Early Modern France

When Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Quebec in 1608, he established elaborate gardens where he sowed French seeds he had brought with him and experimented with indigenous plants that he found in nearby fields and forests. Following Champlain's example, fellow colonists nurtured similar gardens through the Saint Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes region. In A Not-So-New World, Christopher Parsons observes how it was that French colonists began to learn about Native environments and claimed a mandate to cultivate vegetation that did not differ all that much from that which they had left behind. As Parsons relates, colonists soon discovered that there were limits to what they could accomplish in their gardens. The strangeness of New France became woefully apparent, for example, when colonists found that they could not make French wine out of American grapes. They attributed the differences they discovered to Native American neglect and believed that the French colonial project would rehabilitate and restore the plant life in the region. However, the more colonists experimented with indigenous species and communicated their findings to the wider French Atlantic world, the more foreign New France appeared to French naturalists and even to the colonists themselves. Parsons demonstrates how the French experience of attempting to improve American environments supported not only the acquisition and incorporation of Native American knowledge but also the development of an emerging botanical science that focused on naming new species. Exploring the moment in which settlers, missionaries, merchants, and administrators believed in their ability to shape the environment to better resemble the country they left behind, A Not-So-New World reveals that French colonial ambitions were fueled by a vision of an ecologically sustainable empire.

In this project I wish to establish a seventeenth century popular concept focusing on the lute in France between 1650 and 1700. By promoting a more culturally based understanding of French lute music, I try to unveil some of its functions as social phenomena. The argument takes a starting point in Robert Middleton’s popular as presented in his book Studying popular music (1990), together with selected writings by Foucault; and from that I map different cultural groupings within the French society as to unveil how lute music was articulated. Following, I investigate how the construction of musician and music fits into and fulfill the conception of seventeenth century popular music that I propose. This study presents an internally contradictory concept of lute music that participates in dialogues between internal and external, self and other, individual and society.

Key words: Popular music; seventeenth century; lute; French society; cultural studies; performance studies.

ABSTRACT in English (résumé en français plus bas): "Artillery and the art of the 'petite guerre': a long progression"
In 1744, for the first time in France, some pieces of artillery are associated to a unit of light troops from its inception. Indeed, the regiment of the harquebusiers of Grassin, a mixed body of infantrymen and cavalrymen, received two pieces of the light cannon known as "à la Suédoise" (in the Swedish way). With examples, the article shows on the one hand that narrative sources make it possible to identify a use of cannons in the "petite guerre" – the tactic in which light troops are specialized – from the War of the Austrian Succession in Flanders (1744-1748) onwards. But on the other hand, it is observed that only the theoretical treatises of the "petite guerre" published after the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) seriously consider the use of artillery in this area and encourage it. To clarify this discrepancy, we must return to the tactical and technical developments as well as to the political choices during the 18th century.

RESUME en français :
« Artillerie et art de la petite guerre : un long cheminement »
En 1744, pour la première fois en France, des pièces d’artillerie sont associées à un corps de troupes légères dès sa création. Le régiment des arquebusiers de Grassin, corps mixte de fantassins et de cavaliers, se voit en effet attribuer deux pièces du canon léger dit « à la suédoise ». L’article montre d’une part, exemples à l’appui, que les sources narratives permettent d’identifier un usage du canon à la petite guerre – la tactique de spécialité des troupes légères – dès la guerre de Succession d’Autriche en Flandre (1744-1748). Mais, d’autre part, on observe que seuls les traités théoriques de petite guerre publiés après la guerre de Sept Ans (1756-1763) envisagent sérieusement le recours à l’artillerie dans ce domaine et l’encouragent. Pour éclairer ce décalage, il faut revenir sur les évolutions tactiques et techniques ainsi que sur les choix politiques au long du XVIIIe siècle.

Few signifiers of the persistence of gender inequality are more potent than the evidence across many centuries of men beating their domestic partners. Yet the historicization of family conflict demands that we interrogate the specific and widely varied dynamics that shaped attitudes toward and experiences of spousal violence. Although a seventeenth-century woman was legally subject to her husband's discipline, wives themselves as well as individuals and institutions in local communities publicly negotiated the parameters of that discipline. A twentieth-century woman living in a community that valorized romantic , companionate, and privatized ideals of marriage was, by contrast, isolated and wary of public acknowledgment of her status as a battered wife. This essay explores the matrix of early modern urban conjugal battery in seventeenth-century France to examine how and why individuals and communities defined the use of force between spouses as they did. Despite clichés about the early modern period's acceptance of wife beating, attitudes toward domestic violence were complex. Certainly, men's aggression toward their wives was naturalized to a degree, and women's violence against their husbands was demonized. 1 But, in practice, women as well as men, in courts and in communities, negotiated parameters for spousal behavior that defined hus-bands' prerogatives in using force. What issues defined some men's behavior * This essay draws on material from a larger research project, " Courting Families: Litigation and the Political Economies of Daily Life in Early Modern France, " that has been generously supported by a summer stipend and a yearlong fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University of Texas supplemented these with a Faculty Research Assignment. I have very much appreciated the comments and suggestions of the anonymous journal readers as well as those of many colleagues, especially

http://www.cir17.info/colloques/princeton
Ce colloque pluridisciplinaire se propose d'examiner la place des pratiques collaboratives dans la culture française du XVIIe siècle. Alors que se renforce la monarchie absolue, incarnée par un souverain unique, il règne dans le domaine des arts et des lettres un esprit (ou impératif) de collaboration d'où résultent de nombreuses oeuvres plus ou moins collectives. Il s'agira d'étudier ces productions sous tous leurs aspects (genèse et réception, formes et idées, style et sens), d'interroger leur réussite ou échec, et de les situer par rapport aux ouvrages plus « solitaires ». Pourquoi écrire à quatre mains, voire plus ? Comment peut-on travailler en commun avec son frère ou son maître, un compositeur ou un graveur ? La Bruyère avait-il raison d'écrire : « L'on n'a guère vu jusques à présent un chef-d'oeuvre d'esprit qui soit l'ouvrage de plusieurs » ?

This essay reappraises the origins of French Quakerism based on new archival research conducted on both sides of the Channel. It identifies 34 Quaker missionaries in 17th- and early 18C France, sheds new light on the French reception of Quakerism and suggests possible connections with non-violent, charismatic movements in Languedoc.

If the greatness of a philosophical work can be measured by the volume and vehemence of the public response, there is little question that Rousseau's Social Contract stands out as a masterpiece. Within a week of its publication in 1762 it was banished from France. Soon thereafter, Rousseau fled to Geneva, where he saw the book burned in public. At the same time, many of his contemporaries, such as Kant, considered Rousseau to be “the Newton of the moral world,” as he was the first philosopher to draw attention to the basic dignity of human nature. The Social Contract has never ceased to be read in the 250 years since it was written. Rousseau's “Social Contract”: An Introduction offers a thorough and systematic tour of this notoriously paradoxical and challenging text. David Lay Williams offers readers a chapter-by-chapter reading of the Social Contract, squarely confronting these interpretive obstacles, leaving no stones unturned. The conclusion connects Rousseau's text both to his important influences and those who took inspiration and sometimes exception to his arguments. The book also features a special extended appendix dedicated to outlining his famous conception of the general will, which has been the object of controversy since the Social Contract's publication.

Les deux tomes des œuvres complètes de Samuel de Champlain rassemblent, en français moderne, tous ses ouvrages imprimés de son vivant, avec toutes les cartes des éditions originales, ainsi que tous ses manuscrits, dont trois mémoires inédits. Un système de concordance permet au lecteur de retrouver rapidement les textes cités des éditions antérieures de Biggar et de Laverdière. Finalement, une solide introduction, des notes explicatives et un index complètent cette édition finale des textes de Champlain.

Les récits de Champlain sont un témoignage capital des débuts de la présence française en Amérique du Nord. Il y raconte les fondations de l'Acadie et de Québec, ainsi que les explorations des provinces maritimes, de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, de la vallée du Saint-Laurent et de l'Ontario. Il y rapporte les alliances avec les Micmacs, les Etchemins, les Montagnais, les Algonquins et les Hurons. Il rappelle tout ce qu'il a vécu aux côtés des autres fondateurs, en particulier Pierre Dugua de Mons et François Gravé, mais il révèle aussi ses démarches auprès du pouvoir royal et certains aspects inconnus de sa vie.

Tome 1

Bref discours (1600-1601) • Mémoire sur un établissement dans les Terres-Neuves (1603) • Des Sauvages (1603) • Voyages (1613) • Mémoires au roi et à la Chambre du commerce (1617-1618) • Voyages (1619)

«Premier ministre de Louis XIII » et « fondateur de l’Académie française » : tels sont les titres associés à la figure d’Armand Jean du Plessis (1585-1642), cardinal-duc de Richelieu, sur les plaques de rue qui affichent son nom au coeur de Paris. Ce ne sont que les plus connus d’un grand nombre de titres acquis ou attribués à ce célèbre homme d’État et d’Église dont la vie, l’histoire et la légende se composent de mille et une facettes. Ce Dictionnaire invite le lecteur à les découvrir ou à les redécouvrir autrement à travers cent vingt notices rédigées par cinquante-sept spécialistes du Cardinal et de son époque. Replacé dans son contexte français, européen et, parfois même, mondial, chaque sujet abordé renvoie à plusieurs autres dont la lecture – complémentaire ou indépendante de celle d’une biographie de Richelieu – permettra à tout un chacun d’aborder, selon ses besoins et envies, la réflexion et l’action de celui qui avait largement contribué à l’avènement du Grand Siècle.

“Chief Minister of Louis XIII” and “founder of the Académie Française” are but the best-known titles held by Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu. The 120 entries in this dictionary offer an original exploration of the manifold facets of the statesman-cum-clergyman’s life and legend.

Ont participé à ce volume : Cécile d’Albis; Ghislaine André; Serge Aroles; Laurent Avezou; Marie-Noëlle Baudouin-Matuszek; Françoise Bayard; Claire Béchu; Yves-Marie Bercé; Joseph Bergin; Christophe Blanquie; François Boulêtreau; Michel Cassan; Alexandre Cojannot; Jonathan Dewald; Jean-François Dubost; Hélène Duccini; Fadi El Hage; Hélène Fernandez-Lacôte; Alexandre Gady; Barbara Gaehtgens; Pierre Gatulle; Madeleine Haehl; Dénes Harai; Philippe Henrat; Françoise Hildesheimer; Alain Hugon; Stéphane Jettot; Arlette Jouanna; Camille Lefauconnier-Ripoll; Yves Le Guillou; Brigitte Lozza; Caroline Maillet-Rao; Claire Martin; Jacqueline Martin-Bagnaudez; Fabrice Maurin; Claude Michaud; Stéphane-Marie Morgain; Pascale Mormiche; Alice Motte; Yannick Nexon; David Parrott; Jotham Parsons; François Pernot; Laurent Perrillat; Benoist Pierre; Olivier Poncet; Pascal Rambeaud; Orest Ranum; Isabelle Richefort; Jean-Marc Roger; Paul Sonnino; Sylvie Taussig; Arnaud Teyssier; Erik Thomson; Myriam Tsimbidy; Marie-Catherine Vignal-Souleyreau; Laurent Veyssière.

Notre propos sera plus de lancer une problématique de recherche, que de faire une synthèse sur une question qui n'a jamais été traitée frontalement : la place de l' « ostau » (ou de l'etxe basque) dans la vie religieuse à l'époque moderne. La période moderne nous paraît un moment privilégié, car du fait des réformes et de la division religieuse, des comportements spécifiquement liés à l'ostau deviennent subitement détectables du fait de la question du choix confessionnel. Aussi notre observatoire privilégié sera la souveraineté de Béarn qui a connu une réforme calviniste très poussée à l'instigation de Jeanne d'Albret de 1564 à 1599, suivi d'une phase de réforme catholique qui s'est accéléré après 1620, date de l'Édit d'Union qui allait définitivement lié le sort de la vicomté souveraine avec le royaume de France. Nous nous autoriserons quelques incursions dans les territoires voisins du Labourd et des Pyrénées Centrales qui connaissent eux-aussi l'institution de l'ostau, structure sociale fondamentale des sociétés pyrénéennes (ou au moins des Pyrénées occidentales) qui a bien été reconnue par de nombreuses études. La dimension collective de l'ostau pyrénéens soumettant étroitement les individus qui le compose a été systématiquement mise en avant par les historiens, juristes et sociologues qui l'ont étudié. À l'âge des réformes, dans le cadre d'une religion cherchant à promouvoir une dimension plus individuelle dans le salut, les Églises se sont forcément heurtées à cette structure qui leur préexistait et dont les règles de fonctionnement très strictes pouvaient contrevenir avec les nouvelles attentes religieuses. Pour aborder ce sujet, nous rappellerons dans un premier temps les caractéristiques des communautés pyrénéennes, véritables sociétés de maisons qui ont conditionné dans chaque paroisse une assemblée (ecclesia) de maisons. Puis, dans un second temps nous verrons que les Réformes sont entrées en conflit avec l'ostau, ont cherché à le façonner en fonctions des nouvelles normes tout en s'y adaptant. Enfin, nous verrons à l'aide de quelques exemples comment l'ostau intervient dans la question du choix confessionnel dans le cadre d'une société béarnaise marquée par une coexistence confessionnelle à partir du XVIIe siècle.

Dear readers, I have now made available the inventory that should have been included with this article.  I apologize for that oversight.

I transcribed and translated the inventory (shown above on Academia.edu,

Published with appendix, 3 August 2018, with "French History".

This is a re-reading of Corneille's relationship with music, drawing from the machine play "Andromède" (and scholarship on "Andromède") and comparing its particularities with Corneille's theoretical work from ten years later. The idea is that we have too often relied on the theoretical writings to explain his relationship with music, whereas Corneille was much more experimental (and opera-friendly) in practice than he claimed to be in the _Discours_. "Andromède" without the _Discours_ can be read as a kind of laboratory for early French opera.

David Do Paço, « De l’État composite à l’État décomposé : le retour de l’Ancien Régime », Histoire@Politique, n° 38, mai-août 2019

This article examines the significant impact that the process of European construction has had on the historians of the modern era and their contribution to the history of regional integration. It sets the notion of the composite state in the context of the intellectual and political history of the twentieth century and shows how it was used to either support or challenge voluntary and/or forced regional integration. The new history of empires is thus seen as directly following from a history of composite states that has increasingly come to center on actors and agency. Drawing upon the author’s work, finally, the article suggests some new avenues for research into regional integration in an intercultural context.

A closely-researched and detailed study of the operations and tactics of early modern armies, it uses the French and Savoyard invasion of Spanish Lombardy in 1636 to explore warfare through a neo-Darwinian lens. This emphasizes the universal features of human behavior and psychology as they relate to violence and war. Oxford University Press, January 2016, Paperback version 2018; Italian translation LEG 2018.

This course presents a broad survey of historical forces at work over the past 6,000 years, examining the manners in which human societies have organized themselves along categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender to meet the challenges of the increasing human population and its demands on natural resources: thus, it examines continuity and change in societies over time, in different places, and among various peoples.

This collection of essays, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, developed from a one-day conference—‘Religion and Violence in Early Modern France: The Work of Natalie Zemon Davis’—which was held in June 2008 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Five of the papers published here were initially delivered on that occasion, but the conference also sought to learn from the differing perspectives of violence outside sixteenth-century France. This concern is also reflected in this collection, which seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

In exploring two different kinds of early modern institutional religious discourses, i.e. catechisms and exposition of discussed matters, this article highlights two modes of enunciative fading off. On the one hand, catechisms look like dialogues, but they are actually full of apparently “autonomous” utterances. On the other hand, exposition, a supposedly neutral presentation, proves to be pervaded by a subdued but clearly partial subjectivity, a chiaroscuro presence very much in tune with the mediate and transitive Christian regime of authority.

L’étude de deux types de discours religieux institutionnels, les catéchismes et l’exposition de matières controversées, permet de mettre au jour deux modes d’effacement énonciatif : les catéchismes miment le dialogue, mais multiplient les énoncés « autonomisés » ; l’exposition, qui se veut présentation neutre, s’avère constellée de marqueurs d’une subjectivité certes pacifiée mais partiale – présence en demi-teinte conforme au caractère médiat et transitif de l’autorité en régime chrétien.

In exploring two different kinds of early modern institutional religious discourses, i.e. catechisms and exposition of discussed matters, this article highlights two modes of enunciative fading off. On the one hand, catechisms look like dialogues, but they are actually full of apparently “autonomous” utterances. On the other hand, exposition, a supposedly neutral presentation, proves to be pervaded by a subdued but clearly partial subjectivity, a chiaroscuro presence very much in tune with the mediate and transitive Christian regime of authority.

El estudio de dos tipos de discusos religiosos institucionales, los catecismos y la exposición de temas sometidos a controversia, premite presentar dos modalidades de borramiento enunciativo : los catecismos miman al diálogo, pero multiplican los enunciados “autonomizados” ; la exposición, que se pretende presentación neutra, se presenta constelada por marcadores de una subjetividad, a su vez pacificada pero parcial – presencia esbozada conforme al caráter mediato y transitivo de la autoridad bajo un regimen cristiano.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the foundation of the Royal Academy of Dance in France during the second half of the seventeenth century. This event gives rise to a regime of supervision and control of the practice of dance at professional level which, in turn, results in the dissemination of rules concerning dancing through a dynamic of emulation. A series of sources related to the foundation of the Royal Academy itself and to the dissemination of its practices through the publication of manuals and other forms of chorographical writing are analysed. Our research attempts to evaluate the historical conditions underlying this process and the related importance of a new approach to the body.

PRÒLEG / PROLOGUE
Agustí Alcoberro (Director del Museu d’Història de Catalunya) 7

OBERTURA
Westphalie, Pyrénées, Utrecht : trois traités pour redessiner l’Europe
Lucien Bély (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne) 13

1. HISTÒRIA I MEMÒRIA DEL TRACTAT
Boundaries and Identities in the Cerdanya
Peter Sahlins (University of California, Berkeley) 25
La memòria popular del Tractat dels Pirineus al segle XX
Enric Pujol (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) 31
Trois centenaires du traité des Pyrénées en Roussillon
Gilbert Larguier (Université de Perpignan-Via Domitia) 37
De la géographie à l’histoire : les Pyrénées de Pierre Vilar
Daniel Nordman (Directeur de recherche émérite au CNRS) 47
Repercussions del Tractat dels Pirineus a les Illes Balears
Miquel Deyà (Universitat de les Illes Balears) 55
Nature contre-nature. Raconter l’histoire du traité des Pyrénées en Catalogne française
Nicolas Berjoan (Université de Provence-UMR Telemme) 67
La frontera ceremonial y la frontera real:
el Tratado de los Pirineos y la reavivación del conflicto por el dominio del río Bidasoa (1659-1668)
Fernando Chavarría (Marie Curie Fellowship-EHESS, París) 75

2. LA GUERRA I LA PAU
Preliminars per a un tractat: una visió des del sud
Fernando Sánchez Marcos (Universitat de Barcelona) 89
Contrôle pyrénéen et maîtrise frontalière dans les conflits franco-hispaniques (1559-1659)
Alain Hugon (Université de Caen Basse-Normandie) 101
La paix des Pyrénées, la lettre et l’esprit
Bertrand Haan (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne) 111
La France et la paix des Pyrénées
Daniel Séré (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne) 119
Pierre de Marca (1594-1662), l’absolutisme et la frontière : l’homme qui divisa la Catalogne
Thierry Issartel (Historien) 127
«Que toda ella se tiene por un cabello»: la guerra a Catalunya entre la caiguda de Barcelona i
el Tractat dels Pirineus (1652-1659)
Àngel Casals (Universitat de Barcelona) 139
El paradigma ambrosià.
Devoció i patriotisme a la Guerra dels Segadors
Xavier Torres (Universitat de Girona) 153
España y Francia cara a cara en la frontera: alardes de poder y la Paz de los Pirineos
Lynn Williams (Brigham Young University) 161
Poesia i política en la Guerra dels Segadors
Eulàlia Miralles (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) 177
El Tractat dels Pirineus i els orígens de la geografia moderna
Agustí Alcoberro (Museu d’Història de Catalunya-Universitat de Barcelona) 189

3. UN MOMENT DE CONVULSIÓ I ECLOSIÓ
La configuració d’una nova frontera militar a Catalunya, 1659-1667
Antonio Espino (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) 199
La résistance dans les Comtés au lendemain du traité des Pyrénées :
quelles résistances, quels résistants ?
Alain Ayats (Historien) 213
L’entrada de Catalunya en el joc de la política internacional europea del segle XVII.
Lectures polítiques del primer intent de segregació del territori català
Antoni Simon Tarrés (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-Institut d’Estudis Catalans) 221
La Catalogne de 1640 à 1659 :
le rôle du Visiteur Général dans la mise en place d’une administration française
Sophie Gonzalez (Université de Perpignan) 233
Conflictivitat social i revolta després del Tractat dels Pirineus
Jaume Dantí (Universitat de Barcelona) 245
Els exiliats polítics (agents d’una adaptació electiva) i la frontera amb França
Òscar Jané (Universitat de Barcelona) 255
La Catalunya borbònica (1641-1659):
virregnat i dinàmiques de poder durant el govern de Lluís XIII i Lluís XIV de França al Principat
Daniel Aznar (Universitat de Barcelona) 265

4. UNA QUOTIDIANITAT EN UN ESPAI NOU
L’obra (o la vida) de Francesc Fontanella en l’esquinç de 1652-1659
Pep Valsalobre (Institut de Llengua i Cultura Catalanes-Universitat de Girona) 281
La literatura jurídica, un mirall entelat de les guerres,
les revoltes i les paus en la Catalunya dels anys 1640-1700
Josep Capdeferro (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) 291
El comerç entre guerra i pau als Pirineus catalans abans i després del Tractat de 1659
Patrici Pojada (Universitat de Tolosa-Lo Miralh) 305
La quotidianitat i la percepció del Tractat dels Pirineus a la lectura dels dietaris catalans
Joan Peytaví Deixona (Universitat de Perpinyà-Via Domícia) 315
El Tractat dels Pirineus i el patronat eclesiàstic. Família i religió a la diòcesi d’Elna-Perpinyà
Ignasi Fernández Terricabras (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) 325
Permanences et mutations religieuses en Catalogne du Nord après le traité des Pyrénées
Ramon Sala (Universitat de Perpinyà-Via Domícia) 335

CLOENDA
El Tractat dels Pirineus: Catalunya, un sol poble i dos destins
Eva Serra (Universitat de Barcelona) 345

The inventory is possessions that was erroneously separated from this related article, is now available here.  As my research expands, it is important for those interested in my area of study to have access to this manuscript. 

Abstract:
https://academic.oup.com/jhc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jhc/fhx047/4628089

Published online with appendix on 14 November 201 7 with "Journal of the History of Collections".

El llibre Memòria Personal. Una altra manera de llegir la història
proposa, de manera pública, el consens assolit entre les diverses fórmules que s’han afirmat amb més o menys fortuna els darrers temps al voltant de la literatura personal,aquella del “jo”, autobiogràfica, dietarística. Memòria personal entre història
i escriptura, entre vida quotidiana i relat íntim. És una mirada personal oberta a un món que acaba no gaire lluny d’un autor que, en el moment que escriu, ben poc s’imagina el ressò i l’interès del seu escrit. Tanmateix, es tracta d’una documentació heterogènia que no sempre té un fil conductor intens ni continu, ni una prosa destacada, però que pot arribar a ser embrancada com la peça d’un enorme puzle, el de la història. Una història que abraça alhora historiadors, filòlegs, antropòlegs i tants altres especialistes de disciplines diverses. És el complement de la història oficial que, com sabem, ha omès el particular. Aquest volum és un llibre que permet una lectura coherent dels debats i interessos apareguts a partir de casos particulars, i des de territoris europeus diferents. Hi descobrim els textos de Jordi Curbet, Belinda Rodríguez, Verònica Zaragoza, Véronique Garrigues, Josefi na Molinero, Mercè Renom, Montserrat Sauquet, Gisela Figueras, Livia Castelli, Cecilia Tarruell, Rafaella Pilo, Neus Ballbé, Gaetano Damiano, Rafael Roca, Sílvia Amor, Antoine Odier, Narcís Figueras, Joaquim M. Puigvert, Ricardo
Rodrigo Mancho, Pilar Pérez Pacheco i Òscar Jané.

This article investigates the significance of female equestrianism within seventeenth-century French aristocratic culture, highlighting its role both as leisure practice and as a key tool for elite women to exercise their authority in the political and military arena. The study of contemporary riding manuals, examined in dialogue with paintings and engravings, as well as extant objects, sheds new light on equestrian techniques and technologies available for women at the time. Research into general practices and prescriptions is complemented by a close analysis of the experiences of three French noblewomen, whose equestrian feats were celebrated during their lifetime. The biographical accounts of Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans Duchess of Montpensier (1627-1693), Catherine Meurdrac de La Guette (1613-1676) and Alberte-Barbe d’Ernécourt, dame de Neuville et de Saint-Baslemont (1607-1660) offer precious insights that complicate current understandings of the physical education and corporeal life of elite women from the period.

From amazon.com:
""Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time.

Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda.

In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again.

Ulrich Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading."

Across Europe, the parish church has stood for centuries at the centre of local communities; it was the focal point of its religious life, the rituals performed there marked the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless the church itself artistically and architecturally stood apart from the parish community. It was often the largest and only stone-built building in a village; it was legally distinct being subject to canon law, as well as consecrated for the celebration of religious rites. The buildings associated with the ‘cure of souls’ were sacred sites or holy places, where humanity interacted with the divine.

In spite of the importance of the parish church, these buildings have generally not received the same attention from historians as non-parochial places of worship. This collection of essays redresses this balance and reflects on the parish church across a number of confessions – Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anti-Trinitarian – during the early modern period. Rather than providing a series of case studies of individual buildings, each essay looks at the evolution of parish churches in response to religious reform as well as confessional change and upheaval. They examine aspects of their design and construction; furnishings and material culture; liturgy and the use of the parish church. While these essays range widely across Europe, the volume also considers how religious provision and the parish church were translated into a global context with colonial and commercial expansion in the Americas and Asia. This interdisciplinary volume seeks to identify what was distinctive about the parish church for the congregations that gathered in them for worship and for communities across the early modern world.

Contents:
The early modern parish church: an introduction
Andrew Spicer
Patrician and episcopal rivalry for the Milanese parish church: San Nazaro in Brolo during French and Spanish rule,
Philippa Woodcock
Exploring the features and challenges of the urban parish church in the southern Low Countries. The case of 16th-century Ghent
Anne-Laure Van Bruaene
The Counter Reformation and the parish church in western Brittany (France) 1500-1700
Elizabeth Tingle
The body of the faithful: Joseph Furttenbach’s 1649 Lutheran Church plans
Emily Fisher Gray
Staging the Eucharist, adiaphora, and shaping Lutheran identities in the Transylvanian parish church
Evelin Wetter
Parish temples of Geneva and the Swiss Romande
Andrew Spicer
'Which of them do belong to the parish or not’. The changing rural parish in the Dutch Republic after the Reformation
Arjan Nobel
Unitarian parish churches in early modern Transylvania
Maria Crăciun
Heaven on earth: churches in early modern Hispanic America
Andrew Redden
Franciscans and the parish in early modern Brazil
Ivan Cavalcanti Filho
Parish churches, colonisation and conversion in Portuguese Goa
Mallica Kumbera Landrus
Dutch churches in Asia
Andrew Spicer
'To build up the walls of Jerusalem’: Anglican churches in 17th-century Virginia
Carl Lounsbury
Parish churches in the early modern world - afterword
Beat Kümin

Une visite, effectuée en 1656 lors de l’achat du domaine de Meudon par Abel Servien aux héritiers de la Maison de Guise, permet de préciser la nature des travaux menés dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, notamment ceux exécutés sur les dessins du Primatice. L’intervention de ce dernier ne se borna pas en effet à la seule grotte que Vasari mentionne, non sans exagération, et qui au demeurant n’a pas été achevée, mais elle porta aussi sur le château : création de galeries terrasses dans la cour, des décors de la galerie dans l’aile droite, de la grande salle et d’un petit studiolo peint sur le thème d’Aristote.