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127-397: The building is made of Toulouse brick, a common material in the region. Of the original church, dating back to the 12th century, only part of the portal survives. The Wars of Religion during the 16th century caused great damage in the city, leaving only the bell tower, which could be used as a watchtower. The nave renovation was not completed until 1689. Most of the reconstruction work

254-424: 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 sovereignty of the people , ideas to which Catholic writers and preachers responded fiercely. Nevertheless, it was only in the aftermath of the massacre that anti-monarchical ideas found widespread support from Huguenots, among

381-588: A contingent of fellow Protestant militias from Germany – including 14,000 mercenary reiters led by the Calvinist Duke of Zweibrücken . After the Duke was killed in action, his troops remained under the employ of the Huguenots who had raised a loan from England against the security of Jeanne d'Albret 's crown jewels. Much of the Huguenots' financing came from Queen Elizabeth of England, who

508-695: A definitive ruling by classifying "Lutherans" as heretical Zwinglians . Calvin, originally from Noyon in Picardy , went into exile in 1535 to escape persecution and settled in Basel , where he published the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1538. This work contained the key principles of Calvinism , which became immensely popular in France and other European countries. While Lutheranism

635-462: 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

762-522: 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; Chancellor Birague ; the duke of Nevers , and the comte de Retz" (Gondi). 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

889-437: 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 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

1016-501: A peaceful solution led to the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (8 August 1570), negotiated by Jeanne d'Albret, which once more allowed some concessions to the Huguenots. With the kingdom once more at peace, the crown began seeking a policy of reconciliation to bring the fractured polity back together. One key part of this was to be a marriage between Navarre , the son of Jeanne d'Albret and Antoine of Navarre, and Margaret of Valois ,

1143-626: A prolonged struggle for power between his widow Catherine de' Medici and powerful nobles. These included a fervently Catholic faction led by the Guise and Montmorency families, and Protestants headed by the House of Condé and Jeanne d'Albret . Both sides received assistance from external powers, with Spain and Savoy supporting the Catholics, and England and the Dutch Republic backing

1270-518: A series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots ) from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. One of its most notorious episodes was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who had converted to Catholicism in 1593,

1397-693: 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. In the Holy Innocents' Cemetery , on 24 August at noon, a hawthorn bush , that had withered for months, began to green again near an image of

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1524-463: A single one alive to reproach me!" 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..." A strand of Catholic writing, especially by Italian authors, broke from

1651-600: A special mission by Gondi, prevented the collapse of her policy of remaining on good terms with them. Elizabeth I of England 's ambassador to France at that time, Sir Francis Walsingham , barely escaped with his life. Even Tsar Ivan the Terrible expressed horror at the carnage in a letter to the Emperor. The massacre "spawned a pullulating mass of polemical literature, bubbling with theories, prejudices and phobias". Many Catholic authors were exultant in their praise of

1778-562: A sword before which are the felled Protestants. Pope Gregory XIII 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 those commemorating the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). "The massacre was interpreted as an act of divine retribution ; Coligny

1905-708: A view to religious renewal and reform. Humanist scholars argued interpretation of the Bible required an ability to read the New Testament and Old Testaments in the original Greek and Hebrew , rather than relying on the 4th century Latin translation known as the " Vulgate Bible". In 1495, the Venetian Aldus Manutius began using the newly invented printing press to produce small, inexpensive, pocket editions of Greek, Latin, and vernacular literature, making knowledge in all disciplines available for

2032-412: Is generally seen as the spark which led to open hostilities between the two religions. Guyenne was the epicentre of the turn to religious violence in late 16th-century France. Many explanations have been proffered for the rise of violence. Traditional explanations focus on the influence of Jeanne d'Albret and Antoine of Navarre. Other explanations focus on the rise of seigneurialism in the 1550s and see

2159-540: 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. 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

2286-620: 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) 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

2413-416: The Battle of Jarnac (16 March 1569), the prince of Condé was killed, forcing Admiral de Coligny to take command of the Protestant forces, nominally on behalf of Condé's 16-year-old son, Henry , and the 15-year-old Henry of Navarre , who were presented by Jeanne d'Albret as the legitimate leaders of the Huguenot cause against royal authority. The Battle of La Roche-l'Abeille was a nominal victory for

2540-555: The 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. 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. In Bordeaux

2667-738: The Edict of Nantes (13 April 1598) and the Peace of Vervins (2 May 1598) concluded the wars, while the ensuing 1620s Huguenot rebellions lead others to believe the Peace of Alès in 1629 is the actual conclusion. However, the agreed upon beginning of the wars is the Massacre of Wassy in 1562, and the Edict of Nantes at least ended this series of conflicts. During this time, complex diplomatic negotiations and agreements of peace were followed by renewed conflict and power struggles. American military historians Kiser, Drass & Brustein (1994) maintained

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2794-416: The Edict of Saint-Maur revoked the freedom of Huguenots to worship. In November, William of Orange led an army into France to support his fellow Protestants, but, the army being poorly paid, he accepted the crown's offer of money and free passage to leave the country. The Huguenots gathered a formidable army under the command of Condé, aided by forces from south-east France, led by Paul de Mouvans, and

2921-645: The Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants ) during the French Wars of Religion . Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Queen Catherine de' Medici , the mother of King Charles IX , the massacre started a few days after the marriage on 18 August of the king's sister 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

3048-572: The 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. 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

3175-707: 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, as he had managed to do the previous October, before Catherine had got the decision reversed. After

3302-644: The Rhine added to these fears, and political discontent grew. After Protestant troops unsuccessfully tried to capture and take control of King Charles IX in the Surprise of Meaux , a number of cities, such as La Rochelle , declared themselves for the Huguenot cause. Protestants attacked and massacred Catholic laymen and clergy the following day in Nîmes , in what became known as the Michelade . This provoked

3429-461: 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". 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

3556-588: The 14th century in Italy and arrived in France in the early 16th, coinciding with the rise of Protestantism in France . The movement emphasised the importance of ad fontes , or study of original sources, and initially focused on the reconstruction of secular Greek and Latin texts. It later expanded into the reading, study and translation of works by the Church Fathers and the New Testament , with

3683-631: The 15-year-old Francis II lacked the ability to control. Francis, Duke of Guise , whose niece Mary, Queen of Scots, was married to the king, exploited the situation to establish dominance over their rivals, the House of Montmorency . Within days of the King's accession, the English ambassador reported "the house of Guise ruleth and doth all about the French King". On 10 March 1560, a group of disaffected nobles led by Jean du Barry, attempted to break

3810-541: The 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris , which resulted in Catholic mobs killing between 5,000 and 30,000 Protestants throughout France. The wars threatened the authority of the monarchy and the last Valois kings, Catherine's three sons Francis II , Charles IX , and Henry III . Their Bourbon successor Henry IV responded by creating a strong central state and extending toleration to Huguenots;

3937-668: The Circle of Meaux , aiming to improve the quality of preaching and religious life in general. They were joined by François Vatable , an expert in Hebrew , along with Guillaume Budé , a classicist and Royal librarian. Lefèvre's Fivefold Psalter and his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans emphasised the literal interpretation of the Bible and the centrality of Jesus Christ . Many of

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4064-512: The English in 1562 as part of the Treaty of Hampton Court between its Huguenot leaders and Elizabeth I of England . That July, the French expelled the English. On 17 August 1563, Charles IX was declared of age at the Parlement of Rouen ending the regency of Catherine de Medici. His mother continued to play a principal role in politics, and she joined her son on a Grand Tour of

4191-578: The French nobility also generally supported the status quo and existing policies. Despite his personal opposition, Francis tolerated Martin Luther ’s ideas when they entered France in the late 1520s, largely because the definition of Catholic orthodoxy was unclear, making it hard to determine precisely what was or was not heresy . He tried to steer a middle course in the developing religious schism, but in January ;1535, Catholic authorities made

4318-594: The Guisard compromise of scaling back persecution but not permitting toleration . For the moment she held to the Guisard line. Before his death, Francis II had called the first Estates General held since 1484, which in December 1560 assembled in Orléans to discuss topics which included taxation and religion. It made little progress on the latter, other than agreeing to pardon those convicted of religious offences in

4445-599: The Guises, the city militia and the common people. According to 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

4572-468: 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. 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

4699-513: The Huguenots, but they were unable to seize control of Poitiers and were soundly defeated at the Battle of Moncontour (30 October 1569). Coligny and his troops retreated to the south-west and regrouped with Gabriel, comte de Montgomery , and in spring of 1570, they pillaged Toulouse , cut a path through the south of France, and went up the Rhone valley up to La Charité-sur-Loire . The staggering royal debt and Charles IX's desire to seek

4826-406: 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, 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 . In

4953-521: The Protestant leaders. Holt speculated this entailed "between two and three dozen noblemen" who were still in Paris. 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

5080-530: The Protestants led by de Bèze and the Catholics by Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine , brother of the Duke of Guise. The two sides initially sought to accommodate Protestant forms of worship within the existing church but this proved impossible. By the time the Colloquy ended on 8 October, it was clear the divide between Catholic and Protestant theology was too wide to be bridged. With their options narrowing,

5207-522: The Protestants. Moderates, also known as Politiques , hoped to maintain order by centralising power and making concessions to Huguenots, rather than the policies of repression pursued by Henry II and his father Francis I . They were initially supported by Catherine de' Medici, whose January 1562 Edict of Saint-Germain was strongly opposed by the Guise faction and led to an outbreak of widespread fighting in March. She later hardened her stance and backed

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5334-654: The Seventh War of Religion to 1579–1580 rather than just 1580. Holt (2005) asserted a rather different periodisation from 1562 to 1629, writing of 'civil wars' rather than wars of religion, dating the Sixth War to March–September 1577, and dating the Eight War from June 1584 (death of Anjou) to April 1598 (Edict of Nantes); finally, although he didn't put a number on it, Holt regarded the 1610–1629 period as 'the last war of religion'. Renaissance humanism began during

5461-601: The Three Henrys (1585–1589) Coutras ; Vimory ; Auneau ; Day of the Barricades Succession of Henry IV of France (1589–1594) Arques ; Ivry ; Paris ; Château-Laudran ; Rouen ; Caudebec ; Craon ; 1st Luxembourg ; Blaye ; Morlaix ; Fort Crozon Franco-Spanish War (1595–1598) 2nd Luxembourg ; Fontaine-Française ; Ham ; Le Catelet ; Doullens ; Cambrai ; Calais ; La Fère ; Ardres ; Amiens The French Wars of Religion were

5588-529: The Virgin. That was interpreted by the Parisians as a sign of divine blessing and approval to these multiple murders, 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, but Coligny himself seemed unperturbed. According to

5715-659: The aftermath of the plot, the term " Huguenot " for France's Protestants came into widespread usage. Shortly afterwards, the first instances of Protestant iconoclasm or the destruction of images and statues in Catholic churches, occurred in Rouen and La Rochelle . This continued throughout 1561 in more than 20 cities and towns, sparking attacks on Protestants by Catholic mobs in Sens , Cahors , Carcassonne , Tours and elsewhere. When Francis II died on 5 December 1560, his mother Catherine de' Medici became regent for her second son,

5842-416: The bloodletting "was the worst of the century's religious massacres". Throughout Europe, it "printed on Protestant minds the indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion". The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day was the culmination of a series of events: The Peace of Saint-Germain put an end to three years of civil war between Catholics and Protestants. This peace, however,

5969-477: 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

6096-443: The city of Orléans to the siege, led Catherine de' Medici to mediate a truce, resulting in the Edict of Amboise on 19 March 1563. The Edict of Amboise was generally regarded as unsatisfactory by all concerned, and the Guise faction was particularly opposed to what they saw as dangerous concessions to heretics . The crown tried to re-unite the two factions in its efforts to re-capture Le Havre , which had been occupied by

6223-463: 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

6350-592: The clear-sighted Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, was then detained in Rome). 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,

6477-459: The conflict escalated, the Crown revoked the Edict under pressure from the Guise faction. The major engagements of the war occurred at Rouen , Dreux , and Orléans . At the Siege of Rouen (May–October 1562), the crown regained the city, but Antoine of Navarre died of his wounds. In the Battle of Dreux (December 1562), Condé was captured by the crown, and the constable Montmorency

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6604-455: 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". 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

6731-512: The contemporary Huguenot Maximilien de Béthune , who himself barely escaped death. Accurate figures for casualties have never been compiled, 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 and 3,000 in the provinces, the latter figure an estimate by Philip Benedict in 1978. Other estimates are about 10,000 in total, with about 3,000 in Paris and 7,000 in

6858-478: The conversion to Calvinism of large sections of the nobility. Historians estimate that by the outbreak of war in 1562, there were around two million French Calvinists, including more than half of the nobility, backed by 1,200–1,250 churches. This constituted a substantial threat to the monarchy. The death of Henry II in July 1559 created a political vacuum and an internal struggle for power between rival factions, which

6985-405: 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

7112-403: 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

7239-569: The door of his bedchamber. Having been severely criticised for his initial tolerance, he was now encouraged to punish those responsible. On 21 February 1535, a number of those implicated in the Affair were executed in front of Notre-Dame de Paris , an event attended by Francis and members of the Ottoman embassy to France . The fight against heresy intensified in the 1540s, forcing Protestants to worship in secret. In October 1545, Francis ordered

7366-506: The elites at court", listing a number of cases where Catholic courtiers intervened to save individual Protestants who were not in the leadership. 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. The two leading Huguenots, Henry of Navarre and his cousin

7493-399: The end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again during the reign of Louis XIV , culminating with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes . Soon afterward both sides prepared for a fourth civil war , which began before the end of the year. Estimates of the number that perished in the massacres have varied from 2,000 by a Roman Catholic apologist to 70,000 by

7620-415: The ensuing confusion. Other theories about who was ultimately responsible for the attack centre on three candidates: 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,

7747-419: The events of St. Bartholomew's Day". 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

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7874-407: The first civil war..." 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. It seems unlikely any such orders came from the king, although the Guise faction may have desired the massacres. Apparently genuine letters from

8001-464: The first time to a wide audience. Cheap pamphlets and broadsides allowed theological and religious ideas to be disseminated at an unprecedented pace. In 1519, John Froben published a collection of works by Martin Luther and noted in his correspondence that 600 copies were being shipped to France and Spain and sold in Paris . In 1521, a group of reformers including Jacques Lefèvre and Guillaume Briçonnet , recently appointed bishop of Meaux , formed

8128-424: The following divisions, periodisations and locations: Both Kohn (2013) and Clodfelter (2017) followed the same counting and periodisation and noted that " War of the Three Henrys " was another name for the Eighth War of Religion, with Kohn adding "Lovers' War" as another name for the Seventh War. In her Michel de Montaigne biography (2014), Elizabeth Guild concurred with this chronology as well, except for dating

8255-473: 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. 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

8382-435: The government attempted to quell escalating disorder in the provinces by passing the Edict of Saint-Germain , which allowed Protestants to worship in public outside towns and in private inside them. On 1 March, Guise family retainers attacked a Calvinist service in Champagne , leading to what became known as the massacre of Vassy . This seemed to confirm Huguenot fears that the Guisards had no intention of compromising and

8509-454: The growth of true faith. The Italian revival of classical learning appealed to Francis I (1494-1547), who set up royal professorships in Paris to better understand ancient literature. However, this did not extend to religion, especially after the 1516 Concordat of Bologna when Pope Leo X increased royal control of the Gallican church , allowing Francis to nominate French clergy and levy taxes on church property. Unlike Germany,

8636-431: 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. Diplomatic correspondence was readier than published polemics to recognise the unplanned and chaotic nature of the events, which also emerged from several accounts in memoirs published over

8763-461: The inflammatory sermon on 29 September of a Jesuit , Edmond Auger, encouraged the massacre that was to occur a few days later. 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,

8890-415: 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. Traditional histories have tended to focus more on

9017-414: The killer of Coligny, on the ground that he was a murderer. On hearing of the slaughter, Philip II of Spain supposedly "laughed, for almost 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. On the other hand, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II , King Charles's father-in-law,

9144-468: 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. Fears of Huguenot reprisals grew. Coligny's brother-in-law led a 4,000-strong army camped just outside Paris and, although there is no evidence it was planning to attack, Catholics in

9271-451: 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". Huguenot works understandably dwelt on

9398-451: The king promised to provide. Catherine, Guise, Anjou, and Alba were all variously suspected, though the Huguenot nobility directed their anger primarily at Guise, threatening to kill him in front of the king. St. Bartholomew%27s Day massacre The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre ( French : Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy ) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence directed against

9525-550: The king's sister. Albret was hesitant, worried it might lead to the abjuration of her son, and it took until March 1572 for the contract to be signed. Coligny , who had a price on his head during the third civil war, was restored to favour through the peace, and received lavishly at court in August 1571. He firmly believed that France should invade the Spanish Netherlands to unify the Catholics and Huguenots behind

9652-489: The king. Charles, however, was unwilling to provide more than covert support to this project, not wanting open war with Spain. The council was unanimous in rejecting Coligny's policy and he left court, not finding it welcoming. In August, the wedding was finally held, and all the most powerful Huguenot aristocracy had entered Paris for the occasion. A few days after the wedding, Coligny was shot on his way home from council. The outraged Huguenot nobility demanded justice which

9779-469: The kingdom between 1564 and 1566, designed to reinstate crown authority. During this time, Jeanne d'Albret met and held talks with Catherine at Mâcon and Nérac. Reports of iconoclasm in Flanders led Charles IX to lend support to the Catholics there; French Huguenots feared a Catholic re-mobilisation against them. Philip II of Spain 's reinforcement of the strategic corridor from Italy north along

9906-499: The kingdom's financial difficulties and the Huguenots' strong defensive position: they controlled the fortified towns of La Rochelle , La Charité-sur-Loire , Cognac , and Montauban . To cement the peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter Margaret to the Protestant Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV ), son of the Huguenot leader Queen Jeanne d'Albret . The royal marriage

10033-471: The latter policy would last until 1685, when Henry's grandson Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes . Along with "French Wars of Religion" and "Huguenot Wars", the wars have also been variously described as the "Eight Wars of Religion", or simply the "Wars of Religion" (only within France). The exact number of wars and their respective dates are subject to continued debate by historians: some assert that

10160-419: The marriage of a princess of France to a Protestant. The Parlement 's opposition and the court's absence from the wedding led to increased political tension. Compounding this bad feeling was the fact that the harvests had been poor and taxes had risen. 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

10287-472: 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,

10414-414: The massacre had been premeditated twice, finally concluding that it was not. 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. 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

10541-525: The massacres of August, the relatives of the Gastines family were among the first to be killed by the mob. 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 Cardinal de Bourbon (paternal uncle of

10668-542: The next four years. 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". In fact there

10795-486: The nine year old Charles IX . With the state financially exhausted by the Italian Wars, Catherine had to preserve the independence of the monarchy from a range of competing factions led by powerful nobles, each of whom controlled what were essentially private armies. To offset the Guise or "Guisard", she agreed a deal in which Antoine of Navarre renounced any claim to the regency in return for Condé's release and

10922-463: The official French line to applaud the massacre as precisely a brilliant stratagem, deliberately planned from various points beforehand. 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

11049-500: 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." A jubilee celebration, including a procession, was then held, while the killings continued in parts of the city. Although Charles had dispatched orders to his provincial governors on 24 August to prevent violence and maintain

11176-680: 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". 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 and captured the Catholic strongholds of Mons and Valenciennes (now in Belgium and France, respectively). Louis governed

11303-436: The position of Lieutenant-General of France. Catherine had several options for dealing with "heresy", including continuing Henry's II's failed policy of eradication, an approach backed by Catholic ultras such as François de Tournon , or converting the monarchy to Calvinism, as preferred by de Bèze. A middle path between these two extremes was allowing both religions to be openly practised in France at least temporarily, or

11430-401: The power of the Guise by abducting the young king. Their plans were discovered before being carried out and hundreds of suspected plotters executed, including du Barry. The Guise suspected Condé of involvement in the plot, and he was arrested and sentenced to death before being freed in the political chaos that followed the sudden death of Francis II, adding to the tensions of the period. In

11557-540: The prior year. Since this was clearly unacceptable to Condé and his followers, Catherine bypassed the Estates and enacted conciliatory measures such as the Edict of 19 April 1561 and the Edict of July . This recognised Catholicism as the state religion but confirmed previous measures reducing penalties for "heresy". The Estates then approved the Colloquy of Poissy , which began its session on 8 September 1561, with

11684-543: The property of 'heretics' seizable by the crown. From his base in Geneva, Calvin provided leadership and organisational structures for the Reformed Church of France . Calvinism proved attractive to people from across the social hierarchy and occupational divides and was highly regionalised, with no coherent pattern of geographical spread. Despite persecution, their numbers and power increased markedly, driven by

11811-514: The provinces. At the higher end are total figures of up to 20,000, or 30,000 in total, from "a contemporary, non-partisan guesstimate" quoted by the historians Felipe Fernández-Armesto and D. Wilson. 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. Among

11938-646: The punishment of Waldensians based in the south-eastern village of Mérindol . A long-standing Proto-Protestantism tradition dating back to the 13th century, the Waldensians had recently affiliated with the Reformed church and became increasingly militant in their activities. In what became known as the Massacre of Mérindol , Provençal troops killed numerous residents and destroyed another 22 to 28 nearby villages, while hundreds of men were forced to become Galley slaves . Francis I died on 31 March 1547 and

12065-624: The religious debate until the Affair of the Placards in October 1534, when Protestant radicals put up posters in Paris and other provincial towns that rejected the Catholic doctrine of the " Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist ". This allowed Protestantism to be clearly defined as heresy, while Francis was furious at the breach of security which had allowed one of the posters to be placed on

12192-530: 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". Despite the large numbers of pamphlets and broadsheets in circulation, literacy rates were still poor. Thus, some modern historians have stressed

12319-567: 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,

12446-420: 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

12573-421: The second war and its main military engagement, the Battle of Saint-Denis , where the crown's commander-in-chief and lieutenant general, the 74-year-old Anne de Montmorency, died. The war was brief, ending in another truce, the Peace of Longjumeau (March 1568), which was a reiteration of the Peace of Amboise of 1563 and once again granted significant religious freedoms and privileges to Protestants. News of

12700-592: 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. The Politiques , 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

12827-432: 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 the end justified the means ". The French 18th-century historian Louis-Pierre Anquetil , in his Esprit de la Ligue of 1767,

12954-536: The tenets behind Lutheranism first appeared in Luther's lectures, which in turn contained many of the ideas expressed in the works of Lefèvre. Other members of the Circle included Marguerite de Navarre , sister of Francis I and mother of Jeanne d'Albret , as well as Guillaume Farel , who was exiled to Geneva in 1530 due to his reformist views and persuaded John Calvin to join him there. Both men were banished from Geneva in 1538 for opposing what they viewed as government interference with religious affairs; although

13081-406: The terms of the 1570 edict, from August to October, similar massacres of Huguenots took place in a total of twelve other cities: Toulouse , Bordeaux , Lyon , Bourges , Rouen , Orléans , Meaux , Angers , La Charité , Saumur , Gaillac and Troyes . 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

13208-670: The truce reached Toulouse in April, but such was the antagonism between the two sides that 6,000 Catholics continued their siege of Puylaurens , a notorious Protestant stronghold in the Lauragais , for another week. In reaction to the Peace, Catholic confraternities and leagues sprang up across the country in defiance of the law throughout the summer of 1568. Huguenot leaders such as Condé and Coligny fled court in fear for their lives, many of their followers were murdered, and in September,

13335-557: The turn to violence as a response of the peasant class. The murder of the baron of Château de Fumel  [ fr ] by a Protestant mob in 1561 is often cited as an example. Recent analyses, on the other hand, have turned the focus on religious explanations. Denis Crouzet fingers the fiery eschatological preaching of the Franciscan Thomas Illyricus , who toured the region in the 1510s and 1520s. Stuart Carroll, however, argues for politicization: "the violence

13462-634: The two fell out over the nature of the Eucharist , Calvin's return to Geneva in 1541 allowed him to forge the doctrine of Calvinism . A key driver behind the Reform movement was corruption among the clergy which Luther and others attacked and sought to change. Such criticisms were not new but the printing press allowed them to be widely shared, such as the Heptameron by Marguerite, a collection of stories about clerical immorality. Another complaint

13589-531: The wedding of Catholic Marguerite de Valois and Huguenot Henry de Navarre on 18 August 1572, 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 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 ( c.  1505 –1583), escaped in

13716-520: 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 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,

13843-582: 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. It was in this context that the massacre came to be seen as a product of 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

13970-486: 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 , a book of 1561, in which he had argued that when kings disobey God, they "automatically abdicate their worldly power" –

14097-496: 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. By this period the Massacre was being widely used by Voltaire (in his Henriade ) and other Enlightenment writers in polemics against organised religion in general. Lord Acton changed his mind on whether

14224-467: Was an open-air cross erected on the site of the house of 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. In

14351-400: Was apparently dispatched to Pope Gregory XIII , though it got no further than Lyon, and the pope sent the king a Golden Rose . 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

14478-587: Was arranged for 18 August 1572. It was not accepted by traditionalist Catholics or by the Pope . Both the Pope and King Philip II of Spain strongly condemned Catherine's Huguenot policy as well. 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

14605-464: Was captured by those opposing the crown. In February 1563, at the Siege of Orléans, Francis, Duke of Guise , was shot and killed by the Huguenot Jean de Poltrot de Méré . As he was killed outside of direct combat, the Guise considered this an assassination on the orders of the duke's enemy, Admiral Coligny . The popular unrest caused by the assassination, coupled with the resistance by

14732-487: 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." 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

14859-525: Was directly caused by politicized factions and was not the result of a spontaneous intercommunal eruption." Although the Huguenots had begun mobilising for war before the Vassy massacre , many claimed that the massacre confirmed claims that they could not rely on the Edict of Saint Germain . In response, a group of nobles led by Condé proclaimed their intention of "liberating" the king from "evil" councillors and seized Orléans on 2 April 1562. This example

14986-836: Was done by François Mansart . Others also attribute it to his nephew, Jules Hardouin-Mansart , who was known to work under the guidance of his uncle. The cathedral has a single nave, the chapels being inserted between the buttresses. This article on a Roman Catholic cathedral in France is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . French Wars of Religion Second; 1567–1568 Saint-Denis ; Chartres Third; 1568–1570 Jarnac ; La Roche-l'Abeille ; Poitiers ; Orthez ; Moncontour ; Saint-Jean d'Angély ; Arney-le-Duc Fourth; 1572–1573 Mons ; Sommières ; Sancerre ; La Rochelle Fifth; 1574–1576 Dormans Sixth; 1577 La Charité-sur-Loire ; Issoire ; Brouage Seventh; 1580 La Fère War of

15113-594: Was likely influenced in the matter by Sir Francis Walsingham . The Catholics were commanded by the Duke d'Anjou  – later King Henry III – and assisted by troops from Spain, the Papal States , and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany . The Protestant army laid siege to several cities in the Poitou and Saintonge regions (to protect La Rochelle ), and then Angoulême and Cognac . At

15240-487: Was precarious, since the more intransigent Catholics refused to accept it. The strongly Catholic Guise family was out of favour at the French court; the Huguenot leader, Admiral 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 , were practical in their support of peace and Coligny, as they were conscious of

15367-474: Was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes , which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to disapprove of Protestants and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s. Tensions between the two religions had been building since the 1530s, exacerbating existing regional divisions. The death of Henry II of France in July 1559 initiated

15494-766: Was quickly followed by Protestant groups around France, who seized and garrisoned Angers , Blois and Tours along the Loire and assaulted Valence in the Rhône River . After capturing Lyon on 30 April, the attackers first sacked, then demolished all Catholic institutions in the city. Hoping to turn Toulouse over to Condé, local Huguenots seized the Hôtel de ville but met resistance from angry Catholic mobs which resulted in street battles and over 3,000 deaths, mostly Huguenots. On 12 April 1562, there were massacres of Huguenots at Sens, as well as at Tours in July. As

15621-464: Was sickened, describing the massacre as a "shameful bloodbath". 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". Protestant countries were horrified at the events, and only the concentrated efforts of Catherine's ambassadors, including

15748-400: Was succeeded by his son Henry II , who continued the religious repression pursued by his father in the last years of his reign. His policies were even more severe since he sincerely believed all Protestants were heretics; on 27 June 1551, the Edict of Châteaubriant sharply curtailed their right to worship. Prohibitions were placed upon the distribution of 'heretical' literature, with

15875-461: Was the reduction of Salvation to a business scheme based on the sale of Indulgences , which added to general unrest and increased the popularity of works such as Farel's translation of the Lord's Prayer, The True and Perfect Prayer . This focused on Sola fide , or the idea salvation was a free gift from God, emphasised the importance of understanding in prayer and criticised the clergy for hampering

16002-407: Was therefore his own, and not Catherine de' Medici's. 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

16129-539: Was widespread within the French commercial class, the rapid growth of Calvinism was driven by the nobility. It is believed to have started when Condé passed through Geneva while returning home from a military campaign and heard a Calvinist sermon. Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, converted to Calvinism in 1560, possibly due to the influence of Theodore de Beze . Along with Condé and her husband Antoine of Navarre , she and their son Henry of Navarre became Huguenot leaders. The crown continued efforts to remain neutral in

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