The Marillac were one of the most important noble families in early modern France. My analysis of this pivotal and deeply political family during the turbulent era of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1629) examines and explains the importance of the interaction of familial alliances, religion and diplomacy in the making of the state. This period represents a critical moment in the process of state development. In contrast to prevailing studies of early modern state formation that concentrate on a centrally-directed program, this dissertation argues that it was the expansion of family strategy, and its interplay with religion and diplomacy, that drove the ongoing construction of the early modern state. There was no blueprint for the creation of this state. Rather, it was born out of an accretion of policies formed by politically important clans working to advance their familial interests. By closely tracing the fortunes of the Marillac clan through archives and research libraries in France, this study discloses the nature of power in early modern Europe in its daily, practical manifestations. My project reaffirms the agency of the family and the individual in the making of the state. It showcases the importance of religious devotion to the formation of family strategy, and especially how Marillac women were drivers of this devotion. My research demonstrates how one family successfully negotiated the Wars of Religion. Additionally, I discuss the impactful role of the individual diplomat in the practice of foreign affairs. Finally, by tracing the fortunes of the Marillac family, I show how a family not only rises to power, but falls, as well as the consequences and limits of disgrace. My research will therefore contribute to the fields of early modern state-building, diplomacy, religious politics, and women and gender through the prism of Marillac family strategy and its interaction with religion and diplomacy.

This thesis examines the increasing sophistication of sixteenth-century French literary engagement with Virgil's Aeneid. It argues that successive forms of engagement with the Aeneid should be viewed as a single process that gradually adopts increasingly complex literary strategies. It does this through a series of four different forms of literary engagement with the Aeneid: translation, continuation, rejection and reconciliation. The increasing sophistication of these forms reflects the writers' desire to interact with the original Aeneid as political epic and Roman foundation narrative, and with the political, religious and literary contexts of early modern France. The first chapter compares the methods of and motivations behind all of the sixteenth-century translations of the Aeneid into French; it thus demonstrates shifts in successive translators' interpretations of Virgil's work, and of its application to sixteenth-century France. The next three chapters each analyse adaptation of Virgil's poem in a major French literary work. Firstly, Ronsard's Franciade is analysed as an example of French foundation epic that simultaneously draws upon and rejects Virgil's narrative. Ronsard's poem is read in the light of Mapheo Vegio's “Thirteenth Book” of the Aeneid, or Supplementum, which continues Virgil's narrative and carries it over into a Christian context. Next, Agrippa d'Aubigné's response to Virgilian epic in Les Tragiques is shown to have been mediated by Lucan's Pharsalia and its anti- epic and anti-imperialist interpretation of the Aeneid. D'Aubigné's inversion of Virgil is highlighted through comparison of attitudes to death and resurrection in Les Tragiques, the Aeneid and Vegio's Antoniad. Finally, Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas' combination, in La Sepmaine and La Seconde Sepmaine of the hexameral structure of Genesis with Virgil's narrative of reconciliation after civil war is shown to represent the most sophisticated understanding of and most complex interaction with the Aeneid in sixteenth-century France.