The Good Shepherd: Francois LePicart (1504-56) and Preaching Reform from Within

Abstract

Feared and ridiculed by Calvinists, Franqois LePicart was considered the soul of the people of a man many felt was responsible for keeping Paris in the Catholic fold. An examination of 270 sermons by the most popular preacher in Paris offers a window onto religious mentalities in the decades before 1562. Instead of the eschatological anguish and prophetic imminence suggested by Denis Crouzet, LePicart's sermons express hope, and present God as the loving father. Concerned with heresy and the troubles of the times, LePicart set forth a reform program that anticipated the ideas of Trent and the early Jesuits. Far from being a prophet of doom, LePicart had every hope that once reform was accomplished the problems would cease. Only after his death in 1556 did military, religious, and political factors converge to lead to the breakdown of order. THE OUTBREAK OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN FRANCE IN i562 ushered in over thirtyfive years of civil war, international involvement in French affairs, and divisions that would tear father from son, wife from husband, servant from master. As many factors led to the breakdown of order, it is important to understand the climate, especially in Paris, in the decades immediately preceding 1562. The years after the Reformation were marked by extreme volatility in Paris, as Francis I, pursuing his Italian dreams, wavered in his response to heresy. Naturally sympathetic to humanism and evangelism, Francis was personally disinclined to repression. Even had the king wished to pursue the more extreme policies advocated by the Parlement and Faculty of Theology, Francis's decisions were dictated largely by the complicated diplomatic and military situation. The result, at least before the Affair of the Placards of 1534, was a confusing alternation between leniency and repression that allowed the new ideas to ferment and grow. Alongside and interwoven with the religious uncertainty of these years, Denis Crouzet describes an atmosphere of intense angst, with astrology, prophecy, and eschatological foreboding dominating