Forging memory: the aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Lyon

Abstract

Abstract In the aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacres, Catholics and Protestants often had to explain or justify the extreme violence that marked this bloody episode. A process of memory construction therefore took place in the days and weeks immediately following the killings. Taking the city of Lyon as a case study, this article analyses how Catholics and Protestants constructed a partisan memory of the massacres and studies the role of these memories in subsequent conflicts and in the interpretation of the massacres, both during and after the Wars of Religion. The article shows that whereas Protestants relied on the model of the martyrology to formulate a theological response to the violence, Lyon’s Catholic elites preferred to insist on the legality of their actions and their respect of the royal will. This dual memory was not only built up gradually, it was also rewritten and reconstructed over the years and in different contexts.