Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France

Henry Heller. Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 266.

With the prefatory statement "Xenophobia is hardly the dominant note of French history; yet in times of stress it is a recurrent theme of French national experience," Henry Heller introduces his reader to largely unexplored decades of French anti-Italianism, its roots and manifestations, and implications and ramifications. Heller provides a comprehensive investigation of the course of the anti-Italian reaction in the French kingdom in the late sixteenth century, especially during the time of the last Valois kings, Charles IX and Henry III. Over the course of this work Heller charts the spread of anti-Italian sentiments in connection with a variety of settings and circumstances that range from literary and cultural to economic, from religious to political and nationalistic. In Heller's view, anti-Italian opinion first took hold among the humanists, then spread to merchants, then to Huguenots and nobles, and finally to the urban Catholic population.

Heller aptly begins his reconstruction of events by analyzing the pervasiveness and complexity of the Italian migration to France, and the initial atmosphere of welcoming and respect, even admiration and generous hospitality, especially under Francis I. The subsequent shift toward anti-Italian sentiment is first noted as a manifestation of a literary and cultural rivalry that led a number of French humanists to make disparaging statements about Italian...