ROBERT TITTLER, Concordia University

Book Reviews / Comptes rendus / 73
order, but also in protest against the financial demands which the Tudor state made
upon the local community in the late 1540s. Those demands included the required
purchase of new service books and furnishings, and the sale or surrender of much
of the traditional devotional paraphernalia and other parochial possessions —eventually even the church house which had served as a community centre.
In consequence of these losses, and the reduced responsibilities which they
effected, a mere handful of the wealthier parishioners — those who could bear the
added burdens of office — replaced the nearly complete involvement of the whole
adult community in parish affairs. The broad collaborative interaction which had
long bound parishioners in harmonious relations, and which had openly included
women and adolescents, richer and poorer, now took on a more oligarchic profile.
This more concentrated authority, along with what Duffy calls “the coarsening of
the social fibre” (p. 185), may have responded more effectively to the increased
civil demands made on the parish, but it changed forever the accustomed and
broadly egalitarian state of the community.
Duffy’s story affirms that the Reformation constituted much more than a
doctrinal event, a change in religious belief and practice. It was nothing less than
a seismic upheaval in English society and culture, for parish communities like
Morebath and for the nation as a whole. It cannot be understood, as generations of
historians have tried to understand it, only from the national perspective. Like all
revolutions, we may know it fully only when we know it from below. One wishes
that Duffy had been able to test his picture of pre-Reformation peace and harmony
against the evidence of recorded litigation, in either consistory or secular courts.
Yet this compelling and accessible micro-history of the Reformation brings us
closer to realizing the enormous scope and complexity of what once seemed largely
a matter of doctrinal legislation and enforcement.
ROBERT TITTLER, Concordia University
Ronald S. Love. Blood and Religion: The Conscience of Henri IV 1553–1593.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 457.
Robert Love’s religious biography of the young Henri IV, King of France, examines the relationship between individual faith and political action by focusing on
a seminal moment in French history: Henri’s conversion to Catholicism in 1593.
This act, which brought an end to three decades of religious and civil war, is usually
attributed to political and cultural pressures rather than to a personal crisis of
conscience. Love firmly rejects such characterizations of Henri as a man of
vacillating religious convictions or a political pragmatist who coolly abandoned
his Calvinist co-religionists in order to cement his hold on the French throne.
Love’s focus on Henri’s conscience provides a welcome complement to traditional
political analyses of these events, the most recent being Michael Wolfe’s The
Conversion of Henri IV (1993). Although Love ultimately fails to resolve the
74 / Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme
question of Henri’s faith, he vividly portrays the Bourbon prince as a historical
agent whose conversion was a personal choice of his own making.
Love chastises previous biographers for having dismissed the sincerity of
Henri’s Calvinist convictions, which he maintains were constant and profound.
Opening with a fascinating assessment of Henri’s early education at the French
court and in Navarre, Love argues that Henri’s sectarian allegiance to Calvinism
was impressed upon him by his strong-willed mother, Jeanne de Navarre. Henri’s
faith was later tested during his captivity at the French court after the 1572 Saint
Bartholomew’s massacres. Love insists that Henri’s forced conversion to Catholicism at that time left his private faith untouched and celebrates Henri’s return to
the Reformed faith in 1576 after escaping from court. Repeatedly, Love draws our
attention to Henri’s stubborn loyalty to Calvinism despite the clear political
advantages of becoming Catholic, particularly after 1589, when the French king’s
unexpected death left Henri as the most obvious heir to the throne. Only in 1593,
after four years of failing to prove his military worth against the Catholic League,
did Henri finally compromise his personal convictions in order to bring peace to
France. Love ends his narrative with the 1593 conversion, which he sees as the end
of Henri’s journey of conscience. Henri’s failure to reconcile his personal religious
faith with his political responsibilities demonstrates, for Love, that early monarchs
could only rarely afford the luxury of a religious conscience.
Love’s aim is to present Henri as a man of principle who was not “motivated
exclusively by considerations of pragmatic politics” (p. 151). To do so, Love tries
to reconcile Henri’s public statements — his personal letters, his pronouncements
to visiting dignitaries, and his printed proclamations — with his apparently contradictory political and military choices. This approach is most effective when
analyzing Henri’s military tactics between 1576 and 1589, a time when Henri tried
to balance his Calvinism, his belief in religious toleration, and his loyalty to the
French crown. Love captures with telling precision the world of noble honour and
military valour Henri inhabited. By elucidating the mentality of a sixteenth-century
noble torn between his loyalties to blood and religion, Love clarifies why Henri
continued to profess undying loyalty to the French king even as he engaged royal
forces in battle, and how he managed to establish himself as the leader of the
Calvinist cause while simultaneously enforcing policies of religious toleration in
the lands under his authority. Although Love’s analysis underplays Henri’s ability
to be distracted by hunting matches and love affairs, qualities that led the prince’s
contemporaries to doubt his commitment to any principles besides his own satisfaction, overall his treatment of this period offers a compelling interpretation of
Henri’s motivation.
Love’s approach cannot, however, penetrate Henri’s deliberate obfuscation
of his most private self. As a leader vulnerable both militarily and politically, Henri
was always prevaricating about his religious convictions. While he kept his
Calvinist and Protestant allies satisfied with frequent statements about the depth
of his faith, Henri also retained the loyalty of Catholic nobles after 1589 by
promising repeatedly to subject himself to instruction in Catholicism. Love’s
Book Reviews / Comptes rendus / 75
analysis fails to resolve these ambiguities. Unlike David Starkey, whose recent
biography of the young Elizabeth I of England successfully tracks the evolution
of her faith by unpacking the evidence with a careful examination of both text and
context, Love sacrifices convincing analysis to narrative flow. Too often Love
relies on partisan accounts, such as the writings of politique Pierre de L’Estoile or
Elizabeth I’s emissaries, to document Henri’s apparently sincere Calvinist faith.
Nor does Love effectively refute alternate explanations for Henri’s reluctance to
convert to Catholicism in 1589. The traditional analysis, that Henri the pragmatist
remained Calvinist for fear of losing the support of his Protestant allies, withstands
the pressure of Love’s narrative.
Nevertheless, for readers familiar with the main events of the Wars of
Religion, Love fleshes out one of its most intriguing characters with a singular
clarity of language and a passionate purpose. We may not agree with his conclusions, but his portrayal of Henri forces us to confront the limits of historical
knowledge and the possibilities that may lie beyond.
SARA BEAM, University of Victoria
Gilbert Schrenck. Nicolas de Harlay, sieur de Sancy (1546–1629), l’antagoniste
d’Agrippa d’Aubigné. Étude biographique et contexte pamphlétaire. Paris, H.
Champion, 2000. P. 282.
Nicolas de Harlay de Sancy. Discours sur l’occurrence des ses affaires. Éd.
Gilbert Schrenck. Paris, H. Champion, 2000. P. 156.
Le venimeux pamphlet théologique d’Agrippa d’Aubigné, La Confession catholique du sieur de Sancy, a une telle réputation qu’il a obscurci l’évaluation plus juste
de l’action de Nicolas de Harlay de Sancy dans les guerres de religion. On peut
dire que c’est à une juste entreprise de réhabilitation que se livre Gilbert Schrenck
au cours d’une enquête historique et de la publication des Mémoires de Sancy. Que
celui-ci ne soit pas un ange, que la peur (durant les massacres de la Saint-Barthélemy à Orléans), puis l’intérêt personnel, aient pu commander ses abjurations,
certes, mais il a été un serviteur zélé et loyal envers Henri III et Henri de Navarre,
un ministre compétent, assez courageux pour affronter la disgrâce en s’opposant
au mariage d’Henri IV avec Gabrielle d’Estrées, assez désintéressé pour lever à
ses frais les troupes de Suisses nécessaires à la guerre, vendre ses diamants, etc.
Figure intéressante de ces grands serviteurs de l’État auxquels le XVIIe siècle
devait demander de définir un nouveau rapport non aristocratique du Roi avec ses
sujets , Sancy était méconnu, et, le pamphlet théologique aidant, réduit à une
dimension burlesque.
L’édition du Discours sur l’occurrence de ses affaires, opuscule de 74 pages
publié juste après la mort d’Henri IV (s.d. mais logiquement en 1611), est
évidemment une pièce primordiale, même s’il faut se méfier aussi des apologies