Jean du Tillet and the French Wars of Religion: Five Tracts, 1562-69 (review)

Reviews 159 market place and the view that Hamlet illustrates the importance of 'critical reflection' in the history of modern culture. Axel Kruse Engblsh Department University of Sydney Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ed., Jean du Tillet and the French Wars of Religion: Five Tracts, 1562-69 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 108), Binghamton, N e w York, 1994; cloth; pp. xii, 231; R.R.P. US$40.00. Jean du Tillet is best k n o w n for his Recueils recording French history using the court records and archival material to which he had access in his positions as royal prothonotary and secretary and as greffier civil at the Parlement of Paris. Yet D u Tillet also wrote at least eight tracts, five of which remain in manuscript until now, which bear witness to his fervent belief in Catholicism as the one true faith and his rejection of opposing, or even conciliatory, positions. Elizabeth A. R. Brown treats in her book those five manuscript tracts written in the last decade of D u Tillet's life, between 1562 and 1569, as the absolute authority of Catholicism was increasingly threatened and factional fighting with Huguenots erupted. The knowledge of the archival material D u Tillet had obtained through his research on the Recueils was an invaluable source of propaganda of which he could make use in his more polemical works defending the Catholic faith. Only two of his eight treatises were published in D u Tillet's lifetime, and these anonymously. Another was published posthumously in the final decade of the sixteenth century. Brown suggests at least three of his tracts m a y have been entirely private works D u Tillet did not circulate, surviving only in draft form. A s the author of personal works, D u Tillet was not constrained to temper his viewpoints and, in some cf his tracts, his overwhelming conviction about Catholicism and its inextricable connection to the concept of the monarchy appears to have destroyed the objectivity and critical eye with which he used the archival material in his Recueils. Brown proposes that D u Tillet's tracts provide us with a unique personal 160 Reviews response to the events of the Wars of Religion. She argues that since few members of the pro-Catholic Parlement of Paris left an individual record of their opinions, D u Tillet's works provide insight as a reflection of the mindset of this powerful section of the community. Brown provides a dense introduction situating D u Tillet's work in its historical and political context. However, some comparison to contemporary tracts might have been useful to draw attention to those original elements and sources in D u Tillet's works and those which were c o m m o n to many pro-Catholic treatises. Each work is prefaced by a further brief note containing bibliographical details. The decision to publish both an English translation and the original French text makes the book accessible to a wide audience. The smooth English translations provide the non-French reader with an introduction to the issues and debates of the French Wars of Religion and the sixteenthcentury French specialist can consult the original text, otherwise only available in manuscript copies in Paris. The bibliography provides a vast array of further reading material to which an interested reader could refer, although a division between primary source material and secondary reading matter would have been helpful. However, minor criticisms do not detract from what is essentially a well-researched and informative addition to the study of both the Reformation and sixteenth-century France. Susan Broomhall School of European Languages The University of Western Australia Bullough, Vern L. and James A. Brundage, ed., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1696), N e w York and London, Garland, 1996; board; pp. xviii, 441; R.R.P. US$78.00. The aim of this Handbook, according to the editors' Introduction, is to compensate for the neglect of the field of sexuality in earlier medievalists' work and to draw to scholars' and students' attention the state of research in this area in the hope of increasing 'its interest and appeal...