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Historic Love and Marriages From Hell

Khalid Elhassan September 22, 2020 31 min

Jerry Lee Lewis - Myra Gale Brown — Jerry Lee Lewis and his child bride, back home after a disastrous overseas trip. The Commercial Appeal

24. No Love Lost Between the Bride’s and Groom’s Religions

saint bartholomew's day massacre 1 — Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. BBC

At the time of Margaret of Valois’ nuptials, France was under serious religious strains, with no love lost between French Catholics and Protestants. To ease the tensions, Catherine de Medici sought to bring the Catholic Valois closer to their Bourbon relatives, a Protestant branch of the French royal family. Accordingly, Catherine arranged for Margaret to marry her Bourbon relative, the Protestant Henry of Navarre.

Catherine de Medici with her children in 1861: Francis, Charles IX, Margaret, and Henry. Derniers Valois

The wedding was held at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on August 19^th, 1572. Things went wrong from the start when the Protestant groom refused – or was not allowed – to set foot in the Catholic cathedral. So he spent the wedding day outside Notre Dame. Things got worse for religious reconciliation five days later, when the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre began on August 24^th, Thousands of Protestants who had traveled to Paris for the wedding were murdered by Catholic mobs. Tens of thousands more Protestants were massacred throughout France in the following days.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.