Ordnungsverlust und epische Form

Reviewed by: Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion ed. by Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard Claire Konieczny (bio) Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard, editors. Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion. De Gruyter, 2019. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 68. 217 pages. ISBN: 978-1-5015-1803-4. The Wars of Religion were a turbulent time in France’s history; decades of conflict ravaged the country on numerous levels—economically, socially, and emotionally, among others. Much scholarly focus has been dedicated to the actual battles and historical events of this tumultuous epoch. Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion approaches this era in a different manner, however; the volume focuses on a variety of printed material produced during these conflicts that were, as identified by the editors in their introduction, part of a “textual war” that “could provoke armed conflict” (1; 3). The contributions of the work not only explore the manner in which “[t]hese writings shaped the ways in which the Wars were ultimately understood by those who experienced them” (8) but also how these texts engaged directly in the Wars of Religion themselves, either by creating or promoting a certain ideological group or by advocating specific actions. Taking a broader view on literature’s influence before, during, and after the Wars, the volume defines polemic as “fighting words”; that is, “expressions of violence that can give rise to actual physical conflict” (3). Christopher M. Flood’s article, the first in a volume structured more or less around the chronology of the Wars of Religion, focuses on the period just before the outbreak of the first war in 1562. Flood notes that in the pre-war era, “an unprecedented preponderance of satirical literature typified the intensifying conflict between Protestants and Catholics” (10). Interestingly, writes Flood, both the Catholic and Protestant sides employed biblical stories in their satires. Focusing on Théodore de Bèze’s Epistola Magistri Benedicti Passavantii (1553) and the anonymous Catholic response to Bèze’s work entitled Passevent parisien respondent à Pasquin (1556), Flood contends that the biblical models used by these satirical authors offers insights into the self-perceptions of each side of the religious conflict. After providing a short history of the satirical genre itself, Flood shows how Bèze’s clever usage of the David and Goliath story in his own work constructs a communal identity based on the biblical image of a small and unlikely hero (the Protestants) fighting against a monstrous enemy (the Catholics). The Catholic response in turn utilizes the biblical model of Judith in order to, according to Flood, specifically vilify [End Page 976] Protestant leadership as well as to legitimize violence of the majority (the Catholics) against the minority (the Protestants). The following chapter, written by Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier, analyzes a literary quarrel that took place during the first War of Religion between the Catholic Pierre de Ronsard and Antoine de la Roche-Chandieu, a Protestant. Focusing on Chandieu’s Palinodies (1563) and his Response aux calomnies (1563), Morand-Métivier contends that Chandieu’s imitation (indeed, near copying) of Ronsard’s writings indicates that Chandieu wished to attack the “‘official’ vision of the [French] kingdom,” as promoted by the politically active and powerful Ronsard (30). Ronsard, who believed that in order to be French one must be Catholic as well as support the royal family, “used [his] poetry as a weapon to defend France” —at least his idea of France and what it meant to be French (35). In mimicking Ronsard, Chandieu “ventriloquizes” him; Chandieu uses Ronsard to promote claims that are directly opposed to Ronsard’s own (30). Overall, Morand-Métivier contends that Ronsard and Chandieu’s written squabble points to the deepening divides that were developing between the Catholics and Protestants; both sides held specific models for the kingdom, but neither side was willing to make concessions—a fact that led to the continuation of the wars. Taking a step away from the chronological, Amy Graves Monroe’s chapter analyzes the physical aspect of polemical writings. Focusing specifically on the title pages of polemical writings, Monroe “proposes to consider the...

Even to ask the question posed in the title of this essay might seem unnecessary, since no other conict in late medieval or early modern history includes the phrase ‘wars of religion’ in the label conventionally axed to it. In fact, however, historians from the sixteenth century to the present day have debated whether the civil wars that roiled France from c.1560 to 1598 arose primarily from religious dierences or aristocratic ambition. Consider these two quotations from the years 1579-81, the rst from a Catholic historian and the second from a Protestant:ose who have considered things closely have known that neither religion alone nor the oppression of the Protestants caused the kingdom’s troubles, but also the hatreds that existed among the great nobles because of their ambitions and rivalries.2

The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers during the Wars of Religion, 1560-1600. By Megan C. Armstrong. (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press. 2004. Pp. vii, 278. $75.00.) When I began my work on the French Wars of Religion decades ago, social tensions and class struggles served as the primary explanations for the violence of the era. Given my then poorly articulated dissatisfaction with largely ignoring religion as a motivating factor, I am pleased to find still another book that presents religion as central to the religious wars. Megan Armstrong puts forward a powerful case for the importance of the Franciscans in galvanizing French Catholic opposition to the French Protestants and aiding and abetting the Catholic League's resistance to Henry III and Henry of Navarre. The author begins with a succinct overview of the era of the religious wars, which emphasizes the close interplay between politics and religion. In the minds of most French Catholics religious division necessarily led to political sedition because of the irreducible relationship between church and monarchy. The author stresses the importance of traditional pious practices to French Catholics as a means of purging the world of sin, especially heresy. This leads her into a discussion of the Franciscans and how they promoted such devotions through their preaching. She points out the political radicalism of so many of the friars and notes how unusual it was for members of a religious order, for whom obedience to authority was a key aspect of their lives, to be involved in seditious behavior. Armstrong then devotes a chapter to the internal reform of the Franciscan order. She examines the fissures between the Conventual and the Observant Franciscans in France and the tensions that arose when the Capuchins were introduced there by 1568. The work provides detailed information on the judicial disputes that often ended up in the Parlement of Paris. Armstrong notes that the many patrons of the Franciscans among the French elite often wound up on opposite sides in the final phases of the religious wars. (An appendix provides the names of patrons to the Parisian Franciscans, the nature of their patronage, and the sums involved.) Her explanation for Franciscan success lies in the nature of their piety and preaching, which she finds to have been highly emotional and sensual in the meaning of the word that it excited the senses. These features help to explain the popularity of the Franciscans across the French social classes. …

This chapter explores how people memorialised distressing events in sixteenth century France. Narrative context as well as the genres that these necessitated shaped kinds of episodes of violence and distress that could be remembered and the way these memories and the emotions they generated could be expressed. Despite repeated official injunctions to oubliance, as Kathleen Long has argued, period during and following wars of religion in France saw an explosion of literary, artistic and historical works which make sense of period's violent events. Distress about religious violence and upheavals was memorialised in personal accounts by many narrators for a wide variety of audiences and contexts. Many memories of experiences during the violent wars of religion suggested just such a climate of fear but also a need to control the expression and visibility of feelings during moments of crisis, for practical reasons as well as in keeping with spiritual beliefs.Keywords: France; Kathleen Long; oubliance; spiritual beliefs; violent wars

Front-matter : Table of Abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter I : The Geneva Company of Pastors : Internal Developments, 1564-1572; Chapter II : The Geneva Company of Pastors : Its Mission to France, 1563-1572; Chapter III : Arguments over French Reformed Church Organization; A. The Institutional Background; B. The Internal Attack : Jean Morely and his Treatise on Christian Discipline; C. The Internal Quarrel : 1. First Reactions to Morely’s Proposal; 2. Morely in the Ile-de-France; 3. The Official Reply to Morely; 4. Morely at the Court of Navarre; 5. Ramus Enters the Quarrel; 6. The St. Bartholomew’s Massacres End the Quarrel; 7. Epilogue; D. The External Attack : Charles du Moulin; Chapter IV : Geneva and the French Wars of Religion, 1563-1572; A. The Peace of Amboise : 1. Immediate Protestant Reactions; 2. Continuing Rumors of Sedition; B. {p. 8} The Renewal of War : Geneva and the Conspiracy of Meaux; C. Geneva’s Support For War : 1. Diplomatic Background; 2. The Second War of Religion; 3. The Third War of Religion; D. The Return of Peace; Conclusion; Back-matter : Appendixes; Annotated Bibliography; Index

The Huguenots are French Calvinists. The word “huguenot” is an adaptation from eidgenossen, a Swiss German term meaning “confederates,” which was applied to the Genevans who rebelled against their lord in the early 16th century. This term is rarely used in contemporary French, the generic word protestant being widely used. Other terms used over the centuries have been “Lutherans” (luthériens) in the 16th century, “members of the self-styled reformed religion” (membres de la religion prétendue réformée) in the 17th century, and “new converts” or “new Catholics” (nouveaux convertis, nouveaux catholiques, or simply NCs) in the 18th. There are five periods in the history of the Huguenots: the Reformation and the French Wars of Religion (c. 1530s–1598; see Reformation in France and the Wars of Religion); the 17th century (1598–1685; see 17th-Century French Protestantism); the refuge or diaspora (c. 1680–1760s; see the Post-Revocation Diaspora); the 18th century (1685–1787; see 18th-Century French Protestantism); and the contemporary era (since the Revolution; see Contemporary French Protestantism). The 1550s were the formative years of French Protestantism. Then began a series of eight Wars of Religion (1562–1598) that preserved the throne to a Catholic monarch and condemned French Protestantism to a peripheral role in the history of France. In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes at the end of the wars. This highly significant document guaranteed the Huguenots religious, economic, educational, judicial, political, and military rights. In 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes after decades of harassment followed by violent repression. This led to a major exodus—roughly 200,000 individuals—of Huguenots to northern Europe and to a lesser extent to British North America and Dutch South Africa. The period that extends from the revocation to the Edict of Toleration of 1787 is referred to as le désert. Following the dislocation brought about by the exodus and the War of the Cévennes (a localized Huguenot rebellion in a mountainous region of southern France), the 18th century was marked by sporadic and regional persecution interspersed by periods of calm. First the edict then the Revolution and the Napoleonic years opened a permanent era of toleration and acceptance for the Huguenots. In contemporary France, even if at times they could be victims of virulent attacks from Catholic extremist pamphleteers, the Huguenots have enjoyed peace and prosperity—some of them even reaching high positions in the state—and have remained a small religious minority in a country increasingly secular.

During one of the most violent phases of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), the Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonado made an extraordinarily original contribution to early-modern demonology. This contribution did not originally take on a printed form: rather it started life as a theological course taught at one of the most prestigious and innovative Parisian educational institutions of the period. Between 1551 and 1557 Maldonado studied grammar, Greek, logic, rhetoric and philosophy in Salamanca. Even more recent historians have, for the most part ignored him and have continued to underestimate his significance both for his contribution to Catholic theology and demonology, and for his role in the Wars of Religion. The lectures dedicated to impure spirits also show a trace of bitterness which reflected the anti-Protestant fanaticism of the author, disappointed by the outcome of the Third War of Religion (1568-1570), which made considerable concessions to French Protestants.

Paris, 1599. At the end of the French Wars of Religion, the widow Renée Chevalier instigated the prosecution of the military captain Mathurin Delacanche, who had committed multiple acts of rape, homicide, and theft against the villagers who lived around her château near the cathedral city of Sens. But how could Chevalier win her case when King Henri IV’s Edict of Nantes ordered that the recent troubles should be forgotten as ‘things that had never been’? A Widow’s Vengeance after the Wars of Religion is a dramatic account of the impact of the religious wars on daily life. Based on neglected archival sources and an exceptional criminal trial, it recovers the experiences of women, peasants, and foot soldiers, who are marginalized in most historical accounts. Tom Hamilton shows how this trial contributed to a wider struggle for justice and an end to violence in post-war France. People throughout the society of the Old Regime did not consider rape and pillage as inevitable consequences of war, and denounced soldiers’ illicit violence when they were given the chance. As a result, the early modern laws of war need to be understood not only as the idealistic invention of great legal thinkers, but also as a practical framework that enabled magistrates to do justice for plaintiffs and witnesses, like Chevalier and the villagers who lived under her protection.

Front-matter : Table of Abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter I : The Geneva Company of Pastors : Internal Developments, 1564-1572; Chapter II : The Geneva Company of Pastors : Its Mission to France, 1563-1572; Chapter III : Arguments over French Reformed Church Organization; A. The Institutional Background; B. The Internal Attack : Jean Morely and his Treatise on Christian Discipline; C. The Internal Quarrel : 1. First Reactions to Morely’s Proposal; 2. Morely in the Ile-de-France; 3. The Official Reply to Morely; 4. Morely at the Court of Navarre; 5. Ramus Enters the Quarrel; 6. The St. Bartholomew’s Massacres End the Quarrel; 7. Epilogue; D. The External Attack : Charles du Moulin; Chapter IV : Geneva and the French Wars of Religion, 1563-1572; A. The Peace of Amboise : 1. Immediate Protestant Reactions; 2. Continuing Rumors of Sedition; B. {p. 8} The Renewal of War : Geneva and the Conspiracy of Meaux; C. Geneva’s Support For War : 1. Diplomatic Background; 2. The Second War of Religion; 3. The Third War of Religion; D. The Return of Peace; Conclusion; Back-matter : Appendixes; Annotated Bibliography; Index

book reviews553 that, for all its careful wording, still raised determined opposition. The suspension designed to shut down dissident voices in 1547 left big issues unresolved, including one with a long history in Spain: the question ofthe power ofbishops undertaking corrective visitations. Even when such visits were justified through the decrees of the first phase of Trent, exemptions from episcopal authority— usually held by cathedral chapters—limited that power. Gutiérrez gives over the first three chapters in this book to this problem and to examples of chapter opposition, and then follows with analysis of the diplomacy between the Spanish clerics, the Emperor, and the papacy in 1554 designed to reduce this contention . These negotiations were paralyzed, as Gutiérrez relates in the following four chapters, by the death ofJulius III and by an interlude that included hopeful signs for the cathedral clerics (like the election of Marcellus H) but also included decisive abandonment of diplomacy in the bellicose, anticonciliar pontificate of Paul IV The stories Gutiérrez presents establish the precedents to the wider diplomatic operations followed to gain reconvocation in 1561, and these he relates in chapters 9 through 15. Pius IV quickly overcame the conciliar lethargy characteristic of the Pauline pontificate to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, but only with hard work and complex diplomacy. Gutiérrez traces it all, demonstrating, for example,the symbolic barrier that the very city ofTrent constituted for Protestants, and the wide variety of fears operating: from papal fear of a French national council, to fear within the Consejo Real that renewed jurisdictional strife would result from conciliar reconsideration of episcopal authority. He does so with constant use of archival sources, and includes appendices with transcriptions of correspondence and other documents. Gutiérrez argues a familiar position, namely, that it was the determination of Pius IV that secured reconvocation, but he does so with a presentation of archival evidence that far surpasses those who have held it before. A brief episode—but one with a vast network of connections to the religious, political, and military history of the era—is reconsidered in this massive volume . Gutierrez's finely researched, detailed analysis represents a major contribution to the history of early-modern Catholicism, even though it is a relatively small portion of the study to which he has dedicated his scholarly career. William V Hudon Bloomsburg University Michel de l'Hôpital: The Vision of a Reformist Chancellor during the French Wars ofReligion. By Seong-Hak Kim. [Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, Volume XXXVI.] (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers . 1997. Pp. xii, 216. $40.00.) A central figure in the fractious religious politics ofsixteenth-century France, Michel de l'Hôpital has surprisingly not received much attention in recent 554book reviews decades. The last major treatment of his life was A. Buisson's rather limited biography published in 1950. Apart from a few articles, nothing much new has been added to the nineteenth-century portrait of Hôpital as an early apostle of freedom of conscience guaranteed by a secular state. Kim's fine book revises this picture considerably by drawing on a wide array of archival sources and by devoting attention to the early stages ofHôpital's career. In the process, she captures the complex inconsistencies of a man who embodied a number of the central contradictions that plagued France during the Wars of Religion. Kim stresses the importance of Hôpital's own family history in explaining his rise to power. His father's involvement in Charles III de Bourbon's betrayal of François I in 1523 led to the family's exile in Italy,where young Michel grew up, taking a law degree from the University of Bologna. His firsthand exposure to Cinquecento Italian humanism impressed upon him a special sensibility regarding notions of civic duty and political morality that distinguished him from his counterparts back in France. Indeed, his Neo-Latin poetry demonstrated the close connection between literary humanism and careerism so emphasized by Italian courtly writers such as Castiglione and Delia Casa. Yet Hôpital's foreign upbringing only sharpened his own acute sense ofpatriotic devotion to France, where...

Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigne’s representations of cruelty in his epic about the Wars of Religion in France, Les Tragiques, function within the frame of a relationship between the authorial persona and a reader based on manipulation and even interrogation of the reader’s motives. While this cruelty might function as a spur to empathy, forcing the reader to face and at least try to understand the suffering of the victims of war and of religious persecution, it also evokes the possibility of vengeance and thus of continued violence. This strategy is supported by calculated perversion of some of the most cherished literary forms of the period, in particular Petrarchan poetry and classical epic. Agrippa d’Aubigne creates certain expectations by the use of well-known Petrarchan and epic images and forms, and then destroys those expectations by twisting the images and forms to very different uses. In this way, the reader is continually kept off balance, shocked, and perhaps even distressed by what she reads. In the end, by acting in what seems to be an inhumane manner toward his reader, Agrippa d’Aubigne may be revealing an “ethics of affect” in his reader, inculcating empathy through shared suffering and vulnerability. Nonetheless, in the context of the Wars of Religion, the limitations of this empathy must be recognized. The reader is thus left with the choice to be cruel or to be kind.

Prodigy collections, also known as wonder books, are important but little-used sources for understanding the experience of violence in France during the Wars of Religion. Authors Pierre Boaistuau, Jean de Marconville, Francois de Belleforest and Simon Goulart included many stories of violence and cruelty in their wonder books, with a notable focus upon violence within families and toward children. Civil war impacted upon community and family connections, and these authors sought to generate strong emotional responses in their articulation of a brutally disordered world on a wider scale. While prodigies are often understood in terms of natural phenomena like floods, earthquakes and monstrous births in recent scholarship, this essay argues that human violence forms a crucial element of early modern prodigy culture.

When I was a kid reading comics, I used sometimes saved the mother and kid from the falling building, but would they rescue me if they knew I was a fag? I now have an answer for that. (Letter 17) The US comic book industry has addressed a number of pressing social and political issues in its narratives through the years, including alcohol and drug abuse, racism, environmental devastation, gun control, and poverty. In the process, the industry has provided a rich tapestry of American cultural attitudes and philosophies that reflect varying approaches issues that continue haunt, confound, and rile the American public. With its pulse on issues relevant US public culture, it is not surprising that the complexities of gay identity and antigay crimes have been increasingly explored by industry leaders, DC and Marvel Comics, since the late 1980s. While there are many comic book companies, DC Comics and Marvel Comics are consistently the nation's top two comic book producers, controlling approximately 60% of the market (McAllister 19). These two leaders in the field have introduced various gay and lesbian characters in their mainstream comic books since 1988, most of them in minor roles (Franklin 224). In 2001, the long-standing comic book Green Lantern, reaching approximately 65,000 readers every month, introduced a well-adjusted, proudly out central character, Terry Berg, in its issue #137. The issue won an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for being the year's best comic book. DC Comics pushed the envelope even further in the September and October 2002 issues of Green Lantern by becoming the first mainstream comic book focus a major two-part story line on a central character, the aforementioned Terry Berg, whose experience of antigay violence leaves him on the verge of death. The Green Lantern crime story line has received considerable attention in a range of media outlets; news stories have appeared in such mainstream venues as The New York Times (Gustines) and CNN.com (Comic's Gay). Additionally, the Green Lantern's at the time, Judd Winick, was featured on an episode of MSNBC's Donahue discussing the debut of the story line. Out magazine's December 2002 issue featured Winick drawn in comic art being hailed as a straight alliance. Further, Out exclaims that the writer of Green Lantern is a superhero gays and lesbians (Champagne 86). In a telephone interview, Winick lamented the fact that hate crimes only come on the radar when people are beaten and murdered, when it also exists on a daily level. With this story, Winick said that he hoped to create dialogue about the topic and prompt people think twice, check their mindsets, challenge their behavior. Bob Schreck, editor of the Green Lantern, states, It's a story that needs be told .... We've tried reasonably, intelligently educate people that we're not all on one note (Gustines). As if underscore the salience of the topic, as the first installment of the two-part story line hit the stands in September 2002, the Associated Press reported that three men in West Hollywood had been victims of antigay violence (Gay Man Beaten). The Green Lantern crime story line provides a compelling opportunity examine reader response an important moment in the history of the US comic book industry. It also presents an opportunity contribute what is presently a dearth of research on masculinity in general, and gay masculinity in particular, in mainstream comic books, a point that we establish in the next section. In order assess reader reaction the antigay crime story line, we analyze twentynine unpublished letters1 written in response the story line provided by Bob Schreck and Judd Winick. In our analysis of the letters, we argue that there was a meaningful level of understanding regarding issues of concern the gay community among these particular letter writers. …

Some of the comparative ideas that Mr. Kingdon has dealt with in the foregoing article are elaborations of views that he suggested in his recent monograph, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion, 1555–1563. In a recent review of this book by Sir John Neale the author is praised for claiming that the “highly-organized subversive conspiracy from Geneva,” which was so important in the French wars of religion, “has a bearing on Dutch and English, not to mention Scottish, history.” What is more, Neale indicates that he “certainly finds it illuminating for an appreciation of the Puritan Classical movement in Elizabethan history.” It might be worth-while, therefore, to extend the discussion by briefly examining Mr. Kingdon's criteria for “revolutionary Calvinist parties” in connection with England in the age of Elizabeth and, later, with the period of the English civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. Those criteria include a synodical organization, noble leadership, and a resistance theory.

202 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) alimentary or any other fashion, appears dangerous in this collection of poems where ‘experience as possession … seems under assault’ (p. 206), particularly in the earlier version of ‘The Holy Communion’in the W. Manuscript. Rather than a decorous Anglican ‘middle way’, Netzley discerns a struggle between sensuality and pragmatism being played out in the poems. All primary texts are translated, the Index is comprehensive and the few typographical errors are minor ones. Mary Scrafton Adelaide, South Australia Kettering, Sharon, Patronage in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France (Variorum Collected Studies Series CS738), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002; cloth; pp. xvi, 286; £55; ISBN 0860788814. This Variorum edition brings together eleven of Sharon Kettering’s articles on patronage. Originally published between 1989 and 1993, these essays follow upon Kettering’s seminal Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France of 1986. Covering patronage from its apogee in the sixteenth and early to mid- seventeenth centuries through its decline during the reign of Louis XIV, the collection forms an exceptionally coherent whole with minimal repetition (one exception is that Kettering twice challenges Kristen Neuschel’s thesis that clientage is anachronistic applied to sixteenth-century warrior culture, put forward in her Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France, in I and again in IV). The first set of four essays provides an overview of the topic, laying out and considering the categories modern historians use for understanding patronage. In ‘Patronage in Early Modern France,’ Kettering critiques some of the prominent recent positions on the language of patronage, re-affirming that the patron/client relationship was a material one motivated by self-interest and justifying her historical method of taking into account both the social scientific approach, which is necessary to ‘distinguishing long-term trends and causal explanations often imperceptible to contemporaries’ (I, p. 856) and the cultural historical approach, which seeks to determine how contemporaries experienced their situations.The distinction between the system as it actually existed and the system as it was perceived by those who lived within it is an important one, and it should be maintained, Kettering argues in relation to historical models that understand patronage as a primarily linguistic phenomenon. In her second essay, ‘Gift-Giving in early modern France’, she Reviews 203 Parergon 21.2 (2004) proposes a model of patronage based upon the obligatory reciprocity of gift-giving as analyzed by Mauss. She puts the overlapping categories of kin and friendship into the context of patronage in ‘Patronage and Kinship in Early Modern France’ and ‘Friendship and Clientage in Early Modern France’, examining in particular the wide semantic field of the word ami. The second set of two essays investigates female patronage. ‘The Patronage Power of Early Modern French Noblewomen’suggests that because ‘members of all-male political clienteles were often initially connected by kinship or marriage ties to women,’women ‘affected the formation and dissolution of political alliances’ (V, p. 819). They exercised considerable power as brokers throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The careers of several women in noble households are traced in ‘The Household Service of Early Modern French Noblewomen’. The role of brokers is the subject of the third set of two essays, ‘The Historical Development of Political Clientelism’and ‘Brokerage at the Court of Louis XIV’. Here Kettering proposes a ‘broker model of political integration’ (VII, p. 432) in states undergoing centralization.As the central government develops and expands, local brokers, individuals in a position to negotiate patron/client relationships between third parties, are crucial in mediating governmental integration into the different regions.The stronger the central government, the less necessary brokerage becomes; the chain from the royal court to the provinces becomes increasingly less significant during the reign of Louis XIV. Royal patronage became ever more important to noble fortunes, which had the effect of attenuating nobles’ties to their former clients and strengthening noble dependence upon the king. The final set of three essays, ‘Clientage During the French Wars of Religion’, ‘Patronage and Politics During the Fronde’ and ‘The Decline of Great Noble Clientage During the Reign of Louis XIV’ map the decline of noble patronage from the Wars of Religion...