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t68ware
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Is it true that Catholics committed a brutal massacre of Protestants on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 and again in 1641, where tens of thousands of Protestants were killed, and the Vatican did nothing to stop it?
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Leonius
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What happened on 1572 was not as simple as that, the Huguenots(Protestants) were camped with an army outside Paris and were plotting to take over the Louvre Palace and kill the French government including the king, they were planning a military coup, a revolution.
AS a result of this the French King armed the citizens of Paris to repulse this threat of the Huguenots to take Paris by force.
But then the king lost control of the people and they in their fear of the Huguenots began to attack them. You have to remember shortly before this the Huguenots had just recently been trying to destroy Catholicism in France by killing Catholics in the War of Religion.
The attack was not a pre meditated massacre it was a response by Parisians to the fear caused by the very real plot of the Huguenots to overthrow the government and force protestantism upon the French people just as protestant leaders did in several other countries such as England for example.
As such it saved France from been taken over by the protestants who were at this time making war with Catholics throughout Europe. And the number killed was less than 10,000.
Protestants complain about it because they lost, they never complain about the thousands upon thousands of Catholics massacred by men like Cromwell though, to them Cromwell is a hero.
As for 1641 you will have to be more specific about the event you are referring to.
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GeorgeSword
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The Huguenots were quite radical… they also burned down alot of churches, and from what I’ve read actually dug up saints and burned their corpses 
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Leonius
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And killed priests and wore their ears as necklaces etc,The Huguenots were quite radical… they also burned down alot of churches, and from what I’ve read actually dug up saints and burned their corpses
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Hesychios
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I have a hard time believing this…
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Hesychios
Guest
It seems that these Huguenots were at Paris to attend the wedding of Henry of Navarre to the daughter of the king.
Whether they were plotting a coup I cannot venture to guess, so you could be right, but it does not look much like a military plan to attack the city.
It is a fact that Admiral de Coligny was murdered two days before the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre. I can imagine a lot of people were irate over that.
In point of fact (whether events happened as described or not), the Vatican would have been powerless to stop anything in France, the bishops of Rome did not have the kind of authority that they claim for themselves today, especially in France. The church was an instrument of the French Monarchy.
Vatican control was not to come to France until two things happened:
1] After the French Revolution (in which the French people tore the Catholic church into shreds) closed parishes and murdered priests and bishops, effectively breaking the church as an institution. And…
2] …later, the revolution had spent it’s course and Napoleon came to absolute power in France as a tyrant, he then concluded a Concordat with the Pope (whom he also sought to control). This resulted in a reorganization of the Catholic church ie reducing the number of dioceses, nationalizing much church property and assigning the Pope the task to appoint French bishops for the first time in history.
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t68ware
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" A similar massacre occurred in Ireland in 1641, The conspirators picked October 23, the feast of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order." This is the event I was refering to in 1641, where I read that 40,000 Protestants were killed, including women and children.
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LilyM
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The Vatican ‘did nothing’ because it COULD do nothing. The massacre lasted three days. By the time it was over news wouldn’t even have reached the Holy Father or the Vatican, let alone any help being able to be sent back to France or anything.
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thiscatholickid
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The Vatican did do something. It struck a medal commemorating the death of those Protestants.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gregory_XIII_medal.jpg
Which I’m not proud or ashamed of. Just indifferent.
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LilyM
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I see a medal - acknowledging the event, yes. Applauding it? Approving it? Who knows. The very use of the word ‘slaughtered’ as opposed to a positive term such as, I don’t know, ‘vanquished’ or ‘conquered’ or something, seems to imply a criticism.
Our Australian government probably struck medals commemorating those who died in Gallipoli in WWI, and the American government has built memorials to those who died at Pearl Harbour. But in neither case does this mean that the event was being approved of. On the contrary they’ve always been acknowledged as the horrible disasters they were.
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thiscatholickid
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The implication of the medal is up to interpertation. But the imagery is an angel holding a cross and sword over dead Protestants.
The Pope also sent a Golden Rose (at the time the highest honor a Pope can bestow to a layman) to the French King who was responsible.
In addition, the Pope ordered frescoes to be done commemorating the death of the Huguenot leader Coligny. And had a Te Deum sung for several years after in thanksgiving for the event.
Let me make my stance of ‘indifference’ more clear. Its not that I dont care that Protestants were killed and the Church approved. It’s that I understand why in that period of history Catholics would approve of such an event.
As someone else mentioned, Catholics were also persecuted by Protestants.
This massacre is also nothing compared to the Sack of Rome.
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LilyM
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Well, some smart Pope also gave Henry VIII the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’ and never took it back - the Popes weren’t all models of wonderfulness, sadly.
While I agree that we can’t really judge people of other times and places (much more violent ones) by today’s standards, it’s far from being adequate as an excuse or explanation for some atrocities.
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thiscatholickid
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Agreed.Well, some smart Pope also gave Henry VIII the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’ and never took it back - the Popes weren’t all models of wonderfulness, sadly.
While I agree that we can’t really judge people of other times and places (much more violent ones) by today’s standards, it’s far from being adequate as an excuse or explanation for some atrocities.
I never assumed you thought any different.
Its just that the comment about “The Vatican didn’t do anything because it couldn’t do anything” was a bit too blissfully ignorant.
And I don’t mean that in an insulting way at all.
I assume you said that out of defense for our Church, which is admirable.
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LilyM
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Back up - the quesion was actually ‘why did the Vatican do nothing* to stop it* (the massacre)’
In terms of being able to stop the massacre, I totally stand by what I said.
It’s not a matter of blissful ignorance - no-one knew that it was going to happen apart from French Catholic leaders.I’ve studied that period of French history. That’s fact.
Certainly the Vatican couldn’t have stopped it, not knowing beforehand that it was going to happen.
I was perfectly correct in stating that not knowing was a reason why they did nothing to stop it. They literally couldn’t have done anything to stop it.
Given the attitude afterwards they probably wouldn’t have stopped it even if they could have, but that isn’t relevant to the fact that they lacked the foreknowledge and hence the ability to do anything.
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thiscatholickid
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Fair enough.
Vatican couldn’t stop it because there’s nothing it could have done. However, it’s unlikely they wouldve tried to intervene seeing that the reaction afterwards was mainly positive.
That works.
Vatican couldn’t stop it because there’s nothing it could have done. However, it’s unlikely they wouldve tried to intervene seeing that the reaction afterwards was mainly positive.
That works.
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Hesychios
Guest
This being long before the age of the telegraph, I think it is fair to say that *had the Pope any ability to stop it *he still would not have been able to react in a timely fashion. He would not have even heard of it before it was all over.
The fact is that the massacre was a government instigated atrocity. Yes, the government was run by supposedly devout Catholics but they took their marching orders from Versailles, not the Vatican hill.
I was not going to bring up the medal before, but since it is already out there…
The Pope’s reaction to this event is far different than the reaction to the Crusader sack of Zara in 1202AD (370 years earlier). At that time the then reigning Pope excommunicated the perpetrators (although they seem to have been pardoned later). At the very least the Pope could have registered a formal protest at what happened on St. Bartholomew’s day in France.
The commissioning of the medal was in very poor taste. Attempting to make it look like an innocent gesture is like attempting to put lipstick on a pig.
The fact is that the massacre was a government instigated atrocity. Yes, the government was run by supposedly devout Catholics but they took their marching orders from Versailles, not the Vatican hill.
I was not going to bring up the medal before, but since it is already out there…
The Pope’s reaction to this event is far different than the reaction to the Crusader sack of Zara in 1202AD (370 years earlier). At that time the then reigning Pope excommunicated the perpetrators (although they seem to have been pardoned later). At the very least the Pope could have registered a formal protest at what happened on St. Bartholomew’s day in France.
The commissioning of the medal was in very poor taste. Attempting to make it look like an innocent gesture is like attempting to put lipstick on a pig.
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twf
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Hesychios: The Popes didn’t claim supreme authority over the Church in the 16th century? Where did you get that bit of fiction? Sure, they didn’t exercise practical control over the French Church, but that has nothing to do with their claims to universal authority! As for appointing bishops, this is a matter of canonical discipline, not doctrine, and subject to change; no Catholic believes that the Pope must, by divine institution, appoint all bishops of the Latin Church…
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Leonius
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Well it is in the historical records, the mans name was Briquemaut and he was a Captain of the Huguenot forces during the Wars of Religion
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Leonius
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1641 was the year of the Irish uprising against the English but there is no evidence that a masacre which you speak of took place.
The great historian Antonia Fraser among others tells us “There is no actual evidence that this deliberate massacre, as such took place.”
Some people were killed, (around 4000 according to historians today) as is inevitable in a revolt. But even when Cromwell’s courts began to hand down inditements for this “massacre” only 16 referred to killings.
As such this “massacre” is a historical myth concocted by the puritans.
I suggest you start reading more trustworthy books, As a starting point I recommend to you the A History of Christendom series of books by Warren H. Carroll, and once you have done them start working through the bibliography at the back of them.
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Hesychios
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So one fanatic does this, and you choose to attribute it to an entire group?
" …the number killed was less than 10,000."
" Some people were killed, (around 4000… )"
One has to wonder how many mutilations took place with these other events, but alas we shall never know.
It should also be noted that many Catholics today have Huguenot ancestry, and subsequently can see how their own ancestors, or correlated ancestry, could have died at the hands of Catholics.
And many Protestants today have ancestry which were Catholics at the time, whom could have been killed or maimed by other Protestants.
This is just a rhetorical game.
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