In his Histoire universelle, Agrippa d'Aubigné recorded that just before Christmas 1574, Catherine de’ Medici, queen mother of France, had a vision of the Cardinal de Lorraine standing at the foot of her bed. Shortly afterwards, she learnt of his death, at Avignon. This was one of the many myths surrounding Charles de Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, propagated during his lifetime and afterwards. Born in 1524, a younger son of Claude and brother of François, dukes of Guise, the cardinal was a member of a cadet branch of the ducal Lorraine dynasty which had settled in France in the early sixteenth century. As a senior aristocrat, he lived much of his life at the centre of religious and political events. Archbishop of Reims, he crowned three kings of France; he was a councillor of Henri ii and of François ii, his nephew by marriage to Mary Queen of Scots. The cardinal attended the Council of Trent, acted as diplomat in Germany and Italy and was in and out of royal favour across the early religious wars. Treated rather harshly by Protestants, who cast him as a persecutor, and later by nationalist French historians, his life and work have recently been subject to more objective analysis and his roles as a major patron of the Church, religious reformer and statesman, are currently being reassessed. This is part of a wider re-evaluation of the history of the Guise family. Stuart Carroll and Jean-Marie Constant have written on Guise dynastic politics, noble affinities and their roles in the religious Reformations and wars in France; Jonathan Spangler has taken the history of the family into the seventeenth century; and a recent collection of essays edited by Jessica Munns, Penny Richards and Jonathan Spangler explores the Guise as international aristocrats across the Valois and early Bourbon years. The book under review here contributes to this reconsideration of the Guise through an examination of three aspects of the cardinal's life: as aristocrat, prince of the Church and state prelate.

The volume is a collection of twenty-five essays, the published version of papers presented at a conference held in Reims in 2013. There is not room here to detail all of the essays, but they are of high quality, based on primary research and offer new perspectives on the religious, political and cultural history of mid-sixteenth-century France. There are five sections to the work. The first two sections are dedicated to the cardinal as churchman and religious reformer. The first, ‘The Archbishop of Reims’ comprises four studies of the cardinal's religious activities and reforms in his metropolitan see. Joe Bergin and Bruno Restif contribute essays on the history of the diocese in the mid-sixteenth century, while Patrick Demouy writes on liturgy and Isabelle Balsamo on artistic patronage, both showing links with Tridentine Italy. The second, ‘Catholic Reform, Humanism, Counter-Reformation’, brings together five essays on the cardinal and evangelical-Protestant relations. Alain Tallon provides an account of the cardinal and church reform before and during the Council of Trent; Peter Walter and Loris Petris examine his relations with confessionally-ambiguous figures (Claude d'Espence and Jean du Bellay respectively), while Max Engammare and Hugues Daussy provide accounts of the cardinal's relations with Protestantism, that is, with Théodore de Bèze and with German reformers.

The third section, ‘Networks and Power in Champagne, Lorraine and France’ examines local affairs. The cardinal's relations with the towns of Champagne (Mark Konnert), with the duchy of Lorraine (Stefano Simiz), the mendicant orders (Madeleine Molin), with his brother Louis, cardinal of Guise and with the ‘intendants’ or managers of his temporal affairs, particularly his estates (Mark Greengrass) are well treated in five essays. The fourth section is devoted to politics and diplomacy: six essays demonstrate the international role of this statesman. There are essays on the Holy Roman Empire (Thomas Niklas), Italy (M. Provasi and F. Veratelli), Scotland (Éric Durot), the Low Countries (Julie Verselle and François Pernot on the Cardinal de Granvelle) and on letters of the cardinal of Lorraine held in Russian archives.

The final section, ‘The Prince of Letters and Arts’, considers the cardinal's cultural patronage. The book bindings of works acquired by the cardinal in the 1550s demonstrate his attachment to the style of King Henri ii (Isabelle de Conihout). The collection of Greek manuscripts (Antoine Pietrobelli), poetry (Jean Balsamo) and portraits of the cardinal (Bruno Restif) give a flavour of the wide-ranging interests of Lorraine. A penultimate essay on historiographical perspectives of the cardinal in the 1840s links the conference matter to the city of Reims through a study of the works of local historians (Claude Langlois). The book concludes with an article by Jean-Marie Le Gall which draws together the different themes. For readers of this Journal, it is the cardinal's role as churchman and reformer that is important. A prelate who sought religious concord between Catholic and Protestant within the Gallican Church, who led debates at the Colloquy of Poissy and undertook negotiations with Protestant princes, he was, in Thierry Wangeffelen's conception, a ‘moyenneur’ or seeker of a middle way, before Trent. But his role at the Council, his application of its provisions at least in the archdiocese of Reims, his patronage of the Franciscan tradition and of printing, made of him a Catholic reformer and saw him caught up in confessional politics. A man of great charm, but also one distrusted and feared by many he was, in the words of Le Gall, one of the last cardinal princes of the Renaissance. This is an important collection of essays, engaging and rich in new insights into the religion and politics of the mid-sixteenth century. It deserves to find a wide readership.