ABSTRACT
Over the course of 100 days in the spring and early summer of 1562, iconoclastic attacks permanently transformed the relic shrine of Saint Martin, one of the most prominent in France. The Huguenots cremated Saint Martin’s remains, reduced his fifth-century tomb to rubble, and melted down one of the richest relic treasuries in the kingdom. The systematic attack on the basilica was much more than just an act of looting or pillaging. Under the direction of their military commanders and local consistory, the Huguenots cleansed the most prominent sacred site in the city of what they viewed as the instruments of false worship and idolatry, physically challenging Catholic understandings of the sacred in the community. This chapter examines the Protestant challenge to the sacrality of the site and Catholic efforts to physically repair the basilica and to memorialize the iconoclastic attacks of 1562 in space and liturgy. The struggle over Saint Martin’s basilica provides a useful case study of the wider struggle over the nature of the sacred in the community that took place in thousands of churches across the kingdom during the religious wars.
