St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

So, Dan, how do you characterize the French Reformation? Of course, we know that Calvin had dealings with the Huguenots there in France, the Protestants who were persecuted, but there were things that happened after, and they weren't all good.

We think about the St. Barth St. Bartholomew's Day, let me say that again, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and things that came after.

So I think that's an underappreciated, sort of unknown era.

And I thought maybe there are some parallels with our own day, and we should maybe talk about those.

Call or text now.

So, was the French Reformed Church—I mean, clearly it's a suffering church, and arguably it's the most suffering church in all, really, of the Protestant Reformation.

We don't really know how many people were killed in the spasm of violence associated with the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

But so you see, so the earlier numbers are much, much larger than the numbers that scholars discuss now.

At the time of the Reformation, there was a movement of Protestantism in France, which was met with very strong opposition from the Catholic Church, leading to civil war and political upheaval.

In 1572, there was the famous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris, in which thousands of Protestant Christians were killed following the edict by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1685, there was an edict of Fontainebleau which declared Protestantism illegal, destroyed churches, and forced conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Thousands of French Protestants, the Huguenots, fled France for England, set up a colony here in London, also the Netherlands, USA, Switzerland, leaving small, isolated communities in conditions of the underground church.

We're back talking about the French Wars of Religion.

This is episode six, and we talked about the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre last time, and it was pretty, pretty grim and pretty dramatic, and obviously that had some long-lasting effects.

And much as if France had just conducted a great big bloody duel at the country level, the period after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre was a time of total dismemberment of the French body politic, if we continue with that metaphor.

The last time out, we left off with Charles IX dying less than two years after accidentally unleashing a wave of anti-Huguenot pogroms and taking blame to save what little face the Valois monarchy had left.

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre precipitated another short civil war, which Charles broke off because his mother, Catherine Tobie de Medici, wanted to ensure that his younger brother, Henri, Duke d'Anjou, was elected as King of Poland.

Within a year of his departure for Krakow, Henri was back as Henri III of France.

And I have an anecdote about Henri III in Poland, which is that he got to Poland and he was like, "Wait, they clean lavatories and you have forks to eat with? What is this, the fucking future?"

It never happened again either.

Unfortunately, the beginning of their marriage would be less than auspicious.

In Paris on August 24th 1572, a few days after their wedding occurred, anti-Protestant violence broke out in what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which very longtime listeners of this show might remember from the, ahem, 11th episode, The Wedding Ended in Blood.

Facing the threat of injury or death, Henry of Navarre agreed to convert to Catholicism.

He spent the next few years at the royal court before he managed to finally leave in 1576.

She did the right thing, probably.

and one goes on if her own danger could not tempt elizabeth to interfere in continental affairs it is not likely that anything else would make her take up the sword not even the fearful massacre of saint bartholomew provoked her to take up arms against the catholics by the way i've got uh on the episode epox episode all about catherine de medici i talk all about the saint bartholomew's day massacre in france and so if you're interested you can go back and listen to that one if you like But so not even that prompted Elizabeth to take up arms, which was Catholics murdering Protestants in France.

Well, Omar describes St. Bartholomew, he said, which was, "...on that one night, the weak King of France, egged on by his wicked mother and brother, perhaps, ordered the slaughter of 8,000 Protestants who had come up to Paris, relying on his goodwill and promised patronage." And that took place in 1572.

Elizabeth stormed at the treacherous French court, but made no attempt to aid the surviving Huguenots in their gallant struggle against their persecutors.

And that was not any different with the Huguenots.

Um, There was an event called the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572.

It was a large execution and massacre of these Protestants.

So significant was this that it both caused death but also led to people leaving the country so that by 1600, the population actually declined from 10% of the French population to only 7% to 8%

He stayed in France amongst the Huguenots till 1575 or 1576, sharing probably in the desultory fighting that went on from time to time.

Peace between the Huguenots and Catholics never lasted for long, and the terrible massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24th, 1572, made a lasting peace more impossible than ever.

After he came back from France, Raleigh lived for a while in London.

He made friends with many of the gay noblemen who crowded to Elizabeth's court, but he does not seem at this time to have frequented the court or drawn upon himself the notice of the queen.

Mm.

Who am I? Clue number one, I witnessed the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris in 1572.

As did a fair few people.

Well, I'm sure they did, but-

Was in France?

Mm.

He was English ambassador to France from 1570 to 1573 and was in Paris during the Saint Bartholomew, Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Right.