Histoire du Catholicisme en France. Volume II, Sous Les Rois Très Chrétiens by A. LatreilleReview by: Robert M. KingdonThe American Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Oct., 1962), pp. 118-119Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1847214 .

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I8 Reviews of Books

The other theme is the continuing controversy between Churchill and Roose- velt. They differed about the policies to be followed toward Russia, Poland, Yugo- slavia, Italy, Spain, Vichy, Free France, Palestine, China, Japan, Argentina, and even Germany, for Roosevelt and Stalin both favored dismemberment, whereas the Foreign Office did not, and Churchill was doubtful. One wonders that the two leaders ever agreed on anything. Sometimes they compromised, and sometimes Churchill yielded to Roosevelt, but Churchill was largely responsible for the aban- donment of the Morgenthau plan for Germany. Just as the Foreign Office did not always agree with Churchill, so the State Department was often at loggerheads with Roosevelt. Occasionally there was a four-sided melee. Often complaint is registered that Roosevelt acted without consulting Churchill or the Foreign Office. Through these complicated disputes, Woodward threads his way clearly, and if, as an Englishman, he now and again points out inconsistencies, in the American approach to problems, he does so in good temper. Thus, at Yalta, "the President and his entourage continued to assume that, unlike Great Britain, Russia was not an imperialist power." He is to be heartily congratulated on a book which makes plain what Britain did and why it did it.

The book contains little about the economic aspects of wartime diplomacy, the reader being referred to specialized treatments of these problems by other writers. Nor does it deal with "unofficial" overtures for peace made from time to time by the enemy powers.

Alexandria, Virginia BERNADOTTE E. SCHMITT

HISTOIRE DU CATHOLICISME EN FRANCE. Volume II, SOUS LES ROTS TRi-S CHRtTIENS. By A. Latreillc et al. (Paris: tdition Spes. [i960.] PP. 508.)

THIS is the second volume of a projected three on the history of Roman Cathol- icism in France. The series is not intended to provide a work of reference for scholars, but rather a survey for the general informed reader in France. It ac- cordingly contains no footnotes or volume indexes, presents almost all quoted matter in French, and almost always limits its chapter bibliographies to a selection of the most obvious monographs in French. It will nevertheless prove useful to all American students of the subject, for it is a synthesis in the great French tradition-beautifully organized, lucidly written, well abreast of most modern scholarship, appropriately judicious. To call the present volume judicious, how- ever, is only to say that it avoids the more obvious traps in judgment that can result from religious or national bias, not to claim that it contains no strong opin- ions. Professor Latreille, who wrote this volume's second half, is quite harsh in his judgments on the Jansenists: he speaks at one point, for example, of the "Jan- senist cancer." He is also sharp in his criticism of Cardinal Mazarin, while gen-

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Baehrel: Une croissance iI9

erous in his opinion of the piety and zeal of Cardinal Richelieu. Canon Dela- ruelle, who wrote the first half, is somewhat more measured in his judgments, for example on the earliest French Protestants. He has little to say about earlier "heresies," but such a subject is to some extent beyond the intended scope of the series.

That scope is delineated with intentional precision by the title: this is a history of Roman Catholicism in France, not of the Gallican Church, not of Christianity in France. The principal secondary theme of this particular volume is delineated with equal care in its subtitle: it focuses on Roman Catholicism in a period when a significant share of its leadership in France was assumed by the country's "Most Christian" kings, more precisely from the rule of St. Louis in the mid-thirteenth century to that of Louis XV's ministers in the early eighteenth century (with 1740 as terminal date). Many of the chapters are accordingly devoted to sharply or- ganized summary narratives of the history of royal religious policy. Interspersed among them, however, are chapters analyzing institutions or describing popular piety in different periods. These last are necessarily somewhat impressionistic, but are handled with skill, drawing heavily on artistic and literary evidence. There are also chapters and extended passages providing explanations and assessing sig- nificance, often in a roughly sociological way. While important theological devel- opments are discussed, there is little attempt to analyze them technically or at length.

Altogether this volume provides a useful introduction to an important subject and a fine synthesis of much recent work upon it.

State University of Iowa ROBERT M. KINGDON

UNE CROISSANCE: LA BASSE-PROVENCE RURALE (FIN XVI' SIP-CLE-I789). ESSAI D'I2CONOMIE HISTORIQUE STATISTIQUE. Volume 1, TEXTE; Volume II, GRAPHIQUES. By Rene Baehrel. [lcole Pratique des Hautes Etudes-VIe Section. Centre de Recherches Historiques. Demographie et societes, Volume VI.] (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N. I96I. Pp. 842; 36.)

THIS work is another in a series which has vastly enriched our knowledge of economic and social life in France before I789. While welcomed by specialists able to interpret the astonishingly complete statistics on their own, these volumes re- main a mixed blessing for the general historian. Their wealth of detail on economic life, population, social structure, and institutions lulls the nonspecialist into over- looking problems of historical and statistical method, which put the conclusions of these works in doubt. This is especially true for Baehrel, where method fights a running battle with conditions in Basse-Provence to gain the attention of the reader. This lack of emphasis does not diminish the value of the work, but it

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