Look, LORD, and consider: Whom have you ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? – Lamentations 2:20

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 24, 2020): Lamentations 2

On the evening of August 23, 1572, during the French Wars of Religion, a wave of Catholic mob violence was directed at the French Huguenots (Calvinist Protestants). Our contemporary understanding is that the violence was instigated by Queen Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of King Charles IX. Estimates vary about how many Huguenots died in what is remembered as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, but across France somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 people died at the hands of the mob. Some of the surviving Protestants fled to Sancerre, a fortified hilltop city in the central region of France. There, the Protestant survivors attempted to escape the violence, only to be held hostage inside the city by France forces loyal to the Roman Catholic King, Charles IX. Inside the hilltop city, the inhabitants understood that they were greatly outnumbered, and each one of them feared that this would be the place where their lives would end. Yet, still, they taunted their attackers with cries of “We light here, we fight here; go and assassinate elsewhere.”

But inside Sancerre, conditions were deplorable. The population was left trying to feed itself by eating rats, leather, and even ground slate. There were also reports of cannibalism inside the fortified city. Another 500 people died during the siege, including most of the children. While the French forces were able to hem the people inside the city, any attempt to take the city was repulsed. But the Protestants trapped inside the city were far from safe, and definitely not comfortable.

The Siege of Sancerre was almost immediately compared to the Siege of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. The unthinkable had happened in both cities; accusations persisted of cannibalism, and even that women had been driven to consume their own children in an effort to extend their lives. Cannibalism is unthinkable in our culture, regardless of the circumstances. But to devour the children that you raised increases the level of our horror present in the situation.

And on top of that, in Jerusalem, the priest and the prophet were killed in the sanctuary. Typically, the sanctuary is viewed as a place of safety and peace. But inside of Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege, there was no safe place and no action that was deemed to be unthinkable.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Lamentations 3