A City in Conflict: Troyes during the French Wars of Religion by Penny Roberts

Abstract

334book reviews tion.The universities of Heidelberg and Leiden were autonomous institutions that granted degrees and that devoted as much energy to training lawyers, bureaucrats , and physicians, as to training ministers for Reformed (Calvinist) churches.There were significant exchanges of students and a few exchanges of professors among the four institutions. Geneva made occasional attempts to expand its Academy into a nul university , notably by adding advanced instruction on law. But this instruction was frequently interrupted; the Academy never granted degrees, and it never gained independence from the local Company of Pastors and the city government. Its most important function remained the training of Reformed pastors, particularly for France but also for other parts of Europe, supplying them with not only necessary academic training but also with a degree of practical experience, aU in a tightly disciplined and thoroughly orthodox setting. Maag has drawn upon correspondence among ecclesiastical authorities and by students to provide some striking detaUs about individuals working in these institutions. I found particularly fresh and interesting information gathered from unpublished letters returned to Zurich from students whom that city had sent elsewhere. Altogether this book makes an important contribution to our knowledge of higher education in Europe during the period of confessionalization . Robert M. Kingdon University ofWisconsin-Madison A City in Conflict: Troyes during the French Wars ofReligion. By Penny Roberts . (Manchester: Manchester University Press. Distributed by St. Martin's Press, NewYork. 1996. Pp. xi, 228. $79.95.) Penny Roberts has, in a series of articles published over the past haU-dozen years, estabUshed herseU as a leading authority on the Reformation and confessional strife at Troyes in the eastern French province of Champagne. She now weaves the rich materials into a major interpretative study Her focus onTroyes, an important urban center, directs scholarly attention to a region whose Huguenot population has long been neglected. It also extends the range of provincial studies, which have increasingly informed our understanding of the Reformation experience at the local level. What, in short, were the geographic dimensions and broad social character of reUgious change throughout sixteenth-century France? In this sense, Roberts' contribution is timely and instructive . The study opens with a concise overview of Champagne and the city of Troyes, and then moves directly to the formative years of the Protestant movement . Early scattered Lutheran activity gave way to a highly organized Reformed church by the 1550's.A series of Calvinist pastors secretly ministered to BOOK REVIEWS335 a growing congregation.The faithful,though never a majority atTroyes,were extremely active and, in some instances, quite aggressive. Many came, predictably enough, from artisan ranks.The watershed for the Reformed Church ofTroyes occurred in 1562 when armed conflict between Huguenots and CathoUcs erupted in and around the city as it did in many French towns.The tide soon turned against the Protestants and, over the next decade, their position deteriorated badly.The culmination took place in the autumn of 1572 as CathoUcs massacred the Huguenots in imitation of the August bloodbath at Paris.Afterwards, the municipal debate atTroyes was no longer between Protestant and CathoUc. Discussion now shifted to the rival claims of moderate and extreme Catholics. The ultra-Catholic League even dominatedTroyes for a time.Altogether, the developments related by Roberts foUow the classic pattern of the Reformation in northern France: the gradual emergence of urban pockets of Protestantism, limited initial success, and ultimate failure in the face of resurgent CathoUcism. The sources that Roberts brings in discussing these themes are among the book's greatest strengths. Her close reading and imaginative appUcation offragmentary surviving archival materials as weU as two valuable pubUshed Mémoires , one by the Huguenot Nicolas Pithou, the other by the CathoUc priest Claude Haton, give the analysis a soUd foundation.The author's frequent comparison of the situation at Troyes with other French cities sets the context nicely and lends the study substantial texture.The book also counterbalances an enduring tendency to view the French Reformation largely from a Parisian perspective. On the other hand, the book's heavy emphasis upon the Huguenot experience tends to mask the dynamics of the CathoUc community.A more balanced approach would better aUow Roberts to explore the...