Catalogue information

LastDodo number
5548303
Area
Tokens / Medals
Title
Vatican Huguenots Massacre (Gregory XIII - Restrike) 1872
Value
Country
Year
1872
Collection / set
Material
Weight
Variety / overstrike
Obverse
Ugonottorum . Strages . (Latin "slaughter of the Huguenots") 1572 .
Reverse
Gregorius . XIII Pont . Max . An.I (p.p)
Privy mark
Mint mark
Designer
Engraver
Dimensions / Diameter
30mm
Number
Details
Many Catholics inside and outside France regarded the massacres, at least initially, as deliverance from an imminent Huguenot coup d'etat. Pope Gregory XIII sent the king of France a Golden Rose. The Pope ordered a Te Deum to be sung as a special thanksgiving (a practice continued for many years), and had a medal struck with the motto Ugonottorum strages 1572 (Latin for "slaughter of the Huguenots") showing an angel bearing a cross and sword next to slaughtered Protestants The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de' Medici, the mother of King Charles IX, the massacre took place five days after the wedding of the king's sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (the future Henry IV of France). This marriage was an occasion for which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris. The massacre began in the night of 23–24 August 1572 (the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle), two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. The king ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks, the massacre expanded outward to other urban centres and the countryside. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000. The massacre also marked a turning point in the French Wars of Religion. The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, as well as many re-conversions by the rank and file, and those who remained were increasingly radicalized. Though by no means unique, it was the worst of the century's religious massacres. Throughout Europe, it printed on Protestant minds the indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion. Pope Gregory XIII (7 January 1502 – 10 April 1585) became Pope of the Catholic Church on 13 May 1572, and is best known for commissioning and being the namesake for the Gregorian calendar, which remains the internationally accepted civil calendar to this day. However, there is a dark-side to his reign.