BARTOLOMEO, NOTTE DI SAN. - It was one of the episodes, perhaps the most cruel, that bloodied France during the Wars of Religion. Besides the fierce fanaticism of Huguenot propaganda, the slaughter was generated above all by the antagonism between the two parties into which the French high nobility was divided in order to gain predominance in the kingdom. One of them, that of the Guise, presented itself as the champion of Catholicism; the other, represented by the Condé and the Bourbons, favored the Huguenots, much more for political purposes than from religious conviction. King Carlo IX and his mother Caterina de' Medici, while desiring the victory of Catholicism, aimed particularly not to be overwhelmed by either of the contending parties. When the third war of religion was concluded by the peace of St-Germain-en-Laye in Aug. 1570, by which the Huguenots obtained full toleration throughout the kingdom and, as a guarantee, four fortified places of security, the blandishments of Gaspero di Coligny, leader
