Voltaire and the Massacre of St Bartholomew
J.H.M. Salmon describes how Voltaire was haunted by the massacre of Huguenots in August 1572, and used his version of the complicated event in his lifelong campaign against prejudice and superstition.
The massacre of Saint Bartholomew haunted Voltaire’s imagination. Nearly every year, when the fateful day of August 24th approached, the letters he despatched from his refuge at Ferney alluded to the fever that invariably attacked him upon the anniversary. In the spring of 1772 the fever developed earlier than usual, and Voltaire wrote of his conviction that he would die during the second centenary of that atrocious event.
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