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Hiding Sins

This hall is closed to the public to this day because of the three frescoes that portray this unsavoury historical event.

Hiding Sins
Photo by Simone Savoldi / Unsplash

I hadn't heard of the St Bartholomew's Day massacre until recently. Long story short, a bunch of French Catholics assassinated a group of Calvinist Protestants in 1572. This began in Paris[1] but soon escalated to twelve other cities. Ordered by King Charles IX, between 5,000 and 30,000 died.[2]

What interested me about it was that there is a piece of hidden political[3] propaganda in the Sala Regia within Vatican City, Rome, depicting this event. Some scholars have even suggested that the hall is closed to the public to this day because of the three frescoes that portray this unsavoury historical event.[4] Such was the socio-political climate at the time that the sitting Pope Gregory XIII also had a medal struck to celebrate the massacre.[5] You can see it here.

Ultimately though, Pope John Paul II did issue a statement[6] on the anniversary of the massacre, 425 years later.[7]

  1. With people even being assassinated in the Louvre: https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/st-bartholomews-day-24th-august-1572/. ↩︎

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew's_Day_massacre ↩︎

  3. Or perhaps ecclesiastical. ↩︎

  4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1482335 ↩︎

  5. https://www.britannica.com/event/Massacre-of-Saint-Bartholomews-Day ↩︎

  6. Which was not quite an apology. ↩︎

  7. https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/travels/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_23081997_vigil.html ↩︎

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