Abstract
“One of the great needs of the twentieth century is a scientific study of atrocity and of the moral issues involved.” So wrote Herbert Butter- field, more than twenty years ago, with special reference to Catherine de Medici and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.1 Historians have only just begun systematically to fill this need; but the Massacre of St. Bartholomew at least has kept their interest, and this not only in the two symposia commemorating the quatercentenary of the event, of which this volume is the result. Such sustained interest is in itself curious. Our own century can compete with any other in the number and scale of massacres that men have inflicted on each other. Yet, at each new revolting instance, we tend to turn away with weary disgust, with a heart-sick feeling ofdéjà vu.
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References
H. Butterfield,History and Human Relations(London, 1951), p. 125.
See Philip Hughes, “Lingard and St. Bartholomew,” in G. H. Carter, ed.,From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly(New York, 1965 ).
See H. Butterfield,Man on His Past(Cambridge, 1955), chap. vi.
It will not always be possible to point specifically to the discussions following the papers, among other reasons because I was not present at the symposium in the Folger Shakespeare Library. I am, however, incorporating some of the more important points raised in the discussions in the Newberry Library in this Introduction.
Gf. below, p. 195.
This basic fact of Spanish foreign policy has recently been emphasized and documented from Spanish military expenditure by Geoffrey Parker, “Spain, Her Enemies and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1559-1648,”Past and Present, No. 49 (Nov. 1970), pp. 72–95.
T. A. d’Aubigné,Histoire universelle, ed. A. de Ruble (10 vols.; Paris 1886-1909), VI, 286–88. Cf. alsoCalendar of State Papers, Venetian, VIII, 270.
N. M. Sutherland,The Massacre of St Bartholomew and the European Conflict 1559–1572(London, 1973),passim.
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© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Koenigsberger, H.G. (1974). Introduction. In: Soman, A. (eds) The Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Archives Internationales D’histoire des Idees / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 75. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1601-8_1
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