Jeanne d'Albret et sa Cour: Actes du Colloque International de Pau, 17-19 mai 2001 (review)

This book is a collection of essays originally delivered at a conference in Pau in May 2001 around the theme of Jeanne d'Albret and her court. The volume contains twenty-three essays, many of them written by senior specialists who have written extensively on Jeanne's career and French Protestantism in the past, while others are by younger scholars whose main scholarly contributions are still to come. It is nevertheless odd that the book contains no introduction — unless you count the two-page encomium by Jean-Pierre Babelon praising anyone who has ever written about Jeanne d'Albret — or conclusion to explain the purpose and goal of the volume. No doubt the three editors organized a very pleasant and fruitful conference in 2001, and they likely worked hard to turn the papers presented in Pau into a readable collection of essays. But they leave it to the reader to figure out what the book's themes, arguments, and principal contributions might be, however, and this hardly seems fair given the book's price. Thus, it is impossible for a reviewer to say whether the volume succeeds or not, since it is not clear at all what the editors were hoping to achieve.

The book is divided into five sections. Part 1 focuses on Jeanne d'Albret and religious choice, and essays by Bernard Roussel on Jeanne's theologians and by Anne-Marie Cocula on Jeanne's journey from Nérac to La Rochelle with her children in September 1568 both show in different ways how Jeanne had to work hard to preserve her religion in the face of pressures from the crown as well as from Blaise de Montluc, Jeanne's personal enemy in Guyenne. Part 2 centers on Jeanne's entourage, and this section is a mixed bag. One of the most substantial essays is that of Serge Bruent, who explores Jeanne's relationship with her Spanish great-uncle, Pierre d'Albret, who was the Catholic Bishop of Comminges. Brunet goes well beyond what Nancy Roelker wrote about this relationship in her biography thirty years ago, and shows how Jeanne, like her son Henri IV after her, was forever concerned about a Spanish army crossing the Pyrenees to invade and occupy Béarn. The longest section of the book is part 3 on Jeanne d'Albret and humanism. Here the essays by Mariangela Miotti on theater and poetry at the Albret court and by Claudie Martin-Ulrich on La Brief discours sur la mort de la royne de Navarre are the most interesting. Part 4 contains three essays on Jeanne d'Albret and the fine arts — objets d'art, music, and painting, respectively — while part 5 concludes the collection with three essays on Jeanne d'Albret in the eyes of posterity. Here the most significant of the essays is Christian Desplat's article titled "Jeanne d'Albret, un modèle d'éducation maternelle?" in which the author argues that the historical narrative that emerged in late nineteenth-century France glorifying Jeanne for having educated her son, le bon roi Henri IV, was less a reflection on Jeanne's efforts than a reflection of the devaluation of the reputation of Henri's father, Antoine de Bourbon. If nothing else, this piece serves as a much-needed corrective to the laudatory praise heaped upon Jeanne by Jean-Pierre Babelon in the preface.

So how much does this volume add to what we already know about Jeanne d'Albret? Or about the French Wars of Religion in general and about the history of French Protestantism in particular? There are contributions, however incremental they might be. And many of these essays clearly deserve to be published and do add something to what we know about the...