De Guise Research Articles

Les Remontrances (Europe, xvie–xviiie siècle): textes et commentaires. Sous la direction d’Ullrich Langer et Paul-Alexis Mellet

It is difficult to provide a definition of a remontrance, particularly when viewed across three centuries and several European countries. Those familiar with the political culture of the Ancien Régime will be aware of remontrances parlementaires, judicial texts prepared by magistrates and addressed to the king in response to a royal edict. A second type came in the opposite direction, from the king to the parlement, reminding the magistrates of their duties, usually in the context of a discours d’ouverture. The editors of this collection show that beyond these well-established institutional forms, many different types of text bore the title ‘remontrance’. While the editors claim to be more interested in the non-institutional forms, half of the texts in this collection correspond to the two types described above. The other half are a varied group that includes, among other things, verse and an engraving. Given such variety, the editors’ Introduction focuses on what characterizes the rhetorical approach of such texts, rather than formal patterns. They note that most remontrances expressed a legitimate disagreement based on rational argument (pp. 11–12). Remontrances often drew on a ‘mélange d’affectivité et d’obligation’ and were written with a view to achieving ‘la réconciliation dans le repos public’ (pp. 14, 16). This is certainly true for the remontrances parlementaires, but only partially for the others. For example, Paul-Alexis Mellet shows that the ‘Remonstrance de Madame de Nemours’ is highly polemical, violently criticizing Henri III on whose orders the Duc de Guise and his brother were killed (p. 211). While it is one of the more interesting contributions to the collection, not least because of the analysis of the text and its accompanying image, it would have been helpful to know (in this instance and in relation to certain other texts presented here) whether the use of the term ‘remontrance’ had itself a rhetorical function. More generally, what were the conditions for the transfer of this title from the judicial to the non-judicial sphere (and from the French to the broader European context)? In an earlier example, we read that the printer of Mathurin Cordier’s text (presented by Martine Furno) gave it the title ‘remontrance’, as printers during this period took such decisions ‘pour des raisons commerciales et de diffusion de l’ouvrage’ (p. 49). The commercial benefit of such a title, or how it might help its circulation, is not explained. All the texts here are interesting in their own right and are presented and analysed rigorously, but they are rarely in dialogue. Each contributor gives their own understanding of a remontrance, with a variety of definitions, some of which do not appear in the Introduction. Apart from the useful reflections on authorial postures and their ethical and political implications, the editors do not do enough to bring out the coherence of this collection, which is nonetheless of interest because of the attention it brings to the remontrance as both a literary form and a type of discourse.

From event to enactment: celebrating the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew at Rome

Abstract This article analyzes the communication and celebration of the news of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew at Rome. It explains why there was such rejoicing on that occasion, and it reveals the mechanisms for the transformation of ‘news’ into a ‘news event’. Taking this case-study as its starting-point, it seeks to examine the role of the Urbs as a centre for the reception of news and its prioritization, through which the status of an event in the contemporary Catholic world was determined. The pontifical city emerges as an international political stage, on which different actors sought to impose their particular interpretation of far-off events. That is illustrated by the actions of Charles de Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, who profited from the great visibility offered by Rome in order to disseminate the notion that the massacre had been premeditated.

Riding East—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in Hidalgo (2004)

<i>Riding East</i>—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in <i>Hidalgo</i> (2004)

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

НАПОЛЕОН БОНАПАРТ И ГЕНРИХ ДЕ ГИЗ: КОНСТРУИРОВАНИЕ ОБРАЗА ВЛАСТИ В ЭПОХУ ПЕРВОЙ ИМПЕРИИ ВО ФРАНЦИИ

The article attempts to analyze a little-studied episode related to historical politics in the era of the First Empire in France. The revolution and the coming to power of the emperor actualized many events of the past, the reception of which took place in various, including artistic forms. The article considers an example of an attempt to act in opposition to the emperor and destroy the image of a legitimate charismatic national leader created by him through a historical tragedy. F.J.M. Renoir, a playwright and participant in the revolution, criticized the usurpation of the throne by Napoleon by referring to the history of the 16th century in the play “The States-General in Blois, or the death of the Duke of Guise”, written actually by order of the authorities. That tragedy was forbidden to be staged until 1814, and the image of the Duke of Guise, the head of the Catholic party, displayed in the work, aroused the emperor’s indignation. The article concludes that Napoleon tried to construct the image of his own power, appealing to historical examples. Among the numerous political figures of the past with whom the emperor associated himself, unexpectedly turned out to be Duke Henry de Guise, who in the historical culture of the early 19th century had a reputation not so much as a charismatic leader, as a rebel and an illegal pretender to the throne, what the opposition successfully used in its anti- Bonapart works.

John Knox a Christopher Goodman v (ne)smrtelném boji proti ženám, panchartům a cizincům

Christopher Goodman and John Knox were 16th century famous theologians and reformers, who were well-known for their radical resistence against the authority of English Queen Mary Tudor and Scottish Queen-Regent Mary de Guise. During the years they spent in exile, they wrote their most famoust works &#8211; How Superior Powers Ought To Be Obeyed By Their Subjects: And Wherein They May Lawfully By God´s Word Be Disobeyed And Resisted and The First Blast of Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. The main subject of this research is a comparison of already mentioned writings, while the main emphasis is placed on the comparison of common topics &#8211; that means criticism of women rulers, their illegitimate origins, succession rights and relationship with foreigners, and theory of legitimate defence against bad rulers.

A French Investigation of Oneida

Abstract Studies of nineteenth-century North American utopian communities are rarely interested in the relationships that these may have had with members or sympathizers from other communities outside the United States. It was between 1872 and 1901 that Oneida, one of the best-known communities in the United States, was the subject of an investigation conducted by Auguste Fabre, who was close to Jean-Baptiste André Godin, the founder of the Familistère (Social Palace) de Guise in France. An analysis of the mail circulating in the network formed by and around Auguste Fabre shows that much information on Oneida, including many written documents and photos, was exchanged by both sides of the Atlantic and contributed, albeit slowly, to an internationalization of the communitarian movement.

Living in Utopia in the 19th Century

Abstract Concrete utopias have received little international comparison. In order to contribute to a comparative sociology of such social experiments, this article is interested in the case of France and the United States in the 19th century. To mirror concerns that were important at that time in both of these countries (the “social question” and the “question of women”), attention is focused on local experiments where work and gender were the subject of some notable innovations. After highlighting the form, importance and dynamics of abstract and concrete utopias in France and the United States, two communities inspired by C. Fourier are compared: the Familistère de Guise (France), and the Oneida Association (United States). If both learn about the Fourierist utopia, they put it into practice differently, in particular because of issues specific to each of the two countries.

Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (1682–1715): Musique et spectacles ed. by Anne-Madeleine Goulet

Reviewed by: Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (1682–1715): Musique et spectacles ed. by Anne-Madeleine Goulet Beverly Wilcox Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (1682–1715): Musique et spectacles. Edited by Anne-Madeleine Goulet in collaboration with Rémy Campos, Mathieu da Vinha, and Jean Duron. (Series "Épitome musical.") Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. [446 p. ISBN 9782503586199 (paperback), $150.] Illustrations, bibliographical references, index. This collection of essays comes from a 2015 colloquium at Versailles sponsored by the Université de Tours and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles for the three-hundredth anniversary of the death of Louis XIV, King of France. It concerns the concept of "foyers" for the arts from 1682, when the king moved his court to the new palace of Versailles, until the end of his reign. As he grew less interested in ceremonial display, new venues arose in the courts of his legitimate and illegitimate children and his nephew, the duc d'Orléans. Musicologists generally view music and theater in these satellite courts as political resistance to royal power; the conference organizers—but not all the contributors—take a revisionist view that such courts were a system of artistic competition, with a certain amount of collaboration (pp. 12–13). The result is a diverse group of essays that proposes a continuum with political competition at one end, interchange and collaboration at the other, and a mixture of motives in between. The French word foyer, in medieval times, meant a hearth or fireplace, and by extension, a home: a place where people shared warmth and conversation. Here, it serves as a metaphor for musical exchange. Given an itinerant court that moved around between several palaces, and princes or nobles who did the same with their châteaux, town houses, and provincial seats, the foyer was really a household, and itinerance made it simultaneously a propagator and concentrator of art, in a way that led to new forms of musical patronage and the beginnings of galant style in music at the turn of the eighteenth century. Part 1, "The Court, the Courts," begins with a general comparison by David Hennebelle of the old tool of statecraft—noisy and expensive magnificence—versus the new princely tool of "good taste." The members of the Musique du Roi composed and performed in both types of venue, and the newer mode—good taste—created a foyer for musical experimentation (pp. 29–36). The other chapters are case studies. Don Fader writes on the Orléans family [End Page 252] at St. Cloud and in Paris at the Palais-Royal, who created a fun-loving alternative to Versailles to woo the Grand Dauphin in the expectation that he would one day become king. Architectural historian Tarek Berrada documents new designs that took music into account: a central music room in the Hôtel de Guise so that sound could drift into nearby billiards and dining rooms; a hunting lodge at Saint-Germain-en-Laye that allowed placement of activities closer to or further from two music tribunes ad libitum; and a cabinet de musique at the Château de Chantilly, purpose-built furniture needed for the household musicians. Thomas Vernet writes about Marie Anne, princesse de Conti, who maintained a théâtre de société (a private theater) in her residence across the street from the Château de Versailles for the youthful companions of her half-brother, the dauphin, but still avoided alienating the religious sensibilities of the king and Madame de Maintenon. Catherine Cessac shows how the humiliation of a marriage between a granddaughter of the Grand Condé (Louis, prince de Condé, 1621–1686) and a royal bastard was countered by parodying Versailles: sixteen grands nuits de Sceaux, over the course of a year, each with its own "king" and "queen" who chose or commissioned divertissements performed by members of the Paris Opéra. Oddly, the final paragraph suddenly concludes that this celebration of the glories of the night in the waning days of the reign of the Sun King was not a "foyer of opposition to Versailles," but rather, evidence of "the exceptional personality of the...

Od posłuszeństwa do tyranobójstwa. Ewolucja prawa oporu w teologii politycznej Johna Knoxa

Myśl polityczna reformacji i kontrreformacji po rozpadzie Christianitas po raz kolej-ny postawiła pytania o zakres posłuszeństwa i możliwość czynnego oporu wobec tyranii. Spośród ojców doktryny uzasadniającej sprzeciw wobec władzy należy wskazać przede wszystkim Johna Knoxa, uważanego za jednego z założycieli szkockiej reformacji. Ten prominentny kaznodzieja i teolog jest także, obok George’a Buchanana i Samuela Rutherforda, jednym z klasyków anglosa-skiej koncepcji prawa oporu.W artykule autor dowodzi, że Knox, wychodząc od stanowiska nakazującego obowiązek po-słuchu wobec monarchy i dopuszczającego jedynie bierny opór, ostatecznie odchodzi od umiarko-wanego stanowiska Jana Kalwina i Heinricha Bullingera. Jego argumentacja, pod wpływem wyda-rzeń politycznych w Szkocji i Anglii oraz radykalnych koncepcji pisarzy kalwińskich, zmierza do uzasadnienia powszechnej rewolucji, a nawet królobójstwa. Ewolucja jego poglądów zdaniem au-tora spowodowana była zmianami sytuacji politycznej i religijnej w Szkocji i Anglii. Rządy katolic-kich królowych — Marii de Guise, Marii Tudor i Marii Stuart — spowodowały radykalizację jego politycznych poglądów, których sensem było bezlitosne zwalczanie herezji i bałwochwalstwa oraz obrona prawdziwej wiary. Jego koncepcje miały zdaniem autora wielki wpływ na angielskich pu-rytanów — to między innymi jemu angielski purytanizm zawdzięczał swą radykalizację. To Knox był również w dużym stopniu odpowiedzialny za postawę szkockich prezbiterian podczas rewolucji purytańskiej, a jego myśl była istotną inspiracją najbardziej radykalnych koncepcji tego okresu.W artykule autor zastosował metodę kontekstowej analizy dzieł i wypowiedzi Knoxa, stosując klucz chronologiczny. Pozwoliło mu to na wykazanie ścisłej korelacji między poglądami Knoxa na prawo oporu a zapotrzebowaniem bieżącej debaty politycznej. Autor dochodzi ostatecznie do wniosku, że to właśnie okoliczności polityczne, a nie poglądy teologiczne uczyniły z Knoxa mo-narchomachę.

Looking at Marie de Guise

This paper examines the symbolic value of the headdresses worn by French women at the Scottish court following the marriage of James V and Mary de Guise in 1538, using the Stirling Heads, portrait medallions from the Renaissance palace at Stirling Castle, as visual evidence. While several of the women are portrayed wearing a conventional French hood, others, including Marie de Guise, wear elaborately crafted “chafferons” which would have been made of gold wire. The chafferon is an unusual choice of headdress for a portrait and the reasons for this are considered with reference to the Petrarchan canon of ideal female beauty and how precious metal and shining hair merged into a single visual conceit. The royal accounts show that chafferons worn by the gentlewomen at the Scottish court were exceptional gifts made by the royal goldsmiths using Scottish gold from the king’s own mines, extracted with the assistance of miners sent by the Duke and Duchess of Guise. These chafferons, therefore, carried layers of meaning about the transformation of Scotland’s fortunes through dynastic marriage and the promise of a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity.

A Too Free Conduit? When the Flow of Men and Ideas Turned against Marie de Guise

The purpose of this essay is to describe the way in which the substantial circulation of men and ideas between France and Scotland ultimately turned against Marie de Guise and the kingdom of France in the years 1559 and 1560. In order to build a Franco-Scottish kingdom, an initial step towards a Franco-British Empire, the King of France, Henri II, helped increase this trans-Channel circulation of men and ideas. Henri II’s goal was to forge an alliance with both Scottish and English opponents of the Catholic Mary Tudor, particularly by supporting and employing notable Scottish Protestant figures. This policy failed after the Scots’ growing concerns about the “Frenchification” of their government encountered a new English political context in which a Protestant queen, Elizabeth Tudor, took the throne. The open conduit backfired against French ambitions and against the Regent of Scotland, Marie de Guise. The rebellion in Scotland that began in 1559 proved successful by 1560. It was a swift victory by the Protestant Lords that was partly due to the fact that they allied themselves with England after long benefiting from a highly tolerant French attitude. The English takeover of cross-Channel communications led to the isolation of the French army in Scotland and, with the Amboise conspiracy in 1560, to the opening of a second front in France. Significantly, a number of Protestant Scots officially serving the King of France were also double agents for the benefit of England.

Developing the Art of Secret Writing across Borders: The Journey of Marie de Guise’s Ciphers between France and Scotland

This article looks at Marie de Guise’s part in the development of ciphered writing in Scotland. Based on six surviving enciphered dispatches between the Regent of Scotland and the French ambassadors between 1553 and 1560, it analyses Guise’s increasing reliance on secret writing in periods of war or domestic conflict as well as the encoding technique she or her secretaries used. This cryptoanalysis leads to a discussion of Guise’s political use of ciphers and her attempt to prevent French skills in the field to be shared with the Scots. Finally it discusses the information game, involving three players – France, Scotland and England – in which the Regent took part during the Reformation rebellion and which contributed to her fall. Guise’s ciphered letters as well as the matching code tables are also transcribed here to illustrate the contribution of continental consorts to this aspect of early modern diplomatic culture.

Religious Reform, the House of Guise and the Council of Fontainebleau: The French Memorial Service for Marie de Guise, August 1560

During the summer of 1560 the power of the Guise family was under attack in France and Scotland alike. In Scotland, Marie de Guise, mother of Mary, queen of Scots, who had acted as Regent for her daughter from 1554 onwards, had recently been defeated by religious rebels and died shortly thereafter. In France, the influence of her two younger brothers, Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, and Francois, duke of Guise, over Francois II provoked criticism whilst the government was also under pressure to make concessions to Protestants. On 12 August 1560 a memorial service was held in Notre Dame de Paris. This is entirely passed over in accounts of French politics in the period, and appears as a mere epilogue to studies of Marie de Guise herself. This article offers the first analysis of the organisation of, attendance at, and contents of the service, focusing in particular on the funeral sermon. Coming eight days before the Council of Fontainebleau the memorial service, witnessed by a large and influential audience, provided an excellent opportunity for Marie de Guise’s family not only to celebrate her life but to tell a positive narrative about the House of Guise as a counter to widely circulating criticisms.

Constructing a Political Crime: Songs about the Assassination of the duc and the cardinal de Guise

Songs played a significant role in the French Wars of Religion by spreading political and religious ideas, and by involving Protestants and Catholics in the conflict. Performed in the streets, churches, workshops and houses, songs participated in the construction of urban soundscapes during the troubles. This article examines six songs composed after the execution of the duc and the cardinal de Guise on the order of Henri III (23 and 24 December, 1588) and printed in Paris by Nicolas Bonfons. This event sparked the armed revolt of the Catholic League against the king and his heir, the Protestant Henri de Navarre. The article analyses the rhetorical features of the songs and compares their arguments with those of contemporary visual images and printed libels. In particular, it shows how songs served as a link between print and oral culture. Songs allowed Leaguers — whatever their age, sex, or status — not only to assimilate the main points of the justification of the revolt and to incorporate representations of a just monarchy, but also to appropriate them intimately by singing.

Montaigne by Arlette Jouanna

Reviewed by: Montaigne by Arlette Jouanna Reinier Leushuis Jouanna, Arlette. Montaigne. Gallimard, 2017. ISBN 978-2-07-014706-9. Pp. 459. In 1571, Montaigne took the curious decision to retire from public service, at the relatively young age of 38 and in rather good health, in order to dedicate himself to his 'inner life' by writing his Essays in the refuge of his own domain. This mid-life retraite, commemorated on a wall of Montaigne's tower library, epitomizes his paradoxical notion of freedom, which is woven as an unobtrusive common thread throughout Arlette Jouanna's study. She argues that until 1571 Montaigne's desire to be free from the stifling familial and social obligations of a family recently promoted to nobility and from the servitudes of court and parlement had been fanned by the unconditional freedom of his perfect friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, by his encounter with the unspoiled nature of the New World sauvages (displayed in France), and by translating Sebond's Natural Theology, which would allow him to take position against rational dogmatism. After 1571, Montaigne's liberating 'trying out' (essayer) of the Self and [End Page 213] judgment through the writing of his co-substantial book in the isolation of his chateau remains intertwined with an ever-present outside world. In Jouanna's study, we witness him engaging with this world through humanist travel (Germany and Italy) and the publication both of La Boétie's works and of his own Essays. Jouanna also foregrounds Montaigne's challenging political commitments (mayor of Bordeaux) and his volatile interconfessional allegiances pursued for the sake of conciliation in religious strife. For instance, she highlights Montaigne's purported attempt to act as mediator between Henri de Navarre and the duc de Guise. Rather than clinging to radical ideals of freedom, Jouanna depicts Montaigne realistically and warily cultivating tradition and custom as life-saving comfort zones in the world outside his tower. Her biography offers no eye-opening revelations on larger questions that have occupied critics for decades, nor is it driven by an over-arching thesis, as is Philippe Desan's Montaigne: une biographie politique (Odile Jacob, 2014), which claims that Montaigne was more a politician than he was a writer. Rather, it is guided by the author's wish to reconstruct the "ambiguities" and the "vigorous originality" (16) with which the humanist from Bordeaux probed himself and the world. But for anyone familiar with the sterling work of this prominent historian of Renaissance France and its wars of religion, it comes as no surprise that Jouanna meticulously, and with great clarity, reconstructs an image of Montaigne intricately embedded in the French kingdom's complex social and political networks. A case in point is her contextualization of the puzzling moment when Montaigne is made knight in the Order of Saint Michael, an honor normally reserved for nobles of higher lineage. Wielding profound knowledge of the mechanisms of loyalty in early modern France, Jouanna paints a compelling picture of Montaigne's multiple regional and royal allegiances that brought about this distinction. Last but not least, Jouanna's lucid style and enticing narrative make this biography especially welcoming to non-specialists. Reinier Leushuis Florida State University, Tallahassee Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Un prélat français de la Renaissance: Le Cardinal de Lorraine entre Reims et l’Europe ed. by Jean Balsamo, Thomas Nicklas, Bruno Restif

Reviewed by: Un prélat français de la Renaissance: Le Cardinal de Lorraine entre Reims et l’Europe ed. by Jean Balsamo, Thomas Nicklas, Bruno Restif Brian Sandberg Un prélat français de la Renaissance: Le Cardinal de Lorraine entre Reims et l’Europe. Edited by Jean Balsamo, Thomas Nicklas, and Bruno Restif. [Travaux d’humanisme et Renaissance, No DXLVI.] (Geneva: Librairie Droz. 2015. Pp. 472. $66.00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-600-01889-0.) Charles de Lorraine, cardinal de Lorraine and archbishop of Reims, became one of the principal leaders of the Catholic reform in France during the mid-sixteenth century. A member of the Guise branch of the Lorraine dynasty, Charles de Lorraine (1524–1574) personified a Renaissance prince and a reforming prelate during a tumultuous period of religious change and confessional division. His religious and political engagement in the first two decades of the French Wars of Religion (1559–1629) made him a controversial and polarizing figure. Un prélat français de la Renaissance. Le Cardinal de Lorraine entre Reims et l’Europe offers a historical portrait of the cardinal de Lorraine from various perspectives. This collective volume publishes twenty-five essays by historians, art historians, literary scholars, and other specialists on the cardinal de Lorraine and his historical context. The volume produces a nuanced view of the cardinal as a religio-political leader and a literary and artistic patron (Jean Balsamo, Bruno Restif). Several essays treat the documentary record and historiographical literature on the cardinal de Lorraine (Vladimir Chichkine, Isabelle de Conihout, Antoine Pietrobelli, Claude Langlois, Jean-Marie Le Gall). Charles de Lorraine served as archbishop of Reims and also played numerous other clerical roles. He embodied a reforming bishop, transforming his diocese of Reims into a major center of Catholic reform (Bruno Restif). Isabelle Balsamo assesses the archbishop’s artistic patronage in the cathedral of Reims, while Patrick Demouy focuses on the devotional activities and penitential processions that he encouraged. The cardinal promoted Catholic reform throughout the kingdom by sponsoring Jesuit missions in France and supporting other religious orders (Madeleine Molin). Joseph Bergin analyzes the “ecclesiastical empire of the Guises,” focusing particularly on the cardinal de Lorraine’s role as abbot of the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, where royal family members were interred. As archbishop of Reims, Lorraine crowned three French kings and engaged in religious politics in order to promote Catholic reform in the kingdom. The cardinal and his brother—François de Lorraine, duc de Guise—advised the young François II during his short reign (1559–1560). Charles de Lorraine maintained a broad clientele in the province of Champagne and beyond through his benefices and urban associations (Mark Konnert and Mark Greengrass). Charles de Lorraine’s attitudes toward heresy gradually shifted between the 1540s and 1570s. Theologian Claude d’Espence provided the young cardinal with spiritual guidance, but the he later fell under suspicion of heresy (Peter Walter). The cardinal promoted a religious reform program based on religious harmony and Christian unity in the mid-sixteenth century (Alain Tallon). Lorraine later organized a major theological discussion between Catholic and Calvinist theologians at the Colloquy of Poissy (1561), but the meeting utterly failed to produce any theological [End Page 352] compromise between the increasingly divided confessions (Max Engam-mare). The cardinal de Lorraine seems to have gradually embraced strict anti-heresy policies, pressing for executions of Huguenots who had participated in the Conspiracy of Amboise and justifying massacres of Protestants. Calvinist writers such as François Hotman demonized the cardinal as a “tiger” and a “viper” for his “cruelty and avarice” toward Protestants. Hugues Daussy traces the crystallization of this negative image of the cardinal. Lorraine engaged in European politics through relationships in Germany, Italy, Scotland, and the Netherlands (Eric Durot, Matteo Provasi, Federica Veratelli, Jules Versele, and François Pernot). The cardinal de Lorraine conducted several diplomatic missions and acted as one of the main negotiators for the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559 (Thomas Nicklas). He participated in the papal conclave for the election of Julius III, and his brother, the cardinal de Guise, took part in two additional conclaves (Alain Cullière). Yet, electoral...

Sin and Salvation in Early Modern France: Three Women's Stories by Marguerite d'Auge, Renée Burlamacchi

Reviewed by: Sin and Salvation in Early Modern France: Three Women's Stories by Marguerite d'Auge, Renée Burlamacchi Jane Couchman SIN AND SALVATION IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE: THREE WOMEN'S STORIES, by Marguerite d'Auge, Renée Burlamacchi, and Jeanne du Laurens. Edited by Colette H. Winn. Translated from French by Nicholas van Handel and Colette H. Winn. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series. Toronto: Iter Press and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017. 97 pp. $34.95 paper. Sin and Salvation in Early Modern France: Three Women's Stories, translated by Nicholas van Handel and Colette H. Winn, is a welcome addition to The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series, offering vivid glimpses of the lives of three very different women of the merchant and professional classes in early modern France. While sin and salvation are indeed important themes, the texts are particularly valuable for the insights they offer into early modern families and the roles of women therein. Renée Burlamacchi's Memoirs Concerning Her Father's Family (1623) and Jeanne du Laurens's The Genealogy of the du Laurens (1631) are nicely matched accounts by proud daughters of their birth families. Burlamacchi's family were Protestants from Lucca, Italy, and her Memoirs Concerning Her Father's Family recount their journey, led by her father Michele, into exile in France and from one refuge to another (Paris, Montargis, Sedan) to escape persecution. They eventually arrived in Geneva, where they joined a community of Italian Protestant exiles. Jeanne du Laurens's family were Catholic, based in Arles, France. Laurens's story centers on the valiant and remarkably successful efforts of her widowed mother, Louise, to arrange for the proper education and placement of her many children, especially her sons. In both accounts, God plays a central role. For Burlamacchi, a Calvinist, hardships were signs that God was testing the elect, and triumphs revealed that God's grace was upholding them, even when using Catholics such as the Duke de Guise to ensure their safety. For the Catholic Laurens, faith in God was accompanied by the use of God-given talents to achieve success. Laurens and her mother were proud that four of her nine brothers became either priests or monks. Both Burlamacchi's and Laurens's works remained in manuscript, appropriately since they were intended as memorials and advice for their immediate families. Marguerite d'Auge's Pitiful and Macabre Regrets (1600) is the anomaly here. Like the other two, it focuses on a family but, in this case, a fatally dysfunctional one. Published as a broadsheet, Pitiful and Macabre Regrets claims to report the words of repentance spoken by d'Auge, a notorious adulteress who plotted with her lover to murder her husband and was condemned to death. The case was infamous, with court records and another account also available, and the broadsheet is clearly written to [End Page 197] sell to a public eager for a vivid account of violence and passion. It is not actually clear whose voice is recorded in the broadsheet; are the words really d'Auge's or are they attributed to her by an anonymous male author? Much of the rhetoric echoes attacks on women surrounding the querelle des femmes (the woman question). The image of d'Auge, as Winn points out, reflects contemporary depictions of the penitent harlot. The lady does indeed protest too much and in too much gory detail, urging other young women to eschew her example. Yet the language of Pitiful and Macabre Regrets does echo d'Auge's own plea as recorded in her trial account, a plea no doubt crafted to win the pity of her judges. All three texts are translated from recent editions of the originals.1 For d'Auge and Laurens, there exists only one original version. For Burlamacchi, the choice of a base text is more complicated. Two manuscripts written in Italian by the author survive, as well as three translations into French. Van Handel and Winn have chosen one of the French translations as their base text rather than one of the original Italian ones; the reasons for this choice and the...

Utopia as a Tool for Change: A Review of Publications on Utopia in France (2016 and the First Semester of 2017)

Utopia as a Tool for Change: A Review of Publications on Utopia in France (2016 and the First Semester of 2017)

Painting and Narrative in France: From Poussin to Gauguin. Edited by Peter Cooke and Nina Lübbren.

This is a study of visual narrative in French art — predominantly history painting — from its rise in the seventeenth century to its controversial demise at the end of the nineteenth century. In this connection, art history needed to catch up to take account of the work of literary narratologists such as Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Gérard Genette, and Mieke Bal. The ut pictura poesis doctrine, inherited from the Italian Renaissance, was key to the development of history painting in post-Renaissance France, with painting being lauded as silent poetry and linear temporality being deemed virtually unattainable through image alone. Yet, in Poussin’s Les Israélites recueillant la manne dans le désert (1637–39), Claudine Mitchell highlights the simultaneous representation of successive actions, and Marianne Cojannot-Le Blanc applies the theories of Genette very effectively to the north bays of the Grande Galerie at Versailles. In the first years of the reign of Louis XV there was a glitch, vividly described here by Susanna Caviglia, when history painting eschewed glorious action for states of static ‘absorption’ (notably in the works of François Boucher and Charles-Joseph Natoire), casting doubt on the viability of narrative painting and leading, as a reaction, to a revival of serious history painting in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The experience of the French Revolution challenged the emphasis of classical historiography on a single hero acting in a single place and time. New mass audiences were addressed and drawn into empathy with a much wider spectrum of subjects than the antiquity and mythology of the earlier period. As shown masterfully by Beth Wright, Delacroix puts the reader to work, inspiring spectators to create their own mental pictures. This approach also informs Patricia Smyth’s presentation of Paul Delaroche, whose Assassinat du duc de Guise au château de Blois en 1588 (1834) is so often characterized as the work of a ‘literary’ painter, but is shown here to challenge the spectator’s mental conception of everyday objects. Indeed, inanimate things are shown by Nina Lübbren to be treated by painters such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-Paul Laurens in the same pictorial register as animate humans, thus foreshadowing the ultimate abolition of generic distinctions. Gustave Moreau, as presented by Scott Allan, fought a rearguard action in defence of history painting: although he deplored its theatricality and its loss of ‘plastic’ identity, Moreau sought to preserve its ideals on new pictorial grounds, pivoting between rigorous selection and inspired choice of ornament. The over-dependence of art on its literary and narrative aspects was highlighted, in very different ways, by the Impressionists and later by Gauguin, who nevertheless, as outlined by Belinda Thomson, integrated verbal commentary and wordplay into his painting. The outstanding essay in this excellent volume is that of Peter Cooke, in which he brings all these strands together, showing the ubiquity of temporality, despite its Protean existence as a function of the ever-changing roles of the viewer.