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A lot of people don’t understand just how much blood has been spilled over how to be Christian. Catholics and Protestants have killed each other by the literal millions because they didn’t like the way the other one prayed to Jesus. One such pivotal event in the history of “My god is better than your god” was the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Yes, I know it’s the same god. Shut up.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 23, 1572--
Huguenots were a French type of Protestant, based on the teachings of John Calvin. Calvinism is the death of fun and had a powerful influence on the development of American evangelicals being such uptight motherfuckers. Thanks, dick.
After Martin Luther nailed his 95 reasons the Catholic Church can fuck all the way off to that door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517, Protestantism took off like a mofo and Catholics didn’t like that one bit. One of the outcomes of its spread were the French Wars of Religion. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre took place after a wedding that was some serious Romeo and Juliet type shit.
In an effort to maintain peace with the politically powerful Huguenots, Catholic queen mother Catherine de’ Medici got her daughter to marry Huguenot (Protestant) Henry of Navarre. The pope said fuck this marriage. So there was this big royal wedding in 1572 in Paris and all these aristocratic Huguenots came into town for it. And Parisians hated the shit out of Huguenots.
Here is where it gets a bit complicated. There was a highly respected admiral and Huguenot leader who was pals with the Catholic king. The king’s mom (Catherine) worried over that and she (maybe) ordered the admiral’s assassination right after the wedding. He was badly wounded but survived. The Huguenot aristocrats were all “Attempted murder most foul!” and threatened reprisals and Catherine said ah fuck I guess I’m all in and convinced her son they needed to strike first. And that’s what they did on August 23, 1572.
It was a fucking murderfest. They finished off the admiral and threw him out a window. Then they started in on all the Huguenot leaders, including the newlywed Henry of Navarre, but Henry’s life was spared because he said hey don’t kill me I’ll become a Catholic I promise. But after he escaped Paris he said haha fuck you I was kidding. Anyway, the common Parisians said oh we’re killing Huguenots now? Fuckin’ A. Count me in. And the massacre turned into a wholesale slaughter that spread throughout the city and beyond, lasting for weeks and resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
With many of the Huguenot leaders dead and the lower classes converting to Catholicism to prevent being murdered, that was pretty much it for them being a political force in France.
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