This massacre of which Protestants were the victims occurred in Paris on 24 August, 1572 (the feast of St. Bartholomew), and in the provinces of France during the ensuing weeks, and it has been the subject of knotty historical disputes.
The first point argued was whether or not the massacre had been premeditated by the French Court — Sismondi, Sir James Mackintosh, and Henri Bordier maintaining that it had, and Ranke, Henri Martin, Henry White, Loiseleur, H. de la Ferrière, and the Abbé Vacandard, that it had not. The second question debated was the extent to which the court of Rome was responsible for this outrage. At present only a few over-zealous Protestant historians claim that the Holy See was the accomplice of the French Court: this view implies their belief in the premeditation of the massacre, which is now denied by the majority of historians. For the satisfactory solution of the question it is necessary to distinguish carefully between the attempted murder of Coligny on 22 August and his assassination on the night of 23-24 August, and the general massacre of Protestants.
The idea of a summary execution of the Protestant leaders, which would be the means of putting an end to the civil discord that had caused three "religious wars" in France in 1562-1563, 1567-1568, and 1569-1570 respectively, had long existed in the mind of Catherine de' Medici, widow of Henry II and mother of the three successive kings, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III; it had also been entertained by her sons. As early as 1560 Michaelis Suriano, the Venetian ambassador, wrote: "Francis II (1559-1560) wanted to fall upon the Protestant leaders, punish them without mercy and thus extinguish the conflagration." When, in 1565, Catherine de' Medici with her son Charles IX (1560-1574) and her daughters Margaret of Valois and Elizabeth, wife of Philip II, investigated the political and religious questions of the hour at the conferences of Bayonne, the Duke of Alba, who was present on these occasions, wrote to Philip II: "A way to be rid of the five, or at most six, who are at the head of the faction and direct it, would be to seize their persons and cut off their heads or at least to confine them where it would be impossible for them to renew their criminal plots." Just at that time Alava on his side confided to the same Spanish king this dark forecast, "I foresee that these heretics will be completely wiped out". In 1569 Catholics and Protestants were in arms one against the other, and the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Carrero, remarked: "It is the common opinion that, in the beginning it would have sufficed to do away with five or six heads and no more". This same year Parliament promised a reward of 50,000 écus to whoever would apprehend the Admiral de Coligny (1517-72), leader of the Calvinist party, the king adding that this sum would be awarded to him who would deliver up the admiral either alive or dead. Maurevel tried to overtake the admiral for the purpose of killing him but instead only assassinated one of his lieutenants. Thus we see that the idea of a summary execution of the leaders of Protestantism was in the air from 1560 to 1570; moreover it was conformable to the doctrine of political murder as it flourished during the sixteenth century when the principles of social morality and Christian politics elaborated by the theology of the Middle Ages, were replaced by the lay and half-pagan doctrine of Machiavellianism, proclaiming the right of the strongest or the most crafty.
