Editing St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

{{Short description|1572 killing of Huguenots in France}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2024}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2024}}
{{Infobox civilian attack
| location = [[Kingdom of France]]
| date = 1572
| partof = the [[French Wars of Religion]]
| image = La masacre de San Bartolomé, por François Dubois.jpg
| image_size = 400
| caption = Painting by [[François Dubois]], a Huguenot painter who fled France after the massacre. Although it is not known whether Dubois witnessed the event, he depicts [[Admiral Coligny]]'s body hanging out of a window at the rear to the right. To the left rear, [[Catherine de' Medici]] is shown emerging from the [[Louvre Palace]] to inspect a heap of bodies.<ref>{{cite book|last1= Knecht|first1= Robert J.|author-link1= Robert Jean Knecht|title= The French religious wars: 1562–1598|date=2002|publisher=Osprey|location=Oxford|isbn=978-1841763958|pages=51–52|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=VZAzvAOz9uEC&pg=PA51}}</ref>
| target = French [[Protestants]]
| type = [[Mob violence]], [[massacres]], [[mass murder]]
| fatalities = 5,000–30,000
| perpetrators = [[Catholic]] mobs
| motive = [[Anti-Protestantism]]
}}

The '''Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre''' ({{langx|fr|Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy}}) in 1572 was a targeted group of [[assassination]]s and a wave of [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] [[mob violence]] directed against the [[Huguenots]] (French [[Calvinist]] [[Protestant]]s) during the [[French Wars of Religion]]. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Queen [[Catherine de' Medici]], the mother of King [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]],<ref>{{cite book|last1=Jouanna|first1=Arlette|author-link1=Arlette Jouanna|translator-last1=Bergin|translator-first1=Joseph|translator-link1=|orig-date=2007|title=The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre: The mysteries of a crime of state|date=16 May 2016 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cXC5DwAAQBAJ|publisher=Manchester University Press|publication-date=2016|isbn=978-1526112187|access-date=1 August 2022|quote=It is unlikely that it was an agreed signal for a massacre planned in advance—a highly dubious plan, whether attributed to the Queen Mother (by Protestant sources) or to Parisian Catholics.}}</ref> the [[massacre]] started a few days after the marriage on 18 August of the king's sister [[Margaret of Valois| Margaret]] to the Protestant King [[Henry III of Navarre]]. Many of the wealthiest and most prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic [[Paris]] to attend the wedding.

The massacre began in the night of 23–24 August 1572, the eve of the [[Feast of Saint Bartholomew]] the Apostle, two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral [[Gaspard II de Coligny| Gaspard de Coligny]], the military and political leader of the Huguenots. King Charles IX ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks in all, the massacre expanded outward to the countryside and other urban centres. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.

The massacre marked a turning point in the [[French Wars of Religion]]. The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, and many rank-and-file members subsequently converted. Those who remained became increasingly radicalised. Though by no means unique, the bloodletting "was the worst of the century's religious massacres".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Koenigsburger |first1=H. G.|last2=Mosse |first2=George |last3=Bowler |first3=G. Q. |author2-link=George L. Mosse |title=Europe in the sixteenth century |date=1999 |publisher=Longman |isbn=978-0582418639 |edition=2nd}}</ref> Throughout Europe, it "printed on Protestant minds the indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion".<ref>
{{cite book |last1=Chadwick |first1=Henry |last2=Evans |first2=G. R. |author1-link=Henry Chadwick (theologian) |title=Atlas of the Christian church |date=1987 |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |isbn=978-0-333-44157-2 |page=113}}</ref>

==Background==
[[File:François Clouet - Admiral Gaspard II de Coligny - 168-1925 - Saint Louis Art Museum.jpg|thumb|upright|Admiral [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Gaspard de Coligny]], the leader of the [[Huguenots]]]]

The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day was the culmination of a series of events:
*The [[Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye]], which put an end to the [[third War of Religion]] on 8 August 1570.
*The marriage between [[Henry III of Navarre]] and [[Margaret of Valois]] on 18 August 1572.
*The failed assassination of Admiral de Coligny on 22 August 1572.

=== Unacceptable peace and marriage ===
The [[Peace of Saint-Germain]] put an end to three years of civil war between Catholics and Protestants. This peace, however, was precarious, since the more intransigent Catholics refused to accept it. The strongly Catholic [[House of Guise|Guise]] family was out of favour at the French court; the Huguenot leader, Admiral [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Gaspard de Coligny]], was readmitted into the king's council in September 1571. Staunch Catholics were shocked by the return of Protestants to the court, but the queen mother, [[Catherine de' Medici]], and her son, [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]], were practical in their support of peace and Coligny, as they were conscious of the kingdom's financial difficulties and the Huguenots' strong defensive position: they controlled the fortified towns of [[La Rochelle]], [[La Charité-sur-Loire]], [[Cognac, France|Cognac]], and [[Montauban]].

To cement the peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter [[Margaret of Valois|Margaret]] to the Protestant Henry of Navarre (the future King [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]]), son of the Huguenot leader Queen [[Jeanne d'Albret]].<ref>Holt, p. 78.</ref> The royal marriage was arranged for 18 August 1572. It was not accepted by traditionalist Catholics or by the [[Pope Gregory XIII|Pope]]. Both the Pope and King [[Philip II of Spain]] strongly condemned Catherine's Huguenot policy as well.

===Tension in Paris===
[[File:Bemberg Fondation Toulouse - Portrait de Charles IX - François Clouet - Inv.1012.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Charles IX of France]], who was 22 years old in August 1572, by [[François Clouet]].]]
The impending marriage led to the gathering of a large number of well-born Protestants in Paris, but Paris was a violently anti-Huguenot city, and Parisians, who tended to be extreme Catholics, found their presence unacceptable. Encouraged by Catholic preachers, they were horrified at the marriage of a princess of France to a Protestant.<ref>Lincoln (1989), pp. 93–94</ref> The [[Parlement]]'s opposition and the court's absence from the wedding led to increased political tension.<ref name="Shennan1998">{{cite book|author=J. H. Shennan |author-link=J. H. Shennan |title=The Parlement of Paris|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HCOJAAAAMAAJ|year=1998|publisher=Sutton|isbn=978-0-7509-1830-5|page=25}}</ref>

Compounding this bad feeling was the fact that the harvests had been poor and taxes had risen.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 359</ref> The rise in food prices and the luxury displayed on the occasion of the royal wedding increased tensions among the common people. A particular point of tension was an open-air cross erected on the site of the house of {{ill|Philippe de Gastine|fr}}, a Huguenot who had been executed in 1569. The mob had torn down his house and erected a large wooden [[cross]] on a stone base. Under the terms of the peace, and after considerable popular resistance, this had been removed in December 1571 (and re-erected in a cemetery), which had already led to about 50 deaths in riots, as well as mob destruction of property.<ref>Holt, Mack P. (2005). ''The French Wars of Religion 1562–1626'', Cambridge University Press, pp. 79–80 [https://books.google.com/books?id=En23VTbYwhQC&q='The+French+Wars+of+Religion+1562+-+1629'&pg=PA95 google Books]</ref> In the massacres of August, the relatives of the Gastines family were among the first to be killed by the mob.<ref>Holt (2005), p. 86</ref>

The court itself was extremely divided. Catherine had not obtained Pope Gregory XIII's permission to celebrate this irregular marriage; consequently, the French prelates hesitated over which attitude to adopt. It took all the queen mother's skill to convince the [[Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon (born 1523)|Cardinal de Bourbon]] (paternal uncle of the Protestant groom, but himself a Catholic clergyman) to marry the couple. Beside this, the rivalries between the leading families re-emerged. The Guises were not prepared to make way for their rivals, the [[House of Montmorency]]. [[François de Montmorency|François, Duke of Montmorency]] and governor of Paris, was unable to control the disturbances in the city. On 20 August, he left the capital and retired to [[Chantilly, Oise|Chantilly]].<ref name="Daussy2002">{{cite book|author=Hugues Daussy|title=Les huguenots et le roi: le combat politique de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, 1572–1600|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DxQjVTLAgC4C&pg=PA84|year=2002|publisher=Librairie Droz|isbn=978-2-600-00667-5|page=84}}</ref>

===Shift in Huguenot thought===
In the years preceding the massacre, Huguenot political rhetoric had for the first time taken a tone against not just the policies of a particular monarch of France, but [[monarchy]] in general. In part this was led by an apparent change in stance by [[John Calvin]] in his ''Readings on the Prophet [[Daniel (biblical figure)|Daniel]]'', a book of 1561, in which he had argued that when kings disobey God, they "automatically abdicate their worldly power" – a change from his views in earlier works that even ungodly kings should be obeyed. This change was soon picked up by Huguenot writers, who began to expand on Calvin and promote the idea of the [[Popular sovereignty|sovereignty of the people]], ideas to which Catholic writers and preachers responded fiercely.<ref>Holt (2005), pp. 78–79; Calvin's book was "Praelectiones in librum prophetiarum Danielis", Geneva and [[Laon]], 1561</ref>

Nevertheless, it was only in the aftermath of the massacre that anti-monarchical ideas found widespread support from Huguenots, among the "[[Monarchomachs]]" and others. "Huguenot writers, who had previously, for the most part, paraded their loyalty to the Crown, now called for the deposition or assassination of a Godless king who had either authorised or permitted the slaughter".<ref>{{aut|[[Felipe Fernández-Armesto|Fernández-Armesto, F.]]}} & Wilson, D. (1996), ''Reformation: Christianity and the World 1500–2000'', Bantam Press, London, {{ISBN|0-593-02749-3}} paperback, p. 237</ref> Thus, 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 [[Gallicanism|Gallican]] monarchy itself".<ref>Holt (1995 ed), p. 95</ref>

===Huguenot intervention in the Netherlands===
Tensions were further raised when in May 1572 the news reached Paris that a French Huguenot army under [[Louis of Nassau]] had crossed from France to the [[Netherlandish]] province of [[Hainaut (province)|Hainaut]] and captured the Catholic strongholds of [[Mons, Belgium|Mons]] and [[Valenciennes]] (now in Belgium and France, respectively). Louis governed the [[Principality of Orange]] around [[Avignon]] in southern France for his brother [[William the Silent]], who was leading the [[Dutch Revolt]] against the Spanish. This intervention threatened to involve France in that war; many Catholics believed that Coligny had again persuaded the king to intervene on the side of the Dutch,<ref name="Holt81">Holt (2005), p. 81</ref> as he had managed to do the previous October, before Catherine had got the decision reversed.<ref>[[Robert Jean Knecht|Knecht, Robert Jean]] (2001), ''The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, 1483–1610'', p. 356, Blackwell Publishing, {{ISBN|978-0-631-22729-8}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=nuyx5E_wp7QC&dq=Elizabeth+England+St+Bartholomew%27s+Day&pg=PA355 Google Books]</ref>

===Attempted assassination of Admiral de Coligny===
{{main|Assassination of Admiral Coligny}}

[[File:Frans Hogenberg, The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, circa 1572.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|This [[popular print]] by [[Frans Hogenberg]] shows the attempted assassination of [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Coligny]] at left, his subsequent murder at right, and scenes of the general massacre in the streets.]]
After the wedding of Catholic Marguerite de Valois and Huguenot Henry de Navarre on 18 August 1572,<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Usher |first=Phillip |date=2014 |title=From Marriage to Massacre: The Louvre in August 1572 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26378894 |journal=L'Esprit Créateur |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=33–44 |doi=10.1353/esp.2014.0023 |jstor=26378894 |s2cid=162224757 }}</ref> Coligny and the leading Huguenots remained in Paris to discuss some outstanding grievances about the Peace of St. Germain with the king. An attempt was made on Coligny's life a few days later on 22 August<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gaspard II de Coligny, seigneur de Châtillon {{!}} French admiral and Huguenot leader |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gaspard-II-de-Coligny-seigneur-de-Chatillon |access-date=2 April 2022 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> as he made his way back to his house from the Louvre. He was shot from an upstairs window, and seriously wounded. The would-be assassin, most likely [[Charles de Louviers]], Lord of [[Maurevert]]<ref name=":0" />({{Circa|1505}}–1583), escaped in the ensuing confusion. Other theories about who was ultimately responsible for the attack centre on three candidates:

*The Guises: the [[Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine|Cardinal of Lorraine]] (who was in Rome at the time), and his nephews, the Dukes of Guise and [[Claude, Duke of Aumale|Aumale]], are the most likely suspects. The leaders of the Catholic party, they wanted to avenge the death of the two dukes' father [[Francis, Duke of Guise]], whose assassination ten years earlier they believed to have been ordered by Coligny. The shot aimed at Admiral de Coligny came from a house belonging to the Guises.
*The [[Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba|Duke of Alba]]: he governed the Netherlands on behalf of Philip II. Coligny planned to lead a campaign in the Netherlands to participate in the [[Dutch Revolt]] to free the region from Spanish control. During the summer, Coligny had secretly dispatched a number of troops to help the Protestants in Mons, who were now besieged by the Duke of Alba. So Admiral de Coligny was a real threat to the latter.
*Catherine de' Medici: according to tradition, the Queen Mother had been worried that the king was increasingly becoming dominated by Coligny. Among other things, Catherine reportedly feared that Coligny's influence would drag France into a war with Spain over the Netherlands.<ref name="Holt1995">{{cite book|author=Mack P. Holt|title=The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dUBQKCEhylIC&pg=PA83|date=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-35873-6|page=83}}</ref>

==Massacres==
[[File:Huns 003.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Preparation for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Painting by [[Kārlis Hūns]] (1868).]]

===Paris===
The attempted assassination of Coligny triggered the crisis that led to the massacre. Admiral de Coligny was the most respected Huguenot leader and enjoyed a close relationship with the king, although he was distrusted by the king's mother. Aware of the danger of reprisals from the Protestants, the king and his court visited Coligny on his sickbed and promised him that the culprits would be punished. While the Queen Mother was eating dinner, Protestants burst in to demand justice, some talking in menacing terms.<ref>Garrisson, pp. 82–83, and Lincoln, p. 96, and Knecht (2001), p. 361</ref> Fears of Huguenot reprisals grew. Coligny's brother-in-law led a 4,000-strong army camped just outside Paris<ref name="Holt81"/> and, although there is no evidence it was planning to attack, Catholics in the city feared it might take revenge on the Guises or the city populace itself.

That evening, Catherine held a meeting at the [[Tuileries]] Palace with her Italian advisers, including [[Albert de Gondi]], Comte de Retz. On the evening of 23 August, Catherine went to see the king to discuss the crisis. Though no details of the meeting survive, Charles IX and his mother apparently made the decision to eliminate the Protestant leaders. Holt speculated this entailed "between two and three dozen noblemen" who were still in Paris.<ref>Holt (2005), p. 85.</ref> Other historians are reluctant to speculate on the composition or size of the group of leaders targeted at this point, beyond the few obvious heads. Like Coligny, most potential candidates for elimination were accompanied by groups of gentlemen who served as staff and bodyguards, so murdering them would also have involved killing their retainers as a necessity.

Shortly after this decision, the municipal authorities of Paris were summoned. They were ordered to shut the city gates and arm the citizenry to prevent any attempt at a Protestant uprising. The king's [[Swiss Guards|Swiss mercenaries]] were given the task of killing a list of leading Protestants. It is difficult today to determine the exact chronology of events, or to know the precise moment the killing began. It seems probable that a signal was given by ringing bells for [[matins]] (between midnight and dawn) at the church of [[Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois]], near the Louvre, which was the parish church of the kings of France. The Swiss mercenaries expelled the Protestant nobles from the Louvre Castle and then slaughtered them in the streets.
[[File:Debat-Ponsan-matin-Louvre.jpg|thumb|left|''One morning at the gates of the Louvre'', 19th-century painting by [[Édouard Debat-Ponsan]]. [[Catherine de' Medici]] is in black. The scene from Dubois (above) re-imagined.]]

In the [[Holy Innocents' Cemetery]], on 24 August at noon, a [[Crataegus|hawthorn bush]], that had withered for months, began to green again near an image of the Virgin. That was interpreted by the Parisians as a sign of divine blessing and approval to these multiple murders,<ref>{{Cite news |date=3 August 2007 |title=Le massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy : l'obsession de la souillure hérétique |language=fr |work=Le Monde.fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/ete-2007/article/2007/08/03/le-massacre-de-la-saint-barthelemy-l-obsession-de-la-souillure-heretique_941606_781732.html |access-date=22 December 2022}}</ref> and that night, a group led by Guise in person dragged Admiral Coligny from his bed, killed him, and threw his body out of a window. The terrified Huguenot nobles in the building initially put up a fight, hoping to save the life of their leader,<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 364. The site is now 144 [[Rue de Rivoli]], with a plaque commemorating the event, though both building and street layout postdate the 16th century. [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04E4DD1739E233A25752C2A9609C94669FD7CF New York Times on the plaque]</ref> but Coligny himself seemed unperturbed. According to the contemporary French historian [[Jacques Auguste de Thou]], one of Coligny's murderers was struck by how calmly he accepted his fate, and remarked that "he never saw anyone less afraid in so great a peril, nor die more steadfastly".<ref>{{cite book|last1=De Thou|first1=Jacques- Auguste|title=Histoire des choses arrivees de son temps|publisher=Boston: Ginn and Company}}</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2020}} 

The tension that had been building since the Peace of St. Germain now exploded in a wave of popular violence. The common people began to hunt Protestants throughout the city, including women and children. Chains were used to block streets so that Protestants could not escape from their houses. The bodies of the dead were collected in carts and thrown into the [[Seine]]. The massacre in Paris lasted three days despite the king's attempts to stop it. Holt concludes that "while the general massacre might have been prevented, there is no evidence that it was intended by any of the elites at court", listing a number of cases where Catholic courtiers intervened to save individual Protestants who were not in the leadership.<ref>Holt (2005 edn), pp. 88–91 (quotation from p. 91)</ref> Recent research by Jérémie Foa, investigating the [[prosopography]] suggests that the massacres were carried by a group of militants who had already made out lists of Protestants deserving extermination, and the mass of the population, whether approving or disapproving, were not directly involved.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foa |first=Jérémie |title=Tous ceux qui tombent. Visages du massacre de la Saint-Bethélemy |language=fr |trans-title=All Who Fall. Faces of the St. Bethlemy Massacre |date=2021 |publisher=La Découverte |isbn=978-2348057885}}</ref>

The two leading Huguenots, Henry of Navarre and his cousin the [[Henri I de Bourbon, prince de Condé|Prince of Condé]] (respectively aged 19 and 20), were spared as they pledged to convert to Catholicism; both would eventually renounce their conversions when they managed to escape Paris.<ref name="Dyer1861">{{cite book |last=Dyer |first=Thomas Henry |author-link=Thomas Henry Dyer |title=The history of modern Europe: from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the war in the Crimea in 1857 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ErgyAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA268 |access-date=28 March 2011 |year=1861 |publisher=John Murray |page=268}}</ref> According to some interpretations, the survival of these Huguenots was a key point in Catherine's overall scheme, to prevent the House of Guise from becoming too powerful.

On 26 August, the king and court established the official version of events by going to the [[Paris Parlement]]. "Holding a [[lit de justice]], Charles declared that he had ordered the massacre in order to thwart a Huguenot plot against the royal family."<ref name="Lincoln98">Lincoln, p. 98</ref> A jubilee celebration, including a procession, was then held, while the killings continued in parts of the city.<ref name="Lincoln98"/>

===Provinces===
{{main|St Bartholomew's Day massacre in the provinces}}
Although Charles had dispatched orders to his provincial governors on 24 August to prevent violence and maintain the terms of the 1570 edict,<ref name="Holt91">Holt (2005 ed.), p. 91</ref> from August to October, similar massacres of Huguenots took place in a total of twelve other cities: [[Toulouse]], [[Bordeaux]], [[Lyon]], [[Bourges]], [[Rouen]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Benedict |first=Philip |date=2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N4hwtKRfj8UC&dq=%22St+Bartholomew%27s+day+Massacre%22+deaths&pg=PA128 |title=Rouen During the Wars of Religion |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=126 |isbn=0-521-54797-0}}, {{ISBN|978-0-521-54797-0}}</ref>
[[Orléans]], [[Meaux]], [[Angers]], [[La Charité]], [[Saumur]], [[Gaillac]] and [[Troyes]].<ref>Holt (2005 ed.), p. 91. The dates are in Garrison, p. 139, who adds [[Albi]] to the 12 in Holt. [https://books.google.com/books?id=wfFDhvXCS90C&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Day+massacre+Auger+Bordeaux&pg=PA144 online]</ref> In most of them, the killings swiftly followed the arrival of the news of the Paris massacre, but in some places there was a delay of more than a month. According to Mack P. Holt: "All twelve cities where provincial massacres occurred had one striking feature in common; they were all cities with Catholic majorities where there had once been ''significant'' Protestant minorities.... All of them had also experienced serious religious division... during the first three civil wars... Moreover seven of them shared a previous experience ... [they] had actually been taken over by Protestant minorities during the first civil war..."<ref name="Holt91"/>

[[File:Le Siege de La Rochelle par le Duc d Anjou en 1573.jpg|thumb|The [[Siege of La Rochelle (1572–1573)]] began soon after the St. Bartholomew massacre.]]
In several cases the Catholic party in the city believed they had received orders from the king to begin the massacre, some conveyed by visitors to the city, and in other cases apparently coming from a local nobleman or his agent.<ref>Holt (2005 ed.), pp. 93–94, and Benedict (2004), p. 127</ref> It seems unlikely any such orders came from the king, although the Guise faction may have desired the massacres.<ref>Benedict (2004), p. 127</ref> 

Apparently genuine letters from the [[Henry III of France|Duke of Anjou]], the king's younger brother, did urge massacres in the king's name; in [[Nantes]] the mayor fortunately held on to his without publicising it until a week later when contrary orders from the king had arrived.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 367</ref> In some cities the massacres were led by the mob, while the city authorities tried to suppress them, and in others small groups of soldiers and officials began rounding up Protestants with little mob involvement.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 368, though see Holt (2005), pp. 93–95 for a different emphasis</ref> In Bordeaux the inflammatory sermon on 29 September of a [[Jesuit]], Edmond Auger, encouraged the massacre that was to occur a few days later.<ref>("Emond" or "Edmond"). Garrison, pp. 144–45, who rejects the view that this "met le feu au poudres" (lit the powder) in Bordeaux. See also: Pearl, Jonathan L. (1998), ''The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620'', Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, p. 70, {{ISBN|978-0-88920-296-2}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=2TJeVkAMz5sC&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Day+massacre+Auger+Bordeaux&pg=PA70 Google Books]</ref>

In the cities affected, the loss to the Huguenot communities after the massacres was numerically far larger than those actually killed; in the following weeks there were mass conversions to Catholicism, apparently in response to the threatening atmosphere for Huguenots in these cities. In Rouen, where some hundreds were killed, the Huguenot community shrank from 16,500 to fewer than 3,000 mainly as a result of conversions and emigration to safer cities or countries. Some cities unaffected by the violence nevertheless witnessed a sharp decline in their Huguenot population.<ref>Holt (2005 ed.), p. 95, citing Benedict (2004), pp. 127–132</ref> It has been claimed that the Huguenot community represented as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, declining to 7–8% by the end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again during the reign of [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]], culminating with the [[Revocation of the Edict of Nantes]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Hans J. |last=Hillerbrand |title=Encyclopedia of Protestantism: 4-volume Set}}</ref>

Soon afterward both sides prepared for a [[French Wars of Religion#The "fourth" war (1572–1573)|fourth civil war]], which began before the end of the year.

===Death toll===
[[File:Jost Amman, Gaspar de Coligny, 1573, NGA 3643 (cropped).jpg|thumb|''Bas de page'' detail from a portrait print of Coligny, [[Jost Amman]], 1573. Coligny is shot at left, and killed at right.]]
Estimates of the number that perished in the massacres have varied from 2,000 by a Roman Catholic apologist to 70,000 by the contemporary Huguenot [[Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully|Maximilien de Béthune]], who himself barely escaped death.<ref>''Saint Bartholomew's Day, Massacre of'' (2008) Encyclopædia Britannica Deluxe Edition, Chicago; [[Hardouin de Péréfixe de Beaumont]], Catholic [[Archbishop of Paris]] a century later, put the number at 100,000, but "This last number is probably exaggerated, if we reckon only those who perished by a violent death. But if we add those who died from wretchedness, hunger, sorrow, abandoned old men, women without shelter, children without bread,—all the miserable whose life was shortened by this great catastrophe, we shall see that the estimate of Péréfixe is still below the reality." G. D. Félice (1851). [https://books.google.com/books?id=ywIQAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA217 ''History of the Protestants of France'']. New York: Edward Walker, p. 217.</ref> Accurate figures for casualties have never been compiled,<ref>The range of estimates available in the mid-19th century, with other details, are summarized by the Huguenot statesman and historian [[François Guizot]] in his [https://books.google.com/books?id=nbIWRyfAvq8C&dq=%22Kill+them+all%22+Batholomew&pg=PA351 ''A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume IV'']</ref> and even in writings by modern historians there is a considerable range, though the more specialised the historian, the lower they tend to be. At the low end are figures of about 2,000 in Paris<ref>Armstrong, Alastair (2003), ''France 1500–1715'', Heinemann, pp. 70–71 {{ISBN|0-435-32751-8}}</ref> and 3,000 in the provinces, the latter figure an estimate by [[Philip Benedict]] in 1978.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Benedict |first=Philip |author-link=Philip Benedict |title=The Saint Bartholomew's Massacres in the Provinces |journal=[[The Historical Journal]] |year=1978 |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=205–225 |jstor=2638258 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00000510 |s2cid=159715479}}; cited by Holt (2005 ed.), p. 91, and also used by Knecht (2001), p. 366, and {{cite book |last=Zalloua |first=Zahi Anbra |date=2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E_MYeI40zrEC&dq=%22St+Bartholomew%27s+day+Massacre%22+deaths&pg=PA152 |title=Montaigne And the Ethics of Skepticism |publisher=Rookwood Press |isbn=978-1-886365-59-9}}</ref> Other estimates are about 10,000 in total,<ref>Lincoln, p. 97 (a "bare minimum of 2,000" in Paris), and [[Gérard Chaliand|Chaliand, Gérard]]; [[Arnaud Blin|Blin, Arnaud]]; Schneider, Edward; Pulver, Kathryn; {{cite book |last=Browner |first=Jesse |date=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YmpfgNqmVXYC&dq=%22St+Bartholomew%27s+day+Massacre%22+deaths&pg=PA89 |title=The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |isbn=978-0-520-24709-3}}, citing David El Kenz (2008), ''Guerres et paix de religion en Europe aux XVIe–XVIIe siecles''</ref> with about 3,000 in Paris<ref>Garrisson, p, 131; {{cite book |editor-link=Geoffrey Parker (historian) |editor-last=Parker |editor-first=G. |date=1998 |title=Oxford Encyclopedia World History |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford |isbn=0-19-860223-5 |page=585}}; and {{aut|[[Henry Chadwick (theologian)|Chadwick, H.]]}} & Evans, G.R. (1987), ''Atlas of the Christian Church'', Macmillan, London, {{ISBN|0-333-44157-5}} hardback, p. 113;</ref> and 7,000 in the provinces.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Brian Moynahan |last=Moynahan |first=B. |date=2003 |title=The Faith: A History of Christianity |publisher=Pimlico |location=London |isbn=0-7126-0720-X |page=456}}; [[John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton|Lord Acton]], who discusses the matter in some detail, found that "no evidence takes us as high as eight thousand", and found those contemporaries in the best position to know typically gave the lowest figures – ''[[s:Lectures on Modern History|Lectures on Modern History]]'', "[[s:Lectures on Modern History/The Huguenots and the League|The Huguenots and the League]]", pp. 162–163.</ref> At the higher end are total figures of up to 20,000,<ref>{{cite book |last=Perry |first=Sheila |date=1997 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HJ76gwN_pSwC&dq=%22St+Bartholomew%27s+day+Massacre%22+deaths&pg=PA5 |title=Aspects of Contemporary France |page=5 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-13179-7}}</ref> or 30,000 in total, from "a contemporary, non-partisan guesstimate" quoted by the historians [[Felipe Fernández-Armesto]] and D. Wilson.<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Felipe Fernández-Armesto |last1=Fernández-Armesto |first1=F. |last2=Wilson |first2=D. |date=1996 |title=Reformation: Christianity and the World 1500–2000 |publisher=[[Bantam Press]] |location=London |isbn=0-593-02749-3 |pages=236–237}}</ref> 

For Paris, the only hard figure is a payment by the city to workmen for collecting and burying 1,100 bodies washed up on the banks of the Seine downstream from the city in one week. Body counts relating to other payments are computed from this.<ref>Garrisson, 131; see also [https://books.google.com/books?id=mAZkbMHlX7cC&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Day+massacre+Seine+bodies&pg=PA429 the 19th-century historian Henry White], who goes into full details, listing estimates of other historians, which range up to 100,000. His own estimation was 20,000.{{cite book |last=White |first=Henry |title=The Massacre of St Bartholomew |year=1868 |location=London |publisher=John Murray |page=472}}</ref>

Among the slain were the philosopher [[Petrus Ramus]], and in Lyon the composer [[Claude Goudimel]]. The corpses floating down the [[Rhône]] from Lyon are said to have put the people of [[Arles]] off drinking the water for three months.<ref name="cathen">{{Catholic |first=Pierre-Louis-Théophile-Georges |last=Goyau |author-link=Georges Goyau |prescript= |wstitle=Saint Bartholomew's Day |volume=14}}</ref>

==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}}

==Interpretations==
===Role of the royal family===
[[File:Catherine de Medicis.jpg|thumb|right|[[Catherine de' Medici]], Charles IX's mother, after [[François Clouet]].]]
Over the centuries, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre has aroused a great deal of controversy. Modern historians are still divided over the responsibility of the royal family:

The traditional interpretation makes Catherine de' Medici and her Catholic advisers the principal culprits in the execution of the principal military leaders. They forced the hand of a hesitant and weak-willed king in the decision of that particular execution. This traditional interpretation has been largely abandoned by some modern historians including, among others, Janine Garrisson. However, in a more recent work than his history of the period, Holt concludes: "The ringleaders of the conspiracy appear to have been a group of four men: Henry, duke of Anjou; [[René de Birague|Chancellor Birague]]; the [[Louis Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers|duke of Nevers]], and the comte de Retz" (Gondi).<ref>Holt, Mack P. (2002), ''The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle During the Wars of Religion'', Cambridge University Press,  {{ISBN|978-0-521-89278-0}}
[https://books.google.com/books?id=-OJscrcxTLsC&dq=Elizabeth+Bartholomew%27s+Day+Massacre&pg=PA26 p. 20]</ref> Apart from Anjou, the others were all Italian advisors at the French court.

According to [[Denis Crouzet]], Charles IX feared a Protestant uprising, and chose to strangle it at birth to protect his power. The execution decision was therefore his own, and not Catherine de' Medici's.<ref>Crouzet, Denis (1994), ''La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy: Un rêve perdu de la Renaissance'', Fayard, coll. " Chroniques ", {{ISBN|2-213-59216-0}}</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2020}}

According to Jean-Louis Bourgeon, the violently anti-Huguenot city of Paris was really responsible. He stresses that the city was on the verge of revolt. The Guises, who were highly popular, exploited this situation to put pressure on the King and the Queen Mother. Charles IX was thus forced to head off the potential riot, which was the work of the Guises, the city militia and the common people.<ref>Bourgeon, Jean-Louis (1992), ''L'assassinat de Coligny'', Genève: Droz</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2020}}

According to {{ill|Thierry Wanegffelen|fr|Thierry Wanegffelen}}, the member of the royal family with the most responsibility in this affair is Henry, Duke of Anjou, the king's ambitious younger brother. Following the failed assassination attack against the Admiral de Coligny (which Wanegffelen attributes to the Guise family and Spain), the Italian advisers of Catherine de' Medici undoubtedly recommended in the royal council the execution of about fifty Protestant leaders. These Italians stood to benefit from the occasion by eliminating the Huguenot danger. Despite the firm opposition of the Queen Mother and the King, Anjou, Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, present at this meeting of the council, could see a good occasion to make a name for himself with the government. He contacted the Parisian authorities and another ambitious young man, running out of authority and power, Duke Henri de Guise (whose uncle, the clear-sighted Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, was then detained in Rome).{{cn|date=July 2024}}

The Parisian St. Bartholomew's Day massacre resulted from this conjunction of interests, and this offers a much better explanation as to why the men of the Duke of Anjou acted in the name of the Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, consistent with the thinking of the time, rather than in the name of the King. One can also understand why, the day after the start of the massacre, Catherine de' Medici, through royal declaration of Charles IX, condemned the crimes, and threatened the Guise family with royal justice. However, when Charles IX and his mother learned of the involvement of the duke of Anjou, and being so dependent on his support, they issued a second royal declaration, which, while asking for an end to the massacres, credited the initiative with the desire of Charles IX to prevent a Protestant plot. Initially the ''coup d'état'' of the duke of Anjou was a success, but Catherine de' Medici went out of her way to deprive him from any power in France: she sent him with the royal army to remain in front of La Rochelle and then had him elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.<ref>Wanegffelen, Thierry (2005), ''Catherine de Médicis: Le pouvoir au féminin'', Payot {{ISBN|2228900184}}</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2020}}

===Role of the religious factions===
Traditional histories have tended to focus more on the roles of the political notables whose machinations began the massacre than the mindset of those who actually did the killing. Ordinary lay Catholics were involved in the mass killings; they believed they were executing the wishes of the king and of God. At this time, in an age before mass media, "the pulpit remained probably the most effective means of mass communication".<ref>Atkin, N. & Tallett, F. (2003) ''Priests, Prelates & People: A History of European Catholicism Since 1750'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, {{ISBN|0-19-521987-2}} hardback, p. 9;</ref>

Despite the large numbers of pamphlets and [[broadsheet]]s in circulation, literacy rates were still poor. Thus, some modern historians have stressed the critical and incendiary role that militant preachers played in shaping ordinary lay beliefs, both Catholic and Protestant.

Historian Barbara B. Diefendorf, Professor of History at [[Boston University]], wrote that [[Simon Vigor]] had "said if the King ordered the Admiral (Coligny) killed, 'it would be wicked not to kill him'. With these words, the most popular preacher in Paris legitimised in advance the events of St. Bartholomew's Day".<ref>Diefendorf, B.B. (1991) ''Beneath The Cross: Catholics & Huguenots in Sixteenth Century Paris'', Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|0-1950-7013-5}} paperback, p. 157</ref> Diefendorf says that when the head of the murdered Coligny was shown to the Paris mob by a member of the nobility, with the claim that it was the King's will, the die was cast. Another historian Mack P. Holt, Professor at [[George Mason University]], agrees that Vigor, "the best known preacher in Paris", preached sermons that were full of references to the evils that would befall the capital should the Protestants seize control.<ref>Holt, M. P. (1995) ''The French Wars of Religion 1562–1629'', Cambridge University Press, {{ISBN|0-521-35359-9}} hardback, pp. 88–89</ref> This view is also partly supported by Cunningham and Grell (2000) who explained that "militant sermons by priests such as Simon Vigor served to raise the religious and eschatological temperature on the eve of the Massacre".<ref>Cunningham, A. & Grell, O. P. (2000) ''The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine & Death in Reformation Europe'', Cambridge University Press, {{ISBN|0-521-46701-2}} paperback, p. 151</ref>

[[File:Guise.jpg|thumb|left|[[Henry, Duke of Guise]], leader of the [[Catholic League (French)|Catholic League]].]]

Historians cite the extreme tension and bitterness that led to the powder-keg atmosphere of Paris in August 1572.<ref>Holt, (1995), p. 86</ref> In the previous ten years there had already been three outbreaks of civil war, and attempts by Protestant nobles to seize power in France.<ref>Holt, (1995), p. 44</ref> Some blame the complete esteem with which the sovereign's office was held, justified by prominent French Roman Catholic theologians, and that the special powers of French Kings "...were accompanied by explicit responsibilities, the foremost of which was combating heresy".<ref>Holt (1995 ed.), p. 9</ref>

Holt, notable for re-emphasising the importance of religious issues, as opposed to political/dynastic power struggles or socio-economic tensions, in explaining the French Wars of Religion, also re-emphasised the role of religion in the St Bartholomew's Day massacre. He noted that the extra violence inflicted on many of the corpses "was not random at all, but patterned after the rites of the Catholic culture that had given birth to it". "Many Protestant houses were burned, invoking the traditional purification by fire of all heretics. Many victims were also thrown into the Seine, invoking the purification by water of Catholic baptism".<ref name="Holt87">Holt (1995 ed.), p. 87</ref> Viewed as a threat to the social and political order, Holt argues that "Huguenots not only had to be exterminated – that is, killed – they also had to be humiliated, dishonoured, and shamed as the inhuman beasts they were perceived to be."<ref name="Holt87"/>

However Raymond Mentzer points out that Protestants "could be as bloodthirsty as Catholics. Earlier Huguenot rage at Nimes (in 1567) led to... [[Michelade|the massacre of twenty-four Catholics]], mostly priests and prominent laymen, at the hands of their Protestant neighbours. Few towns escaped the episodic violence and some suffered repeatedly from both sides. Neither faith had a monopoly on cruelty and misguided fervour".<ref>Mentzer, Raymond A., ''The French Wars of Religion'' in ''The Reformation World'', Ed. Andrew Pettegree, Routledge, (2000), {{ISBN|0-415-16357-9}}, p. 332</ref>

Some, like Leonie Frieda, emphasise the element within the mob violence of the "haves" being "killed by the 'have-nots'". Many Protestants were nobles or bourgeois and Frieda adds that "a number of bourgeois Catholic Parisians had suffered the same fate as the Protestants; many financial debts were wiped clean with the death of creditors and moneylenders that night".<ref>Frieda, L. (2003) ''Catherine de Medici'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson, {{ISBN|0-7538-2039-0}}, pp. 314–316</ref> At least one Huguenot was able to buy off his would-be murderers.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 364</ref>

The historian H.G. Koenigsberger (who until his retirement in 1984 was Professor of History at King's College, [[University of London]]) wrote that the Massacre was deeply disturbing because "it was Christians massacring other Christians who were not foreign enemies but their neighbours with which they and their forebears had lived in a Christian community, and under the same ruler, for a thousand years".<ref>Koenigsberger, H. G. (1987) ''Early Modern Europe 1500–1789'', Longman, Harlow, {{ISBN|0-582-49401-X}} paperback, p. 115</ref> He concludes that the historical importance of the Massacre "lies not so much in the appalling tragedies involved as their demonstration of the power of sectarian passion to break down the barriers of civilisation, community and accepted morality".<ref>Koenigsberger, p. 115</ref>

One historian puts forward an analysis of the massacre in terms of [[social anthropology]] – the religious historian [[Bruce Lincoln]]. He describes how the religious divide, which gave the Huguenots different patterns of dress, eating and pastimes, as well as the obvious differences of religion and (very often) class, had become a social schism or cleavage. The rituals around the royal marriage had only intensified this cleavage, contrary to its intentions, and the "sentiments of estrangement – radical otherness – [had come] to prevail over sentiments of affinity between Catholics and Protestants".<ref>Lincoln, chapter 6, pp. 89–102, quotation from p. 101</ref>

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 Reuters 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."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/travels/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_23081997_vigil.html|title=Vigil – Address of the Holy Father – John Paul II|website=w2.vatican.va}}</ref>

==Cultural references==
{{more citations needed|section|date=November 2017}}

[[File:Huguenot lovers on St. Bartholomew's Day.jpg|left|thumb|upright=0.85|[[John Everett Millais]]'s painting, ''[[A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day]]'']]
[[File:Intolerance (St. Bartholomew's Day massacre).jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.85|Depiction of the massacre on a poster for the film ''[[Intolerance (film)|Intolerance]]'' (1916)]]
The [[Elizabethan]] dramatist [[Christopher Marlowe]] knew the story well from the Huguenot literature translated into English, and probably from French refugees who had sought refuge in his native [[Canterbury]]. He wrote a strongly anti-Catholic and anti-French play based on the events entitled ''[[The Massacre at Paris]]''. Also, in his biography ''The World of Christopher Marlowe'', David Riggs claims the incident remained with the playwright, and massacres are incorporated into the final acts of three of his early plays, ''1'' and ''2 Tamburlaine'' and ''The Jew of Malta'' – see above for Marlowe and Machiavellism.

The story was also taken up in 1772 by [[Louis-Sébastien Mercier]] in his play ''Jean Hennuyer, Bishop of Lizieux'', unperformed until the [[French Revolution]]. This play was translated into English, with some adaptations, as ''The Massacre'' by the actress and playwright [[Elizabeth Inchbald]] in 1792. Inchbald kept the historical setting, but ''The Massacre'', completed by February 1792, also reflected events in the recent French Revolution, though not the [[September Massacres]] of 1792, which coincided with its printing.<ref>Burdett, Sarah, Sarah Burdett, "'Feminine Virtues Violated’ Motherhood, Female Militancy and Revolutionary Violence in Elizabeth Inchbald's ''The Massacre'', p. 3, ''Dandelion'', 5.1 (Summer 2014), [http://dandelionjournal.org/index.php/dandelion/article/viewFile/194/176 PDF]</ref>

[[Joseph Chénier]]'s play ''Charles IX'' was a huge success during the French Revolution, drawing strongly anti-monarchical and anti-religious lessons from the massacre. Chénier was able to put his principles into practice as a politician, voting for the execution of [[Louis XVI]] and many others, perhaps including his brother [[André Chénier]]. However, before the collapse of the Revolution he became suspected of moderation, and in some danger himself.<ref>Maslan, Susan (2005), ''Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy, and the French Revolution'', Johns Hopkins University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-8018-8125-1}}
[https://books.google.com/books?id=KxSLdT56z0cC&dq=Voltaire+Bartholomew%27s+Day+Massacre&pg=PA40 p. 40]</ref>
 
The story was fictionalised by [[Prosper Mérimée]] in his ''[[A Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX]]'' (1829), and by [[Alexandre Dumas, père]] in ''[[La Reine Margot (novel)|La Reine Margot]]'', an 1845 novel that fills in the history as it was then seen with romance and adventure. That novel has been translated into English and was made first into a commercially successful [[French film]] in 1954, ''[[La Reine Margot (1954 film)|La reine Margot]]'' (US title "A Woman of Evil"), starring [[Jeanne Moreau]]. It was remade in 1994 as ''[[La Reine Margot (1994 film)|La Reine Margot]]'' (later as ''Queen Margot'', and subtitled, in English-language markets), starring [[Isabelle Adjani]].

[[File:They seemed but dark shadows as they slid along the walls (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|"They seemed but dark shadows as they slid along the walls", illustration from an English ''History of France'', c. 1912]]
[[Giacomo Meyerbeer]]'s [[opera]] ''[[Les Huguenots]]'' (1836), very loosely based on the events of the massacre, was one of the most popular and spectacular examples of French [[grand opera]].

The [[Pre-Raphaelite]] painter [[John Everett Millais]] managed to create a sentimental moment in the massacre in his painting ''[[A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day]]'' (1852), which depicts a Catholic woman attempting to convince her Huguenot lover to wear the white scarf badge of the Catholics and protect himself. The man, true to his beliefs, gently refuses her.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=216|title=A Huguenot on St Bartholomew's Day|access-date=19 April 2007|publisher=Humanities Web}}</ref> Millais was inspired to create the painting after seeing Meyerbeer's ''Les Huguenots''.

[[Mark Twain]] described the massacre in "From the Manuscript of 'A Tramp Abroad' (1879): The French and the Comanches", an essay about "partly civilized races". He wrote in part, "St. Bartholomew's was unquestionably the finest thing of the kind ever devised and accomplished in the world. All the best people took a hand in it, the King and the Queen Mother included."<ref>Letters from Earth. Ostara publications. 2013</ref>

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and the events surrounding it were incorporated into [[D.W. Griffith]]'s film ''[[Intolerance (movie)|Intolerance]]'' (1916). The film follows [[Catherine de' Medici]] ([[Josephine Crowell]]) plotting the massacre, coercing her son King [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]] (Frank Bennett) to sanction it. Incidental characters include Henri of Navarre, [[Marguerite de Valois]] ([[Constance Talmadge]]), [[Admiral Coligny]] ([[Joseph Henabery]]), and the Duke of Anjou, who is portrayed as homosexual. These historic scenes are depicted alongside a fictional plot in which a Huguenot family is caught among the events.

Another novel depicting this massacre is ''[[Queen Jezebel (novel)|Queen Jezebel]]'', by [[Jean Plaidy]] (1953). In the third episode of the [[BBC]] miniseries ''[[Elizabeth R]]'' (1971), starring [[Glenda Jackson]] as Queen Elizabeth I of England, the English court's reaction to the massacre and its effect on England's relations with France is addressed in depth.

A 1966 serial in the [[United Kingdom|British]] [[science fiction on television|science fiction television]] series ''[[Doctor Who]]'' entitled ''[[The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve]]'' is set during the events leading up to the Paris massacre. [[Leonard Sachs]] appeared as Admiral Coligny and Joan Young played Catherine de' Medici. This serial is [[Doctor Who missing episodes|missing from the BBC archives]] and survives only in audio form. It depicts the massacre as having been instigated by Catherine de' Medici for both religious and political reasons, and authorised by a weak-willed and easily influenced Charles IX.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Doctor Who Transcripts – The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve |url=http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/3-4.htm |website=Chrissie's Transcripts Site |access-date=25 February 2020}}</ref>

The St Bartholomew's Day massacre is the setting for [[Tim Willocks]]' historical novel, ''The Twelve Children of Paris'' (Matthias Tannhauser Trilogy:2), published in 2013.

[[Ken Follett]]'s 2017 historical fiction novel ''[[A Column of Fire]]'' uses this event. Several chapters depict in great detail the massacre and the events leading up to it, with the book's protagonists getting some warning in advance and making enormous but futile efforts to avert it. Follett completely clears King Charles IX and his mother Catherine of any complicity and depicts them as sincere proponents of religious toleration, caught by surprise and horrified by the events; he places the entire responsibility on the Guise Family, following the "Machiavellian" view of the massacre and depicting it as a complicated Guise conspiracy, meticulously planned in advance and implemented in full detail.

The second season finale of ''[[The Serpent Queen]]'' depicts the St. Bartholomew's massacre.

==See also==

* [[List of incidents of cannibalism]]
* [[Michelade]], a massacre of Catholics by Protestants in [[Nîmes]] in 1567
* [[Sack of Magdeburg]] in 1631
* [[Grenoble's Saint-Bartholomew|Grenoble's Saint-Bartholomew's Day]], a massacre during World War II that was named after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

==Notes==
{{reflist|30em}}

==References==
* Anglo, Sydney (2005), ''Machiavelli – the First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance'', Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-19-926776-7}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=-K6zI1iw90AC&dq=The+Massacre+at+Paris+Machiavelli&pg=PA232 Google Books]
*[[Herbert Butterfield|Butterfield, Herbert]], ''Man on his Past'', Cambridge University Press, 1955, Chapter VI, ''[[Lord Acton]] and the Massacre of St Bartholomew''
*Denis Crouzet : ''Les Guerriers de Dieu. La violence au temps des troubles de religion vers 1525–vers 1610'', Champvallon, 1990 ({{ISBN|2-87673-094-4}}), ''La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy. Un rêve perdu de la Renaissance'', Fayard, coll. " Chroniques ", 1994 ({{ISBN|2-213-59216-0}}) ;
*Garrisson, Janine, ''1572 : la Saint-Barthélemy'', Complexe, 2000 ({{ISBN|2-87027-721-0}}). (in French) [https://books.google.com/books?id=wfFDhvXCS90C&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Day+massacre+Auger+Bordeaux&pg=PA144 Google books]
*{{cite book |last1=Holt |first1=Mack P. |title=The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 |date=1995 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=0521-35873-6}}
*{{cite book |title=The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 |first=Mack P. |last=Holt |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2005 }}
*{{cite book |last=Jouanna |first=Arlette |title=Histoire et Dictionnaire des Guerres de Religion |publisher=Bouquins |year=1998}}
*{{cite book |title=Society in Crisis: France during the Sixteenth Century |first=J.H.M |last=Salmon |year=1979 |publisher=Metheun & Co.}}
*[[Bruce Lincoln|Lincoln, Bruce]], ''Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification'', Oxford University Press US, 1989, {{ISBN|978-0-19-507909-8}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=pensGMOgkv8C&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Lit+de+Justice&pg=PA98 Google Books]
*Note: this article incorporates material from the [[:fr:Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy|French Wikipedia]].

==Further reading==
* Barbara B. Diefendorf, ''The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents'' (2008)
* Arlette Jouanna and Joseph Bergin. ''The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre: The mysteries of a crime of state'' (2015)?{{jstor|j.ctt1mf70}}
* Robert Kingdon. ''Myths about the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacres, 1572–1576'' (1988)
* James R. Smither, "The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and Images of Kingship in France: 1572–1574." ''The Sixteenth Century Journal'' (1991): 27–46. {{JSTOR|2542014}}
* N. M Sutherland. ''The Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the European conflict, 1559–1572'' (1973)

==External links==
{{Commons}}
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005493t St Bartholomew's Day Massacre], BBC Radio 4 discussion with Diarmaid McCulloch, Mark Greengrass & Penny Roberts, chaired by [[Melvyn Bragg]] (''In Our Time'', 27 November 2003)
*[http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/massacres-during-wars-religion ''Massacres during the wars of religion: The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, a foundational event'' (at Massacres.org)]
*{{Cite CE1913 |last=Goyau |first=Georges |authorlink=Georges Goyau |wstitle=Saint Bartholomew's Day |short=x}}
*{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=St Bartholomew, Massacre of |short=x}}

{{Authority control}}

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