Description
Book SynopsisA new English translation. Looks at the most notorious massacre in early modern European history and rejects most of the established accounts, especially those privileging conspiracy. Based on extensive research and a careful examination of existing interpretations, this is the most authoritative analysis of a shattering event.
Trade ReviewWinner of the American Historical Association’s 2014 J. Russell Major Prize
'This is a career-capping tour de force. Jouanna’s mastery of primary and secondary sources in many languages allows her to weave together, on the one hand, a compelling narrative of the political and diplomatic history of Saint-Barthélemy as event with, on the other, insights from recent scholarship about religious violence and the cultural history of the period. This timely and important book sets a very high bar. It is sure to be the standard account of this still-controversial subject for a long time.'
Todd Shepard, Johns Hopkins University
Arlette Jouanna is one of the finest historians writing about early modern France today, but apart from academic specialists of the period, she is virtually unknown in the Anglophone world because virtually none of her work has previously been translated into English. Thus, the recent publication by the Manchester University Press of an English translation of her book, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, is a real cause for celebration. Not only will this book bring her scholarship to a much wider leadership around the globe, but it will also help resolve one of the most difficult tasks for all historians of early modern France: how to explain satisfactorily the events that made up the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres in 1572.
Above all, Jouanna’s account examines all the available primary sources for the reader in a systematic way. And this, in my view, is her primary contribution. Anyone wishing to continue further research on Saint Bartholomew’s Day now can start here and find all the primary and principal secondary sources in one place.
This excellent book offers both a thorough re-evaluation of the primary sources for the Massacre and a careful assessment of the secondary works.
Adding to the value of the book is Joseph Bergin’s highly readable translation. This should become the first book that anyone with a scholarly interest in St. Bartholomew’s Massacre will read.
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Table of ContentsTranslator’s note
Author’s Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART ONE: THE FRAGILITY OF CONCORD
1. Trial by suspicion: the peace of 1570
2. Politics matrimonial and international
3. The assault on peace
PART TWO: SWORD OF GOD, SWORD OF THE KING
4. Surgical strike
5. Catholic furies
6. The King’s truth, reason of state
PART THREE: ELUCIDATIONS AND RETORTS
7. Protestant misfortune in biblical perspective
8. Political readings of the French tragedy
9. The king’s death, or the meaning of a massacre revealed
Conclusion
Appendix: Sociology of the victims of the Massacre, 1572
Sources and bibliography
Index
