Abstract
Reviewed by: Jan Machielsen, University of Oxford, UK
The events that took place in Paris on 24 August 1572 reverberated throughout the Christian world, and indeed beyond; one of the many gems offered by Arlette Jouanna’s fascinating study is the inclusion of the Ottoman Sultan in the international pro-French propaganda campaign that followed the St Bartholomew’s Massacre. Jouanna traces the tremors of a proverbial earthquake not only through space but also across time. She investigates the immediate origins and aftermath of the initial shockwave, as well as its long-term consequences, which, she notes, can still be felt in France today (as a dramatic instance of the ever present ‘fear of the Other’). Her study is indeed a fitting part of the series on ‘The Thirty Days Which Made France’ in which it originally appeared (in French, in 2007). Joseph Bergin is to be commended for making it available to a wide Anglophone audience in an elegant translation.
The first half of the book delves deep into the events leading up to the Massacre. How, Jouanna asks, can the murderous rage of 24 August be reconciled with a very different event that took place less than a week earlier? The marriage of Henri of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois on 18 August was intended to consolidate the Peace of St-Germain that had ended the Third War of Religion two years earlier. The contrast between one day of concord and one of violence could hardly be more stark. Traditional narratives (Huguenot, at root), Jouanna notes, resolve it only by denying the sincerity of the earlier event, turning the wedding into a ploy to lure the Huguenot high nobility to Paris. Dissatisfied with such conspiracy theories, Jouanna instead points to the particular importance of the attempted assassination of Admiral Coligny on 22 August by a Catholic nobleman (it remains unclear who, if anyone, ordered the attack).
Jouanna builds a convincing case to substantiate her reading of events in a number of meticulously researched chapters. Her opening chapter demonstrates the sincerity with which Charles IX and his mother implemented the peace of St Germain and its mandate to forget the recent past. Chapter 2 underscores the ancient tradition of marriages as a means to solidify treaties and, in passing, refutes theories postulating foreign (especially Spanish) involvement in the Massacre. Chapter 3 considers the failed attempt on Coligny’s life. Not even Jouanna can fully dispel the fog that surrounds this event, but her argument that it should be seen not as a failed attack on Coligny, but a successful assault on peace within the kingdom is persuasive. (Arguably, within an international context, it could also be seen as an attack on war, given the Admiral’s push for French involvement in the Dutch Revolt.) Chapters 4 and 5 study the subsequent actions of the Crown and the Parisian populace respectively. Jouanna marshals evidence that the court, gripped by fear for Huguenot reprisals, planned the death of Protestant leaders, while seeking to preserve the Peace of St-Germain. Jouanna demonstrates that it was Parisian Catholics, displeased with Charles’s leadership, which (mis-) took this ‘surgical strike’ as a signal for the widespread slaughter of their Huguenot neighbours.
In her concluding chapters on the aftermath of the Massacre Jouanna paints with broader brush strokes. Her main argument here is that the Massacre was ultimately more significant as a political than as a religious event. The politics of reason of state are already present from the outset of her study. Charles IX justified the execution of the Huguenot leadership on those grounds to his Protestant neighbours, for instance. Jouanna also argues that Charles’s adherence to the Peace of St-Germain, before and (shortly) after the Massacre, must be understood as a political decision, emanating from the young king’s wish to be a father to all his subjects. The political significance of the events of 24 August 1572 grew over time. If the Massacre itself demonstrated the vulnerability of the French Crown, in the long term it contributed to a process of ‘political autonomization’, of separating the religious and political sphere. At the same time, the shock of the Massacre was a ‘decisive spur’ for the personal sacralization of the King. The Catholic eulogists who celebrated Charles IX’s short life emphasized that royal actions are subject to divine judgement alone. When attempts by Protestants, Malcontents and others to reform the monarchy failed, monarchy alone came to be seen as the guarantor of peace. It was thus in a moment of weakness that the seeds of the absolutist monarchy of later centuries were sown.
These two arguments, while very different in kind, complement each other. If the second argument is rather more speculative, it is also more likely to excite an Anglophone audience less familiar with this essentially Francophone debate. Jouanna’s examination of the events surrounding the Massacre is unrivalled in its attention to detail, yet the broad outlines of her conclusions will come as less of a surprise to English and American scholars familiar with the work of Barbara Diefendorf and N. M. Sutherland. The endnotes demonstrate that Jouanna too knows their work well. While the introduction clearly embeds her argument within French historiography, it is unfortunate that the text was not revised to show where it differs from that of English and American scholars with whom it appears to have much in common. This is only a minor quibble, however. The unrivalled meticulousness of Jouanna’s research as well as the careful exposition of a convincing argument means that this work will fast become the standard reference work for students and scholars interested in the St Bartholomew’s Massacre, its origins and its consequences.