Consoling the Huguenot Refugees in Late Sixteenth-Century Geneva

Abstract

A brief but ominous entry in the minutes of the Genevan Company of Pastors on Saturday, 30 August 1572, heralds a turning point in French history and the life of the Company’s moderator, Theodore Beza.1 “News has come,” it records, “of the treachery and horrible cruelty taking place in France against several nobles and all the faithful, not only at Paris, but also subsequently at Lyon and throughout all France, where there were horrible massacres.”2 The entry alludes to the Saint-Bartholomew’s Day massacre, which commenced on the morning of 24 August at the instigation of Catherine de’ Medici in collusion with her somewhat conflicted son, King Charles IX.3 Initially it involved the assassination of Admiral Gaspard II de Coligny (a Huguenot leader who was urging Charles to declare war on Spain) and some Huguenot nobles, who had come to Paris to attend the wedding of Henri de Navarre and Charles’ sister, Marguerite de Valois. It quickly spread, however, to the murder of some twoto four-thou-