Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation FranceIn an age when the printed book was still in its infancy, the pulpit was the mass medium. A vital part of medieval religious life, sermons were the chief occasions on which the church attempted to bridge the gap between high theology and popular religious culture. The preaching event provided the opportunity for men and women to socialize, flirt, dispute with or mock the preacher and, in a more positive way, to heed the preacher's words and change their lives. Sacred bonfires, mass conversions of prostitutes, and confessional violence all testify to the active involvement of audiences which often numbered well into the thousands. A new look at late medieval religious values and practices through the sermons of the day, Soldiers of Christ offers intriguing insight into the beliefs and behaviors of ordinary Christians in the crucial era that saw the onset of the Protestant Reformation. Studying over 1,600 sermons given by the leading preachers in France between 1460 and 1560, Taylor examines the social context of preaching and the literary structure of the sermon to provide the background for a thorough analysis of the popular theology of the sermons, the preachers' attitudes toward men and women, and the preaching of and response to heresy in the decades after 1520. She reconstructs popular attitudes about such issues as original sin, free will, purgatory, the devil, the sacraments, and the magical arts. Offering original and often surprising analysis of a pivotal time in history, Soldiers of Christ will appeal not only to those interested in European history during the late Middle Ages and the Reformation era, but also to students of religious, social, and women's history and literaryspecialists interested in the development of the French language and the sermon as a genre. |
Contents
The Art of Preaching | 5 |
The Sermon as Event | 15 |
The Life of a Preacher | 37 |
The Study of Sermons | 52 |
The Quest for Salvation | 83 |
The Religious Cosmos | 102 |
The Life of the Christian Believer | 120 |
The Orders of Society | 141 |
Challenge and Response | 179 |
Heretical Preaching after the Reformation | 189 |
The Catholic Response to Early Protestant Heresy | 210 |
Conclusion | 226 |
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES | 235 |
NOTES | 243 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 327 |
345 | |
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Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France Larissa Taylor No preview available - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
Archives Communales audience autem Avent believe Biographical Register bishop Caresme Christian church Citation Cleree Clichtove Collège de Navarre confession confessor convent Dieu divine doctors of theology doctrine Dominican ecclesia enim etiam Évreux exemplum faith Farge Farinier fifteenth France Franciscan Gaigny God's gospel grace Grenoble Guillaume Pepin heresy heretics hodie Holy Homélies Ibid Iesus Illyricus Jacques Merlin Jean Jesus Christ king Lansperge late medieval Lent LePicart listeners Lord Luther Lutheran Maillard Martin Mary medieval Meigret mendicant Menot Messier Métier Middle Ages Monluc mulieres nisi nunc Paris Paris-2 peccatum penitence Pepin poor pope popular Pre-Reformation Preachers preachers preaching priest problem Protestant qu'il quae quam quia quod Raulin Reformation religion religious sacrament saints salvation scripture secular sermons sicut sinner sins sixteenth century soul Spirit sunt tamen Testament theme theology Tisserand Tours Trinité Virgin woman women