Conclusion: St. Bartholomew and Historical Perspective

Abstract

At a certain level the Massacre of St. Bartholomew remains unique, sui generis. It haunts historical consciousness as the epitome of the cold viciousness of religious excess, the mindless destroyer of Ramus as well as Coligny. But at another level it blends into those agonizingly slow and deliberate processes that are the historian’s main concern. The particular process — the establishment of absolutism in France, the Counter Reformation, the change in the forms of violence, the development of Paris — may vary, but each offers the historian the means to achieve the perspective that is his stock in trade, the long view that alone can lessen the horror of St. Bartholomew.