Liturgy, Politics, and Salvation: The Catholic League in Paris and the Nature of Catholic Reform, 1540-1630.

Ann W. Ramsey. Liturgy, Politics, and Salvation: The Catholic League in Paris and the Nature of Catholic Reform, 1540-1630

Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1999. xii + 447 pp. $99. ISBN: 1-58046-031-3.

The French Holy League has long fascinated scholars. Among other things, its dynamics draw together the religious, social, and political threads associated with the multifaceted crisis, which gripped the kingdom during the late sixteenth century. Examination of the League serves to inform us about the profound crisis of religious perspective and conduct, the transformation of social and political elites, and the tensions between civic self-governance and the developing absolutist monarchy. A number of stimulating, original approaches have appeared over the past several decades. Ann Ramsey's inquiry into Leaguer piety at Paris focuses our attention on the firm connection between political activity and liturgical practices -- the fusion of the civic and the sacred. The emphasis, to be sure, is firmly on the sacred and the manner by which liturgical experiences gave rise to and fashioned the Catholic League. Still, we also learn a great deal about political power and the social order.

Ramsey begins by juxtaposing two opposed readings of the place of the holy as competing faiths fought to dominate religion and culture. Calvin and his Huguenot followers emphasized sacred transcendence and, accordingly, located Christian religiosity in a spiritual universe independent of time and the material world. The politiques, who were mostly Catholics, leaned toward a transcendent position as well. Much to the disgust of Leaguers, for example, they proposed a separation of the civil and the sacred.

These notions of a transcendent religious culture were anathema to members of the League, who, in Ramsey's view, maintained and heightened traditional medieval insistence upon sacred immanence. For the Leaguer community, the liturgy -- sacraments, prayers, and ceremonies -- possessed an emotional and social reality. There was, furthermore, a close association of their exteriorized piety and political behavior. Penitential processions, the rituals of service in the municipal guard, and a variety of other religious and civic gestures took place squarely within city walls and parish boundaries. Symbolic behavior possessed a clear liminal quality that defined and unified the body sacred and politic.

At the heart of Ramsey's evaluation of Leaguer religious performance is an extensive yet close reading of the wills of more than 1200 Parisians. She carefully divides her sampling into three groups. The first, from 1543-1544, includes 159 wills and rakes measure of piety on the eve of the Council of Trent and its reform of Catholic liturgical observances. The second and largest sample -- 727 wills from 1590 -- corresponds to Henry IV's prolonged siege of Paris. It marked the climax of Leaguer opposition to the king. Finally, 344 wills from 1630 allow the author to push the analysis forward into the emerging devot world.

Analysis of this impressive sampling is particularly attentive to the burial arrangements that testators made and the values that their preparations disclose. These matters also provide a striking counterpoint to Calvinist funeral practices, which were utterly devoid of formal ceremony. Ramsey develops a "Performativity Index" that attempts to measure matters such as provisions for decoration of sacred objects, detailed arrangements for funeral processions, and bequests to the poor. What percentage of testators provided for the use of candles? How many candles? To what end? How did customs evolve over time? In all, Ramsey creates thirteen categories of liturgical practice associated with death and burial. She then compares their employ by pre-Tridentine testators, followers of the League, and later devot testators. The data are striking, although Ramsey might have teased a bit more information and meaning from them.

This statistical profile of funerary devotion is nicely balanced by close explication of a handful of selected wills. The author's textual analysis is rich and revealing. Detailed stipulations for memorial masses, bequests for reliquaries to be carried in Eucharistic processions, and gifts to penitential confraternities announce Leaguer piety and its connections to Catholic reform.

Altogether, this is an ambitious, complex, and occasionally frustrating book. It presumes familiarity with the dynamics of the Catholic League as well as with the religious traditions tied to Tridentine Catholicism. In addition, while Ramsey is superb at linking the religious and social spheres, their interconnections with the political are occasionally more implicit than explicit. Still, these criticisms are not meant to detract from the book's value. The results are promising, the argument Imaginative, and the interpretation fresh.