Voices of Conscience

Reviews / Votes

This is an ambitious book that draws together topics that, though related, are often treated separately or secondarily in the existing literature . . . On the whole, the comparative approach that Reinhardt has taken in Voices of Conscience enables her to make an effective case for the steady divergence of politics from royal conscience over the seventeenth century, and for the slow retreat of the confessor to the private sins of the king and the political margins . . . the breadth of the author's source work and her commitment to the fullest possible study of conscience counselling, the seal of the confessional notwithstanding, is admirable. Offering numerous insights into the power, potential, and limits of religious counsel. Voices of Conscience is a learned book and an absorbing read. * Alison Forrestal, H- France * Nicole Reinhardt . . . has written an impressive book. * Luise Schorn- Schutte, Goethe University Frankfurt * Voices of Conscience is a wide- ranging, exhaustively researched, and complexly argued work. * Miriam Bodiam, University of Texas * This important work broadens our understanding of political and religious history and is another puzzle piece to the recovery of probabilism's influence in the seventeenth century. * Ulrich Lehner, Regensburg Forum * Voices of Conscience: ( . . . ) makes a significant contribution to political theory and to the history of early modern European political culture by demonstrating the entanglement of relgion and royal politics in early modern states and court societies. * Brian Sandberg, Northern Illinois University * Both for its erudition and for its independent and rigorous persepective on the topic, this study will immediately become the benchmark. ... There is no doubt that Nicole Reinhardt has written an impressive book which is bound to enter the canon swiftly and for years to come. * Markus Friedrich, University of Hamburg * Reinhardt's work is formidable both for its erudition and its wide horizon. ... Anybody seeking to understand the political culture of Habsburg Spain as well as the religious life at the French court under the Bourbon dynasty will have to consult this impressive and elegantly written study. * Ronald G. Asch, University of Freiburg * Reinhardt has illuminated some of the basic realities of early modern political life. * Jonathan Dewald, Reviews in History * This beautiful erudite book on the practices of counsel of conscience in politics prooves that the author is a true European and an accomplished practicioner of comparative history, especially of France and Spain, as well as of interdisciplinarity, the most challenging of all disciplines. Without any national bias the secondary reading draws on the best works by French, Spanish, Italian, American and English authors and transcends the disciplinary boundaries between history, poltical theory,theology and even philosophy and anthropology. * Catherine Maire, Francia-Recensio * Reinhardt successfully uses royal confessors as a way of exploring wider intellectual and institutional change ... this is an impressive and surely definitive survey of French and Spanish royal confessors in the period, from which scholars of other governments may learn much -- while also sharpening their awareness of the importance of understanding the particularities of each system. The attention to both theory and practice is pleasing * Jacqueline Rose, History *