Social+Factors

The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacres
   Count Châtillon was leader of the French Protestants, or Huguenots, during the 16th-century wars of religion in France. Catherine de Médicis, mother of Charles IX, king of France, became alarmed by Count Châtillon’s growing influence and ordered his assassination in 1572. The plot failed, however. Alarmed by rumors of a plot against him, Charles ordered the murder of the Huguenot leaders, including Count Châtillon. The slayings became known as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

 The strife continued throughout the reign of [|Henry III]. In 1584 the childless king designated his Protestant brother-in-law Henry, the king of Navarre ( //see // [|Henry IV]), as his successor. This decision prompted a popular Catholic revolt in 1588 led by [|Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre] conspirator [|Henri I de Lorraine, 3rd Duc de Guise]. Guise secured control of the city, but in the subsequent upheaval both Guise and the king were assassinated. Upon the king’s death in 1589, Henry of Navarre nominally succeeded to the French throne. However, the largely Catholic population of Paris resisted the idea of a Protestant king. In order to appease the city, he converted to Catholicism in 1593 with the famous words “Paris vaut bien une messe” (“Paris is well worth a mass”). In 1594, after a five-year siege, he captured Paris and the throne. He also reached out to the Protestant population, issuing the 1598 [|Edict of Nantes], which gave partial religious freedom to the Huguenots.  Perhaps the most [|vivid image] of the French religious wars is Francois Dubois' eyewitness painting of the [|St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre] (1572). (1) This painting has all the qualities that appeal to an audience. It shows clerics, women, and even children murdered, their bodies [|strewn] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: normal; font-size: 13px; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: black; border-right-color: black; border-bottom-color: black; border-left-color: black; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; visibility: hidden; text-transform: none; width: 300px; text-align: left; position: absolute; background-color: rgb(253, 245, 230); text-decoration: none; margin-left: 6px;">

across Paris in pools of blood. Dubois' painting illustrates not only the drama of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (August 24, 1572), it also provides a window into how contemporaries viewed the religious strife at the end of the sixteenth century. They saw bodies strewn everywhere. (2) Both Protestant and Catholic thinkers visualized the crisis as an analogue of the human body. In perhaps the oldest political metaphor, at least as early as Plato's Republic, the state was perceived in the terms of a corpus mysticum with different parts. As Paul Archambault illustrates in his classic 1967 article, from the ancient world to the Renaissance, philosophers imagined states and countries in terms of a [|corporeal] <span class="hint" style="border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: black; border-right-color: black; border-bottom-color: black; border-left-color: black; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 1em; line-height: normal; visibility: hidden; text-transform: none; width: 300px; text-align: left; position: absolute; background-color: rgb(253, 245, 230); text-decoration: none; margin-left: 6px;">  analogy. (3) In the bloody fray of the sixteenth-century religious wars, this ancient metaphor had particular resonance, for the French <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">[|body politic] <span class="hint" style="border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: black; border-right-color: black; border-bottom-color: black; border-left-color: black; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 1em; line-height: normal; visibility: hidden; text-transform: none; width: 300px; text-align: left; position: absolute; background-color: rgb(253, 245, 230); text-decoration: none; margin-left: 6px;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: normal; font-size: 13px;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">was seen as sick and wounded (RSA 2002, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-decoration: none;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-decoration: none;">). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">