Les Cures de Paris au XVIe siecle. By Vladimir Angelo. [Histoire Religieuse de la France, no. 26.] (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf. 2005. Pp. v, 906. euro49.00 paperback.) At 906 pages, this book, a revised these de doctorat completed under the direction of Marc Venard, cannot help but to command attention. The author seemingly left no stone unturned in his effort to bring the parish clergy of sixteenth-century Paris into the historical spotlight. The significance of Paris as the demographic, intellectual, and political hub of sixteenth-century France is well understood, as is its emergence as a bastion of militant Catholicism (here Megan Armstrong's recent study of Franciscan preachers in particular comes to mind). Yet, a few well-known cures aside, the place of the secular clergy is largely absent from scholarly discourse. This absence is regrettable, Angelo argues, because the cures serving the city's thirty-nine parishes were not only deeply enmeshed in everyday life, but they also formed "le lien entre theologie et pastorale, entre pratique religieuse quotidienne et orientation politique" at a time when the dual forces of Catholic reform and Protestantism were reshaping the city (p. 596). Angelo sets out to reconstruct the cures' world, layer by layer, over the course of the sixteenth century. He intentionally casts a broad chronological net in order to expose change and continuity over time. It is a daunting agenda, which, he explains, he began by identifying the names of as many cures as possible, where they served, and for how long. Once armed with this list, comprised of 386 men in all, Angelo cuEed through an enormous range of sources (synodal statutes, capitular and parish registers, wills, inventories after death, to name only a few) to illuminate the trajectory of the cures' careers as both an ideal and lived experience. The result is a well-organized and cogently presented group portrait of Parisian cures that in its sheer scope and concomitant refusal to rest on generalizations forges new historiographical ground. Divided into three parts, Angelo's narrative draws the reader into ever closer concentric circles around the cures and their parishes. Part I examines the varied, and often competing, jurisdictional frameworks in which cures had to function, followed in Part II with a detailed look at how men became cures, and what inteEectual and cultural "baggage" they brought with them to the job. Angelo reserves his most extended discussion for Part III, where he explores the realities of the cures' lives as pastors-how well they performed their charge; their relations with auxiliary clergy and parishioners; the manner in which they lived. His study concludes with two, user-friendly appendices: a chronological list of the 386 cures by parish (pp. …