Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation

This is the story of Paris from the Reformation to the Religious Wars. Through the works of François Le Picart, the most popular preacher from 1530-1556, the book delineates the increasing tensions sparked by Reformation ideas. Targeted by Calvin and Beza, Le Picart was considered the reason Paris remained in the Catholic fold.
Exiled by Francis I for his incendiary preaching, he would later serve as a professor and lecturer coming into close contact with the first Jesuits. A fierce opponent of heresy, he helped compile the Articles of Faith, read heretical books, lectured on scripture, and presided at executions. His 270 sermons, the only substantial preaching source for this period, offer glimpses of life during these increasingly troubled times that challenge works by Denis Crouzet suggesting that France was in the grip of eschatological anguish.

Larissa Juliet Taylor, Ph.D. (1990) in History, Brown University, is Chair and Associate Professor of History at Colby College. She has published extensively on preaching and is the author of Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (Oxford, 1992), winner of the John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Mediaeval Academy of America in 1996 for the best first book in medieval studies.

'...an excellent assessment of a prominent Catholic cleric in Paris in an era in which most attention has been on the Protestant side. Based on the reading of hundreds of sermons an other devotional materials, the book is a fine example of scholarship.'
Frederic J. Baumgartner, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2001.