France in the Sixteenth Century.

Frederic Baumgartner is known to readers of this journal as a historian of religious conflict who moved first into the field of church administration during the Counter-Reformation then into a biography of Henry II. This is a compelling synthesis of Baumgartner's view of the evolution of French society and culture between the meetings of the Etats generaux, called in 1484 to settle the question of a regent for Charles VIII (only thirteen at the death of Louis XI), and the session called in 1614 to take up a similar question for Louis XIII.

Baumgartner divides his volume into three parts: the period between 1484 and the Peace of the Ladies at Cambrai (1530) which effectively ended French adventures in Italy; 1530 and the beginning of the wars of religion in 1562; and the wars of religion and Henry of Navarre's pacification of his exhausted kingdom. Each part is further divided into six chapters, including one on the monarchy which explains the fiscal system and revenues and outlines the political events of the period. A second chapter on the church includes the Reformation and the Catholic response; the chapter on the nobility includes military developments; and the one on the commoners includes economic trends. Each part also includes a chapter on the law, the courts and the robins who staffed them, and a concluding chapter on the cultural and intellectual developments in each period.

These final chapters are the closest to my own a priori interests, but they appear to be the furthest from Baumgartner's fields of expertise and are the most woodenly written. The same material was covered more felicitously almost thirty years ago in a book of the same title by the literary critic Donald Stone.

Historians will doubtless find the newer book much more congenial, though it is difficult to focus narrowly on Baumgartner's intended audience. "This work," he writes, "is intended first of all for upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students or advanced scholars being introduced to a detailed history of sixteenth-century France" (xi). It is very easy to use: each chapter is organized chronologically within each of the many divisions according to time period and occupational status, and the book concludes with a detailed index and such features as trees not only of the Valois and Bourbon families but of the Guise and Montmorency as well.

France in the Sixteenth Century will interest seiziemistes of differing professional orientation not just as a teaching tool but also as book that presents information in challenging ways. After stating that Henry II merely suspended payment for a quarter instead of defaulting on his loans in 1557, for instance, Baumgartner explains that the debt compiled by the middle of the sixteenth century required such exorbitant taxes that it soured the Third Estate on the monarchy, at the same time that it prevented the king and his sons from lavishing the gifts to which the nobles d'epee had become accustomed or from engaging in the foreign wars that kept them happy in the king's armies. As a result, "the huge royal debt in place in 1559 ensured that the religious division already ren[d]ing France would become civil war" (129).

Even historical domains of particular interest to this reviewer, like witchcraft, are treated accurately and sensitively by Baumgartner in a way which demonstrates his command of (the uncited) Ginzburg, Le Roy Ladurie, Mandrou, Monter, and Muchembled. The result is that this is less than an ideal introduction to topics readers want to explore more fully on their own. Baumgartner's Montaigne supported religious toleration, moreover, since it was "putting a high price on one's own beliefs to burn someone else for them" (299) - but the certitude Montaigne was attacking in "Des boyteux" is not religious but judicial (Essais 3.9.1032 B). Montaigne did attack religious intolerance elsewhere in the Essais, but with less indignation than he directed here at witch-hunters.

The book is not without faults, but it is by far the best historical introduction to France of the Renaissance and religious wars.

EDWARD BENSON Central Missouri State University