In this book, Pierre Escudé sheds some light on Toulouse as the third most important print center in France, after Paris and Lyon, during the Renaissance. In the first half of the sixteenth century, Toulouse, a commercial center in the southern province of Languedoc, was one of the most important cities in France. As the capital of the Occitan region, it was a hub for the cultural revolution of humanist Europe, uniting between its walls different powers—religious, political, administrative, and educational. The city, however, lost its predominant place as the century progressed and the wars between Huguenots and Catholics took over almost all spheres of activity, resulting in a political, economic, and cultural alienation. By studying the printing industry in Toulouse, the author aims to demonstrate how this new form of communication first developed thanks to the vitality of this city and how the books produced during this period afford a unique window onto social movements and conflicts, especially pertaining to religious, political, juridical, and literary thought.

This book is divided into three chapters, each spanning from 1475—when the art of printing was first introduced to the city by German masters—to 1617, the year Pèire Godolin's Ramelet, a work of poetry written in Occitan, was first published. In the first chapter, we are introduced to Renaissance Toulouse, its unique political structure centered around the parlement, the capitoulat, and the Languedoc estates, and its role as a cultural and economic hub of the Languedoc and beyond. We see how the political events of the century, mainly related to the Wars of Religion—which put an abrupt end to the city's humanistic output after 1561—shaped the power dynamic of the city. By siding with the Catholic League, Toulouse became engulfed in a religious fanaticism that contributed to its isolation within the Languedoc. After the failure of the League, Toulouse regained some stability—never, however, to return to its former importance—and was influenced by several preponderant figures of libertinage in the first decades of the seventeenth century.

In the second chapter, well documented and comprising several graphs and detailed figures, we revisit the sixteenth century, but concentrate solely on the printing industry, its development, evolution, and the people at its core. Having no choice but to base the core of his analysis on the titles found in printed catalogues compiled since the nineteenth century and on the few books that have survived to this day—a great but unknown number of books were destroyed by the Catholic authorities during the massacres of 1561—the author is aware that the resulting analysis can only be partial. Escudé is nonetheless able to provide a sound interpretation of the four great stages of printing, from the end of the fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century, with a special attention to the historical backdrop and the material particularities of the prints produced. Among the themes discussed are the incunabula and use of print to assert the power of political factions; the humanistic output of a few printers, especially Guyon Boudeville (1541–62); the ensuing monopoly of the Colomiès family (1562–96); and the influence of the Jesuits.

In the third and last chapter, the author makes a microanalysis of the languages found in the books printed in Toulouse during the Renaissance, with a special interest in the typology of languages (notably the importance of political and religious works and the rapid and growing presence of French) and the use of Occitan as a printed language (too often neglected in previous studies, according to Escudé). Again, one must be wary of statistics based on the few surviving books available. When the author speaks of an “exceptional effervescence” of Occitan writing in Toulouse in the first decades of the seventeenth century, prompted, he explains, by the liberalization of powers and led by the national and ideological opposition in Provence (232), the evidence consists of merely ten books in Occitan out of the ninety-nine printed in Toulouse between 1600 and 1617.

Demonstrating a thorough knowledge of the literature produced in Toulouse (whether in French, Latin, Occitan, or Spanish), Pierre Escudé provides an important study of Toulouse in the Renaissance, its rise and fall, and the crucial role of print as an agent of history.