Larissa Juliet Taylor

Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation

List of Abbreviations Preface 1. The Sources 2. Early Life, 1504-1533 3. The Defining Moment, 1533-1534 4. The Faith Embattled 5. Friend of the Society 6. Catholic Reform 7. Avant le deluge: The Prophet of Paris? 8. Endings and Beginnings Appendices Appendix A. Epistre Appendix B. Sermons Bibliography Indices Index of Names Index of Places Subject Index

Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380-1600 (review)

Spear also considers literary references to religious superiors, contrasting in detail Chaucer’s portrayal of the fictional Prioress Eglentyne and the eulogy in Wherwell Cartulary for its Abbess Euphemia (d. 1257). The eulogy, reprinted in full, praised Euphemia for increasing the number of nuns from forty to eighty, aiding their “sanctification and honour,” adorning “the church with crosses, reliquaries, precious stones, vestments, and books,” and being “zealous in works of charity.” In addition to renovating the abbey manor courtyard, rebuilding the bell tower,and constructing a farmery,watercourse,mill,and chapel,Euphemia is said to have ordered the leveling of the presbytery of the church,which was in “imminent danger”of “complete collapse,”specifying that “the damp soil”be “dug out to a depth of twelve feet till firm and dry ground was found”(pp.217-218). Treating this eulogy as hagiography intent on describing a model abbess,not an actual one, Spear uses the ideal to challenge Chaucer’s portrayal of his Canterbury pilgrim.

Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity (review)

Delft examines the use of this imagery in the work of La Bruyère and La Rochefoucauld, and also of Montaigne, Gracián, La Fontaine, Pascal, and his inquiry sometimes turns into a welcome work of Toposforschung. The sixteenth-century Scientific Revolution, Marjorie Nicolson’s “breaking of the circle,” had many well-known consequences and some more unexpected repercussions. With the twilight, the slow decay of scholasticism, the philosopher’s attention was once again focused on man and his mind, and not on God. The “spectator of life” was looking both at the outside world and his inside world from a detached position. He stood alone at the top of creation (see Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De dignitate hominis Oratio) and enjoyed this situation for a time, but, after a while, he gave in to the darkest despair. The Greek cosmos, the well-ordered universe of the Middle Ages, called for the Timaeus and the Summa theologica. The discarded, disintegrated world of the early modern period needed fragments, maxims, like rambling wrecks of wisdom or skeptical snatches of experience. “All coherence gone,” wrote John Donne: sitting on a shore, Melancholia I dismally meditates among odds and ends of human knowledge. Van Delft gives new life to old metaphors, refreshing interpretations of well-known texts, and also uses obscure engravings or paintings (by Jacques Callot, Laurent Van Haecht, Lucas Kilian, Piero di Puccio, and so on). Summing up such a rich book is far from being an easy task, and the present decline of the French language is not one of the world’s best-kept secrets. May I thus, at the end of this review, call for a quick English translation of such an important work for specialists in comparative literature and the history of ideas? GILLES C. BANDERIER Basel, Switzerland

From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (review)

Débat is a “false debate” since folie and amour cannot live without each other. Moreover, in her other essay, this critic sees a close bond between Labé’s poésie and her satirical Débat: in all these works many facets of love are depicted and debated to reveal a close relationship between love and writing. In the same way, Marie Madeleine Fontaine invites her readers to look at Labé’s politics in both her poetry and in the Débat. To her, Labé’s goal is a secret understanding and mutual exchange of rapports between women and men in both matters of love and in the observance of society’s rules. Two essays follow, one on the judicial eloquence of expression by the protagonists of the Débat, authored by Christiane Lauvergnat Gagnière, and an examination of the impact of the Débat, by Marie Rose Logan, who considers it to be merely “a verbal jousting.” This review had to be selective and could not mention all of the eighteen essays in the book. Overall, scholars and students will find that it is a thoughtful selection of Labé criticism with special emphasis on her feminist views. The collection goes a long way toward fulfilling the editors’ objective that it “serves as a guide” to study, discover, and appreciate the works of Louise Labé, whose voice, first heard in the sixteenth century, still appeals to us in this new millennium. ANNE-MARIE BOURBON Queensborough Community College, CUNY