See releated threads:
Protest Songs [review of "Les Huguenots", an opera about the St Bartholomew Massacre]
HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS
The Huguenots - their faith, history, and impact.
FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS, CHAPTER IV, Papal Persecutions
Posted on 08/21/2011 4:55:48 AM PDT by HarleyD
King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France.
Two days earlier, Catherine had ordered the murder of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader whom she felt was leading her son into war with Spain. However, Coligny was only wounded, and Charles promised to investigate the assassination in order to placate the angry Huguenots. Catherine then convinced the young king that the Huguenots were on the brink of rebellion, and he authorized the murder of their leaders by the Catholic authorities. Most of these Huguenots were in Paris at the time, celebrating the marriage of their leader, Henry of Navarre, to the king's sister, Margaret.
A list of those to be killed was drawn up, headed by Coligny, who was brutally beaten and thrown out of his bedroom window just before dawn on August 24. Once the killing started, mobs of Catholic Parisians, apparently overcome with bloodlust, began a general massacre of Huguenots. Charles issued a royal order on August 25 to halt the killing, but his pleas went unheeded as the massacres spread. Mass slaughters continued into October, reaching the provinces of Rouen, Lyon, Bourges, Bourdeaux, and Orleans. An estimated 3,000 French Protestants were killed in Paris, and as many as 70,000 in all of France. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day marked the resumption of religious civil war in France.
History ping...
My father's middle name was Bartholomew and my grandfather was anti-Catholic, although he married an Irish girl, he forbad the family from entering a Catholic church. This may have been in part shaped by the experiences of his grandfather who commanded a Police precinct in New York during the July, 1863 draft riots, mainly fueled by Irish immigrants.
In before the *Yeah but the Protestants.......*
LoL...
Throughout history, ruthless and or desperate people have seized upon 'otherness' to rally towards desired goals. The deeper the emotion, the more force it generates and for that religion is hard to beat!
This is what our FOUNDERS were thinking when they penned the FIRST AMENDMENT clause for FREEDOM OF RELIGION! They saw the history of the state-mandated religion and these abuses and made it clear that our government would have no such thing for our country. It is the recent generations of illiberal de-constructists who have turned it into "Freedom from Religion"!
Funny, you never hear very many Gaspards in the roll calls at kindergarten these days
My father told me we were from the Huguenots (Merrill), but did not talk of the persecution. Out family came over in the early 1700s. I suspect it was because of the religious persecutions common in those days.
My father told me we were from the Huguenots (Merrill), but did not talk of the persecution. Our family came over in the early 1700s. I suspect it was because of the religious persecutions common in those days.
Joan of Arc saved France from the English, then turned her over to the English to be burned at the stake (after all sorts of interrogation and trials of course). Now France claims her as a national hero.
Ever hear of Nicholas Martiau? I’ve read that half the english speaking people in the world are related to him. One of his descendants was George Washington.
There is a stained glass window in the New-York Historical Society's library on Central Park West depicting Louis XIV revoking the Edict of Nantes. (I think the king is running his sword through it.) I assume the founders of the society were linking their family histories to the diaspora that act caused.
See releated threads:
Protest Songs [review of "Les Huguenots", an opera about the St Bartholomew Massacre]
HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS
The Huguenots - their faith, history, and impact.
FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS, CHAPTER IV, Papal Persecutions
>”They saw the history of the state-mandated religion and these abuses and made it clear that our government would have no such thing for our country. It is the recent generations of illiberal de-constructists who have turned it into “Freedom from Religion”!”
Yes, as they also did not mean this meant the official institution of atheistic secularism, which has effectively been the result.
The fact is by not allowing such things as any sanctioned prayer by teachers,m etc it sends a message to the country that we do not see ourselves in need of help from a Creator, or deem anyone more than man worthy of our gratitude. Thus it officially fosters agnosticism or atheism.
One can argue that not allowing state sanctioned prayer means we recognize the state has no business in that, but you cannot separate the state from a basic belief system and practices, and in a Democracy the people will decide what that is.
And in America the Christian faith was it, and in the general sense the Gov., including the writers of the 1st Amendment, overall sanctioned it, and which was reflected in courts and schools for a long time.
And by censoring churches from endorsing candidates within the church itself via 501(3)(c) (voluntary but basically needed) then it seeks to silence not just gov. from positively speaking about religion, but religion from speaking about government, contrary the 1st Amendment.
Yet this means of establishment does allow that the people may choose to officially sanction atheism, and with officially sanctioned secularism - which is intolerant of official sanction of the general Christian faith - then it has. And which functionally serves as religion in determining an ever morphing morality, to our collective hurt. http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/RevealingStatistics.html#TABLE
Excerpts from:
Christ the King : Lord of History
by, Anne W. Carroll, pages 244-251.
Philip was crowned king of Spain in 1556. … In thanksgiving to God, Philip began the construction of a monastery-palace in honor of St Lawrence … This building symbolizes Philip’s character strong, unostentatious, centered on Christ. It contains his “throne”—a simple canvas stool under a painting of the Crucifixion, and the magnificent basilica where he would slip in quietly to pray as he bore the great burdens of his office. …
[After Philip’s wedding] Philip took his gentle, lovely wife [Isabel of Valois] home, leaving France under the rule of Francis II and Mary Stuart, assisted by the Guises.
Calvinism had made strong headway among French aristocrats (though the majority of the ordinary French people held to the Catholic Church), as nobles saw the new religion as a means of wresting political power from the crown and from the Catholic nobility. With Henry II dead and a weak, young king on the throne, the Huguenots (French Calvinists) under the leadership of Admiral Coligny saw an opportunity to seize power. In March 1560 came the shadowy plot known as the Conspiracy or Tumult of Amboise, in which certain Huguenots—probably with Cecil’s connivance and with the support of Calvin himself, who had said that it was lawful to slay those who hindered the preaching of Calvinism—attempted to kidnap Francis and murder the Guises. They hoped to control Francis and influence him to be Calvinist. The plot was uncovered and the head of the Guise family, Duke Francis, moved against the ringleaders.
Furious at the failure of their plot, and encouraged by Cecil, who urged them to make good use of “their pen and weapons,” the Huguenots began the Wars of Religion in France, sweeping the country with a wave of diabolical anti-Catholic atrocities during 1561 Churches were devastated; nuns and priests were scourged and killed; the tombs of saints were violated. At Montpellier the Huguenots sacked 60 churches and killed 150 priests and monks. The famous monastery of Cluny, from which had come the great reform of the Church in the tenth and eleventh centuries, was looted. All that remained of two of France’s most famous saints, Irenaeus of Lyons and Martin of Tours, was thrown into the Loire River, the incorrupt body of St Francis of Paola was taken from its tomb, dragged through the streets and burned.
By this time, Francis II had died; and Catherine d’Medici, Henry II’s widow, was ruling in the name of the young Charles IX. …
Catherine would wield power for thirty years, manipulating her children as so many pawns on a chessboard, seeking power for herself and her family, putting personal gain ahead of the rights of the Church.
Catherine was already well-practiced in defying the Church Forced into a political marriage at 14 (to further Francis I’s ambitions in Italy), she had felt her position threatened because she had borne no children after ten years of marriage. Prayers and pilgrimages had not relieved her barrenness. So she turned from God to a power she felt could get things done more efficiently witchcraft and devil worship. On January 19, 1544, Francis was born, and Catherine bore a child a year for the next decade.
But no one can defy the laws of God without eventually suffering the consequences. And the consequences for the children Catherine bore were frightening to behold: Francis, dead before he was 17, his brain half-rotted away; Isabel, a loving and loyal wife to Philip, but dead in her early 20’s; Claude, crippled from birth and welcoming her death at 27; Louis, Jean, Victor, all dead within a year of their baptisms Charles, insane and dead at 24; Hercule, stunted and misshapen, dead at 30; Marguerite, so beautiful that men traveled hundreds of miles simply to look at her, yet never able to bear children and pursuing a life of immorality with terrible energy until she grew old and sick and ugly and returned to the God her mother had forsaken; Henri, greedy, perverted, assassinated in his 38th year.
No one can sin except through his own free will choice, but sometimes the innocent suffer because of the sins of others. Catherine’s children were responsible for their own souls, but each one of them suffered because of their mother’s sins. And so, tragically, did France.
Following close upon Calvinist gains in France, Cecil begin stirring up trouble in the Low Countries (also known as the Netherlands, or Holland and Belgium). William of Orange, who took favors from Philip and promised loyalty, plotted against him behind his back with Cecil and Coligny. The Protestant nobles were against Philip for religious reasons primarily, but they also wanted political freedom and complete control of the wealth of the Low Countries. In 1566 a group of the noblemen came before Margaret of Parma, Philip’s governor in the Netherlands, with insolent demands. One of her companions said, “Don’t be afraid of these beggars,” so the next time they came dressed in rags. Their rebellion is therefore sometimes called the Revolt of the Beggars. Margaret was willing to consider such of their requests as were reasonable and Philip himself had made concessions, but they were not willing to compromise: they wanted Spain and the Catholic Church out of the Netherlands.
On August 16, 1566, the great cathedral of Antwerp was gutted by a Calvinist mob. They began by smashing the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that had been carried in solemn procession the preceding Sunday; they chopped off the heads of statues of Christ with axes and transfixed other images and pictures of Christ with swords; they assaulted a great old crucifix, which displayed the two thieves between whom Christ was crucified, leaving untouched the thieves, but hacking the form of Christ to pieces. They smashed stained glass windows and the great organ, and stole and defiled the vessels and plate. From Antwerp the destruction spread all over the Low Countries, until in the incredibly short time of six weeks the churches in more than 400 towns and villages had been sacked. In Antwerp alone more than 25 churches were devastated in the one terrible night of August 16-17. …
Meanwhile in France, Catherine d’Medici, who of course had sent no aid in response to the Pope’s call for a crusade against the Turks, was becoming fearful that the Huguenots were gaining too much power over Charles, as her son came to rely more on Coligny and less on his mother. On August 22, 1572, Catherine tried to have Coligny assassinated, but the assassin failed and only wounded hint Catherine now feared that her son would find out her involvement in the assassination attempt. So she deliberately provoked Charles—whose mind was unbalanced—into an insane rage, so that he ordered the murder of all the Huguenot leaders in Paris. Catherine and Henri of Guise, Duke Francis’ son, drew up the list. On August 24, the feast of St. Bartholomew, soldiers of the French king systematically struck down the Huguenot leaders. But having unleashed the violence, Charles and Catherine were unable to stop it, and the soldiers ran wild, killing nearly 5,000 Huguenots, including women and children, in what is known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. This atrocity gave the Calvinists further anti-Catholic propaganda, though Catherine had ordered the killings not for the sake of the Church but to increase her own power.
Christ the King : Lord of History
by, Anne W. Carroll
A replay to the 1928 presidential election when Al Smith was greeted by tens of thousands of the Klan in Oklahoma would provide suitable backdrop.
If one looks at the real history of the same people who lead to the Junkers and Prussian sensibility that outlined German history from 1870 to 1945
let's trace the Huguenots, shall we. In france, under Francis I, France was tolerant of all religious views
however, what did the Huguenots do? In the affair of the placards they posted placards all over Paris and even on the bedchamber door of the king (a security breach that angered him and made him change his tolerance position) -- these placards were attacks on Catholics.
So, instead of discussing, the Huguenots went to attack the Catholic majority who until then were content to let them live and debate and discuss and debate. Incidently, until this time the Huguenots were increasing, like the Moslems in Bradford, but then they started to get shrill and wake people up with their attacks
This polemic was an attack and the Huguenots started this retaliation.This was in 1534
Next, came the French wars of religion in which the Huguenots conspired against the King. This, added to the previous attack meant that they now publically came to attack the conservative forces. The progressives of the Huguenots were the precursors of the Revolutionaires
The people who became Huguenots were primarily the urban elite, like our present-day New Yorkers who take a fad and they saw that this was a means to oppose the King, so Huguenotism became a political tool
A group of Huguenots tried to kidnap the Prince Francis II when his father died -- causing more antagonism.
Huguenots in 1560 attacked Catholic Churchs and destroyed properties in Rouen and La Rochelle -- thus the FIRST salvo was lobbed by the Huguenots. -- the Catholics retailiated with mobs at seeing their places of worship attacked and defiled by Huguenots
Next, in 1562-70, we have the wars -- now political-religious, so no, it was not a simple case of "persecution" --> The Huguenots were one side of a civil war, which they lost
Now, let's come to the juicy part, the St. Bart's day massacre -- this occured in 1572, 40 years after the first provocations by the Huguenots and 12 years after they started destroying Catholic Churchs (just like the Moslems in America they were quiet until their numbers grew)
now, King Charles XI was openly in favor of the Huguenots -- so a political moment. Hence the attacks on the opposing side
So, let's see in conclusion -- Huguenots first start their provocations in 1534, then in 1560 start attacking Catholic Churchs (with no provocation), then start their political support against the conservatives and start a civil war. After 12 years their side loses the civil war and yet they are still allowed to live and practise their faith (note this is the 1500s, not a nice time, yet they get this tolerance) -- but they still play political intrigues. So, one faction starts to attack and massacre the other faction
so, their proponents ought to stop the entire "poor persecuted Huguenots" -- they brought it on themselves.
the Huguenots after doing their persecuting of Catholics, got retaliation, then they went to England and many to South Africa where they were among the racists enforcing Apartheid.
Many came to the US and Germany as well.
In England and Germany they were Calvinists in non-Calvinist lands, but no "persecution". In the US they were one of many and no, no "persecutions". In South Africa they were one of the folks doing the persecutions and in Northern Germany they enthusiastically participated in the Kulturkampf.
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