Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation by Larissa Juliet Taylor (review)

114BOOK REVIEWS positive. In the introduction five changes marking the transition from medieval to early modern times are surveyed, changes in which religion was caught up but did not simply or solely produce, of which the Reformation is merely the last. The emphasis throughout on the centrality of lay piety is an excellent corrective to versions of confessionalization theory which remain too institutionally concerned with the state's direction of its subjects. Instead both casuistry and Jansenism are admirably approached with a properly Jesuit sensitivity. For undergraduate use this volume certainly avoids the many formulations likely, however unintentionally, to mislead which can be found in the alternative, recent textbook by R. Po-Chia Hsia on Catholic Renewal between 1540 and 1770. A. D.Wright University ofLeeds Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation. By Larissa Juliet Taylor. [Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, Volume LXXVIL] (Leiden: Brill. 1999. Pp. xvii, 332. $120.00.) The origins of the Protestant Reformation in France is today a mature, if still controversial, subject of historical inquiry. The Catholic response to this challenge is less well understood. Recent work: byJames K. Farge, Marc Venard, Barbara Diefendorf, and Denis Crouzet has helped scholars to begin to understand the Catholic perspective more clearly. Larissa Juliet Taylor's work marks yet a further important step toward comprehending the roots of the Catholic Reformation in France. Taylor attempts to map the contours of Catholic spirituality in the crucial period 1520-1560 through an examination of the life and works of the most celebrated Catholic preacher of the period, the Parisian cleric François Le Picart. Basing her study on a systematic analysis of the collected and posthumously printed sermons of the Sorbonnist doctor,Taylor attempts to delineate the characteristic features of orthodox Catholic religiosity as it reacted to the crisis of the Reformation. Her earlier study of late medieval preaching in France has eminently qualified her for the task. As described by Taylor, Le Picart emerges as solidly a part of the judicial and ecclesiastical elite of Paris as well as a product of the Paris Faculty of Theology. Likewise, as a popular defender of orthodoxy, he appears to have early attracted the support of the Guise family. The dramatic highlight of his life was his engagement alongside Noël Beda and Nicolas Le Clerc against the subversive evangelical influence of Marguerite of Navarre and Gérard Roussel in 1533-34, for which he suffered temporary exile anil imprisonment. The punishment he endured at this time only enhanced his subsequent reputation as Paris' most popular preacher. Le Picart exceptionally was a supporter of the Jesuits from their early days, and the relationship between him and the founding members BOOK REVIEWS115 of the Society constitutes one of the most interesting chapters on Taylor's work. The heart of Taylor's book is a scrupulously complete study of the 6000 pages of Le Picart's 269 extant sermons. Through exhaustive and careful analysis she demonstrates that Le Picart pioneered a new simple, direct, and coherent mode of Catholic preaching which was infused with an emotional warmth that had deep appeal to the urban populace. Founding his homilies overwhelmingly on the texts of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, Le Picart was able effectively to attach the principal positions of Protestant theology and to call for Catholic Reformation. Taylor thus demonstrates that the Catholic party work was far from ideologically disarmed by the Protestants on the eve of the wars of religion. In contrast to Le Picart's Sorbonnist orthodoxy there existed an evangelical party in France closely dependent on the royal court and the Gallican tradition. Its beliefs cannot be reduced to Calvinism or crypto-Calvinism. For many years it pursued an eirenic policy in relation to Protestants at home and abroad. If there is a defect in Taylor's admirable work it is her failure to delineate clearly the relationship between this group and the orthodox Catholic party. As a result of this lack of clarity, Roussel whether intentionally or not is erroneously misrepresented as a secret Protestant, while Rabelais is pictured distortedly as close to Le Picart. On the...