Smorgasbord Posts from the Archives 2021 – Pot Luck – #Huguenot #History -11 September: A Date to Remember– A Date to Mourn by Joyce Hampton

Since this series began in January 2018 there have been over 1000 Posts from Your Archives where bloggers have taken the opportunity to share posts to a new audience… mine. The topics have ranged from travel, childhood, recipes, history, family and the most recent series was #PotLuck where I shared a random selection of different topics.

In this series I have shared posts from the last six months of 2020 and the series is now closed to new participants.

This is the second post by Joyce Hampton who has chronicled the history of the Huguenots and following on from last week shares another date that will be remembered for its infamy.

11 September: A Date to Remember– A Date to Mourn

Following on from my blog last month about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, I am now going to tell you about the next chapter in this sorrowful event.

When news of the massacre reached the Vatican in Rome, Pope Gregory XIII decided to ‘celebrate’ with a jubilee day of public thanksgiving. The date set was the 11th September 1572, it was to be a double celebration for the defeat of the Ottoman troops by the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto on 7th October 1571, and for the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenots in France, in August 1572. The celebration included guns being fired in salute of these events.

It seems distasteful of the Pope to be ordering celebrations for the massacre of thousands of Huguenots, but he viewed it as divine retribution on heretics. When Pope Gregory had heard news of the massacre, he ordered the singing of a Te Deum and ordered a commemorative medal to be struck. This medal depicted the Pope’s head on one side and an image of an angel, holding a sword and a cross, standing over the fallen Huguenots with the motto UGONOTTORUM STRAGES or “Huguenot Bloodbath”.

Pope Gregory XIII’s medal

Later, the Pope commissioned a mural by Giorgio Vasari of the ‘wonderous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre to hang in the Vatican.

©Joyce Hampton 2020

About Joyce Hampton

I was born in Stratford E15 and moved around various areas of London before finally settling in Surrey with my husband John and our two cairn terriers.

I began writing in 2012 and my first book was: Looking back – A century of life in Bethnal Green, this book evolved from tracking other people’s recollections as the primary source material, partly family anecdotes, of the amusing, sad or serious into a written record. This research was supplemented by cross-checking documented events, in London libraries and archives to ensure that the book is both easy to read as well as being factually correct. I gradually found that I had created a walk through time account of the Bethnal Green area of the 19th and 20th centuries, which includes the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943.

My newest book is The Story of the Huguenots: A unique Legacy. It is a 500 page book but with a difference as it is a FACTUAL NOVEL in other words it has the factual history of the Huguenots but written in the expected format of a novel in the belief that the reader will find it more engaging and will want to discover more about this amazing group of people. The book is divided into four parts (all within the one book). I also take bookings for talks and lectures on the subject, including, as an example, a slot at the annual Write Idea Festival in London which was to a very appreciative audience of over 100 people.

Books by Joyce Hampton

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon UK – And: Amazon US – Follow Joyce : Goodreads – Website:Not Just Another Book – Twitter: @NJABOfficial

 

Thanks for dropping by and to Joyce for allowing me to share her posts. I hope you will head over to browse in her archives.. Thanks Sally.