On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

The poem, hereinafter referred to as “Sonnet 18,” is urgent in tone, as established by the directness of the title. Its speaker—identified with the poet—immediately set forth the premise. The setting too is captured precisely in the first two lines, “bones” (Line 1) and “mountains cold” (Line 2) conjuring bleak, harsh terrains, both physical and metaphysical. Echoing the setting, the speaker’s voice is angry, economical, and sharp: There are neither words nor time to be wasted here, and the message must be delivered at once.

The very first word of the poem—“Avenge” (Line 1)—is an imperative, all the more striking because it is a petition couched as an order to God. The poem’s subject is uncharacteristic for its time for the sonnet form, even by Milton’s standards. Milton used traditional sonnets to explore political and spiritual themes, rather than matters of love and courtship. “Sonnet 18” strides an interesting space between a personal poem and a political one, and it indicates the unique nature of Milton’s personality.

The speaker asks God to avenge his “slaughter’d saints” (Line 1), the repeated “s” sounds (alliteration) accentuating the grisliness of the crime committed against pious people. From the first line, the poet’s diction echoes the longer “oh” sound, creating an atmosphere of horror and agony. The “bones” (Line 1) of the Waldensians lie on “cold” (Line 2) mountains; they were killed for keeping a faith “old” (Line 3), their dying “groans” (Line 5) lacerating the air.

The speaker says the Waldensians practiced Christianity when the ancestors of the English were still dealing in “stocks and stones” (Line 4). The allusion is to the time when Christianity was still nascent in England, and Anglo-Saxons worshipped stone or pagan gods. The reference to “stocks” is more ambiguous; stocks could refer to wooden posts or sticks, indicating that the people worshipped homemade idols—again a reference to pagan worship. Alternatively, a few scholars suggest “stocks” refers to a time of punitive barbarism, when people were punished by being put in wooden stocks. The latter interpretation fits in well with the poem’s inner contradiction, wherein Milton’s rational Christian principles of forgiveness clash with his raw cry for retribution. Thus, though the speaker may demand swift, brutal justice, he also thinks of such justice as outmoded.

The speaker exhorts God a second and third time, asking him to “forget not” (Line 5) and “record” (Line 5) the crimes against the Waldensians in his books. The repeated imperatives underscore the speaker’s urgency and passion: The crime must be avenged as swiftly as possible. The “record” refers to the Books of Judgement in the Bible, to which God will refer on Judgement Day. Again, here is a contradiction: Though the imperative tone suggests a speedy reprisal, the notion of Judgement Day situates justice far in the future—at the end of time.

Lines 6-9 evoke the Waldensians’s agony as the Piemontese soldiers terrorized and brutalized them. The image of the “Mother with infant” (Line 8) recalls the iconography of the baby Jesus in Mary’s arms, which makes their murder an even greater travesty. Since the Waldensians keep an “ancient fold” (Line 6), they represent the true spirit of Christianity. Their massacre is then analogous to an assault on Christianity. Though Milton does not explicitly compare the massacre of the Waldensians to the crucifixion of Christ, the scene echoes the setting of the passion; Christ too was crucified on a hill. For Milton’s reader, the “hills” (Line 9) or the Alps would conjure the image of Golgotha, the hilltop on which Christ was crucified in the Bible.

His righteous outrage expressed, the speaker now moves on to the sonnet’s resolution, which, after all, accords with the Christian paradigm of forgiveness and God’s justice. From Line 10 onwards, the call for punishment grows less strident, the speaker now sure that God’s justice will be done. The victimized Waldensians are now martyrs, their “blood and ashes” (Line 10) sowing more rebellion across the “Italian fields” (Line 11). The poet deliberately juxtaposes “ashes” with the verb “sow” (Line 10), immortalizing the Waldensians, even their remnants vivifying. The imagery from Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection continues: Like Jesus’s spilled blood animated the Christian world, the blood of the Waldensians will transform even the Italian fields, where the “triple tyrant” (Line 12), or the Catholic Pope, holds sway. In other words, the sacrifice of the Waldensians will defeat the corruption of the Holy Roman Empire.

The extended metaphor of blood sowing and germinating seeds continues in the last few lines of the sonnet, providing its powerful conclusion. Understanding the metaphor fully relies on the allusions in the final lines: “that from these may grow / A hundred-fold” (Lines 12-13) may be a reference to the Greek myth of Cadmus in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The hero Cadmus sows dragon’s teeth in the soil, from which arise a race of fierce warriors. The word “hundred-fold” is also a direct allusion to the Christ’s Parable of the Sower in the biblical book of Matthew, wherein seeds planted in good soil multiply. Ironically, the Catholic-dominated lands will prove the fertile lands from which more Waldensians—representing a true faith—will sprout in multitudes. This new generation, “Early may fly the Babylonian woe” (Line 14) or escape the bitterness of the papacy; in Milton’s time, Protestants sometimes identified the Catholic Church as Babylon, the kingdom of excess that desecrated the temples of Jerusalem.

By the sonnet’s end, the speaker’s tone has undergone a catharsis from anger to hopeful determination; however, a deeper reading of the last six lines also underscores the poems philosophical ambiguity, most directly expressed in the allusions to the myth of Cadmus and the Parable of the Sower. Cadmus’s army of soldiers is mostly destroyed in in-fighting, while many seeds sown by the sower fall among thorns and choke; the poet’s choice of these allusions is therefore enigmatic, but an explanation may lie in Milton’s own reservations about the idea of retributive justice. Cromwell had called for Protestant forces to unite and fight the papacy as a response to the persecution of the Waldensians; it is possible Milton saw this as fighting fire with fire. His Protestant Christian values would have aligned more with finding a peaceful middle path, despite the fury his sonnet vents.