Politics, Religion and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of De Lamar Jensen.

The material in this collection is similar to many other honorary collections, a mixed bag. The contributors range from established historians such as the late Nancy Lyman Roelker and H.G. Koenigsberger to the still unknown Kristin Richardson. Geographically the essays include Italy, Eastern Europe, Spain, the German states, the Low Countries, France and England while chronologically they span the standard time frame of early modern European history, the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The articles run the gamut of a survey of Italian Renaissance diplomacy to a detailed account of the number and length of English ambassadorial trips during Elizabeth I's reign. These surveys may be helpful to those unfamiliar with certain aspects of the interaction of religion, politics and diplomacy during this period, while the more specific work such as David Bitton and Ward A. Mortensen's "War or Peace: A French Pamphlet Polemic, 1604-1606," sheds new light on the interaction of policy and religion, and Koenigsberger offers a challenge to the accepted standards on the administration of King Philip II's Spain. John Patrick Donnelly's essays on Jesuits in Eastern Europe and on the Low Countries are excellent examples of how these elements functioned in the late sixteenth century, though others merely take up one aspect of the title elements. While Peter Pierson's "The Development of Spanish Naval Strategy and Tactics in the Sixteenth Century" is an informative essay on maritime affairs under Philip II, it is the only essay that does not cohere with the three title elements. A number of essays attempt a revision of the ideas Garrett Mattingly expressed in Renaissance Diplomacy without fully convincing the reader. While the content of the volume is solid and informative, the overall production of the text seems rushed and may account for the flaws in writing, which surprisingly include a sentence fragment. The index is spotty and fails to address the same topics that are mentioned in various articles. However the major flaw is the number of typographical errors that occur throughout the text, with the misdating of the Battle of Pavia being the most obvious. This seems amazing since in a short biographical sketch of Professor Jensen we are told that he practiced meticulous scholarship. The biographical sketch was helpful since I was unfamiliar with Jensen's work; what was missing, however, was the bibliographical listing of the honoree's works that usually accompanies such books. Curious about this lack, a senior colleague in early modern European history indicated to me that Jensen had produced only a slender number of writings in the field, which may explain my unfamiliarity with his work.

Another disconcerting feature was the inclusion of a few prints that have little or no connection to the essays they accompany and no acknowledgment of their origin. The exceptions are those that deal with the Low Countries, which are inserted into the text, allowing a visualization of the Dutch polders. These illustrations were propitious, in light of the mid-winter flooding occurring in Holland at the time.

Despite its glaring mistakes, this is a helpful volume and a good starting point for those interested in aspects of politics, religion and diplomacy in early modern Europe.

WILLIAM REDNOUR City College of New York