‘Le Roi hors de page’ et autres textes: une anthologie by Bernard Teyssandier. Delphine Amstutz, Jean-François Dubost et Bernard Teyssandier, Jean-Raymond Fanlo (review)

This erudite volume brings to light texts that lead up to and depict the assassination of Marie de Medici’s minister Concino Concini, the trial and execution of his wife (Marie’s favorite) Léonora Galligaï for lèse majesté divine et humaine, and Marie’s own exile to Blois, all decreed by Louis XIII in 1617. The editors have divided the book into seven sections. The first, ‘Contextes’, outlines succinctly, in one page, the sociopolitical climate from Henri IV’s assassination in 1610 to the events of 1617. Section II, ‘Textes’, offers eleven critical editions of anonymous pamphlets of various lengths and registers, written and printed between 1615 and 1617, as well as François de Rosset’s tragic story from 1619. In section III, a ‘Postface’, Bertrand Teyssandier and Delphine Amstutz provide synthetic analyses of the texts in question and reproduce several images that were also circulating. The fourth section consists of a series of ‘Études critiques’: Jean-François Dubost writes on the notion of the favori; Tatiana Debbagi-Baranova, on the production and writing of libels; Claire Esnault examines the troubling filiation between Coligny and Concini; Jean-Raymond Fanlo writes on the problematics of Pierre Matthieu’s historiography; and Hélène Merlin-Kajman, on the heterogeneous rhetorical strategies of control and manipulation deployed in the numerous pamphlets. Section V presents an annotated ‘Bibliographie sélective’ compiled by Amstutz; section VI, an ‘Index historique’; and VII, an ‘Index historiographique et critique’. The book’s subtitle is slightly misleading, therefore: rather than a simple ‘anthologie’, the volume constitutes more of a critical apparatus that will allow readers to peruse not only some of the many polemical texts that circulated, and the copious notes that accompany them (the first text, for example, La Sanglante Chemise de Henri le Grand, spans a mere fifteen pages yet contains 139 footnotes), but also cutting-edge theoretical and historiographical studies on the tumultuous period and its thriving pamphlet culture. The editors have also chosen to modernize the French, which will make these texts more accessible to the general public. This is a very welcome volume, particularly as the events covered illuminate a relatively little-known yet crucial turning point in Louis XIII’s reign and his transformation into a king hors de page, emancipated from others’ control (namely, that of his mother and her ministers). To see a critical edition of such disparate texts, ranging from narrative to drama, is refreshing. However, it is surprising that the editors, with their evident focus on Concini’s demise, did not include the anonymous tragedy La Victoire du Phébus français contre le Python de ce temps (1617), a play that re-enacts Concini’s death and the nobles’ newfound respect for the king; it would have complemented their critical edition of La Magicienne étrangère (1617), which shows Galigaï’s arrest, trial, and death. This minor reservation notwithstanding, scholars with an interest in early modern pamphlet culture and its influence on the politics and reception of Louis XIII’s coup d’état will certainly find much useful material in these edited texts and critical studies.