The Cultural Impact of the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day

Abstract

Anna Bryson’s study, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England , signals in its title the argument that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ‘quite a major shift in aristocratic values and patterns of behaviour occurred. In the field of manners, it was a shift from ideals and practices governed by the concept of “courtesy” to those which were expressed and moulded by a new concept — that of “civility”’. 1 For example, we can observe Spenser, writing from outside the court, lamenting the decline in the personal and behavioural standards of courtesy, while tracing the dangers of the more political code based on one’s place as a citizen in the state. In this book, which explores from different perspectives, concepts of ‘civility’, it may be seen as an incivility in itself, a violent breach of decorum, to look at a historical episode which abruptly stepped completely outside the bounds of manners altogether, and plunged Europe into the consequences of sheer barbarism. However, as previous chapters demonstrate, the difference between civility and barbarism is not necessarily one of category but of degree, both linked along a continuum running from civil behaviour to a denial of civilized values. The continuum can be traced through a series of redefinitions running from cives through citizen, civil, civility, civilization, uncivilized — beyond the bounds of codes of conduct altogether. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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