ABSTRACT
Located at the geographic center of France, Bourges was an important regional capital of some 12,000 inhabitants during the sixteenth century. Much like other French cities, it was socially and politically complex. Jean Glaumeau recorded in his journal spanning the years 1541 to 1562 what he considered to be the major events occurring in Bourges and in his own family life leading up to the first War of Religion in France. In his journal, Glaumeau frequently described the staging of communal processions and demonstrations along with other public rites of civic life. The people of Bourges’ festivities reflected the social world they hoped the fortuitous event would preserve. In Glaumeau’s account of the tumultuous events at Bourges from 1557 to 1562, he describes new groups and uses new names to identify them when he tries to size up what was by then an unsettled social world, one in which he had trouble finding his place.
