Glenn Richardson. Renaissance Monarchy: the Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V.

London and New York: Arnold, 2002. Pbk. xvi + 246 pp. index, map. chron. $19.95. ISBN: 0-340-73143-5.

This book is primarily intended for undergraduates and gives a synthetic and comparative analysis of the three reigns of Henry VIII (1509-47), Francis I (1515-47), and Charles V (1515-56). The study is organized around the three regal duties of warfare, government, and patronage, showing how this triumvirate of kings followed a similar ethos of honor and courage as knights or warriors, similar ideals of justice and common good as governors and justice makers, and similar patterns of patronage and artistic sponsoring. Richardson underlines the importance of the culture of nobility and the ideals of princely rule shared by all three kings. However, they ruled very distinct administrative and judicial systems, shaped different models of leadership, and their internal policies and relations with the church differed considerably. Richardson offers a complete and neat summary of the issues, taking into account, for example, the realms finances, the innovations of warfare, tournaments, and royal entries. The competition for glory and glamour took on many different forms, and the prestige of these kings was grounded as much in reality (for their military, religious, and political deeds) as in fiction (their fabricated ideal image). Indeed, the implicit and at times explicit competition between them as to which one of them embodied the ultimate model of princely exemplarity, led them to considerable investment in self-promotion, either through pageantry, spectacle, or art.

While Richardson's arguments are on the whole solid, it is regrettable that he devotes no proper discussion to the term "New Monarchy" (2) which he uses in his introduction. He seems to be content to assert that "Renaissance Monarchy" was not "something self-defining, new, or radically different from medieval monarchy" (ix), but rather the result of intense social changes, giving a distinct dimension to the monarchial regimes of the early sixteenth century. Richardson does not identify the new style of kingship with the revival of Roman law, the creation of a standing royal army, the transfer of power from the nobility to the king or the decline of the Estates-General and other consultative assemblies. J. Russell Major defined Renaissance monarchies as neither feudal nor absolutist, but as a unique style of rule, neither more rational nor effective than medieval kingship. Richardson chooses to ignore this debate and avoids employing the term absolutism on the grounds that it has been frequently misused and that the final power of the king, provided by a large set of prerogatives, has often been confused with despotic power (93-94). In fact, Richardson would endorse J. H. Shennan's view, grounded in Claude de Seyssel's theory, that "royal sovereignty and its limitations existed together and that one did not diminish the other" (104), while holding on to Robert Knecht's more absolutist reading. It brings Richardson to the maybe lucid but paradoxical conclusion that the three Renaissance monarchies were both "authoritarian and contractual" (144).

Richardson claims that his book can "complement existing monographs and textbooks" (ix). I would say rather that it is an excellent introduction to them. The book can be read with no previous knowledge of the period and renders accessible a veritable wealth of information. In doing so, it clearly answers students' needs for a well-articulated and succinct overview of an extremely vast and diverse amount of material, including insights from recent scholarship. The subdivision of each chapter into short paragraphs contributes to the book's clarity, and the relatively light apparatus of notes is counterbalanced by a thematic bibliography, directing the reader toward further reading. Finally, an extended comparative chronology of events (199-210) and a short index turn this student-oriented book into an important and useful tool.

NICOLE HOCHNER

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem