Jan Pendergrass's edition of the correspondence of Jean de Pins is evidence of the multifaceted and complex nature of Renaissance epistolarity. As a magistrate at the parliament of Toulouse and a diplomat, de Pins was witness to some of the most important political and military events of the early sixteenth century. Through his duties as senator at the parliament of Milan under French rule, as a negotiator at the papal court of Leo X, and later on as resident ambassador in Venice, he interacted with the most powerful leaders of his time in his capacity of orator. His official dispatches, written primarily in French and addressed to recipients that include Louise of Savoy, Francis I, and Chancellor Antoine Duprat, constitute valuable historical documents that chronicle the complex diplomatic maneuvers of the French and Spanish at the court of Leo X, the papacy's 1521 defensive alliance with Emperor Charles V, and the rise of Giulio de Medici. The diplomatic persona that emerges from these official letters is complemented by a more intimate portrait in the private letters the editor has collected. A student of the great masters Filipo Beroaldo and Marcus Musurus, and the author of a Life of Saint Catherine and a Life of Filipo Beroaldo, de Pins was also a reputed scholar and patron. After his return to Toulouse in the 1530s, his residence was well known as a place of welcome among local humanist circles. It is this figure of early French Renaissance humanism that is revealed throughout a Latin correspondence that involves a distinguished network of Hellenists, educators, poets, and philosophers, including Jean Lascaris, Claude de Seyssel, Robert Gaguin, and a mysterious "Maior" whom Jan Pendergrass convincingly identifies as Jean Lemaire de Belges. De Pins's Ciceronian approach, as the editor rightfully points out, allows for a variety of tones and styles. While his personal letters are often a literary exercise and a playful display of humanist erudition, they do not exclude more serious concerns and topics. In his exchanges with Erasmus concerning a Greek manuscript of Flavius Josephus's Jewish Wars, de Pins explains that one of the Dutch RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

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Although Boaistuau and others often claimed to be describing actual events in their tragic novelle, François de Belleforest provided an important innovation when he included in his 1572 Cinquiesme tome des histoires tragiques two stories that presented him as an eyewitness and investigator. In this article, I study the ideological and political journey of an author who described two especially violent and disturbing events just a few months before the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Records in the Manuaux du conseil de Lausanne pertaining to the trial of Jean de Coignac, the protagonist of one of these tales, have allowed me to compare the function of Belleforest's tales to that of the executions in effigy that magistrates often ordered in sixteenth century France. Résumé : Bien que des auteurs comme Boaistuau insistent souvent sur la véridicité des faits rapportés dans leurs récits, François de Belleforest innove considérablement en offrant aux lecteurs du Cinquiesme tome des histoires tragiques (1572) deux nouvelles qui le mettent en scène en tant que témoin et enquêteur. Nous avons cherché à retracer le parcours idéologique et politique d'un auteur qui décrit, peu avant la Saint-Barthélemy, deux faits divers particulièrement perturbants par leur violence et leur cruauté. Ayant retrouvé dans les Manuaux du conseil de Lausanne les pièces du procès