Antwerpen, Internationaal Uitgeverscentrum van Devotieprenten 17de-18de Eeuw by Alfons K. L. Thijs (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 281 Antwerpen, Internationaal Uitgeverscentrum vanDevotieprenten 17de-18de Eeuw. By Alfons K. L. Thijs. [Miscellanea Neerlandica, VIL] (Leuven: Peeters . 1993. Pp. xvii, 163- 12 color & 81 b/w illustrations. 1650 B.Fr. paperback.) The author, professor of history at the University Faculties of St. Ignatius in Antwerp, has previously distinguished himself with a pioneering study of the Catholic renewal in Antwerp (Van Geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk: maatschappelijke betekenis van de kerk in contrareformatorischAntwerpen, 1990). The present work is in many ways a continuation of his explorations into the cultural, economic, and religious history of the Southern Low Countries during the early modern period. Divided by the violent history of the Dutch uprising, the Low Countries evolved during the seventeendi century into a Calvinist-dominated, independent political entity in the north, the United Provinces, and a Catholic south loyal to the Habsburg. Whereas the story ofthe Calvinist north has been the subject of close historical investigation, the development of a distinct identity in the southern provinces, especially the way it was shaped by postTridentine Catholicism, has been relatively neglected since the monumental Histoire de Belgique by Henri Pirenne. Yet the Habsburg Netherlands occupied a central role in the Catholic renewal of northern Europe: the Jesuits were strongly represented in the two Belgian provinces, distinguished not in the least by their part in the English seminary in Douai and in their participation in the China mission; the Bollandists embodied a heroic vision of Catholic scholarship that furnished a counterpoint to Protestant church history; in Flemish artists such as Rubens the Baroque found its unique representation of the Catholic renewal; and the printing presses supplied a large part of the devotional literature consumed by Catholic northern Europe. This last theme is the subject of the present study. In a thorough investigation of the Antwerp archives and the print collection of the Ruusbroecgenootschap at his university, Thijs has given us an interesting preliminary introduction to this important subject. The book is divided into two parts; the first five chapters describe die history of the print industry between the late fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, while the last four focus on the men behind the devotional prints: the engravers, printers, clerics, and printsellers . The height of print production was in the seventeenth century, when Antwerp produced for a huge internal and external market. Most of the prints (usually with a devotional picture accompanied by prayers or descriptions) were consumed by the Jesuit Marian sodalities and guild confraternities. Export to Germany and to the Spanish Americas also played a significant role in the expansion of production. Antwerp prints were in high demand for their artistic quality; the art of engraving developed into an industry of pious consumption . During the eighteenth century, however, the print industry went 282 BOOK REVIEWS into gradual decline, faced with secularization and competition from French prints. Thanks to his initial training as an economic historian, Thijs is at his best analyzing the economic aspects of print production: the capital investment, the respective roles of illustrators, engravers, and printers, and the economics of consumption. His is less satisfactory with respect to the iconography of these prints. The success ofthe print industry is explained more in the context of the general history of the Catholic renewal rather than the intrinsic iconographie content of the prints. Nevertheless, the copious reproduction of devotional prints points to the richness of this source material; and scholars will be in his debt for his effort in pointing to the importance of these popular visual representations in the making of post-Tridentine Catholicism. R. Po-CHiA Hsia New York University Jeanne-Françoise Frémyot de Chantal. Correspondance. Tome V: 1635—40. Edited by Marie-Patricia Burns, V.S.M. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, Centre d'Études Franco-Italien des Universités de Turin et de Savoie. 1993. Pp. 970. 360 FF paperback.) This is the fifth of a projected six-volume critical edition, containing about 2600 letters of Saint Jeanne-Françoise-Frémyot de Chantal (1572—1641), cofounder with Francis de Sales of the Visitation Order (1610). Edited and annotated by the present archivist of the Annecy monastery, the collection enlarges and corrects a nineteenth-century compilation (1874—1879...