On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The tripple tyrant; that from these may grow

A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

Milton makes indirect allusions to Rome in his sonnet "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont," but does not make his opinion hidden, or so subtle as to be missed. It is readily apparent exactly how shocked and saddened he is by the bloody slaughter of the Waldensian sect in April 1655 at Pra del Torno, and equally transparent what he thinks of the religious establishment that allowed or commanded it to happen. To him, the victims were faithful dissenters who were the first to correctly interpret God's will, while the marauders were representative of a greedy, tyrannical Church who had lost its way - if it had ever followed it - and whose leadership was all too subject to human frailties.