Remembering France's Heritage: A Protestant/Catholic Wedding

On this day 436 years ago, August 18, 1572, the 19-year-old, Roman Catholic-reared Marguerite de Valois ascended a platform outside the entry of a Parisian church to meet her groom, the French King of Navarre Henry de Bourbon. Henry (better known as Henry IV of France) was the son of Jeanne d'Albret, the acknowledged spiritual and political leader of the French Huguenot movement, and grandson to Margaret of Navarre, a sister of King Francis I of France and a strong supporter of the French Reformation. Hence, Henry had been raised a Huguenot and instructed in the Reformed faith.

Marguerite was the product of the union between Henry II, King of France, and Italian aristocrat Catherine de Medici, and it was her mother Catherine who was primarily responsible for arranging this new marriage alliance in an effort to escape dominance by the Catholic Guises. Henry’s Huguenot mother had at first strongly opposed the marriage, unwilling that her son should marry a Roman Catholic, but eventually caved in to the political pressure and allowed the union.

The two families had agreed that the ceremony should be performed in a way not entirely conformable to the rites of either church. It would not be entirely Reformed, in that the vows were to be received by a Cardinal; not Romish, because the vows were to be received without the sacrament. Following the ceremony, the groom retired to a Protestant meeting to hear a sermon and the bride went into the church to take Mass.

The religious import of this wedding that took place more than four centuries ago can be seen in two significant results, one more distant and one more immediate. On the one hand, it strengthened Henry of Navarre’s claim to the throne of France when it might otherwise have been challenged following the death of Marguerite’s three brothers. Because of his Huguenot upbringing and familial associations, Henry IV’s rule did for a time grant some relief to the Huguenot people through the signing of the Edict of Nantes in 1598. More immediately, however, this wedding set the stage for the terrible “St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre” which occurred just six days after the wedding while the festivities were still in progress. The wedding had brought a great flock of the Huguenot nobility and many followers of the young King of Navarre into a zealously Roman Catholic Paris, heightening the tension in the city. The Romish leaders, including Catherine de Medici and her son, King Charles IX, saw the presence of so many Huguenot leaders as a prize not to be lost and determined to “kill them all” (as Charles IX is reported to have screamed). More on that brutal Huguenot slaughter later ….