Stabbed, defenestrated, burned, drowned, castrated, decapitated, mutilated and hanged. This is what happened to Admiral de Coligny’s corpse during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. A similar fate awaited the bodies of many Protestants during France’s religious troubles. Historians have interpreted these outrages as a manifestation of the religious fervour that animated the Catholics of the time, who were eager to purge their communities from the pollution associated with heresy. This article asks whether the attacks against the bodies of the Huguenots cannot be explained by other reasons, echoing a broad history of insults inflicted to corpses. The fears experienced by Catholics were not only religious, but also social and political. The attacks against the bodies therefore reflected a dual state of mind: firstly the fears, both spiritual and temporal, that the heretics would seize the kingdom or, at least, the local community, and on the other hand, anger, even hatred, against the means they have taken to achieve their ends, that is to say, cunning and conspiracy.