Les Reguliers Mendiants: Acteurs du Changement Religieux dans le Royaume de France (1480-1560). by Robert SauzetReview by: Janet Glenn GrayThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 996-997Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2543845 .

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996 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVI / 4 (1995)

Savonarola's own millenarian preaching predicted and intertwined religious and political reform. Society was to live in total harmony and conform to the precepts of the Gospels, the Church and churchmen were to be purged of their vices, and Florence was to play a key role in the renovation of Christendom. Savonarola strongly supported a broad-based republican government for the city, which was to serve as a model in the coming era. Many early lay leaders of the Piagnoni were fairly conservative intellectuals, for example the poet Girolamo Beniviene, the philosopher Giovanfrancesco Pico, and the poet-theologian-monk Paolo Orlandini; these men looked to Leo X and the Fifth Lateran Council for reform; they wanted no break with the institutional Church or political order.

Other leaders became progressively more radical, especially some Franciscan and many Dominican friars. Savonarola's preaching had recruited an army of novices for San Marco, his convent. Most remained loyal to his teaching. From the millenarian perspective of the Pia- gnoni, every defeat could be seen as a step toward ultimate victory; as one of them told their persecutors, "The more you kindle this fire, the fiercer it will burn and spread throughout the world." Many Piagnoni came to repudiate the institutional church, especially the papacy under the Medici popes Leo X and ClementVII, who had replaced the Florentine Republic with family domination in 1512 and again in 1530. After 1530 Clement VII suppressed the Piagnoni mercilessly. Some twenty-five anti-Medici were condemned to death, and another two hundred were exiled or imprisoned. A few were sent to the galleys. Many faced harsh fines, discriminatory taxes, and disbarment from office. The leadership of the Dominican order in Rome opposed Piagnoni friars. Duke Cosimo tried to suppress San Marco.

Two rival groups of Dominican tertiary sisters led by two mystics played a subordinate but disruptive role among the Piagnoni. Domenica Narducci denounced her rival Dorotea da Lanciuole as a fraud. Later when a Piagnone friar accused Narducci of heresy, a church tri- bunal vindicated her, and her visions turned against the Piagnoni. By the late 1530s the rad- ical Capi rossi, who used confraternities to cloak their conventicle, engaged in lay preaching and group prophecy and visions. Their members, mainly from the lower classes, urged the overthrow of Duke Cosimo and the establishment of a people's republic whose government would exclude the upper classes. One might have expected Piagnone rapprochement with Lutheranism since Savonarola and Luther shared opposition to Pelagianism and the papacy. Luther praised Savonarola and had several of his works republished. In fact few Piagnoni became Protestant, and several wrote and preached against Luther.

Polizzotto, who teaches Italian at the University ofWestern Australia, has written a defin- itive study based mainly on manuscript sources in some twenty archives but also employing the most recent secondary literature. The work includes an index, a select bibliography, very rich footnotes, and very few typographical errors. My only criticism is that Polizzotto makes no effort to trace the extensive publication history of Savonarola's works from 1494 to 1545. Although the vast majority of these editions were printed outside Florence, copies must have found there way there and contributed to the spell that Savonarola continued to cast over the Florentines. Polizzotto does note Paul IV's efforts to prohibit all Savonarola's works.

John Patrick Donnelly, SJ. ...................................Marquette University

Les Reguliers Mendiants: Acteurs du Changement Religieux dans le Royaume de France (1480-1560). Robert Sauzet. Tours: Universit' de Tours. 1994.244 pp. n.p.

This volume offers scholars short, biographical sketches of the participants in the drama of religious change in France during an eighty-year period of rapid ideological transforma- tion. It is in the form of an alphabetical list of regular monks who represented several of the

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Book Reviews 997

orders across France and some of its nearby territories. The text contains 579 names (230 Franciscans, 153 Dominicans, 92 Hermit Augustinians, 75 Carmelites, 25 Minims, 4 Ser- vites) about a fifth of whom turned to Protestantism.A smaller number, after a relatively long time with Protestantism, returned to traditional Catholicism. Fiche entries have been used as models to give topographical, onomastic, chronological, sociological, and bibliographical information to the "players" representing the two systems of thought-those mendicant friars who followed the new humanist ideas and found themselves in the camp of Luther and those who stood in defense of the old religion and tended to be in the camp of Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan.

The author acknowledges the difficulties involved in such a prosopographic study given the paucity of some local records, and the necessity of using national and international biog- raphies and bibliographies as well as sources of the time and recent sources for compiling information.And since the study was published in cooperation with the support of the Euro- pean Center of Research of the Congregations of Religious Orders, one can understand the recording of many of the participants' stands on a couple of specific topics, namely, validity of the marriage of HenryVIII and Catherine of Aragon and a record of participation at the Council ofTrent.

When viewing a prosopographic work, one is immediately reminded of Thomas A. Brady,Jr.'s text on Strasbourg, Ruling class, Regime, and Reformation at Strasbourg: 1520-1555. Here Brady did a structural study of 105 biographies with an analysis and used historical nar- rative to apply his structural analysis to the two major crises of the age. But one is struck by the lack of interpretation in this French study of data.The book would be more interesting to scholars if it had presented more analysis.

Understandably, entries are spotty. For example, Gentian Cordier, O.EM., is given one line: "From the region of Lyon, murdered by the Protestants (1562)." Others, like Pierre Dore, OP., and Thomas Beauxamis, O.C., have rather full biographical information, includ- ing their publications. One woman is listed, Marguerite de Lorraine, O.EM., about whom Marguerite de Valois, future queen of Navarre, wrote a poem of eulogy. Along with many lesser-known entries some very well-known names are included, such as Jean Chatelain or Castellan,Jean Bodin, Franqois de Paule, and Francois Rabelais.

Granted that there is often little information to go by, one still wonders why so many entries are by L.Wadding, W Syllabus, when the content of this source is always that the indi- vidual was killed, hung, murdered, or slaughtered by the Protestants.There are 80 men of the 579 that have been included from Wadding's list. Moreover, in another citation the text says that FatherJ. Farge has corrected the errors ofWadding (an eighteenth-century figure). Has the author been discriminating enough concerning his sources?

Sauzet's list will be helpful in supporting the observation by Lewis W Spitz and others that humanists and Protestants had much in common in the early days of the Reformation; e.g., Marc Richard, an Augustinian, frequented humanist circles, and Jean Glapion, a Fran- ciscan, was influenced by the humanists of the Netherlands.This study will perhaps stimulate more inquiry into the reason so many Augustinians were attracted to the Reformation. It may help one appreciate the written polemical works by the participants that are found in libraries across Europe. Researchers looking for material or seeking to scrutinize sixteenth century personalities will find the easy format of this volume of use so long as the lacunal nature of the study is recognized and the research material approached with caution. The author has rescued some men of faith and intelligence from an unmerited obscurity, which was his goal.

Janet Glenn Gray.............. ...................... ..... Maryville University

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