Editing St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (section)

==Reactions==
[[File:Gregory XIII medal.jpg|thumb|left|[[Gregory XIII]]'s medal]]

The [[Politique]]s, those Catholics who placed national unity above sectarian interests, were horrified, but many Catholics inside and outside France initially regarded the massacres as deliverance from an imminent Huguenot [[coup d'etat]]. The severed head of Coligny was apparently dispatched to [[Pope Gregory XIII]], though it got no further than Lyon, and the pope sent the king a [[Golden Rose]].<ref>{{cite book |author-link=H. A. L. Fisher |last=Fisher |first=H.A.L. |date=1969 |edition=9th |title=A History of Europe |volume=One |publisher=[[Fontana Press]] |location=London |page=581}}</ref> The pope 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'' (Latin: "Overthrow (or slaughter) of the Huguenots 1572") showing an angel bearing a cross and a sword before which are the felled Protestants.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lindberg |first=Carter |date=1996 |title=The European Reformations |publisher=[[Blackwell Publishing]] |page=295}}</ref>
[[File:Giorgio vasari, seconda storia della notte di san bartolomeo, 1573, 01.jpg|thumb|right|The massacre, with the murder of [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Gaspard de Coligny]] above left, as depicted in a fresco by [[Giorgio Vasari]].]] Pope Gregory XIII also commissioned the artist [[Giorgio Vasari]] to paint three frescos in the [[Sala Regia (Vatican)|Sala Regia]] depicting the wounding of Coligny, his death, and Charles IX before Parliament, matching those commemorating 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 Pope Gregory XIII designated 11 September 1572 as a joint commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto and the massacre of the Huguenots."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Howe |first=E. |title=Architecture in Vasari's 'Massacre of the Huguenots' |journal=Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes |volume=39 |date=1976 |pages=258–261 |doi=10.2307/751147 |jstor=751147}}</ref>

Although these formal acts of rejoicing in Rome were not repudiated publicly, misgivings in the papal curia grew as the true story of the killings gradually became known. Pope Gregory XIII himself refused to receive Charles de Maurevert, said to be the killer of Coligny, on the ground that he was a murderer.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Henri Daniel-Rops |last=Daniel-Rops |first=Henri |date=1964 |title=The Catholic Reformation |volume=1 |location=New York |publisher=Image |page=241}}, Erlanger, Philippe (1962), ''St. Bartholomew's Night: The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 119, n. 2, Jouanna, Arlette (2007), ''La Saint Barthélemy: Les Mystères d'un Crime d'État, 24 Août 1572''. Paris: Gallimard, p. 203. The ultimate source for the story of Gregory XIII and Maurevert is a contemporaneous diplomatic report preserved in the French National Library, and described in De la Ferrière, ''Lettres de Catherine de Médicis'' vol. 4 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1891), p. cxvi.</ref>

On hearing of the slaughter, [[Philip II of Spain]] supposedly "laughed, for almost the only time on record".<ref>{{cite book |editor1-link=Adolphus William Ward |editor1-last=Ward |editor1-first=A. W. |others=et al. |date=1904 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x9VmAAAAMAAJ |title=The Cambridge Modern History |volume=III: Wars of Religion |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Oxford |page=20}}</ref> In Paris, the poet [[Jean-Antoine de Baïf]], founder of the {{lang|fr|[[Academie de Musique et de Poésie]]}}, wrote a sonnet extravagantly praising the killings.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Yvonne |title=Jean-Antoine de Baïf and the Saint-Barthélemy |journal=Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance |volume=59 |number=3 |date=1997 |pages=607–611 |publisher=Librairie Droz |jstor=20678289}}</ref> On the other hand, the Holy Roman Emperor, [[Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor|Maximilian II]], King Charles's father-in-law, was sickened, describing the massacre as a "shameful bloodbath".<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Georges Bordonove |first=Georges |last=Bordonove |title=Henri IV |publisher=Editions Pygmalion |date=1981 |page=82 |language=fr |quote=le honteux bain de sang |trans-quote=the shameful bloodbath}}</ref> Moderate French Catholics also began to wonder whether religious uniformity was worth the price of such bloodshed and the ranks of the Politiques began to swell.

The massacre caused a "major international crisis".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cunningham |first1=A. |last2=Grell |first2=O. P. |date=2000 |title=The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine & Death in Reformation Europe |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=0-521-46701-2 |page=59}}</ref> Protestant countries were horrified at the events, and only the concentrated efforts of Catherine's ambassadors, including a special mission by Gondi, prevented the collapse of her policy of remaining on good terms with them. {{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} [[Elizabeth I of England]]'s ambassador to France at that time, [[Sir Francis Walsingham]], barely escaped with his life.<ref>According to [[Stephen Budiansky]] in chapter 1 of ''Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage'' (Viking, 2005)</ref> Even Tsar [[Ivan the Terrible]] expressed horror at the carnage in a letter to the Emperor.<ref>Morell, J. R. (transl.) (1854), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=jpcBAAAAQAAJ&dq=Ivan+Bartholomew%27s+Day+Massacre&pg=PA168 Russia self-condemned, secret and inedited documents connected with Russian history and diplomacy]'', London: David Bogue, p. 168. Ivan was against Anjou becoming King of Poland.</ref>

The massacre "spawned a [[wikt:pullulate|pullulating]] mass of polemical literature, bubbling with theories, prejudices and phobias".<ref>Anglo, 229; See also: {{cite journal |last=Butterfield |first=H. |title=Acton and the Massacre of St Bartholomew |journal=[[Cambridge Historical Journal]] |volume=11 |number=1 |date=1953 |pages=27–47 |doi=10.1017/S1474691300002201 |jstor=3021106}} on the many shifts in emphasis of the historiography of the massacre over the next four centuries.</ref> Many Catholic authors were exultant in their praise of the king for his bold and decisive action (after regretfully abandoning a policy of meeting Huguenot demands as far as he could) against the supposed Huguenot coup, whose details were now fleshed out in officially sponsored works, though the larger mob massacres were somewhat deprecated: "[one] must excuse the people's fury moved by a laudable zeal which is difficult to restrain once it has been stirred up".<ref>Anglo, pp. 237–240</ref> Huguenot works understandably dwelt on the harrowing details of violence, expounded various [[conspiracy theories]] that the royal court had long planned the massacres, and often showed extravagant anti-Italian feelings directed at Catherine, Gondi, and other Italians at court.<ref>Anglo, pp. 272–280</ref>

Diplomatic correspondence was readier than published polemics to recognise the unplanned and chaotic nature of the events,<ref>See Butterfield, 1955, ''passim''; [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13333b.htm The Catholic Encyclopedia] article on ''Saint Bartholomew's Day'' has several quotations</ref> which also emerged from several accounts in memoirs published over the following years by witnesses to the events at court, including the famous ''Memoirs'' of [[Margaret of Valois]], the only eye-witness account of the massacre from a member of the royal family.<ref>''[http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Memoirs-of-Marguerite-de-Valois-V1.html The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois]'' (online)</ref><ref>Craveri, ''Amanti e regine. Il potere delle donne'', Milano, Adelphi, 2008, p. 65.</ref> 

There is also a dramatic and influential account by Henry, duke of Anjou that was not recognised as fake until the 19th century. Anjou's supposed account was the source of the quotation attributed to Charles IX: "Well then, so be it! Kill them! But kill them all! Don't leave a single one alive to reproach me!"<ref>See the ''Catholic Encyclopedia'' and [https://books.google.com/books?id=0LUassLJ7-cC&dq=%22Discours+du+Roi+Henri+III%22+texte&pg=PA163 see note 18] Butterfield, p. 183 (and note), and p. 199; Anjou's account was defended by a minority of historians into the early 20th century, or at least claimed as being in some sense an account informed by actual witnesses.</ref><ref>The first occurrence of the royal injunction is found late in ''The Speech of Roy Henry third to a personage of honor and quality, being close to His Majesty, of the causes and motives of Saint Barthelemy''. This justification, written "in the entourage of the Gondi, in 1628, [aims to] exonerate their ancestor" of the accusation of having instigated the massacre. Albert de Gondi is portrayed there as opposed to the bloody designs of Charles IX, whose tirade is allegedly reported in 1573 by Duke Henri d'Anjou, then reigning in Warsaw as the elected king of Poland. The apocryphal sentence of Charles IX thus participates in a "rewriting of facts" for the apologetic needs of the Gondi family. In Arlette Jouanna, pp. 15 ; 333–334, n. 26.</ref>
[[File:Giorgio vasari e aiuti, terza storia della notte di san bartolomeo, 1573, 01 il parlamento di Carlo IX approva l'uccisione del grande ammiraglio coligny 2.jpg|thumb|left|Charles IX in front of the Paris Parlement on 26 August 1572, justifying the Saint Bartholomew massacre as a response to a Huguenot plot. [[Vasari]] for [[Pope Gregory XIII]], [[Sala Regia (Vatican)]].]]

The author of the ''Lettre de Pierre Charpentier'' (1572) was not only "a Protestant of sorts, and thus, apparently, writing with inside knowledge", but also "an extreme apologist for the massacre ... in his view ... a well-merited punishment for years of civil disobedience [and] secret sedition..."<ref>Anglo, p. 251</ref> A strand of Catholic writing, especially by Italian authors, broke from the official French line to applaud the massacre as precisely a brilliant stratagem, deliberately planned from various points beforehand.<ref>Anglo, pp. 253ff</ref> The most extreme of these writers was Camilo Capilupi, a papal secretary, whose work insisted that the whole series of events since 1570 had been a masterly plan conceived by Charles IX, and carried through by frequently misleading his mother and ministers as to his true intentions. The Venetian government refused to allow the work to be printed there, and it was eventually published in Rome in 1574, and in the same year quickly reprinted in Geneva in the original Italian and a French translation.<ref>Anglo, pp. 254–265</ref>

It was in this context that the massacre came to be seen as a product of [[Machiavellianism (politics)|Machiavellianism]], a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot [[Innocent Gentillet]], who published his ''Discours contre Machievel'' in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years.<ref>Anglo, p. 283, see also the whole chapter</ref> Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that [[Machiavelli]]'s "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized courtiers" (in the words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers".<ref>Anglo, p. 286</ref> In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism.<ref>Anglo, Chapters 10 and 11; p. 328 etc.</ref> It also gave added impetus to the strong anti-Italian feelings already present in Huguenot polemic.

[[Christopher Marlowe]] was one of many Elizabethan writers who were enthusiastic proponents of these ideas. In the ''[[Jew of Malta]]'' (1589–90) "Machievel" in person speaks the Prologue, claiming to not be dead, but to have possessed the soul of the Duke of Guise, "And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France/ To view this land, and frolic with his friends" (Prologue, lines 3–4)<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/901/901-h/901-h.htm Project Gutenberg] ''Jew of Malta'' text.</ref> His last play, ''[[The Massacre at Paris]]'' (1593) takes the massacre, and the following years, as its subject, with Guise and Catherine both depicted as Machiavellian plotters, bent on evil from the start. The [[Catholic Encyclopedia]] of 1913 was still ready to endorse a version of this view, describing the massacres as "an entirely political act committed in the name of the immoral principles of Machiavellianism" and blaming "the pagan theories of a certain [[raison d'état]] according to which [[Consequentialism|the end justified the means]]".<ref name="cathen" />

The French 18th-century historian [[Louis-Pierre Anquetil]], in his ''Esprit de la Ligue'' of 1767, was among the first to begin impartial historical investigation, emphasising the lack of premeditation (before the attempt on Coligny) in the massacre and that Catholic mob violence had a history of uncontrollable escalation.<ref>Whitehead, Barbara (1994), "Revising the Revisionists," in: ''Politics, Ideology, and the Law in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of J.H.M. Salmon'', ed. John Hearsey McMillan Salmon, Boydell & Brewer, {{ISBN|9781878822390}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=0LUassLJ7-cC&dq=%22Discours+du+Roi+Henri+III%22+texte&pg=PA163 p. 162]</ref> By this period the Massacre was being widely used by [[Voltaire]] (in his ''[[Henriade]]'') and other [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] writers in [[polemics]] against organised religion in general. [[Lord Acton]] changed his mind on whether the massacre had been premeditated twice, finally concluding that it was not.<ref>The subject of Butterfield's chapter, referenced below.</ref> The question of whether the massacre had long been premeditated was not entirely settled until the late 19th century by which time a consensus was reached that it was not.{{sfn|Holt|2005|p=86}}{{sfn|Jouanna|1998|p=201}}{{sfn|Salmon|1979|p=187}}