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For those not familiar with St. Bartholomew's Day massacre:

Admiral Coligny, a Calvinist in mid-16th century France, was alleged to have assassinated Francis, Duke of Guise. After the Spanish trounced the Muslim navy (!), Admiral Coligny insisted that Queen Catherine attack the Spanish.

On St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24th, Admiral Coligny and about two dozen of his men were killed. Although Queen Catherine was never tied to the attacks, the protestants' presumption that she ordered them is not unreasonable, since she feared that Coligny would seize military control for himself to attack Spain.

Paris broke out into riots, with a Catholic/Loyalist mob slaughtering up to three thousand Calvinists. Similar outbreaks occurred over the next few months in many major cities, resulting in perhaps another 2,000 deaths. (Some Calvinists claim 100,000; certain Catholics cite "mere" hundreds; I used Wikipedia as an impartial source.)

Rome, believing that Coligny was prepared to attack Spanish forces which had rescued Europe from the Muslim horde, did appear to approve of the St. Bartholomew's Day raid. As the event became known as the "massacre," however, the following tragic riots became conflated with the raid, leading many to inaccurately suggest that Rome had approved of the purely unjustifiable violence.