Extract

Joe Bergin has built his reputation as the world's leading authority on the early modern French church through a formidable series of studies. They range through his mould-breaking analysis of Cardinal Richelieu's rise to power, fame, and fortune (1985), his equally pioneering exploration two years later of the reforming efforts of another cardinal, La Rochefoucauld, and subsequently two mighty prosopographical surveys of the French episcopate between 1589 and 1715, complete with biographical dictionaries as appendices. He knows the church of the grand siècle from the inside, and in analysing its structure and workings he has attained the stature which another formidable prosopographer, Sir Lewis Namier, defined as that of a great historian: someone after whom nobody could ever again hope to work the field in the same terms as before. There are tantalising hints in the preface that this new volume will not be his last word. But for the moment it may be regarded as the summa of a lifetime living with Bourbon bishops.

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