On this day in 1572, the Huguenot nobility of France was assembled in Paris to see Catherine de Medici's daughter, Margaret, marry Prince Henry of Navarre. The atmosphere was highly charged. Catherine seems to have decided that this was an ideal opportunity for a final solution to the inconvenience of the Huguenots; word of the plot was spread amongst the populace, and when the bells of the church of St Germain l'Auxerrois rang out, the Parisians rose in fury and slaughtered Huguenots everywhere in the city's streets. Before the massacre was over, the River Seine was red with the blood of many tens of thousands.
It was the feast of St Bartholomew and, as it happens, the saint himself was no more fortunate. He was one of the 12 apostles, but his life is remembered mainly for the gruesome manner of his leaving it. In AD 44, it seems, he was flayed alive in Armenia - a province in partibus infidelium between the Black Sea and the Caspian.
His feast day, however, is of some importance in the calendar of meteorology in Europe. In Germany, for example, if you see a stork or two today, it is a good omen for the coming winter:
Bleiben die Stoerche nach Bartholomae,
Kommt ein Winter, der tut nicht weh.
"When the storks remain after Bartholomew's Day,/ expect a winter that will bring no trouble."
In Italy, however, the saint performs the same function as St Swithin does in England; it is believed that if it rains today, further rain is guaranteed on each of the succeeding 40 days. Indeed, taken in combination, the two saints are a troublesome pair, since if they were both to do their worst we could expect wet weather for the better part of three whole months. But in England, Bartholomew is viewed as something of an antidote to Swithin; his feast day marks the end of the 40-day sentence handed down by his troublesome Lordship of Winchester, and the English proverb has it that:
St Bartlemy's dusty mantle dries
All the tears that Swithin cries.
By a popular medieval reckoning, on the other hand, today marks the turning of the year. The theory was summed up by the inscription: Dat Clemens hiemem, dat Petrus ver Cathedratus, aesuat Urbanus et autumnnat Bartholomaeus. Loosely translated, this tells us that winter lasts from the feast of St Clement until February 21st; spring from St Peter's Day until the feast of St Urban; and summer from then until August 23rd. Autumn, finally, was said to begin today - on the feast of St Bartholomew.