Changing Identities in Early Modern France

"This volume presents both new material and new interpretation. The scholarship is superior. Historians will welcome its publication."--Jonathan Dewald, State University of New York at Buffalo

Suitable for students and scholars of France, the early modern period, and the history of religion, this book offers interpretations of what it meant to be French during a period of profound transition, from the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in the mid-fourteenth century to the consolidation of the Bourbon monarchy in the seventeenth century.

Foreword / Natalie Zemon Davis vIntroduction: Becoming French in Early Modern Europe / Michael Wolfe 1I. Ideologies and Institutions 23The French Romantics and the Renaissance / J. H. M. Salmon 25Making History: Ceremonial Texts, Royal Space, and Political Theory in the Sixteenth Century / Lawrence M. Bryant 46Identity Politics and Rulership in France: Female Political Place and the Fraudulent Salic Law in Christine de Pizan and Jean de Montreuil / Sarah Hanley 78The Birth of the Nobility of the Robe: Dignity versus Privilege in the Parlement of Paris, 1500–1700 / Robert Descimon 95Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France / Kristen B. Neuschel 124II. Dissent and Deviance 145Religion, Gender, and Class: Nuns and Authority in Early Modern France / Charmaine Blaisdell 147An Age of Gold? Parisian Women, the Holy League, and the Roots of Catholic Renewal / Barbara B. Diefendorf 169A Woman and the Devil: Possession and Exorcism in Sixteenth-Century France / Denis Crouzet 191Satan in Europe: The Geography of Witch Hunts / Richard M. Golden 216Anatomy of an Infanticide Trial: The Case of Marie-Jeanne Bartonnet (1742) / Alfred Soman 248III. Identities in Flux 273New World, Old Historiography / Donald R. Kelley 275Montaigne and the Discovery of the Ordinary / William Bouwsma 294An Intellectual in Politics: Montaigne as Mayor of Bordeaux / Zachary Sayre Schiffman 307Villegagnon, Polyphemus, and Cain of America: Religion and Polemics in the French New World / Silvia Shannon 325Burgundians into Frenchmen: Catholic Identity in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy / Mack P. Holt 345Protestant Reactions to the Conversion of Henry IV / Michael Wolfe 371Index 391Contributors 409