Pierre de L'Estoile and his World in the Wars of Religion - Shortlisted for the 2018 R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book in French Studies

The Wars of Religion embroiled France in decades of faction, violence, and peacemaking in the late sixteenth century. This study offers a new history of these Wars of Religion from the perspective of the period's great diarist and collector, Pierre de L'Estoile (1546-1611), telling the story of his life and times.

The Wars of Religion embroiled France in decades of faction, violence, and peacemaking in the late sixteenth century. When historians interpret these events they inevitably depend on sources of information gathered by contemporaries, none more valuable than the diaries and collection of Pierre de L'Estoile (1546-1611), who lived through the civil wars in Paris and shaped how they have been remembered ever since. Taking him out of the footnotes, and demonstrating his significance in the culture of the late Renaissance, this is the first life of L'Estoile in any language. It examines how he negotiated and commemorated the conflicts that divided France as he assembled an extraordinary collection of the relics of the troubles, a collection that he called 'the storehouse of my curiosities'. The story of his life and times is the history of the civil wars in the making.

Focusing on a crucial individual for understanding Reformation Europe, this study challenges historians' assu mptions about the widespread impact of confessional conflict in the sixteenth century. L'Estoile's prudent, non-confessional responses to the events he lived through and recorded were common among his milieu of Gallican Catholics. His life-writing and engagement with contemporary news, books, and pictures reveals how individuals used different genres and media to destabilise rather than fix confessional identities. Bringing together the great variety of topics in society and culture that attracted L'Estoile's curiosity, this volume rethinks his world in the Wars of Religion.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Introduction
1: The Material World of a Household and Collection
2: The Social World of the Palais de Justice
3: Family Life and the Early Civil Wars, 1546-1580
4: The Reign of Henri III, 1574-1589
5: Drolleries of the League, 1589-1598
6: Book Collecting at the End of the Civil Wars, 1598-1611
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Rezension:

Tom Hamilton's book is a beautifully crafted study of the life and times of one of the most well-known and oft-quoted authors of the period, the royal office-holder and diarist Pierre de L'Estoile... Hamilton is an excellent story-teller and makes effective use of vignettes to draw the reader into the physical and professional world of L'Estoile and his fellow royal office-holders... Hamilton provides careful analysis of L'Estoile's manuscripts and the sources that informed them, including printed images and broadsheets, as well as the contents of his library... This is a remarkable book, fluently written and nicely illustrated. Penny Roberts, University of Warwick, Journal of Ecclesiastical History