French King Research Articles

A la place du roi: vice-rois, gouverneurs et ambassadeurs dans les monarchies françaises et espagnoles (XVIe-XVIIIesiècles)

In the early modern period a monarch, and in particular a hereditary king, was regarded as a representative of God who had given him his place on earth. How was it then possible that another person could stand and act ‘in the place of the king’? That is the leading question of ten French and Spanish articles that deal with viceroys, governors and ambassadors in the monarchies of France and Spain. The subject is analysed under three different aspects: structures, instruments and representation. Many articles, however, deal with several of them. The question of royal ‘replacement’ became tricky in the early modern period: theoretical works like Jean Bodin’s ‘Six Books of a Commonwealth’ underlined the idea of sovereignty and sacred kingship, symbolic solemnities celebrated the king’s uniqueness. Rulers travelled less in their realm and some kings became a kind of restricted resource: the Spanish kings since Philip II lived in ceremonial retirement, the French kings since Louis XIV showed themselves only in Versailles. On the other hand, a king who was sovereign in his realm and insisted in his peculiar place in the world beyond should have been somehow omnipresent. As this was impossible, viceroys, governors and ambassadors stood in the place of their kings. They did not only act for them but mirrored them. To attack a representative meant to attack the very person of the king himself.

The Inequalities of Infamy

The contribution has for focus the etching by Isaak Cruikshank, entitled The Martyr of Equality: Behold the Progress of our System. The critical analysis of the caricature conjoins the figurative forms of the visual imagery with its words investigating, in the process, several of the interdependent layers of meaning that can be imputed therefrom. Produced in the days after the execution of the French King Louis XVI, which had taken place on 21 January 1793, this satirical view of the beheading of the monarch shows off the mechanism of the guillotine as a bloody, equalising, killing machine. The central figure of Philippe Egalite, the King’s distant cousin who had voted for the death of the King, is in the guise of the executioner here, but he, too, would be sent to the guillotine on 6 November of the same year.

The Ordinance of 1667: Ideology of Modern Codification as a Political Tool of Louis XIV

The article shows the process of development of certain ideological frameworks serving the purpose of ‘masking the reality’ (Slavoj Žižek 2008), using the example of preparatory works leading up to the enactment of the 1667 Ordonnance sur la reformation de la justice civile, as well as the actual content of this ordinance, enacted on the order of the French king Louis XIV, and commonly called the ‘Ordinance on civil procedure’. This legal act in theory was passed with the purpose of regulating the civil procedure (and as such permanently classified in the social reception), in principle consolidated the standards of judicial proceeding shaped over previous centuries. The basic innovative load that it carried was the change of entitlements and position within the system of judges, especially of those most highly placed (besides the king) within the hierarchy of the system of justice, that is of judges of the parliaments. The catchy propaganda basically oscillated between steps taken up in social interest (elimination of the abuses of the justice system, abolishment of arbitrary decisions made by judges and reduction of the costs of proceedings), as well as around the lofty work of codification of the law, which is marked with an atmosphere of taking the law a notch higher, of modernization and modernity. The employment of clever social propaganda in this process constituted an element of a well-planned strategy which was to help curtail, without any social upheaval, the competences of parliaments, which were widely considered a bastion of opposition against the royal power. Without excessively reforming the procedure itself, he revolutionized the position of judges within the legal system.

The Image of William III in Amsterdam after His Ascent to the English Throne: The Case of the Sheriffs’ Election in 1690

In 1690 William III and the city of Amsterdam fought out one of their regularly occurring political battles. This time the fight centred around Amsterdam’s refusal to send the nomination of the city sheriffs to England, where William III stayed after his ascent to the English throne. Amsterdam appealed to a privilege of Philip II which stated that the nomination should be sent to the Court of Holland in case the stadholder was not in the country. Superficially the conflict dealt with the sheriffs’ nomination, but in reality Amsterdam wanted to show William III its independence. The city feared the increased power of their stadholder who had also become the king of England. Moreover the Amsterdam regents thought that the king had subordinated the interests of the Republic to those of England, when he negotiated various treaties with the English in 1689. The political struggle was accompanied by a pamphlet war in which the pro-Amsterdam pamphlets accused the king of wanting to become a sovereign in the Netherlands. The pro-Williamite forces, who were supported by Romeyn de Hooghe and Eric Walten, denied this and blamed the Amsterdammers for playing into the French king’s hands by threatening to stop paying for the war against France if their privilege was not upheld. In the end, Amsterdam lost the battle because the other Holland towns did not support Amsterdam’s struggle to maintain its privilege.

Amar por arte mayor by Tirso de Molina

Tirso de Molina. Amar por arte mayor. Ed. Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas. New York-Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Auriseculares (IGAS/IDEA); Madrid-Pamplona: Instituto de Estudios Tirsianos (IET), 2015- 176 pp.In the introduction to his edition of Tirso de Molina's Amar por arte mayor, Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas sets out to explain why the play has seldom been published, performed, or even noticed by many scholars. He gives their due to the small set of academics who have paid attention to Amar, among them Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, Blanca de los Rios, and Premraj Halkhoree. Hartzenbusch, as the first modern editor in 1841, was influential in his distaste for Amur's anachronisms and inverisimilitude, his negative judgment essentially consigning it to obscurity for generations of academics and other aficionados of the Comedia. Garcia Aango-Tomas suspects that Tirso's subordination of nationalistic concerns to language and poetry may also have offended Hartzenbusch's nineteenth-century sensibilities (33). The current editor's compensatory focus on the ingenuity of the expression, along with his respect for cultural and political contexts, are a much-needed corrective to our neglect of the play.Classic in Amar are a protagonist's romantic rivalry with a king, an astute and funny gracioso, and an errant portrait. What is exceptional, even for this genre so attuned to the nuances and play of language, is its wittily self-conscious focus on versification. Amar por arte mayor is a Golden Age poetry-lover's delight. Just as it has been said that the subject of Don Quijote in all its metafiction and self-referentiality is how to write a novel, one could say that a subject of this play is how to versify brilliantly in Spanish. Justifiably, Tirso's characters boast about the virtuoso poetry. Moreover, Tirso employs historical context ingeniously in the sendee of the plot's twists, turns, and linguistic acrobatics. Given the complex language and courtly environment, Halkorhee's suggestion (cited by Garcia 14) makes sense that the piece was probably written for a palace audience.Amar por arte mayor, which takes place in tenth-century Leon, features two jealous kings, one jealous infanta, and one highborn couple secretly in love. We watch as Don Lope and Dona Elvira cleverly pick their way through the minefield that is the passions of royalty. Before the beginning of the play, Don Lope, erstwhile favorite of King Sancho, fled Navarra because of fallout over both men's love for Isabela. She escaped to France and was married to the French king. Now in Leon, Lope and Dona Elvira have fallen in love. King Sancho asks the Asturian-Leonese king, Ordono, to arrest and return Lope to Navarra. Ordono instead appoints the fugitive as his own mayordomo mayor. This king craves Dona Elvira, while his sister, the Infanta Dona Blanca (promised to an Asturian duke), develops a tendre for Lope out of excessive sympathy for his former love Isabela.This work is a hothouse for deceit, rife with ambiguity; metatheater; soliloquies, double- and triple-speak, and sotto-voce plotting. Lope, Elvira, and Blanca all engage in complex deceptions of each other and of King Ordono to further their amorous pursuits. …

Dating the bridge at Avignon (south France) and reconstructing the Rhone River fluvial palaeo-landscape in Provence from medieval to modern times

This paper aims to date the construction and demise of the medieval bridge at Avignon by integrating sedimentological and stratigraphic evidence with geophysical surveys (ERT), optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon chronologies. In this way the palaeo-environments of Barthelasse Island (Avignon) and the Labadie Plain (Villeneuve-les-Avignon) have been reconstructed, and the physical evidence of this iconic landscape placed in temporal and historic frameworks. In the course of this work the location of piers 9 and 10 (partly destroyed and buried today beneath sediments) of the former masonry bridge were re-discovered and cored to ca. 7m depth. 14C dating of large fragments of wood (Abies Alba Mill.), from the pier settings, provides the first direct age determination (1213–1280 and 1238–1301 cal. AD) of the constructional phases for the stone bridge at ~1250±30 AD and reveals an allochtonous origin of the timber (fir tree) used to support it. This new date from a primary context post-dates the historical attribution based on the Benezet legend (dated to 1177–1185 cal. AD). These results suggest that the material associates with a rebuilding phase, potentially between AD 1234–1237, following the destructive activities of the French Army of Louis VIII during the siege of Avignon in AD 1226. Additionally, the integration of sedimentological data, OSL sediment dating, and 14C results reveal that major detrital phases overlie the bedrock followed by rapid accretion of ca 3 to 7m of sand to around 1650±50 AD. This relates to the later stages of the Little Ice Age which are characterised by repeated floods and high sedimentation rates in the Lower Rhone River. In this period, the sedimentary archives and chronology record evidence of major environmental change, coincident with the political and economic conditions during the reign of French King Louis XIV and with the final demise of the medieval bridge across the Rhone at Avignon.

Political Narrative and Symbolism in the Feast of the Pheasant (1454)

The Feast of the Pheasant, held in Lille in 1454 to launch a planned crusade by the duke of Burgundy to recapture Constantinople, has long been regarded as a singular and extravagant moment of 15th century spectacle. However, the Feast was also an important opportunity for Duke Philip the Good and his court to put forward a political narrative that could stress themes of ducal primacy and independence without openly contesting the legal subordination that made the duke of Burgundy a vassal of the French king. This article explores several instances of how that political narrative was crafted at the Feast, and how it demonstrates the ways the ducal court was seeking to advance political arguments that fell outside the language of feudal obligation to implicate other forms of legitimacy. As such, the Feast should be seen as part of the larger effort by the Burgundian polity to advance arguments for dynastic independence.

A Brief History of Self-determination Referendums Before 1920

The article presents an account of the history of the discourses of self-determination referendums from 1552 to 1920. The referendum has played an important part in the discourse of self-determination since it was first pioneered by the French King Henry II in the sixteenth century. While the principle of self-determination expressed through plebiscites was mentioned en passant by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Grotius and Pufendorf, it was only after the French Revolution that the doctrine gained wider practical recognition. In the mid-nineteenth century the referendum was much debated and practised in Italy during the Risorgimento in the early twentieth century the doctrine was once again revived by Woodrow Wilson. But generally the principle was being used by statesmen in pursuit of narrow self-interest idealistic goals.

Источники права британской колонии Квебек в последней трети XVIII века: проблемы выбора

A distinctive feature of modern Canada is the dualism of its legal system. This means that in the country there are two systems of law - continental (Roman-German) and Anglo-Saxon (precedent). Each of these systems differ in their approaches to the understanding of law and justice implementation. However, the main difference is due to the fact that each of these systems relies on its own sources of law. If the basis of the criminal and private law in general, and the federation of nine provinces in particular is common (case) law of England, in the province of Quebec are used English (basically) criminal law and French civil law in its origin.
 Historically, this was due to the fact that at the time of the conquest of the colony of New France (now Quebec) in the XVIII century it had a relatively developed legal system, including the system of administration of justice. At the heart of the local sources of law were kutyums of Paris, supplementing ordinances of the French kings. Inclusion of New France in the possession of the English Crown was for the new authorities a precedent - the first time in the history of the British colonial empire it acquired a part of the territory with a Christian population and European law.
 In fact, the British colonial authorities had to make a choice, which was to determine the vector of further legal development of not only the newly conquered colony, but the whole of British North America. According to the rules of English case law the medieval English monarch (as sovereign) could either admit the law to of its new ownershipin force at the time of the conquest, or introduce there English law in force at the time. In view of the prevailing circumstances of the specific historical issue of the replacement of French law (including sources and the administration of justice) in English it turned out to be extremely difficult from the socio-political and a formal legal point of view.
 This article analyzes the problems encountered during the initial stage of the legal system of the British colony of Quebec and, in particular, of the sources of its territorial law.

LLHistoire se rrppte: Why the Liberalization of the EU Vineyard Planting Rights Regime May Require Another French Revolution (And Why the US and French Constitutions May Have Looked Very Different Without Weak Planting Rights Enforcement)

In 2008, the EU voted to liberalize its system of planting rights which has strictly regulated vine plantings in the EU. However, after an intense lobbying campaign the liberalization of the planting right system was overturned in 2013 and new regulations created an even more restrictive system. European wine associations complained about the detrimental effects of the new regulations. There is a precedent in history. In 1726, the French political philosopher and landowner Montesquieu complained to the French King about the prohibition on planting new vines. Montesquieu was not successful in his demands to remove the planting rights. Old and recent history suggests that political forces against liberalization of planting rights are very strong. Only the French Revolution in 1789 led to a fundamental liberalization of planting rights. The period of the 19th century was sustained by the combination of the French Revolution’s liberal ideology, the thirst for wine of Napoleon’s armies and diseases that wiped out most of the French vineyards. That said, in the past and the present, enforcement of planting rights is a major problem. In fact, despite the official restrictions, Montesquieu managed to plant his vines, allowing him to become a successful wine producer and merchant and to travel and to spend time thinking, discussing and ultimately writing up his ideas which influenced much of the Western world’s constitutions.

La congiura dei Pazzi: I documenti del conflitto fra Lorenzo de’ Medici e Sisto IV. Le bolle di scomunica, la “Florentina synodus,” e la “Dissentio” insorta tra la Santità del Papa e i Fiorentini. Edizione critica e commento ed. by Tobias Daniels (review)

Reviewed by: La congiura dei Pazzi: I documenti del conflitto fra Lorenzo de’ Medici e Sisto IV. Le bolle di scomunica, la “Florentina synodus,” e la “Dissentio” insorta tra la Santità del Papa e i Fiorentini. Edizione critica e commento ed. by Tobias Daniels Melissa Meriam Bullard La congiura dei Pazzi: I documenti del conflitto fra Lorenzo de’ Medici e Sisto IV. Le bolle di scomunica, la “Florentina synodus,” e la “Dissentio” insorta tra la Santità del Papa e i Fiorentini. Edizione critica e commento. Edited by Tobias Daniels. [Studi di Storia e Documentazione Storica.] (Florence: EDIFIR Edizioni Firenze. 2013. Pp. 206. €18,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-7970-649-0.) “The pen is mightier than the sword.” So spoke Cardinal Richelieu’s character in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s popular 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy. The playwright could just as easily have written that line about the hostile propaganda campaigns [End Page 159] launched between Pope Sixtus IV and the Florentines that erupted following the Pazzi Conspiracy. Tobias Daniels’s critical edition and comment brings together for the first time Sixtus IV’s three bulls of excommunication against Lorenzo de’ Medici and his Florentine supporters; the Florentina Synodus, a Florentine defense against them written by Gentile Becchi; and a further little-known papal response, the Dissentio. The latter, aimed to arouse anti-Medici feeling at the imperial court in Germany, was apparently not widely circulated in Italy. The most famous document associated with the Pazzi Conspiracy, Angelo Poliziano’s defense of Lorenzo and condemnation of the Pazzi in his Coniurationis commentarium, is not included in this collection. The second half of the volume contains the documents in their original Latin. Daniels’s meticulous editing records numerous variations in manuscript and incunabular versions of the texts, and he provides erudite notes on persons and events referenced. Close editing is labor-intensive and commendable work, as is the assemblage of the texts themselves. Placed side-by-side, they demonstrate that the exchange of invective reached beyond personal animosities between Sixtus IV and Lorenzo. Rather, it had wider ecclesiastical and European import when viewed in the context of the grander fifteenth-century contests between papal and conciliar authority in which swirled many a war of words. Becchi crafted the Florentine Synodus for Lorenzo to use in drumming up interest, especially at the court of French king Louis XI, for summoning a church council to depose the pope for immoral conduct and abuse of authority. On the other side, in the bulls and Dissentio, Sixtus IV and his secretaries sought to arose support for the expulsion of Lorenzo as unjust tyrant of Florence and for disrespect of the Church. The historical introduction in the first half of the volume leaves one uneasy on several counts for its lacunae and unsubstantiated attributions. The author perememptorily excludes discussing the political implications in the Pazzi Conspiracy regarding the roles of King Ferrante of Naples and Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. The latter served as condottiere in papal hire and, according to the most recent scholarship by Marcello Simonetta, was certainly implicated in the anti-Medici plot. Strangely, Simonetta’s work (New York, 2008) remains unacknowledged by the author. Yet at the same time, Daniels goes into excruiating detail on other aspects of the Pazzi Conspiracy, most of it derived from the many publications of Riccardo Fubini, author of the preface. In his treatment of the Synodus, Daniels ignores Simonetta’s 2012 edition and commentary, which he dismisses with the erroneous statement that it had been based on a later printed edition by Fabroni rather than an autograph manuscript in the Florentine state archive. For another example, when discussing Giovanni Caroli’s dissent from the Florentines’ call for a church council (pp. 76–78), Daniels makes no mention, even in a footnote, of recent scholarship on the Dominican friar and his views on the Medici. The massive bibliography at the volume’s end obscures these and other lacunae. Daniels’s work is useful but oddly skewed. [End Page 160] Melissa Meriam Bullard University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

Christliche Weltgeschichte im 12. Jahrhundert: Themen, Variationen und Kontraste. Untersuchungen zu Hugo von Fleury, Ordericus Vitalis, und Otto von Freising by Elisabeth Mégier (review)

Reviewed by: Christliche Weltgeschichte im 12. Jahrhundert: Themen, Variationen und Kontraste. Untersuchungen zu Hugo von Fleury, Ordericus Vitalis, und Otto von Freising by Elisabeth Mégier Charles Radding Christliche Weltgeschichte im 12. Jahrhundert: Themen, Variationen und Kontraste. Untersuchungen zu Hugo von Fleury, Ordericus Vitalis, und Otto von Freising. By Elisabeth Mégier. [Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, Band 13.] (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 2010. Pp. 437. $101.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-631-60072-6.) This volume gathers together thirteen essays published by Elisabeth Mégier between 1985 and 2006. The articles—written in German, French, English, and Italian—deal with three historians all active in the first half of the twelfth century but interested in rather different slices of contemporary history. Hugh of Fleury, a member of a monastery south of Paris in the Diocese of Orléans, is especially known for his histories of the French kings and their kingdom; he died sometime after 1122. Orderic Vitalis was a monk of Saint-Evroul in Normandy—not far in distance from Fleury—but oriented toward the Anglo-Norman kingdom where he [End Page 359] was born rather than France; he died c. 1142. Mégier’s third subject, however, could hardly differ more from Hugh and Orderic. Otto, bishop of Freising (d. 1158), not only came from the highest ranks of the aristocracy (as fifth son of the margrave of Austria, he was a grandson of Emperor Henry IV and a cousin of Frederick Barbarossa) but also had experience in the schools of Paris before becoming a monk in the new Cistercian house of Morimond. His historical works, written after he became bishop in Freising in 1138, all principally concern Germany. In dealing with these writers, Mégier is not especially interested in how they went about gathering information about contemporary history or even what significance they attributed to specific events. Rather, her interest lies in their broader conceptions of human history and its relationship with Christian theology and the twelfth-century church. The longest essay by far, nearly 140 pages, is devoted to a study of Otto of Freising’s two historical works—the Chronica de duabus civitatibus and the Gesta Friderici Imperatoris—or, more precisely, of the path that led Otto from the explicitly Augustinian framework of the Chronica, in which the earthly empire is contrasted to the heavenly city, to the attitudes seen in the Gesta Friderici where the empire is seen as having a value in itself. Here, as elsewhere in the volume, Mégier’s method is predicated on a close reading of Otto’s texts and especially for their philosophical and theological underpinnings. The essays as a group apply these methods to a wide variety of questions raised by the works of the three historians studied by Mégier. For example, the first (and earliest) essay, inspired by Jacques LeGoff’s book on the origins of idea of purgatory, takes up how Orderic and Otto thought about the afterlife. Another essay parses the way Orderic and Otto conceived the role of fortuna in historical events, whereas a third compares how they integrated the creation of the Cistercian order into their histories. (It is interesting that Otto, the Cistercian, does not mention the Cistercian order by name, even as he notes innovations in monasticism generally.) Two essays discuss how Orderic conceived the operation of Christ and God in history. For Hugh of Fleury, similarly, she writes about his historical treatment of the Jews in the biblical and Roman period, the Old Testament, and Charlemagne. Charles Radding Michigan State University Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

America’s Birth Certificate: The Oldest Globular World Map: c. 1507

In 2012, a woodcut print for a c. 11 centimeter globe was discovered in an ancient volume in the University Library in Munich. This pivotal 1 million US$ globular world map, which only differs marginally from four other extant woodcut copies, attracted worldwide media attention. This discovery ignited the search for the date and the origin of an enigma in the form of an intricate secretive small Renaissance map. The aforementioned had been acquired inserted in a French adapted and unauthorised copy of the Introduction to Cosmography dated 1507 and printed in Lyon. The son of a Dutch American immigrant from Flusching, H. C. Kalbfleisch bought it in Paris in 1881 and brought it to New York. The author offers key evidence that this secretive map is an important misinterpreted and misdated cultural historical prototype which antedates five later woodcut copies: gores in Munich UB, Minnesota-Hauslab, Christie’s, SL Munich and Offenburg. He proves that its size and scale are inspired by a calculation of Leonardo da Vinci as described in one of his Codices, and applied on the 1504 Ostrich Egg globe discovered in London 2012. The research methodology used is stemmatics as developed by the German scholar K. Lachmann applied on ancient maps and the evaluation of the scientific aspects and architectural, historical and artistic design. Evidence was offered that the Introduction to Cosmography printed in France in which the engraved map was loosely inserted, together with two additional copper engravings, was printed prior to March 1508. The map research leads to the Benedictine monk and German cartographer, globe constructor and astrologist Donnus Nicolaus Germanus. The latter was the first who constructed a terrestrial and a celestial globe for the library of the Pope Pius IV. The two additional copper engravings lead to the Dutch born medical doctor and astrologer Guillelmus de Wissekerke, supplier of astrological instruments for French kings and the Duke of Milan. The artistic decorator for these copper engravings L. Boulengier was from the city of Albi in France, a possible key stepping-stone to the Papacy in Rome. The cathedral in Albi stood as an architectural symbol against the Cathars. Boulengier drew his inspiration from the Gothic flamboyant style of that world heritage cathedral in his home town Albi. He decorated these engravings on behalf of the powerful and art-loving Florimond de Robertet, Secretary of State for three subsequent French kings including King Francis I, 1515. Robertet was a client of Leonardo da Vinci. A date on two of the three artistic prints is a key date for the royalty of France. The French king Louis XII lost the succession of his House Valois-Orleans to the House of Valois-Angouleme after failing to produce a male heir to the throne. The author concludes that the small globular map naming America is America’s oldest Birth Certificate. A printed letter—early 1508—by Martin Waldseemuller provides the date. The small map precedes by more than eight years the large woodcut world map discovered in 1903 in Castle Wolfegg (Baden-Wurttemberg) by the Austrian Jesuit priest Dr. J. Fischer and which was sold to the Library of Congress, in 2001 for US $10 million. This research is a reappraisal. It is also a rebuttal of a misdirection in the history of science and a misleading error of 133 years ago. It combines medical, geographical, and cultural history of science. It leads the reader through Italian and French Renaissance and concentrates on aspects of architecture, map design, Leonardo da Vinci, French Royalty, and the early discovery of America. It offers a surprising ending leading to the city of New York, named Nouvelle-Angouleme in 1524.

The Elephant In and Out of the Room: Remigio dei Girolami’s Responses to Charles de Valois

In November 1301, Charles de Valois, brother of French King Philip IV, entered Florence at the request of Pope Boniface VIII and his Florentine allies. While Charles’ mission was ostensibly peacemaking between Florence’s Black and White factions, in reality his visit led to violence and exile of leading Whites, including Dante. Much of what we know about these events was written in retrospect, from the chronicles of Compagni and Villani to Dante’s Commedia. The Florentine Dominican Remigio dei Girolami, however, preached two sermons that week that provide a more immediate impression. One was given at the official communal welcome ceremony for Charles. The other, one of his sermons De pace, was probably given at a semi-secret peace procession mentioned by Compagni. Rhetorical analysis of these two sermons shows that Remigio tailored his message to his audience. When Charles was present, Remigio diplomatically avoided the subject of factional division, instead advising Charles on his upcoming mission to Sicily (perhaps subtly encouraging him to get on with it and leave Florentine politics alone). In Charles’ absence, however, Remigio obliquely criticized Charles and stressed to his fellow-citizens that, as the sermon’s thema stated, peace was in their power.

The Library of the Abbey of La Trappe: A Study of its History from the Twelfth Century to the French Revolution, with an Annotated Edition of the 1752 Catalogue by David N. Bell (review)

Reviewed by: The Library of the Abbey of La Trappe: A Study of its History from the Twelfth Century to the French Revolution, with an Annotated Edition of the 1752 Catalogue by David N. Bell Alexandra Barratt Bell, David N., The Library of the Abbey of La Trappe: A Study of its History from the Twelfth Century to the French Revolution, with an Annotated Edition of the 1752 Catalogue (Medieval Church Studies, 32), Turnhout, Brepols, 2014; hardback; pp. xiv, 648; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €125.00; ISBN 9782503545714. Medievalists will be familiar with David N. Bell’s formidable publications in the area of medieval manuscript and Cistercian studies. His latest book, which includes a study of the library of the Cistercian abbey of La Trappe and the role in its development of its great reforming abbot, Armand-Jean de Rancé, moves into the terrain of post-medieval French monastic history. Three-quarters of this volume, however, consist of an annotated edition of the monastery’s 1752 library catalogue, arranged ‘par ordres de matières’ and ‘par ordre alphabétique’ according to best practice at the time, in which Bell identifies specific editions where possible and valiantly provides brief biographical notices on the authors, some of whom are extremely obscure. The edition is introduced by six chapters that cover the history of the library and its contents. The book’s sub-title dates La Trappe’s library to the twelfth century: the monastery was founded in Normandy in 1140, flourished until falling victim to the Hundred Years’ War in 1337, and was pillaged several times during the next century. But there is little to say about the library’s early history: Bell has so far identified thirty-four of its medieval [End Page 221] manuscripts and the 1752 Catalogue lists only four incunables and a handful of post-incunables. In the sixteenth century, La Trappe became subject to the commendatory system: the French king regularly appointed non-resident prelates to the abbacy, specifically in 1636 Armand-Jean de Rancé, aged only 11. Carefully educated, the child came from a wealthy family that regarded La Trappe (among other monasteries) as a family cash-cow. But after the death of his mistress in 1657, de Rancé repudiated his worldly life and eventually decided to take his abbatial role seriously, becoming La Trappe’s regular abbot in 1664. After a difficult and controversial life devoted to reform, he died in 1700. It was de Rancé’s personal collection, mainly of contemporary theology, that provided the nucleus (maybe one-third) of the monastic library. By the mid-eighteenth century the library contained about 4,300 volumes (or between 1940 and 1990 titles), comparable in size to libraries of other Cistercian houses though, we are told, small compared to some Benedictine ones. Of these items, 65 per cent were seventeenth-century publications and 83 per cent were religious or devotional (Bell argues that this is an unusually high proportion). There were also histories, classical texts, and works on the arts, sciences, and language, in spite of Trappist discouragement of secular learning: de Rancé and his successors severely restricted access to the library and to the types of books the monks could read. Between 1752 and 1790 another thousand volumes, mainly works of popular piety and devotion, were added. In 1792 the monastery was suppressed, the library was inventoried and sealed (about a thousand books had already vanished, perhaps to Switzerland with some of the monks) and most of its contents auctioned off. In his final chapter, Bell addresses the library’s ‘Cistercian dimension’. The collection was short on medieval Cistercian writers, apart from St Bernard himself; later Cistercian writings, many of them little known, are mainly historical or documentary. Cistercians of all stripes (Common Observance, Trappists, Abstinents, Feuillants) contributed less than 10 per cent of the collection. This is an immensely detailed study on a somewhat recherché topic. It contains much valuable information for those interested in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious and book culture, although they may have to dig hard for it. The combination of a diachronic institutional history with a synchronic analysis of the 1752 Catalogue can be confusing and...

“In Everything Illegitimate”: Bastards and the National Family

“In Everything Illegitimate”: Bastards and the National Family

The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer in Medieval and Early Modern Europe by Laura Ackerman Smoller (review)

Reviewed by: The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer in Medieval and Early Modern Europe by Laura Ackerman Smoller Michael Vargas The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. By Laura Ackerman Smoller. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2014. Pp. xx, 343. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-8014-5217-8.) The Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer was an ardent critic of the Great Schism who nonetheless remained close to the Avignon pope, Benedict XIII, until nearly all others had abandoned him. A confidant of the count-kings of the Crown of Aragon, he (after Martin I died without an heir) helped shape the Compromise of Caspe that moved Catalonia into the Castilian orbit. Born in 1350, he died in 1419 in Vannes, where he was preaching at the invitation of the duke of Brittany. [End Page 819] In old age his fiery preaching and apocalyptic message attracted crowds of self-mutilating followers and caused riots that led to forced conversions and deaths. Despite all of this, Laura Ackerman Smoller turns our basic assumption of Ferrer’s profound importance on its head; perhaps his lasting influence is due not to his own achievements but to the powerful persons who promoted his saintliness to advance their own agendas. This book is not a biography but rather an assessment of the uses of recollection. Much of the book treats the politics and processes that led to Ferrer’s canonization in 1455, concentrating foremost on the canonization inquest at Vannes. The single “cult” of the book’s subtitle should be read in the plural, since it is one of Smoller’s central assertions—one for which she presents ample evidence—that there were a number of ways to read Ferrer’s sanctity after his death as well as various ways of promoting and acting upon the many readings. Smoller argues that Ferrer’s cause succeeded because powerful persons who had the money and political capacity to pursue their agendas saw that Ferrer’s canonization would serve them well. The canonization in 1450 of the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena lit a fire under the Dominicans that moved them to make claims for a new saint of their own; once they put their institutional muscle behind it, the canonization process moved along quickly. The dukes of Brittany similarly attached themselves to Ferrer in competition against French kings who quite usefully rode the coattails of St. Louis. The papacy and the Catalan count-kings had their own reasons for advancing Ferrer’s sainthood and their own stories to tell about why his saintliness mattered. Even ordinary people found ways of benefiting from the canonization fervor. Given the complexity of voices and interests, it seems no surprise to find evidence of “whitewashing” of Ferrer’s record, of leading witnesses along a preapproved script, and of a vita written to redress and obscure. The ample nuance and complexity here may leave some readers feeling that the book is disjointed or that they have occasionally lost the main line of argument. Others might want more or less substance in this or that citation or wish that some really good material was not relegated to sparse notes, as for example, in the story of the man who lost his intestines after murmuring against Ferrer. Smoller brings odd humor to her work when she describes the cooking of the chopped-up baby as Valencian paella and when she implies that Ferrer, after death, found several occasions to tell his supporters that he would do them some good once they succeeded in having him canonized. Quibbles and curiosities aside, the author has done well to let facts, legends, and evidentiary threads open one onto another into nets of questions and resources for future Ferrer studies. There is much to learn from this exemplary study of Ferrer’s afterlife. [End Page 820] Michael Vargas State University of New York at New Paltz Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Louis Hennepin on the Native Americans

When the Europeans set out to travel to America, the mysterious new continent discovered by Christopher Columbus in the 15th century, their reasons for doing so differed greatly. Whereas some went for the sheer aim to explore, others tried to set up trade relations, while again others tried to spread their beliefs to the unknown people they wished to encounter. One of the individuals who tried to spread believes was the Missionary Father Louis Hennepin, who was sent on a mission in 1675 by the French King Louis XIV. His goal was not only to explore new land, but also to convert the so-called “savages” to the one true faith, which according to him was Christendom. During his travels that he conducted with Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, he did not only happen to become the first eye witness to write about the Niagara Falls, but also the first European to explore the St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi river. The contact to the Native Americans he needed in order to achieve his mission was not difficult to acquire. He was even captured and taken hostage by the Sioux at one point during his journey. However, he soon realized that the conversion itself was a much more difficult task. Due to his frequent contact with the natives, they are very present in his writings. In most of his elaborations he writes in a neutral way, but he also describes the American tribes being “The Other,” which shows his negative sentiments about them. Therefore, this paper is analyzing Hennepin’s writings about the Native Americans, and explores the different factors that influenced his writings. In order to explain these factors, this paper uses references of literature on different possible influences, such as literature on the code of conduct in Europe during the 17th century, secondary literature on Missionary and travel writings in the 17th century, as well as Norbert Elias book The Civilizing Process.

A király műhelye: Luxemburgi Zsigmond budavári szobrai és művészettörténeti helyzetük

The study was originally written for the volume introducing the Medieval Buda (Medieval Buda in Context. Ed. Szende, Katalin-Nagy, Balazs. Leiden [Brill] 2014, to be published). It was written with...

The Medical Scenes of the 16 & 17th Centuries Reflected on Some Shakespearean Characters—Medicals, Magic, and Magicians

Village wizards in the 16, 17 th centuries were the solution-providers for the people in trouble. People wanted to get some help from their ‘wisdom’ and ‘art.’ A wizard meant a man of wisdom. They fixed diverse problems and specially healed the sick with medical activities. Typically they prescribed some charms or prayers, and simple herbs taken with holy water. In their treatment, prayers were main ingredients, and physic rather secondary. Shakespeare’s medical characters have the respects of magicians. “Doctor She” Helena heals French King’s fatal illness within only two days. Friar Laurence’s potion awakes Juliet from a “like death” for “two and forty hours.” Dr. Pinch is a conjuror of “the fiend.” Their actions could bring up the image of the wizards in villages to the audience. Juliet and Romeo always run to Friar for the solution, and each time he gives them a “remedy.” Helena’s prayer becomes an incantation, which fascinates the king to venture his life on the young woman’s hand. Treating his patient on the stage, Dr. Pinch realized the contemporary doctor of London. His caricatured look reflected the doubts and contempts for quack doctors. Unlike other two, he can’t get the approval of the authorities.