You might want to take a look at:
http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=32
It reviews:
The Massacre in History by Eric Sterling
Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, eds. New York: Berghahn books, 1999. ISBN:
1-57181-934-7, cloth; 1-57181-935-5, paperback.
A collection of essays, a few seem relevant to your topic, including this
excerpt :
Massacres during the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century is the
subject of Mark Greengrass's contribution to the book. Greengrass even
points out that the word massacre in its modern meaning derives from the
religious cleansing in late sixteenth-century France; the word, formerly
meaning a butcher's chopping block, acquired this new meaning from
Protestants who were victimized by this sectarian hatred--Catholic against
Protestant (Huguenot)--in bloody encounters such as the St. Bartholomew
Massacre in August 1572. After 1577, the massacres began to diminish in
number and intensity, partly because so many Huguenots had fled the cities,
particularly in northern France. Edicts of pacification permitted
Protestants freedom to worship in certain locations outside the cities in
the northern parts of the country, which, ironically, exposed them to more
danger because they were easily targeted during their religious processions
on Sundays. Greengrass concurs with French historian Denis Crouzet that a
marked distinction concerning religious violence separated Catholics from
Protestants; this demarcation involved Catholic literature written at the
beginning of the French reformation that stressed apocalyptic and prophetic
forces. The notion that the world would soon come to an end indicated that
a holy authority was immanent and struggling against a dark force. The
emergence of Protestants (heretics in the eyes of many Catholics) as well as
portents such as monstrous births and miracles made many zealous Catholics
believe that an apocalypse was soon coming; they saw themselves,
consequently, as agents of God who, like Him, struggled to wipe out evil in
what they considered a pivotal moment in history. Viewed as Christ-like
bearers of God's blessings during the end of the world, children were
invited to participate in the horrific atrocities. Many of the murders were
astonishingly brutal and gory because the perpetrators saw themselves as
scourges of God and considered their enemies subhuman and diabolical
creatures who deserved the pain and suffering they experienced. Greengrass
discusses various testimonies, "hidden transcripts," related by survivors.
He points out that many testimonies were related decades after the incidents
because of trauma, fear, and repression; he compares this to Holocaust
testimonies, many of which has been recorded long after the Shoah.
-John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenneth Gross" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:52 AM
Subject: Re: Massacred Martyrs
> Do you think English poets like Spenser and Milton would hear the "sacre"
> or the "Mass" hovering within the vocables of "massacre"?
>
> KG
>
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, Charles Butler wrote:
>
>> I wonder if you can help me fine-tune my sense of connotation?
>>
>> As far as one can tell from the citations in the OED, the earliest uses
>> in
>> English of the word 'massacre' date from the 1580s. It strikes me as an
>> interesting possibility (but nb I have no hard evidence for this) that
>> the
>> word was introduced by Huguenot refugees, and/or may have gained some
>> currency from the recent memory of St Bartholomew's Day 1572. What I'd be
>> interested to know is, was there at this time any sense that use of the
>> word
>> 'massacre' (rather than say an English equivalent such as 'slaughter')
>> carried a particular religious or even sectarian connotation?
>>
>> It would be relatively easy to come up with examples that might imply as
>> much, from Spenser's reference 'massacred martyrs' in FQ III.iii to
>> Milton's
>> 'Massacre at Piemont' - and of course, there's the title of Marlowe's
>> play.
>> On the other hand, mass killings often do have a religious dimension, so
>> even if the word were being used in a connotation-free way, as it were,
>> the
>> law of averages suggests that it would still sometimes occur in a
>> religious
>> context. Also, there are other quite early uses of the word that don't
>> seem
>> to have a religious overtone to them at all.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>>
>> Charlie
>>
>
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