Christopher Marlowe and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Protestantism and the theatre of Catholic Violence
In 1593, Christopher Marlowe’s play The Massacre at Paris debuted on the London stage. Marlowe’s play is a fictionalized portrayal of the famous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of August 24, 1572.
The Massacre saw the violent targeting of Protestants by the powerful Catholic interests of the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, the de Guise family, and even King Charles IX himself. All told, the massacre left 3,000 Protestants dead in the city of Paris and another 70,000 throughout France. As news of this violence spread, for Protestants, it became a symbol for the inherent violence of their Catholic opponents and a reminder of the constant threat to their new religion from the old.
In this episode, Amber Williamson joins Hear the Voice and Prayer to discuss how Marlowe’s fiction helped to dramatize the dangers Protestants saw in the Catholic faith. The conversation reveals the significance of religious violence not only to the history of the Reformation, but also to the history of imagination.
Written or Published Around February 19, 2017
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Christopher Marlowe. The Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris. ed. H.S. Bennett. New York: Gordian Press, Inc,1931.
Secondary Sources
Carlos M. Eire. Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1660. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.
N.M. Sutherland. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the European Conflict, 1559-1572.
New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc, 1973.
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