WHY HATE PROTESTANTS?

THE SAINT BARTHOLEMEW'S DAY MASSACRE
SETS OFF A "SEASON" *
 THAT SPREADS TO MOST FRENCH TOWNS

* Jules Michelet

It starts in Paris on the night of August 23, 1572 
and lasts three months 

• Queen Catherine de Medici triggers it
by trying to play off noble clans

 The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre by François Dubois, 1572, Lausanne Museum

Catherine de Medici is the figure in black on the upper left.

Sixteenth-century engraving

She tries to have the Protestant leader shot so as to blame the noble Catholic clan and trigger Protestant revenge, but he is only wounded.

Fearing that revenge, the Catholic nobles attack the house where the wounded man is recovering, kill him and throw his body out of the window.

Town authorities are supposed have local militia keep order. When tolling church bells tell them that their role has begun, those militia join the underclass in killing the Protestant population.

-- The massacre of the Saint-Barthélemy by Philippe Erlanger, 1960, the classic modern account (in French)

.
• Both sides commit atrocities,
 historians say

 ° That statement is true for the countryside
and for towns when soldiers enter them, 
because the armies attract the same kind of men
    

"Soldiers' feast" (detail), tapestry, Renaissance museum, museum publication

Soldiers are mercenaries or pillagers, men cut off from the land and its rules. Nobles are so used to violence that they wear coats of mail under their doublets, even at the Louvre. 

-- Louvre: letter of Henri IV, 1572

° But when massacres are due to city populations
victims are mainly Protestant. 
Blood lust, theft and score-settling strike Catholics too,
but less often and later.

•  Why should "fanatics" suddenly

attack peaceful craftspeople and shopkeepers?

° Like all minorities they stick together
(take the "old school tie")
and insist on being outsiders,
 deliberately and by a faith that elminates the saints

Saints are so much part of daily life that for many Catholics, their saint's day is more important than their birthday. Days of the year ("Saint Valentine's Day") and streets ("rue Saint-Denis," X) are named after them. 

Protestants respect the saints, but pay them no further due.

° Protestant craftsmen

often work outside the guilds, 

charging lower prices

--  Michelet.

Historians have not noticed that statement,
to my knowledge.

Charité de Giverville (Normandy), 1865, photographer not named

Folk art shows the closeness of guild leaders and church: the massacres could not have reached such dimensions without those leaders' consent.

° Suppressing the Church

means supressing alms, hospitals and schools:

In England,

destroying the monasteries and convents
sends monks, nuns and lepers into the streets to beg

Internet

Sixteenth-century woodcut

Chasing a leper in London

Abolishing religious holidays
adds 50 more workdays each year:
Imagine apprentices' and employees' reactions 
when "heretic" patrons impose that change

-- Protestant stores and workshops stay open even on Christmas:
History of Protestants from the Reform to the Revolution (in French),

dir. Philippe Wolff, 2001, without comment.

In short,
Protestants humiliate the vulnerable
 by claiming themselves superior 
and defy practices that protect them.

Sixteenth-century engraving (detail), private collection

*     *     *

Next,

In Spain, no Protestants, no civil war, no capitalists