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The paratexts to Florio's Montaigne claim that Montaigne's worth was recognized everywhere. But what was the fate of the Essais in cities from Geneva in Switzerland to Ferrara, Padua, and Venice in northeastern Italy? In Geneva, the Essais were first published in a heavily censored edition, before appearing unexpurgated with false title pages. Lyon [Geneva] 1595 combines with other evidence to show how one of the most significant early reader-writers of the Essais (Simon Goulart) corrected and used the work. There are some parallels with Ferrara 1590, which we can see as part of the oeuvre both of its translator, Naselli, and of the Ferrarese court. In the late 1620s, early 1630s, clerics in the Veneto including Paolo Sarpi called upon the Essais to assist in the construction of virtù civile and models of the philosophico-religious life for the noble elite. They understood them to be a contribution to Renaissance moral philosophy and 'civil conversation'.

Chapter 6 explores the important place that the sermon occupied in Geneva’s religious life from 1536 to 1609. In addition to outlining Calvin’s theology of preaching and his homiletic style, this chapter describes the priority of preaching services in Geneva, the role of the sermon in Geneva’s liturgy, and the different ways in which Geneva’s townspeople “heard” and reacted to these sermons. After Calvin’s death, ministers such as Theodore Beza, Simon Goulart, and Lambert Daneau worked hard to preserve Calvin’s homiletic legacy, even as they faced new challenges from Geneva’s magistrates, and battled innovative—and more flamboyant—preaching styles from some of their colleagues.

Chapter 2 describes John Calvin’s initial efforts to recruit a competent pastoral company for Geneva’s churches, and offers quantitative evidence as to the geographical origins, social location, and educational backgrounds of these ministers. Special attention will be paid to key foreign- and native-born ministers, including Theodore Beza, Jean Trembley, Simon Goulart, Charles Perrot, Lambert Daneau, Antoine de Chandieu, Jean Diodati, and Theodore Tronchin. The final section of the chapter explores how leadership of the Company of Pastors (specifically the office of moderator) was constructed and sometimes contested during the generations immediately following Calvin’s death.

This chapter traces the editorial tradition of Gellius in France from 1508 down to Carrio's edition of 1585, with extensive paratextual matter by Henri Estienne, in particular the essays named in homage Noctes Parisinae. It then notes the use made of Gellius by scholars such as Guillaume Budé and Julius Caesar Scaliger, and in literature at large. He provided miscellanists with engaging anecdotes, presenting a framework and some ready-made chapters for such widely read compilations as Simon Goulart's Histoires admirables and Laurent Joubert's Erreurs populaires. Through such authors but also directly, he supplied material for Rabelais, for the anonymous satirist who wrote the controversial Cymbalum mundi, and above all for Montaigne, who makes continual use of Gellius while reworking him as he sees fit. The chapter ends by considering the affinities between the two authors.

At the centre of this chapter is Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, approached chiefly by way of several French dramatic precursors (Cléopâtre captive, by Étienne Jodelle; Marc Antoine, by Robert Garnier; Cléopâtre, by Nicolas de Montreux), but also through Plutarch’s Life, including Simon Goulart’s edition of the French translation by Jacques Amyot. With regard to the dramatic analogues, some direct connections with Shakespeare are made, but indirect links are also traced, notably through Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra, which is more closely based on Jodelle than has been realised, and the translation of Garnier’s tragedy by Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, which is compared with the original in detail. A further French dramatic intertext proposed is the tragedy of Jeanne d’Arc by Jean de Virey, which develops a Roman analogy. The overall effect is to suggest the considerable ‘Frenchness’ of the textual heritage contributing to the Shakespearean tragedy.

As the conflict deepened in France, reformers found themselves forced to adopt a more clandestine posture. Satires consequently grew more obscure as they increasingly served as an in-joke for a beset coterie. So, although outlandish satire did continue, it retreated from public dispute and acquired a tragic undertone of martyrdom. The fondness for allusions to the Odyssey betrays French reformers’ conflicted feelings over their exilic aspirations figured in references to Exodus. Satire remained one of the ways in which they could indulge nostalgia for their unreformed past, even as they demarcated themselves from it. The uneasy conjunction of Odyssey and Exodus combines into the unlikely figure of the reformer as “pilgrim,” a spiritual traveler who might one day return home.

This chapter provides a discussion of the book’s intertextual method and a survey of its contents. The relation between theory and practice is set out, and illustrations are given to show how unduly narrow ideas about an early modern dramatist’s use of sources may limit the range of meanings perceived by critics and potentially accessible to contemporary audiences. North’s Plutarch is introduced in relation to its French original, the translation by Jacques Amyot, and, particularly, to that translation’s edition by Simon Goulart. A soliloquy from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is approached by way of its recognised English (from German) source and a possible French one. The perennial question of Shakespeare’s knowledge of French is addressed, as is that of his possible access to more obscure, less obviously ‘literary’, French texts and contexts.

The introduction sets the stage for a detailed study of Reformed ethical thought at Geneva in the period following the death of Calvin, and signals that Beza’s volume of moralizing poetry known as Cato the Christian Censor will frame the argument of the book. It then places this work against the backdrop of the Reformed disciplinary body known as the Consistory along with the theological concept of the Christian’s union with Christ. The introduction concludes by anticipating the book’s thesis, which sees the Genevan reformers’ aggressive moral program as an outgrowth of their unique understanding of the purpose of the Christian life. In their view, the Holy Spirit utilizes the teachings and institutions of the Church to restore Christians to the way God originally intended them to be, in a community of mutual support, conformity, and sincerity.