Content area
Full Text
The Birth of Absolutism: A History of France, 1598-1661. By YVES-MARIE BERCE. Translated by RICHARD REx. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. viii + 262 pp. This is a lucid, informative, yet concise introduction to the history of France, focusing primarily on the development of the state between the end of the Wars of Religion and Louis XIV's assumption of personal rule over France after the death of Cardinal Mazarin. This was an era in which conceptual distinctions between church and state, religion and society, were just beginning to develop. Consequently, church history and the history of state and society continued to impinge upon each other extensively. It is a strength of The Birth of Absolutism that it cogently explains this interaction, though except for a chapter entitled "Hopes and Beliefs," church and religion largely appear only as they impacted affairs of state.
Berce is not unique in finding the foundations of French royal absolutism in the reigns of Henri IV and Louis...