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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
Once the free exercise of the true religion has been granted … the ruler is so much more bound to have it observed [that] if he acts otherwise, I declare that he is practicing manifest tyranny, and [his subjects] will be all the more free to oppose him. For we are bound to set greater store and value in the salvation of our souls and the freedom of our conscience than in any other matters, however desirable.
Theodore Beza (1574)THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY MASSACRE
In the early morning of August 24, 1572, armed soldiers, acting on royal orders, broke into the Paris bedroom of French Calvinist leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, and stabbed him to death. The soldiers heaved his corpse from the window into the courtyard below where a mob was gathering. They slashed and mutilated the corpse further and then began dragging it, now bereft of head, hands, and genitals, through the streets of Paris. Church bells peeled from the monastery of St. Germain l'Auxerrois signaling the start to a pogrom. On cue, soldiers and a growing mob of Catholic supporters began to break into the homes and shops of Calvinists, slaughtering them and pillaging their goods with growing abandon. Waves of popular violence and savagery broke out in the following weeks not only in Paris but also in several other French cities and towns.
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