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 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.

-- Le massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy by Philippe Erlanger, 1960

.

• Both sides commit atrocities. That is true in the countryside, 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. 

• But urban victims are mainly Protestant. Blood lust, theft and score-settling strike Catholics too, but less often and later.

Why? 

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Next,

Catholic townspeople intertwine