Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France

In 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. A new look at late medieval religious values and practices through the sermons of the day, this book offers intriguing insights 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.