Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre

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Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre
(Commenced this day 1572)

[Overview - This Day in History - Linked Above]

King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France.

Two days earlier, Catherine had ordered the murder of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader whom she felt was leading her son into war with Spain. However, Coligny was only wounded, and Charles promised to investigate the assassination in order to placate the angry Huguenots. Catherine then convinced the young king that the Huguenots were on the brink of rebellion, and he authorized the murder of their leaders by the Catholic authorities. Most of these Huguenots were in Paris at the time, celebrating the marriage of their leader, Henry of Navarre, to the king's sister, Margaret.

A list of those to be killed was drawn up, headed by Coligny, who was brutally beaten and thrown out of his bedroom window just before dawn on August 24. Once the killing started, mobs of Catholic Parisians, apparently overcome with bloodlust, began a general massacre of Huguenots. Charles issued a royal order on August 25 to halt the killing, but his pleas went unheeded as the massacres spread. Mass slaughters continued into October, reaching the provinces of Rouen, Lyon, Bourges, Bourdeaux, and Orleans. An estimated 3,000 French Protestants were killed in Paris, and as many as 70,000 in all of France. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day marked the resumption of religious civil war in France.

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Reactions to the massacre

[Excerpt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Linked Above]

The Politiques were horrified but many Catholics inside and outside France regarded the massacres, at least initially, as deliverance from an imminent Huguenot coup d'etat. The severed head of Coligny was apparently despatched to the Pope Gregory XIII, though it got no further than Lyons, and the Pope sent the king a Golden Rose. He ordered a Te Deum to be sung as a special thanksgiving (a practice continued for many years after) and had a medal struck with the motto Ugonottorum strages 1572 showing an angel bearing a cross and sword next to slaughtered Protestants.

The Pope also commissioned the artist Giorgio Vasari to paint three frescos in the Sala Regia depicting the wounding of Coligny, his death, and Charles IX before Parliament, matching ones on the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). "The massacre was interpreted as an act of divine retribution; Coligny was considered a threat to Christendom and thus the pope designated 11 September 1572 as a joint commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto and the massacre of the Huguenots".

On hearing of the slaughter, Philip II of Spain “laughed for the only time on record”. In Paris, the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf, founder of the Academie de Musique et de Poésie, wrote a sonnet extravagantly praising the killings.[citation needed] On the other hand, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II, King Charles's father-in-law, was sickened, describing the massacre as "shameful". Moderate French Catholics also began to wonder whether religious uniformity was worth the price of such bloodshed and they began to swell the ranks of a movement, the Politiques, which placed national unity above sectarian interests.

Commemorative medal commissioned by the Pope

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An Apology / Or is It?

[Excerpt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Linked Above]

On 23 August 1997, Pope John Paul II, who was in Paris for the 12th World Youth Day, issued a statement on the Massacre. He stayed in Paris for three days and made eleven speeches. According to Reuter and the Associated Press, at a late-night vigil, with the hundreds of thousands of young people who were in Paris for the celebrations, he made the following comments: "On the eve of Aug. 24, we cannot forget the sad massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, an event of very obscure causes in the political and religious history of France. ... Christians did things which the Gospel condemns. I am convinced that only forgiveness, offered and received, leads little by little to a fruitful dialogue, which will in turn ensure a fully Christian reconciliation. ... Belonging to different religious traditions must not constitute today a source of opposition and tension. On the contrary, our common love for Christ impels us to seek tirelessly the path of full unity".

The Pope stated the cause of the massacre were "very obscure." While, as in most complex situation, there were obscure factors, the one obvious cause was the repeated call by various popes for the extermination of the Huguenots. He failed to acknowledge the glee of his predecessor over what Pope Gregory XIII described as, "The glorious triumph over a perfidious race," and the wide spread celebrations which followed. He also failed to acknowledge how this massacre was but one in a line of such abominations commissioned by his church: For instance, the Albigensian Crusade, the suppression of the Templars and the explicit role of the Inquisition.

One of three frescoes commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII,
celebrating the slaughter, which still feature in the Vatican

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Mack Holt wrote:

The massacre "marked the beginning of a new form of French Protestantism: one that was openly at war with the crown. This was much more than a war against the policies of the crown, as in the first three civil wars; it was a campaign against the very existence of the Gallican monarchy itself

The mood in France had changed as a consequence of the massacre. Having approved the slaughter, the monarchy lost its medieval air of divine benevolence, and the populace, both Protestants and Catholics, increasing began to question its merits. This spirit of disillusionment in all things regal was to lead to calls for the separation of Church and State and ultimately contributed to the subsequent French Revolution (conventionally marking the dawn of Modern History), in which fewer than half died in the three years of its terror than died in the forty days following Saint Bartholomew's Day 1572.

Catherine de Medici inspects murdered Huguenots