Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/608

 600 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October was annulled by the final victory of Henry IV and the politiques. M. Martin concludes this portion of his narrative with an excellent sketch of the religious condition of France at the end of 1598, the year of the peace of Vervins and the edict of Nantes. The publication of the council now encountered strong opposition from the Parlement. The lawyers regarded it as a symbol of the triumph of ultramontane ideas, and the condemnation at Rome of De Thou's great history through Jesuit influence increased their animosity. Bellarmin's book, De potestate Summi Pontificis (1610), was answered by the De ecclesiastica et polUica potestate (1611) of Edmond Richer, syndic of the Paris university. The parlement naturally made itself the champion of the latter's theories, but the clergy were against him to a man. The councils of two provinces pronounced his books heretical, and the Sorbonne deprived him of his post. In the states-general of 1614 the clergy made the publication of the council of Trent the first article in their cahier, and they carried with them the nobles, but the third estate was obdurate. In the following year the clergy, convinced of the impossibility of getting the Parlement to register a royal edict in favour of publication, acted by themselves. In their own assembly they passed a unanimously-signed declaration that they accepted the council of Trent and promised to observe it to the best of their ability (7 July 1615). Such, briefly, were the fortunes of the council of Trent in France. The story has been narrated by M. Martin from the sources with remarkable lucidity and fairness, and with an appreciation of the personality of the chief actors in the struggle which is too often absent from the pages of modern historians. Arthur Tilley. The Audiencia in the Spanish Colonies, as illustrated by the Audiencia of Manila {1583-1800). By Charles Henry Cunningham, Ph.D. (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1919.) This book gives the valuable results of investigation in the archives preserved at Manila and at Seville, investigation which, as the author justly remarks, was much needed for the elucidation of government in the Spanish dominions. Dr. Cunningham regards the audiencia as occupying a central place among the three chief authorities in those dominions, the viceroy or captain-general, the audiencia, and the church. The audiencia . . . typified and represented the royal authority, and its tenure was more continuous than .the governorship. ... It became the channel through which the royal authority made itself felt in the Islands, and it was especially utilized by the court as a check on the governor. Whenever occasion arose, the audiencia interposed as the intermediary and arbiter between dissenting parties. ... It was first and always a judicial body. It shared executive and administrative duties with the governor. It frequently exercised atttibutes of an advanced legislative character. It participated in the government of the provinces. It shared the authority of the royal patronage in the control of ecclesiastical affairs (pp. 81-2). The plan of the book is not chronological, except in so far as each section in some degree follows chronological arrangement. The working of the several departments of administration is traced, exemplified, and expounded in successive chapters which deal with judicial, semi-judicial, and administrative functions ; relations with the governor in his adminis-