The Significance of the Massacres
Some of what took place in Paris beginning on August 24 can be explained by sociology and social history. There were real religious and social tensions in Paris and in Roman Catholic dominated towns in 1572. Paris itself was not yet spread out. There were about 210,000 people crowded together.1 Tensions were inflamed; France was in the midst of an on-again, off-again series of eight religious-civil wars that began in 1562 and did not end until the Edict of Nantes in 1598. (The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres occurred amidst the fourth war of religion [1572–73].) Virtually everyone was a Christian Nationalist in the sixteenth century. The question was not whether there would be an established church enforced by the coercive power of the state, but which one it would be. At stake in these wars was the control of France. Would it continue to be a Roman Catholic nation, or would it become a Reformed country? There were powerful families among the French nobility who thought that perhaps France could become a Reformed nation.2
The idea that there might be a Huguenot king was no pipe dream. The House of Bourbon was among the most ancient and influential families in France (dating to the tenth century). It had some claim to the French throne as the “highest ranking aristocracy.”3 Their fortunes, however, had waned since Charles III, duc de Bourbon alienated Francis I in the 1520s, causing the Bourbons to throw their allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. This was treason.
Jeanne d’Albret (1528–72) was Queen of Navarre from 1555 until her death. Her second marriage was to Antoine de Bourbon (1518–62). For seven years they ruled Navarre (aka Pamplona, in the Basque region) together. In the 1550s Antoine became Reformed and Jeanne followed him by converting to the Reformed faith in 1560. Navarre, Coligny, and others to follow would pose a significant threat to Roman Catholic France. Antoine was killed in the Siege of Rouen, the culmination (until 1572) of decades of religious tension, persecution, and potential coups. One of their children was Henri de Navarre (1553–1610), who, upon converting to Roman Catholicism would one day become King Henry IV.
On the death of Henry II, King of France, in 1559, the crown fell to Francis II, who was at age fifteen old enough to rule France by himself. Antoine of Navarre saw the death of Henry II and the accession of a young king as an opportunity for the Reformed. So did some French ex-patriots who had fled to Geneva. Without Calvin’s approval, they conspired to overthrow the crown.4 By 1562, Coligny had become Admiral of France after having spent several years as a prisoner of Spain where he took the time to read Reformed literature and correspond with Calvin.5 Anyone who knows Calvin’s political philosophy knows that he would never have approved such an adventure. After Coligny was freed and returned to France, he became an open supporter of the Reformed churches.6 This put him (and the rest of the French Reformed) in direct conflict with the House of Guise, who were utterly committed to Romanism. With the accession of Francis II, the influence of the Guises increased; they, with Cardinal Lorraine, sought to bring France into closer alliance with Spain, much to the hurt of the Reformed churches in France.7 The Guises discovered the plan to overthrow Francis and foiled the rather weak attack by the Huguenots in 1560. According to George Rothrock, there was “little doubt” that Henri de Bourbon Prince of Condé was behind the Plot of Amboise.8 Condé and Henry of Navarre were “Princes of the Blood,” that is, descended from a king and therefore posed threats to the Roman Catholic status quo. Condé was imprisoned for several weeks, but the crown could not make a case against him.
On the death of Francis II in 1560, the crown fell to Charles IX, who was only ten. Thus, a regency (i.e., supervisors) would effectively rule in his place until he reached age fourteen. One of those regents was Antoine de Bourbon. The other was Catherine de Medici, the Queen Mother. In January of 1562, Catherine sought a measure of order and peace, and thus issued an edict. Henceforth, the Calvinists were to be known as “The Religion Purporting To Be Reformed,” or simply “The Religion.”9 The Reformed were to be allowed to worship with relative freedom so long as they did not contradict Scripture, erect church buildings, or use vituperative language about the Roman Catholic religion. The Guises were outraged at even this measure of tolerance, and the Reformed were unsatisfied at these breadcrumbs of religious toleration. Wars and attempts on the crown would continue. As late as 1568, Condé led an attempted coup.10 In short, France, and Paris especially, was a powder keg, which the attempt on Coligny’s life and then his murder set off.
The Reformed were initially convinced that the Guises were behind the attempt on Coligny, and when the massacres began two days later, they thought that it was an attempt on the crown—only to find out that they themselves were the targets. Catherine and Charles thought they could conduct a contained operation. It seems most likely that they underestimated the seething anger of the Roman Catholic population against the Reformed, against their boorish manners and dialect (the Reformed tended to come from the South and were regarded as uncouth by Parisians). They hated the Reformed iconoclasm, which had broken out in the Netherlands and in some parts of France (e.g., Rouen).
Then, of course, there was simple depravity and greed. Mobs of Parisians (and those in outlying towns later on) saw the assassination of Coligny as a sign from the crown that it was time to put the Reformed in their place: in a watery grave in the Seine.
What does it all mean? One thing it means is that the state enforcement of Christianity, insofar as people still believed that God had ordained a state-church, is necessarily a nursery for violence. Most all the French believed that God had instituted a state church. The disagreement was not whether there should be a state church, but which church should have that place. Which religion would be enforced by the coercive power of the state and which religion would be suppressed and even punished at the point of a sword? Thus, both sides schemed to get their hands on the levers of civil power to enforce religious orthodoxy on their neighbors—all for the glory of God and the love of neighbor of course.
The massacres of 1572 were a warning to the American founders, who sought to establish a system that allowed the Reformed to be faithful to their confession and Quakers et al. to be faithful to their understanding of religion without using the levers of the coercive power of the state—which is the only true power the state has—to impose it on others or to punish those with different convictions. Our contemporary theocrats, whether they call themselves Christian Nationalists or Theonomists or Christian Reconstructionists or Social Gospellers, would do well to take note, not only of the bloody French Wars of Religion, but also of the century of religious wars that marked the seventeenth century, which were indelibly impressed on the minds of the American founders.
What was the immediate outcome of the massacres? The tragedy is that it changed nothing. “The most startling thing about the St. Bartholomew’s massacres is that their effect was so slight.”11 The remaining Huguenots were made more resolute in their suspicion of the Guises and the Romanists generally, and the Romanists in France and in Spain especially continued their campaign to exterminate the Reformed and their religion. Both sides merely re-grouped and re-armed. Our modern theocrats, like the Marxists, think that their future theocracy will turn out differently; but that they think so tells us exactly why they must never be allowed near the precincts of civil authority.
Notes
- Gray, The French Huguenots, 131.
- George A. Rothrock, The Huguenots (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979), 67.
- Rothrock, The Huguenots, 69, 75.
- Calvin defended himself in a lengthy letter to Coligny. See Jules Bonnet, ed., Letters of John Calvin, (New York: B. Franklin, 1973), 4.175–82.
- Calvin’s correspondence with Coligny and his wife is in volume 4 of Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin.
- Rothrock, The Huguenots, 76.
- Rothrock, 77.
- Rothrock, 77.
- Rothrock, 85–87.
- Rothrock, 88.
- Rothrock, 97.
©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.
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R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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Thanks for this.
Couldn’t we substitute a secular state for France and have the stame story of a massacre as a parable of the problems of a secular state?
Devin,
You need to be much more specific in order to discuss your question.
Sorry, I will try to be. You suggest that the massacre is a warning against Christian nationalism. But wouldn’t another massacre or attrocity committed under the auspices of a secular state, say the Holodomor, be a warning against secularism?
Devin,
The murder and starvation of Kulaks by Communists tells us that Communism is wicked and murderous. The Communists and Fascists murdered something like 150 million people in the 20th century. So, we should take a lesson but no, it does not follow that having a secular state leads to mass murder. The Americans have had a secular (not a secularist) state since the founding of the Republic. The only mass casualty event was the civil war, in which 500,000 Americans died over slavery and the confederacy.
I hear what you’re saying, but maybe abortion would be the attrocity you’re looking for. It’s hard to see how that could be possible without the rise of secularism in our society.
Maybe you’ve written about this elsewhere, but didn’t the original states have established churches even after the bill of rights?
Devin,
The state is not murdering babies. Individuals are.
America is a corrupt, post-Christian nation to be sure but, again, it doesn’t follow that not having an established church has led to 60 million abortions. There are established churches across Europe and they murder babies there too.
Yes, there were state (as distinct from Federal) churches until the last church was disestablished in 1833.
The state churches were inconsistent with the principles in the Bill of Rights. The courts were right to disestablish them.
Why should I as a Reformed person have to pay taxes to fund the Congregationalists? It’s an outrage.
Why should a Jew or a Muslim or an Atheist have to fund my church?
Dr. Clark, you wrote this: “Why should I as a Reformed person have to pay taxes to fund the Congregationalists? It’s an outrage.”
Actually, if you were a Presbyterian in Massachusetts, you would be able to “sign off the rolls” and no longer be required to pay tithes to the established parish church of your locality, provided that you paid them to your own church. Similar rules were in place, with limits, for Episcopalians. Eventually that privilege was extended to Baptists.
I’m not defending mandatory tithes or state establishment of religion, but an argument could be made that if we’re going to have an established church system, the way it worked in Massachusetts was about as good as it could get.
The current situation in Italy, in which everyone is required to designate a certain percentage of their national taxes to a church or religious or non-religious charitable organization, seems like a reasonable way to operate in a country which has a centuries-old history of formal establishment of the Roman Catholic Church but disestablished the Roman Catholics while actually EXPANDING the funding for church groups to other denominations. I’m not supporting that system but it seems far better than French secularism as a way to go about disestablishment while still recognizing that churches perform many functions that the government would otherwise have to perform. I prefer the American 501(c)3 charitable contribution model, but the Italian system seems to have worked well in a European context, and better than many other European countries with a history of established churches.
For people who do support state establishment of religion: pay close attention to what happened in Massachusetts. It was the **CONSERVATIVES** not the liberals who pushed for disestablishment. The parish system created nightmare situations in which, because the “parish” owned the “meetinghouse,” if the majority of the parish was Unitarian or irreligious, they could — and did — eject the church from the meetinghouse. There was one particularly bad situation in which only two members of a Congregational church in Massachusetts wanted to be Unitarians, but the parish majority supported the Unitarians (or more properly, didn’t like the biblical preaching of the pastor, which isn’t precisely the same thing) and the courts supported the Unitarian parish majority’s claim to ownership of the meetinghouse.
Darrell,
I appreciate the correction but the Christian Nationalists have a plan to establish and fund with public dollars some generic state-church.
Even under the system you describe, people are being coerced to fund a religion. I understand that you’re not defending it but there is no good or benevolent system in which the coercive power of the state is used to advance religion, whether it’s Wiccan or Christian.
The fuit of the state establishment of religion in Italy? Virtually no one attends church regularly. There are exceptions but for the most part Italy’s churches are empty.
Then there are the social consequences of an established religion: insiders and outsiders. Ask the dissenters in England what it was like, until fairly recently, to be a dissenter. They still carry the social and psychological costs and scars of being outsiders.
We largely concur, Dr. Clark. I am not a supporter of the establishment principle.
A few qualifications:
1. I think there are ways that the worst excesses of establishmentarianism can be addressed, and the New England approach is probably the best actual historical example I’ve seen, but I object to the root of the system. The Congregational parish system collapsed when the wealthy shipping magnates and merchants in Boston and the North Shore decided they were not interested in hearing about sin and came to deny the Trinity since they considered it irrational and no longer believed Christ has to be fully divine to pay the penalty for totally depraved sinners, and that shows a fundamental weakness in the New England experiment that the founders of the New England colonies did not anticipate. In their day, moving to New England was a difficult and physically dangerous decision made only by those with a strong commitment to the ideals of the colonies. By the 1700s, several generations removed from the failure of Cromwell’s Commonweath, New England had become a barely-tolerated backwater and there was considerable social pressure to tolerate people who clearly were more interested in commerce than in being part of a Calvinist colony.
2. I’m not sure I would in principle object to a country with an overwhelmingly Christian population declaring itself to be a Christian nation — some form of the Covenanter project — but I can see no way that establishing a particular denomination will not end in disaster. Furthermore, unless the Christian faith is held by the large majority of the population, it either becomes necessary to establish a religious test for voting and for holding civil office, or we end up repeating the Unitarian Schism of New England when a liberal minority starts to control rich and powerful churches and starts to use its money and influence to control the government.
3. Yes, church attendance in Italy is horrible, but to be fair, Italy is considered to be “socially conservative” by Western European standards, and the church retains a level of cultural influence that would be hard to find in any other European country with a comparable economy or population. (Places like Poland and some of the Balkan states are outliers for historical reasons.) I’m absolutely **NOT** defending the influence of “cultural Catholicism” — I know, in ways most American Protestants do not, how much damage that can do by inoculating people with a dead form of faith that keeps people from getting the real thing. I say that not to be anti-Catholic; my friends in the Roman Catholic clergy would say the same or similar things, and say it with a lot more fire because for them it’s their own church and seriously committed Catholics take the abuse of the sacraments by people who say the right things with no real faith more seriously than most Protestants do. But the influence of cultural Catholicism is still quite significant in Italy in ways that are not the case in most traditionally Catholic countries of Europe, and far greater than in the historically Lutheran or Reformed regions of Northern Europe. When I first heard people from Scandinavia or the Netherlands or the urban parts of Germany talk about the “conservative Italian church-based culture,” I was shocked since that certainly is NOT how Americans think of Italy. But it’s the way people in countries whose social liberalism is extreme look at the “superstitious backwards Italians.” We see largely empty churches; they see Italy as a place where people who still practice a certain level of socially conservatism, perhaps by “common grace,” are regarded as “way too conservative for our enlightened European sentiments.”
As for church attendance, as bad as things are in Italy, the situation there looks fairly good compared to much of the rest of Europe. With the sole exception of South Korea, there is no developed nation with a top-tier economy in the modern world where church attendance is anywhere close to that of the United States — and most of us would say that the United States has serious problems in that area.
4. Yes, I fully concur with you about the social ostracism of dissenters, whether in Britain or other countries. I know the history of the Reveil in Europe (roughly comparable to the First Great Awakening) which underlies the Afscheiding and the Christian Reformed Church, but also the Free Church of Scotland and many “free churches” that separated from the state churches in various European countries, or in some cases, either led to the creation of evangelical movements within the state churches comparable to the Gereformeerde Bond in the Hervormde Kerk, or in a few cases, the wholesale takeover of the denominational structures by conservatives.
We have not had that sort of situation in North America with a de facto “establishment” for close to two centuries. Leaving a “big steeple” church just doesn’t carry the social opprobrium that faced the leaders of the Afscheiding, or the Erskine brothers in Scotland and the later leaders of the Free Church of Scotland, or the various leaders of the Reveil in the continental churches.
Bottom line — I guess what I’m saying is that I end up at the same place as you with regard to the idea of an established church. Under current conditions in any major first-world country, it’s a pipe dream and simply cannot happen. While it could possibly happen in some African or Latin American countries, the sort of “established church” we would see there would be Baptistic or charismatic and very far from anything resembling Reformation era principles of church-state relations.
There are two things you cannot show me:
1. A flourishing state church in Europe.;
2. A scintilla of evidence in the New Testament for a state – established church.
We probably agree on both points.
A further comment on dissenters: Italy only began to allow religious freedom in 1848, and that was only in the territories of the Duke of Savoy/King of Sardinia who personally visited the Waldensian Valleys, was impressed with what he saw, and in the new constitution that he issued in 1848, continued the Roman Catholic Church as the established church of his realms, but allowed toleration for pre-existing religious groups (code language for Waldensians and Jews) which had existed before the House of Savoy acquired rulership.
It took another generation for the House of Savoy to acquire sovereignty over most of the Italian Peninsula, and in some parts of Italy, including the region from which my own ancestors came, religious toleration for non-Catholics wasn’t officially allowed until 1919 (though there had been a presence of both Waldensians and Jews in the eastern Alps for centuries, tolerated but not officially legal, and occasionally showing up in official records when some local ruler decided to expel non-Catholics from his territories who didn’t have an official right to live there but were typically tolerated if they remained quiet).
It wasn’t until the defeat of Italy in the Second World War that something comparable to an American approach to religious freedom became law in Italy. While there’s not much point in going into extended details, some vestiges of Roman Catholic establishment remained in law for many years afterward, and still exist today informally though not in law.
So yes, as one of the very few Italian Protestants in existence, I might have some awareness of the negative attitudes faced by dissenters from an established church, whether officially established by law or informally by widespread custom and practice.
That, plus my knowledge of the failure of the Puritan establishment in New England, have made me uncomfortable for well over thirty years with the older theonomist projects and with today’s Christian nationalism.
I have said since the early 1990s that my views of church-state relations are Kuyperian, not theonomist, and there is a very major difference between those two.
Thanks for the interactions. I appreciate it.
Passing through VA recently I stopped at the Chancellorsville civil war memorial. It was indeed sobering.
If I may wax a bit high-minded here:
May God grant us wisdom and unity in the ideals of individual freedoms and responsibilities; to pursue the religion of our choice, or to pursue none at all, and to live peaceably with one another, persuading with words and not with fists.
A country founded on Judeo/Christian principles/laws has largely descended into lawlessness. Hence the push for theocracy in the minds of many, and not just Christians. Islamists are very vocal in thier intentions to transform the wicked west into an Islamic Caliphate, ruled by sharia.
JP,
They are and they and all the theocrats must be resisted vigorously. I’m thankful for the Bill of Rights.