In an essay posted on Christianhistory.net on July 1, 2007, Scott Manetsch writes: â??Before dawn on the morning of August 24, 1572, church bells tolled in the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois quarter of Paris. Just moments earlier, soldiers under the command of [Catholic] Henri, duke of Guise, had overcome resistance and assassinated the admiral of France, Huguenot [Protestant] leader Gaspard de Coligny, in his bedroom. They threw the body from the window to the ground below, where angry crowds later mutilated it, cutting off the head and hands, and dragged it through the streets of Paris. â?¦ The killing unleashed an explosion of popular hatred against Protestants throughout the city. In the terrible days that followed, some 3,000 Huguenots were killed in Paris, and perhaps another 8,000 in other provincial cities. This season of blood â?? known as the Saint Bartholomewâ??s Day massacre â?? decisively ended Huguenot hopes to transform France into a Protestant kingdom. It remains one of the most horrifying episodes in the Reformation era.â?
Pope Gregory XIII even had a medal cast, showing an â??exterminating angelâ? striking Huguenots with a sword, inscribed with Hugonottorum strages (Hugenots slaughtered).
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