Inflation and upheaval drove Parisians to scapegoat the Huguenots
Evidence
It gave a shape to vague terrors and an outlet for uneasiness to blame all the evils of France on the Huguenots, and to make a desperate minority, fighting for its existence, into a menacing conspiracy about to overwhelm the kingdom. It was reassuring to the insecure to hear themselves clamouring for the blood of the heretics, as if one more act of aimless violence could cure a world whose malady was aimless violence. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 90
Categorization
- XREF: The economic-displacement-to-scapegoating mechanism echoes modern theories of populist ressentiment and moral panic.
- SEED: An essay could trace how economic insecurity converts into religious/ethnic scapegoating across centuries, from 1580s Paris to present.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 90