The Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the Problem of Spain

Abstract

The meaning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew has long exercised historians and bedeviled the history of sixteenth-century France. Why should it have been more significant than any other massacre, and what was it all about? It is important to understand, in the first place, that the “Massacre” comprised not one event, but three. The first of these was the abortive attack, in the streets of Paris, upon the admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny, seigneur de Chatillon, on Friday morning 22 August 1572. The second was the further assault during the night of Saturday 23–24 August upon Coligny and his principal adherents — which was followed or accompanied by the massacre in the popular sense. This last was the only respect in which it might be called a religious outrage of Catholics against Protestants. It was not, therefore, primarily a religious incident, although Paris had long been fiercely Catholic and can hardly have forgotten the Protestants’ siege of 1567.