St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2003

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. In Paris, in the high summer of 1572, a very unusual wedding was happening in the cathedral of Notre Dame. Henri, the young Huguenot King of Navarre, was marrying the King of France’s beloved sister, Margot, a Catholic. Theirs was a union designed to bring together the rival factions of France and finally end the French Wars of Religion. Paris was bustling with Huguenots and Catholics and, though the atmosphere was tense, the wedding went off without a hitch. And as they danced together at the Louvre, it seemed that the flower of French nobility had finally come together to bury its differences.That wasn’t to be: on St Bartholomew’s Day, four days after the ill-starred nuptials, so many Protestants were killed in the streets of Paris that the River Seine ran red with their blood. Was the wedding a trap? Who was to blame for the carnage and what impact did it have on the Reformation in Europe?With Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University and author of a new book: Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700; Mark Greengrass, Professor of History at the University of Sheffield; Penny Roberts, Lecturer in History at the University of Warwick.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the Inartime podcast. For more details about Inartime and for our terms of use
0:05.4	Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program
0:11.0	Hello in Paris in the high summer of 1572 a very unexpected wedding was taking place in the Cathedral of Notre Dame
0:19.0	Henry the young Huguenot Protestant King of Navarre was marrying the King of France's beloved sister Margot a Catholic
0:26.2	There's was a union designed to bring together the rival factions of France and finally end the French Wars of religion
0:32.8	Paris was bustling with Protestants and Catholics and though the atmosphere was tense the wedding went off calmly
0:39.0	As they danced together at the Louvre it seemed that the flower of French nobility had finally come together to bury its
0:45.1	differences that wasn't to be on St. Bathole in Musée four days after the Eale-Star
0:50.6	So many Protestants were slaughtered in the streets of Paris that the rivers and it said ran red with their blood
0:56.8	Was the wedding a trap?
0:58.3	Who was to blame for the carnage and what impact did it have on the Reformation in Europe and on the North South
1:04.4	Division of Europe with me to discuss the scent bathole in Musée, Massacre is
1:08.3	Dermont Vacullock professor of the history of the Church at Oxford University and author of a new book Reformation
1:13.7	Europe's House divided
1:15.4	Mark Greengrass professor of history at Cheffield University and Penny Roberts lecturer in history at Warwick University
1:21.6	Noan McCulloch
1:23.1	Can you give us some idea of the strength of the Protestant Huguenot community in France at the time of the wedding in 1572 and where it was based?
1:31.2	The Reformation let's say clicked off in 1517
1:34.2	Would Luther and now are in the 1560s and 70s in Paris?
1:37.8	Yeah, so we've had about half a century of this great European-wide revolution
1:42.4	Which started in Germany, but now we're in France and with a second wave of this Reformation
1:49.3	Reformation sort of stalled in the 1550s in Europe
	...

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