Premieres oeuvres de piete.(Reviews)(Book Review)

Guillaume Du Vair. Premieres oeuvres de piete: De la saincte Philosophie, Meditation sur l'Oraison Dominicale, Le Cantique d'Ezechias, Meditations sur les Pseaumes.

Ed. Bruno Petey-Girard. Paris: Honore Champion Editeur, 2002. 405 pp. index. append. gloss. bibl. [euro] 62. ISBN: 2-7453-0704-5.

Xavier Le Person. Practiques et Practiqueurs La vie politique a la fin du regne de Henri III (1584-1589).

Geneva: Librairie Droz S. A., 2002. 658 pp. index. append. bibl. n.p. ISBN: 2-600-00820-9.

Understanding the tragic events that occurred in France during the Wars of Religion has attracted some of the very best of a particularly strong generation of young historians on both sides of the Atlantic. Among the French this effort has coincided with attempts to "reinvent" or add new approaches to that venerable genre known as political history. Some eminent historians in the so-called "Annales school" maligned political history and enjoyed characterizing it as old-fashioned. In his Guerriers de Dieu (1990), Denis Crouzet took up the challenge by successfully interpreting the violent actions of persons and institutions as inextricably linked to profound general religious, legal, and occultist fears and beliefs. Ten years later Nicolas Le Roux discerned every possible mechanism of power in his study of royal favor in the social and cultural environment of the court. His La Faveur du roi (2000) extends and confirms the claims that understanding the character and uses of power can be every bit as rewarding and complex as studying the history of grain prices, carnivals, and consumerism.

The work under review here is certainly as …