Violence

This poem is a depiction of what we might today (although the term did not exist at the time) call a genocide — the deliberate attempt on the part of a powerful member of the majority religious group to completely exterminate a small, long-oppressed minority. The Easter Massacre of the Waldensians was a horrific event which shocked the world at the time. The details of the murders of the Waldensians were particularly grisly.

Whether or not these horrific reports were true, they were the prevailing narrative of the massacre in its own time, shared in pamphlets and the popular press. Against the context of these gruesome horrors, Milton’s own depiction of the massacre seems relatively tame. The only detail he preserves from the horrifying reports is that of the rolling “Mother with Infant down the Rocks” (8).

Why make these changes from the widespread reports? Certainly, Milton...