Michel de l'Hôpital: The Vision of a Reformist Chancellor during the French Wars of Religion by Seong-Hak Kim (review)

book reviews553 that, for all its careful wording, still raised determined opposition. The suspension designed to shut down dissident voices in 1547 left big issues unresolved, including one with a long history in Spain: the question ofthe power ofbishops undertaking corrective visitations. Even when such visits were justified through the decrees of the first phase of Trent, exemptions from episcopal authority— usually held by cathedral chapters—limited that power. Gutiérrez gives over the first three chapters in this book to this problem and to examples of chapter opposition, and then follows with analysis of the diplomacy between the Spanish clerics, the Emperor, and the papacy in 1554 designed to reduce this contention . These negotiations were paralyzed, as Gutiérrez relates in the following four chapters, by the death ofJulius III and by an interlude that included hopeful signs for the cathedral clerics (like the election of Marcellus H) but also included decisive abandonment of diplomacy in the bellicose, anticonciliar pontificate of Paul IV The stories Gutiérrez presents establish the precedents to the wider diplomatic operations followed to gain reconvocation in 1561, and these he relates in chapters 9 through 15. Pius IV quickly overcame the conciliar lethargy characteristic of the Pauline pontificate to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, but only with hard work and complex diplomacy. Gutiérrez traces it all, demonstrating, for example,the symbolic barrier that the very city ofTrent constituted for Protestants, and the wide variety of fears operating: from papal fear of a French national council, to fear within the Consejo Real that renewed jurisdictional strife would result from conciliar reconsideration of episcopal authority. He does so with constant use of archival sources, and includes appendices with transcriptions of correspondence and other documents. Gutiérrez argues a familiar position, namely, that it was the determination of Pius IV that secured reconvocation, but he does so with a presentation of archival evidence that far surpasses those who have held it before. A brief episode—but one with a vast network of connections to the religious, political, and military history of the era—is reconsidered in this massive volume . Gutierrez's finely researched, detailed analysis represents a major contribution to the history of early-modern Catholicism, even though it is a relatively small portion of the study to which he has dedicated his scholarly career. William V Hudon Bloomsburg University Michel de l'Hôpital: The Vision of a Reformist Chancellor during the French Wars ofReligion. By Seong-Hak Kim. [Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, Volume XXXVI.] (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers . 1997. Pp. xii, 216. $40.00.) A central figure in the fractious religious politics ofsixteenth-century France, Michel de l'Hôpital has surprisingly not received much attention in recent 554book reviews decades. The last major treatment of his life was A. Buisson's rather limited biography published in 1950. Apart from a few articles, nothing much new has been added to the nineteenth-century portrait of Hôpital as an early apostle of freedom of conscience guaranteed by a secular state. Kim's fine book revises this picture considerably by drawing on a wide array of archival sources and by devoting attention to the early stages ofHôpital's career. In the process, she captures the complex inconsistencies of a man who embodied a number of the central contradictions that plagued France during the Wars of Religion. Kim stresses the importance of Hôpital's own family history in explaining his rise to power. His father's involvement in Charles III de Bourbon's betrayal of François I in 1523 led to the family's exile in Italy,where young Michel grew up, taking a law degree from the University of Bologna. His firsthand exposure to Cinquecento Italian humanism impressed upon him a special sensibility regarding notions of civic duty and political morality that distinguished him from his counterparts back in France. Indeed, his Neo-Latin poetry demonstrated the close connection between literary humanism and careerism so emphasized by Italian courtly writers such as Castiglione and Delia Casa. Yet Hôpital's foreign upbringing only sharpened his own acute sense ofpatriotic devotion to France, where...