Friday, August 24, 2007
This Day in the History of Religious Intolerance
On this day in 1572, the St. Bartholomew Massacre, which had started on St. Bartholomew's Day on August 23, ended in the deaths of as many as 50,000 Huguenots (French Protestants) by Catholics in Paris and surrounding provinces. Urged on by the queen mother Catherine de' Medici, Catholics disemboweled the young king's adviser Gaspard, Admiral de Coligny, and threw him from his window still alive. Pope Gregory XIII and all the Catholic powers congratulated Catherine, and the Pope commanded that bonfires be lit to celebrate the massacre, which he called "better than 50 Battles of Lepanto."
Labels: St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 12:08 AM 
