The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre was definitive proof to English Protestants that Catholics were committed to eradicating Protestantism and would stop at no atrocity.
Tom describes how the massacre of French Protestants on St. Bartholomew's Day 1572 became seared into the English Protestant imagination as irrefutable evidence of Catholic intentions. ✦ AI generated
Tom Holland · The Rest Is History · 2026-07-27 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 61:22
What that play describes is the most infamous bloodbath in all 16th century European history. It is the massacre the pogram against French Protestants or hugeno as they were called which began on the 24th of August 1572 St. Bartholomew's day and Marlo was writing his play two decades later. But the events of that day the bloodshed in the streets of Paris were still stamped onto the imaginations of English Protestants. They haunted their dreams because this was the proof. Proof beyond any possible doubt that Catholics were set on extrapating the true religion, the true Protestant faith, that they were plotting and conspiring to destroy Protestantism and that if they were ever given the opportunity, there was no atrocity, no barbarism, no crime, no cruelty that they would not commit in the name of their hellish fanatical devotion to the bishop of Rome and his underlings.
verbatim transcript · starts at 61:22
61:22hugeno as they were called which began on the 24th of August 1572 St. Bartholomew's day and Marlo was writing his play two decades later. But the events of that day the bloodshed in the streets of Paris were still stamped onto the imaginations of English Protestants. They haunted their dreams because this was the proof. Proof beyond any possible doubt that Catholics were set on extrapating the true religion,
61:55the true Protestant faith, that they were plotting and conspiring to destroy Protestantism. and that if they were ever given the opportunity, there was no atrocity, no barbarism, no crime, no cruelty that they would not commit in the name of their hellish fanatical devotion to the bishop of Rome and his underlings. And Tom, people may be thinking, well, this is very overstated and very melodramatic, but actually what the Duke
62:24of Geese is promising in that speech, the massacre, you know, he's punished this bloke. what's happened to this one guy is going to happen to thousands of other people. I mean, this is not so far from the reality of what actually did happen that day in Paris, is it? Yeah. As we'll see, Marlo is drawing on um a contemporaneous accounts for his drama. And even though um in the play, the Duke