Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/428

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41 8 Reviews of Books Registres du Conscil dc Geneve. Publics par la Societe d'Histoire et d'Archeologie de Geneve. Tome II., 1461-1477 (Volumes 5-7). (Geneva, H. Kiindig, 1906, pp. i.x, 571.) This bulky volume suggests the amount of business transacted b}' the Genevan councils. The records of six years cover 480 printed quarto pages. In 1474, presumably a fairly typical year, over two meetings a week were held by the councils — and in only one was the secretary obliged to record " multa fuerunt dicta, sed nichil conclusum est." The municipal housekeeping is like that recorded in the first volume.' Certain items throw interesting side- lights on Genevan life : the sturdy maintenance of their liberties against duke and bishop; the order of 1461 "that every one should have a sword behind the door in front of his house or in the workshop of his house " ; the attempted regulation of vice through a queen of the vicious ; careful auditing of treasurer's accounts, and shrewd bargaining over relief from feudal obligations ; an amusing case of a packed caucus where there was " much cavilling " because " more than twelve ap- peared who were not invited ", with the natural result that in the subse- quent annual election the primary assembly broke the slate. But in these years the councils' records take a wider range. Through dealings with Savoy, Louis XL, Charles the Bold, and the Swiss, Geneva was drawn into vexatious and costly trials ; yet through them she added to her thrifty and independent characteristics a needed breadth of interest and experience in the larger interests of Europe. The volume is prepared with the care and accuracy to be expected from its editors, Louis Dufour-Vernes, the Genevan archivist, and Vic- tor Van Berchem. The improvements which they have introduced into the second volume should be continued and possibly extended — an ap- pendix (with an inedited letter of Charles the Bold), lists of Genevan officers, foot-notes which are models of brevity and usefulness, and a greater fullness and subdivision of the index. Herbert D. Foster. Xouciatiires de France: Nonciat)ires de Clement I'll. Publiees par I'Abbe J. Fraikin, Ancien Chapelain de St.-Louis-des-Franqais. Tome I. Depuis la Bataille de Pavie jusqu'au Rappel d'Acciaiuoli, 25 fevrier 1525 — juin 1527. (Paris, Picard, 1906, pp. Ixxxvii, 451.) This is one of the volumes in the series called "^Archives de I'Histoire Religieuse de la France ", managed by a committee of which Professor Imbart de !a Tour is president, and of which Count Boulay de la Meurthe, Professor E. Chatelain, Abbe Ulysse Chevalier, M. Noel Valois, and other well- known scholars are members. Its publications are to lie principally but not solely in the sixteenth century. The preceding issues were : Mcnioircs dcs Evcqucs dc France stir la Condtiite a teiiir a I'egard dcs Rcformcs (1698), ed. Jean Lemoine, and Ambassadcs en Anglctcrre dc Jean du Bcllay, I. 1 527-1 529, ed. V. L. Bourrilly and P. de 'aissiere. The committee proposes, as one considerable section of its work, to ' See American Historical Review, VII. 546-