I decided to write about the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 because I feel that it is a very influential part of history. I really support the Huguenot's plight to open peoples' minds to other sects of Christianity. I feel like the Huguenot's move away from the Church was an important precursor to the Enlightenment. It was the first time that people had a choice to think for themselves in France. The French could decide whether they wanted to stay with the strict and structured Catholic way of Christianity, or they could open their minds and see Christianity in a different freer light. When I say they had a choice to think for themselves, it's not as easy as it would seem. I can only imagine how hard it would be to break away from the norm, especially in a time when there was nothing but the Church and that's all that people knew. And once a person decided to leave the Church there were certainly repercussions that would follow. The Huguenot's, as a whole, would end up being punished for trying to expose people to a new way of seeing Christianity.
Queen Catherine de Medici, a devout Catholic, didn't like the idea of people moving away from the Church. I think she was worried that if people moved away from the Church that the Protestants would encourage people to think for themselves and realize how corrupt the Church, and present day France, actually was. In the long run people did end up realizing these things, but as we now know, it would take some time for people to start thinking for themselves. Catherine felt so threatened by the Huguenot's that she decided to take down their leader, Admiral de Coligny. She thought that this alone would be enough to shake the Protestant kingdom enough to discourage them from going to war with Spain. When her plan to assassinate Coligny didn't go as planned the first time around, she and the king took greater action. The plane was to murder all of the leaders of the Huguenot's but it turned into a full blown massacre.
As much as I hate to admit it, I thought that Queen Catherine was very innovative and smart about her plans to kill the Huguenot population. She helped plan the wedding of a very important Huguenot couple, so she knew that all of the important and powerful Huguenot leaders would be in France at the time that the murder was to take place. I don't think she ever intended for the murder to turn into a massacre of that calamity, but I also don't think she was upset about how it turned out. I actually think she was very satisfied.
To sum it up, I think that the Huguenot's veering away from the traditional beliefs of the Church was a good beginning to the Enlightenment. I think that the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre put a pause on people thinking for themselves and outside of the norm because most of their population was wiped out and those who remained were scared back into the destructive path of the Church. I do think that the Protestants of that time had a huge impact on the Enlightenment.
I agree with what you're saying here. I think that religious freedom and new conceptions of Christian religion proved important to the ideas of free-thinking of the Enlightenment that would follow in the 18th century. However, in reference to Catherine de Medici, I don't think it was so much that she was worried about people seeing the corruption of the Church as much as she was likely concerned for their salvation and the future of France itself. I think her mind-set likely followed what Jennifer was talking about last week in class in reference to the sense of community and right and wrong ways of worhsipping. As a devout Catholic, she was likley afraid of people invoking God's wrath on France, or that this new way of thinking and worshiping would turn people away from salvation; in light of this thought, then, it is possible that the Massacre, in her mind, proved as a means of stamping out the root of what she saw as a problem and source of instability in France and Europe as a whole (granted, it only fueled more instability and violence). I think all of this falls in line with Huxley's "World State" motto from "Brave New World": Community, Identity, Stability. I think Catherine would have related to this idea, that a unity of religious thought would form communuity, allow people to better identify with their government, therefore creating stability in her kingdom.
ReplyDeleteAll of the violence of the time is hard to imagine, and it is even harder to imagine a queen who is supposed to be a devout Catholic would call for an assassination. It makes one wonder whether or not the queen was well versed in the Bible. Or maybe she took solace in the fact that she was not actually the one doing the killing. Wondering how these “religious” people committed some of the acts that were taking place during the time is just another aspect that makes this time period so interesting.
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct to link these new religious idea with the later Enlightenment ideas. Once the religious dissenters opened the door to questioning the Church, other ways of thinking soon followed.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the guilt of the Queen, I think historians no longer believe that she planned the assassination, arguing that the king had already turned Coligny down and that he did not represent a serious threat to her power. However, they do agree that she favored the king's decision to kill the Huguenot leaders once the assassination attempt had failed and civil war seemed inevitable.
As far as her true feelings, in the decades of religious war that followed Henry II's death in 1559, the Crown (with the Queen as regent) had continually sought compromise solutions to end the religious violence but lacked the power the enforce its will on either side. I would argue that while the Queen probably shed few tears for the death of the Huguenots, her previous actions seemed more inclined to toleration and that her chief aim was most likely to secure some sort of peace or end to religious fighting, by whatever means available.