a certain extent, but Walther knew the papists better than Piepkorn.  Walther, unlike Piepkorn, knew that he did not need to gloss over that the martyrs were not actually Lutherans, he told the history exactly as it was.  The French party of Ribault were Huguenots, i.e. Calvinists.  And the story would lose its notoriety except for the fact that they were considered Lutherans by the Catholics, as their own priest proudly proclaimed!

      Lest any reader wonder that I am improperly characterizing the theology of Pastor (and Professor) Piepkorn, I would point to the testimony of the well-known Father Richard John Neuhaus (see appendix below), a Concordia Seminary trained Lutheran pastor who famously left Lutheranism to be a Roman Catholic priest.  In his 2006 book Catholic Matters, p. 55-56, he revealed who was the greatest influence in his decision to turn away from Lutheranism… to Catholicism (my emphasis): 

“Although he remained a Lutheran until his death, at age sixty-six, in 1973, Piepkorn gave me an understanding of Lutheranism that required my becoming Catholic. … The Church is not…formed by…formulas such as ‘justification by faith alone’”.

Another witness to this would be Robert Louis Wilken, another LCMS Lutheran-turned-Catholic.

A confessed catholic,
not with ambivalence.

America's Luther:
C.F.W. Walther

      The last line of Piepkorn's hymn stanza asks "Who follows in their train?" But how is one to be a Lutheran today in America, one who "follows in their train"?  Is it not to stand with the "Old Lutherans" of the old Missouri Synod of a century ago, the ones so vilified in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia?  Is it not to understand that “The pope did not propose that the [Vatican II] council revise or change Roman Catholic doctrine.” (Meyer-Tjernagel, A History of Western Christianity, p 271)  Is it not to stand fast against not only the Roman Catholic Church, but against the Romanizing Lutheran teachers in the LCMS, epitomized by the writer of this essay, Arthur Carl Piepkorn?  True Lutherans stand fast on sola fide, "without the deeds of the law" (Ro 3:28), that salvation is entirely and alone by God's grace.  Therefore they do not join in spirit (or work) with those who vilify (i.e. massacre) true Lutheranism. 

      What did the father's of the United States of America have in mind with their ideal of "freedom of religion"?  They had in mind to prohibit the civil power of the Roman Catholic Church to rule, so that in America one would not be forced out for not bowing to the Pope.  George Washington hardly had in mind to allow papal power to rule religion in America in his farewell address.
[Other Florida massacre histories available here and here]
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2019-05-26: Appendix I: For additional material on Neuhaus, see Robert Preus's citations from him in his 1970 essay "Confessional Subscription" p. 45 n. 12 & 13.

2023-11-07: See the Catholic "Coming Home" based website here on Neuhaus.