This sixth volume of Tyard's complete works presents texts that have not been published since the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, with two exceptions: as one of the editors, Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, notes, they can be considered discoveries. They are of considerable interest, produced with scrupulous rigor, presented with introductions that constitute mines of information on France of the end of the sixteenth century, and clarified by clear and abundant notes. They form a collection that testifies in its very diversity to the coherence of Tyardian values: passion and moderation, orthodox Catholicism and Erasmian values, loyalty to the monarchy and attention to the responsibilities of regal duties, personal involvement in an ethos that inscribes the principles of a man in his eloquence. The editors' scholarship, far from obscuring these values, makes them even more apparent by constant contextualization; their scholarship underscores Tyard's originality.

Fragonard is the editor of the anthologies of the III Livres d'Homilies (1586, after two separate editions of the first two books) and of the Homilies sur la premiere Table du Décalogue (1588). Her introductions constitute a major synthesis on Episcopal and homiletic eloquence in the sixteenth century, which emphazises the distinctive pastoral functions of the “sermon” and of the “homily” as an exegetic, epidictic, and practical genre. The analysis leads to some most unexpected conclusions about Tyard's choice of genre and theological positions: preaching was not a compulsory exercise relevant to bishopric in the sixteenth century; the double quality of poet and bishop was in itself quite unusual; the contemplative Homilies sur la Passion were by no means a concession either to Jesuitic rhetorics or to Jesuitic conception of “spiritual exercise”; the conclusive “oraison” in each homily was a daring choice implying a return to the original Christianity. In brief, Tyard was neither a mild Catholic nor a crypto-Protestant, nor a follower of emotional forms of post-Tridentine devotion; but an orthodox critic of idolatry, granting a role to the presence of signs, for a religion of love and earthly morals. Each anthology is precisely analyzed in its structure and specificity. The rich quantity of notes and the index of Tyard's biblical and theological sources, with a list of the theological works and Bibles held in Troyes, and an extensive bibliography on the homily, add to the importance of the work.

François Roudaut's introductions to Tyard's occasional works are characterized by clarity and precision. The introduction to Tyard's edition of Jacques de Vintimille's translation of Histoire d'Herodian focuses on the Vintimille family. The edition of Lettre au jésuite Charles (1604) is of major interest, part of a polemical debate between Tyard and the Jesuit Charles Sager; Roudaut reproduces all of the texts that accompany it, including a consultation with the Gallican jurist Charles du Moulin, previously published in 1594. As Roudaut demonstrates, Tyard's pamphlet is born of Ciceronian vehemence and satiric genre, but makes use of the defense of personal reputation for more serious stakes: the passages devoted to a chaos provoked by religious fanaticisms maintains its force, and the denunciation of hypocritical followers and of faux dévots foreshadows, as Roudaut notes, the tone of Provinciales. His introduction to La généalogie de Hugues Capet (composed in 1578, published in 1594) enables one to decode the dynastic querelles of the 1570s to 1580s, between the Capétians and the House of Lorraine and to understand Tyard's political, historical, and methodological choices in that debate. Roudaut bases an edition of Tyard's translation of Les Advis au Diacre Agapet for the first time on the Mazarine copy of the work, a second French translation of a sixth-century treaty addressed to Justinian.

François Rouget is the editor of Modèles de phrases, ou Discours pour parler ou escrire and some forty-five lettres gallantes, of which he produces a new edition, after John C. Lapp, based on the manuscript at the Bibliothèque de Haguenau. The introduction takes up the question of the identification of the author of the two texts, and their date of composition, with valuable caution: the analysis leans towards attributing them to Tyard. The introduction and the notes to Modèles de Phrases resituates them in the context of a project of royal eloquence formed by Henri III, but also opens them to be read as a moral institution of the prince. The letters of the second part are resituated in the context of Catherine de Retz's salon that “seems to have encouraged from very early on the translation of fictional correspondences and love letters,” but the edition proves them to be an original example of “familiar rhetoric” for courtly society.

Thus, much variety, marked by a strong coherence and a powerful humanity.