Bartholomew's Day, 1, a festival celebrated on the 24th day of August (or 25th at Rome) in the Church of Rome, and on the 11th of June in the Greek Church, in commemoration of the apostle Bartholo- mew.
2. The day has been rendered infamous in history
J in consequence of the massacre of the Protestants in France in 1572. The principal Protestants were in-
I vited to Paris, under a solemn oath of safety, to cele-
I brate the marriage of the King of Navarre with the
I sister of the French king. The queen-dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, died before the mar- riage was celebrated, not without suspicion of poison. The massacre commenced about twilight in the morn- ing on the tolling of a bell of the church of St. Ger- main. Admiral Coligni was basely murdered in bis
i own house, and then thrown out of a window, to grati- fy the malice of the Duke of Guise. His head was
j afterward cut oft* and sent to the king (Charles IX)
! and the queen-mother, the bloody Catherine de Medi- cis; his body, after a thousand indignities offered to it, was hung up by the feet on a gibbet. The murder-
■ ers then ravaged the whole city of Paris, and put to death more than ten thousand of all ranks. De Thou says, " The very streets and passages resounded with the groans of the dying and of those who were about to be murdered. The bodies of the slain were thrown out of the windows, and with them the courts and
j chambers of the houses were filled. The dead bodies of others were dragged through the streets ; and the
i blood flowed down the channels in such torrents that
I it seemed to empty itself into the neighboring river.
! In short, an innumerable multitude of men, women, and children were involved in one common destruc- tion, and all the gates and entrances to the king's pal-
1 ace wrere besmeared with blood." From Paris the massacre spread through the kingdom. The total number that fell during this massacre has been esti-
' mated by De Thou at 30,000, by Sully at 60,000, and by Perefixe, a popish historian, at 100,000. The news of this atrocious murder was received at Pome with unrestrained joy and delight; a universal jubilee was proclaimed by the pope: the guns of St. Angelo were
! fired, and bonfires lighted in the streets. A medal was struck in the. pope's mint, with his own head on one side, and on the other a rude representation of the massacre, with an angel brandishing a sword, and bearing the inscription " Hvgonotorum strages." See
j Huguenots.
Romanist writers treat this massacre in three ways: (1.) Some, like Caveirac, De Falloux, and Rohrbacher, justify it ; (2.) others affirm that the Romanists were only following the example set by Protestants ; (3.) others again, like Theiner, in his new volumes of the Annates Ecclesiastici, attribute it to politics, not to re- ligion. Theiner's view is refuted, and the complicity
| of the Roman Church, with the pope at its head, in this great crime is shown in the Christian Remem-
BARTHOLOMEW'S GOSPEL 67:
brancer, xxiv, 245. Lingard, in his History of Eng- land, gives a favorable view of the facts for the Roman side, which is refuted in the Edinburgh Review, vols, xlii, liii ; and in Lardner, Hist, of England (Cab. Cy- clopaedia, vol. iii. See Curths, Die Bartholomausnacht (Lpz. 1814); Wachler, Die Pariser Blutkochzeit (Lpz. 182G) ; Audin, Hist, de la St. Barthelemy (Paris, 1829) ; also, Turner, Hist, of England, vol. iii, Appendix ; Cob- bin, Historical View of the lief Church of France (Lond. 1816) ; Weiss, History of the Prof. Ref. in France (New York, 1854, 2 vols. 12mo); Shoberl, Persecutions of Popery, ii, 1 sq. ; Ranke, Hist, of Papacy, i, 27C, 424, 491; Gieseler, Ck. Hist, iv, 304, Smith's ed.
3. On St. Bartholomew's day in 16G2, the year in which the Act of Uniformity (q. v.) was passed, two thousand non-conforming ministers were ejected from their benefices in England. — Mosheim, Ch. Hist, iii, 173 note.
Bartholomew's Gospel. See Bartholomew (Jh ' Apostle).
Bartholomites, 1, an order of Armenian monks. See Armenia.
2. A congregation of secular priests, who take their name from Bartholomew Holshauser, who founded the order at Salzburg, August 1st, 1G40. Pope Innocent XI approved their constitutions in 1680 and 1684. This congregation was established for the purpose of forming good priests and pastors, and was governed by a chief president, whose duty it was to maintain uniformity of discipline throughout the congregation, and by diocesan presidents, who were to attend to the same thing in their respective dioceses, b}' watch- ing over the curates and other ecclesiastics belonging to their institution, visiting them annually, and report- ing the result of their visitations to the ordinary. Curates belonging to this institute were never placed singly in any cure; an assistant priest was almost al- ways appointed with each curate, who was paid either out of the revenues of the parish, or by the revenues of some richer parish, likewise filled by a Bartholo- mite, if the former be too poor. They had many mem- bers in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and other countries, but have long been extinct. See Hel- yot, Ord. Religieux, i, 373.