Eschatology in Preaching on the Eve of the French Wars of Religion: The Case of François Le Picart

Abstract

This article examines the eschatological dimension of the sermons of François Le Picart (1504–1556), a prominent Parisian preacher and a precursor who established the codes that enabled the gradual maturation of a theophanic tension of violence in which human beings were destined to become its instruments. Through a close reading of his sermon collections, this study analyzes how Le Picart interwove Pauline soteriology, divine love, repentance, and apocalyptic imagery to construct a moral and affective pedagogy. His eschatological language—linking love with fear and salvation with punishment—transformed anxiety about the end times into a form of spiritual yet emotional collective mobilization. By associating divine justice with anti-heretical rhetoric, Le Picart’s preaching turned theology into an instrument for defending both faith and social order. This article situates his sermons within the broader Catholic renewal of sixteenth-century France, highlighting the imagery and rhetoric of eschatology as key components of early modern anti-Protestant propaganda prior to the religious wars.

1. Introduction

According to the classical analysis of the French sixteenth-century historian Denis Crouzet, sacred violence during the Wars of Religion in France was rooted in the soil of collective imaginaries (Crouzet 2005, p. 209). The sermons of Pierre Dyvollé, François Le Picart, Simon Vigor, and other Catholic preachers contributed to shaping these violent and militant imaginaries through their hammering and repetitive harangues on the images of the Flood, the Last Judgment, punishment, and penitence. Among all these preachers, François Le Picart, according to Denis Crouzet, was “a man of the imminence of Judgment, a man of the soteriological necessity of violence (…) François Le Picart was undoubtedly a forerunner”1. Propaganda combined with eschatology occupied an essential place in his preaching, which encompassed an emotional and iconographic cosmos in which eschatology provided a dark and powerful intonation, intensifying the already anxious atmosphere that pervaded the French kingdom in the early sixteenth century. This cosmos calls for closer and more meticulous exploration.

As a prominent and influential preacher in the decades preceding the Wars of Religion, François Le Picart (1504–1556) was among the first to make public what he described as the sordid nature of heretical corruption, a view noted by his contemporary, Jean de La Vacquerie (De La Vacquerie 1574, pp. 36–37). According to Théodore de Bèze, he was regarded as one of the “principal pillars of the Roman Church,” (Bèze 1875, p. 188) at that time still “young,” yet already a “tempestuous spirit” (Bèze 1580, pp. 26–27) and “a furious hothead”2. Following Le Picart’s death on 17 September 1556, the polemicist Artus Désiré dedicated to him Les regrets et complainctes de Passe partout et Bruitquicourt…, in which he exalted the sanctity of the preacher and provided a vivid description of his funeral, reportedly attended by more than 20,000 Parisians “in tears” and “in mourning”. Désiré depicted Le Picart as a “hammer,” as well as “the mighty bell, the fine clarion, the sweet hautboy that made the woods resound… He was the enemy of heresy and of every other vile sin… the war tambourine and the great trumpet of France, whose sound carried with such power that it was heard throughout the world. He was a most learned doctor and the voice crying in the wilderness… the hammer of the chaste” (Désiré 1557).

The sermons of François Le Picart were published mainly in the 1560s, that is, in the years between the first outbreaks of religious war and shortly after his death. The editor presented these sermons as weapons in the struggle against heresy. According to Luc Racaut, French Catholics were highly successful in exploiting printing in defense of the traditional faith, and it was a major factor in keeping France Catholic. Racaut emphasizes that printing in France, centered in Paris, had been associated with conservative institutions such as the University of Paris and the Parlement from an early period; therefore, Catholics were in a better position to take advantage of printing for their polemical attacks than the Huguenots, and he finds a close connection between the content of books, written mostly by theologians of the Sorbonne, and sermons, which, he allows, were the principal means of influencing the masses(Baumgartner 2003, pp. 555–56). According to Larissa Taylor’s research, about 80 percent of the sermons examined in her study (1336 in total) date from the period between 1460 and 1533—quite possibly the peak era in the history of sermon printing. Although the period after 1533 was not the peak era of sermon printing, it nevertheless witnessed the publication of François Le Picart’s collected sermons by the ultra-Catholic publisher Nicolas Chesneau (Taylor 1992, p. 53). This makes it clear that the publication of Le Picart’s sermons formed part of a deliberate editorial strategy adopted by some of the Catholic printers during the Wars of Religion.

One of the prefaces in those volumes clearly expresses the aims of the publications of those sermons. The preface of Sermons et instructions chrestiennes, pour tous les Dimenches, & tous les Festes des Sainctes depuis la Trinité iusques à l’Aduent, issued by Nicolas Chesneau, a dedicatory epistle to Renée de Lorraine, Abbess of Saint-Pierre de Reims, reveals the motives behind the publication strategy. Chesneau, deeply troubled by the spread of “false books” disseminating the ideas of the “new Evangelicals”, sought to expose and discredit their aims by circulating Le Picart’s sermons. These “new Evangelicals”, were attempting “to entice wavering souls, to defile the flesh, to hold dominions in contempt, to revile dignities, and, in the end, to slander all that they do not comprehend—thus bringing corruption upon themselves and upon their followers.” They are likened to “brutish beasts”. Against this, Chesneau urged the dissemination of teachings that were “purer”, declaring: “we must be more steadfast and assured in the observance and maintenance of our ancient religion, without allowing ourselves to be shaken.”3

The collected sermons of François Le Picart during 1560s are relatively complete and were printed chiefly by two publishers.4 The first, Nicolas Chesneau of Paris as cited, issued four collections, each comprising roughly 700 pages.5 The second, Nicolas Bacquenois of Reims, published four collections.6 Another collection, titled Premier et second livre du recueil des sermons, was originally published as two separate volumes by Nicolas Bacquenois in 1559 and 1560, and republished together by Jean de Foigny in Reims in 15807. There is also a unique collection entitled Le recueil des sermons, faicts par feu de bonne memoire Monsieur nostre maistre Francois Le Picart, en son vivant docteur en la faculté de theologie… & doyen de S. Germain de Lauxerroys à Paris, printed in 1574 by François Durelle et Benoist Rigaud in Lyon (Le Picart 1574).

Besides all those sermons, there is also a short work written by Le Picart entitled L’epistre contenant un traicté auquel est monstré combien est grande la charité de Iésus Christ en l’institution de la saincte communion au Saint Sacrement de l’Autel. Printed in 1564 by Nicolas Bacquenois in Reims, it is a treatise on the holy sacrament of the altar composed “upon the request of our good cousin and singular friend, Sister jehanne of Paris, by letters she sent me. She saw me completely useless as a result of the interdiction against preaching which was made against me, which upset me greatly, so I began to write this…” (Le Picart 1564). This treatise offers a firsthand glimpse into Le Picart’s thoughts during the period of his greatest tribulation—his exile by Francis I in 1533—and provides researchers with a basis for comparing the different strategies he employed in his treatise and in his popular sermons.

We have been unable to find precise records regarding the circulation and print quantities; however, the number of reprints was substantial, which attests, in certain respects, to his profound influence in the capital and the kingdom. Almost all the four volumes of sermons issued by Nicolas Chesneau were reprinted at least four times, during the years of wars from 1562 until 1568 (except a version of Easter to Trinity published in 1561) according to the limited records of USTC, as well as the different printings of his sermons in Reim and Lyon.

In the preface to one of the printed collections of sermons, René Benoit attests to the authenticity of these texts. Although he initially doubted the sermons published by Chesneau—believing that Le Picart had never written them himself—he later came to recognize that they faithfully reproduced the preacher’s words as recorded by members of his audience who had attended his sermons. After reading the texts and corresponding directly with Chesneau, Benoit concluded that, although the sermons were not written in Le Picart’s own hand, they accurately reflected his preaching: “…In view of my belief that Le Picart had written nothing, I wanted to know how he had come into the possession of these sermons. Chesneau explained everything to me–how he had gathered them from those who regularly attended the sermons of this learned man. They had taken the sermons down as diligently as possible, without changing (or only very little, as sometimes happens) a sentence or a word. Chesneau then showed me diverse examples of the said sermons, gathered from several people who had been frequent auditors, and who had assiduously written down and collected them. It simply could not be denied” (Taylor 1999).

Having served as dean of St.-Germain l’Auxerrois from 1548 until his death eight years later, Le Picart preached throughout the cities of Paris, Reims, Rouen, Meaux and elsewhere in northern France. He preached mainly at two of the most important Parisian churches, St.-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and St.-Eustache (Taylor 1999, p. 18). We can draw from the sermons that the “people” are the main target of his sermons, like Larissa Taylor proposed: “Le Picart was above all a popular preacher, rather than one who delivered his sermons to the court or to groups of churchmen or monks” (Taylor 1999, p. 18). He aims at a much broader public. According to the records of sermons, he does not hesitate to evoke the burlesque image of priests who play “cards, dice, and tennis”: “There is a priest who is altogether frivolous and dissolute… he goes off to play cards, dice, and tennis, and no one is moved or scandalized.”8 He also criticizes the amusements of daily life, such as card or dice games: “Is it fitting for me to play cards and dice? Horror and abomination!”9 Compared with the Epistle, this could be seen as a deliberate strategic device; the style of his sermons is adapted to the general population, as in the Epistle—where he presents his ideas in a tone different from that of the sermons and adopts, in discussions of doctrinal matters, a quite personal style marked by gentleness—from addressing the sister Jehanne of the monastery of Saint-Magloire (Le Picart 1564).

As for the audience, according to Hilarion de Coste, the audience of Le Picart’s sermons was apparently of great heterogeneity—“men of low birth and men of noble origin, the faithful and the curious onlookers, simple laymen and clerics” (Gillet 1943)—and mingled “harmoniously” (perhaps a somewhat idealized illusion!) For instance, in the Epistle addressed to sister Jehanne of Paris, we find this mixture reflected in this letter he presents his ideas in a tone different from that of the sermons and adopts, in discussions of doctrinal matters, a quite personal style marked by gentleness and reason. And H. de Coste himself admits that “the common people, but also Lords, Princes, Ladies and Princesses, and the Counsellors of the Sovereign Courts attended his Mass and his preaching” (de Coste 1658, p. 105).

Furthermore, besides a large number of institutional clergymen who surrounded Le Picart and attended his sermons daily, there also seem to have been present those to whom he taught, at other times, the craft of preaching. “It was the zeal he had for the salvation of souls and for the glory of God,” writes de Coste, “that led him to give so many good instructions to young priests and ecclesiastics, both secular and regular, to make them capable of announcing the divine word to the people, and of hearing with patience and understanding the confessions of penitents, as he himself teaches in the sermon of the Tuesday after Easter…”10

Moreover, his sermons are presented as being intended also for numerous devout Christians—zealous observers of the divine commandments—among whom were those note-takers who made possible the publication of a considerable number of his sermons: “Several devout Catholics transcribed his sermons on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, on the constitutions of the Church, on the Lord’s Prayer, and on the Gospels for the feasts of Our Lady and of the saints.”11

Carrying “a prophetic message”, the successors of François Le Picart “traversed France” from 1558 onward (Crouzet 1996, p. 431). His preaching established an intensely prophetic atmosphere, shaped by a culture profoundly marked by the early decades of the sixteenth century—flamboyant, eschatological, and gripped by a prophetic expectation of the Last Judgment. His sermons, however, also reveal themselves to be interwoven with rich eschatological imagery drawn from the Bible, particularly from the Old Testament.

The purpose of this study is not to debate or to confirm Denis Crouzet’s theses, but rather to examine closely to the text of François Le Picart’s sermons. As for the research on preaching during the Wars of Religion, historians have tended to focus primarily on the verbal violence or on anti-Protestant propaganda, on their polemic and politico-religious aspect with a rhetoric view, like Stefano Simiz (2012, 2015), Megan C. Armstrong (2004), Tatiana Baranova (Marie et al. 2016), and, also, Claude Postel (2004). Other works, such as Larissa Taylor’s specific work on François Le Picart, Heresy and orthodoxy in sixteenth century Paris: François Le Picart and the beginnings of the Catholic reformation, has offered stimulating discussions of his theology and his reforming dimensions, contributing to an understanding of his preaching on the angle of reformation. Denis Crouzet, by firmly situating this preacher within the collective psychological spectrum by the arguments on eschatology in Le Picart’s predications, has provided an important epistemological insights with his close text studies12; Luc Racaut paid much attention to the argument on the eschatology of Denis Crouzet, and he innovatively exploited the highly religious motivations and considerations for their selections of printings, and emphasized the eschatology in the Catholic printings (Racaut 2002). Yet Le Picart’s sermons still call for more detailed, and perhaps rather literary study, in order to approach and deeply penetrate the texts. Neither a study of theology, like the works of André Godin (1971), Jean Longère (1975, 1993), David L. d’Avray (1985, 1994), and D. Catherine Brown (1987) on medieval sermons, nor a study of the rhetoric of those religious speeches, such as the works of Antoine Bernard (1901) and Jacques Truchet (1960), and the studies on the sixteenth century’s rhetoric of John O’Malley (1979) and Marc Fumaroli (1980, 1999) are so detailed—even as their research offers significant inspiration in terms of both methodology and content, for our own study. We might instead return to the works of Henri Bremond’s l’Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuisles guerres de Religion jusqu’à nos jours (Bremond 1923–1932). In this book, he said: “I therefore draw only from literary sources: biographies; books of piety; essays of devout philosophy, morality, or asceticism; sermons; Christian poetry or other works of the same kind, leaving to scholars the other sources less accessible to the common reader: wills, foundations, contracts, diaries kept by the director of a parish, a confraternity, a pilgrimage; in a word, all archival documents which, in themselves, generally have nothing mystical about them, but which provide abundant information on the religious habits and tendencies of an era”(Bremond 1923, vol. 1, p. XI). Inspired by this approach, our purpose is to study the religious sentiment, and put this sentiment of religion in the texts back into the mosaic of the dynamic anthropological and cultural studies of religious history on the basis of the argument of eschatology of Denis Crouzet. As a reading of the texts combined with a closer reflection on religion situated within the broader context of early modern history, our research aligns with the methodological trajectory described by Stephen Cummins: “The ‘emotional turn’ in numerous disciplines has coincided with a purported return of religion into world historical prominence.” His consideration and approach, however, moves rather from monological religious studies to a wider sphere of historical inquiry as the necessity of contextualization: “At the same time, it is necessary that ‘religious feelings’ be contextualised and studied as socially and culturally embedded phenomena”(Cummins and Stille 2021).

Our aim, in conclusion, is to explore his eschatological mindset through a literary and theological analysis that helps to reinforce the intense emotional atmosphere—or, as Stephen Cummins proposes, to approach the “Emotions in Religion” by studies of the “Religious Emotions”. In other words, we seek to sketch an eschatology—or rather a “system” of eschatology—in the style of Le Picart, and, through this literary universe of eschatology, to trace a collective psychological pattern: a shared emotion forged, perhaps, through his preaching. Such an approach allows scholars to apprehend the vision he sought to project—one intended to impress upon his flock the urgency of self-purification and their engagement in the anti-heretical struggle—and to understand both the power of the imaginary violences that unfold within this dark framework of collective emotion, revealing the deep-rooted violence that preceded the religious wars.

2. The Love of God and the Indissoluble Union: The “Anguish of Salvation”

The emotions expressed in the sermons are reflected above all through a pervasive theocentrism, upon which Le Picart builds his reflections on the love of God and the anguish of separation from Him.

For example, in the opening sermons of his collection, Sermons et instructions chrestiennes pour tous les iours de l’Advent iusques à Noël et de tous les dimenches et festes depuis Noël iusques à Caresme, Le Picart introduces his audience to the knowledge of Jesus Christ (Le Picart 1562). Le Picart introduces teachings concerning Jesus Christ, insisting on the necessity of loving God more deeply and of uniting oneself with Him—a mode of spiritual pedagogy that occupies a central place in his preaching: “The whole study and chief care of a Christian must be to learn, to know rightly, and by his deeds to bear witness that he knows Jesus Christ. For he who truly loves God and our Lord Jesus Christ is he who in very truth knows and acknowledges God. Thus must we devote ourselves to study, in order to learn Christ Jesus” (Le Picart 1562, fol. 23.). The theme of theocentrism—which encompasses knowledge, grace, divine mercy, and the nature and mystery of God—appears in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 12th, 25th, 29th, 31st, 33rd, 40th, 44th, 45th, 52nd, 53rd, and 64th sermons of the Advent à Caresme collection (See the corresponding sermons in

Table A1. The Themes of the Advent à Caresme.

	Sermon	Theme
1	From the First Sunday of Advent	The knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ
2	Another sermon of the said day, First Sunday of Advent	Recapitulation on the Knowledge of God/The Penance for Sin/The Judgment of God/Denunciation of Ecclesiastical Simoniacal Practices/God’s Punishment for Amendment
3	The first Monday of Advent	Adam and Jesus Christ/Sin and the Goodness of God/Jesus Christ’s Support for Salvation/Freedom in fear and love of God, union with God/Keep the commandments of God/Denunciation of the distorted religion in order to gain the adherence of women
4	For the Tuesday after the first Sunday	The knowledge of God/The denunciation of the sinful man/The justice of the Holy Catholic Church/Transubstantiation/The power to forgive and to remit sins
5	For the Wednesday after the first Sunday.	The knowledge of Jesus Christ/the knowledge of man and his fall/The spirit and the flesh/Purgatory and satisfaction/the remission of guilt/Baptism/the sacrament of penance/contrition, confession, satisfaction/The heretic who does not recant, he is burned/The Anabaptist/the rebaptized
6	For Thursday after the First Sunday	Recapitulation: the resurrection of the body, the judgment of the dead, and penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction)/enduring for God, for the love of God, and in hope/Purgatory/the freedom of being delivered from sin and living in God’s grace, though not exempt from all pain and misery/the anti-heretical polemic and invectives
7	For the Friday after the First Sunday	Recapitulation: Jesus Christ is our hope in the face of evils and torments/the weariness and vexation that arise from desire, pride, and avarice/tyrants and martyrs/Providence/the holy patriarchs/and the figures of Jesus Christ.
8	For Friday after the First Sunday	Two laws—the law of Moses and the law of grace, the law of fear and the law of love, the Evangelical law/the controversy over freedom, since the evangelical law is not called the law of liberty but delivers us from the subjection of prelates and superiors/the power of the priest/the sacrament and the heretic, for it does not belong to a woman to absolve sins/the Mass and transubstantiation, the heretic, and the history of the counter-Mass since Berengar/the dignity of the priesthood, against unworthy ministers vilified for their dealings with women and for their superfluity/and the council whose purpose is to reform the abuses of the Church, but not the faith of the Catholic Church
9	For the Second Sunday of Advent	Knowledge drawn from Holy Scripture, in order to recognize the omnipotence of God and the human life of misery and tribulation/Job and the man in adversity, more consoled than one who lives in prosperity/the hidden heretic—“God keep me from him”/and the wicked who mock the Virgin Mary
10	Another sermon for the same day, the Second Sunday of Advent	Man begins his salvation through fear and brings it to completion through charity, in the fear and love of God/the judgment of God, with its signs, in pitiful and calamitous times—Antichrist, concubinage, simony, and ambition/and death
11	For the Second Monday of Advent	The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary/anti-heretical
12	For the Second Tuesday of Advent	Evil, worldliness, carnality, and the worship of the devil/the parish priests and scandals/and free will
13	For the Second Wednesday of Advent	The multitude of sins, hell, and the love of God; the children of men and the children of God, with the woman’s desire to eat in response to the serpent’s promise/the lustful gaze upon a woman and her abuse, shameless and brazen girls who throw themselves upon men, and the indulgence of the flesh/free will and the sins of others/widows, and our new doctors—the married priests
14	For the second Thursday of Advent	Recapitulation: union and separation from God; sin and penance/baptism and the sacraments (contrition, oral confession, satisfaction)/the punishments of man as both grace and the sufferings from God/the lust and wantonness of the age and the flood/and Paris as no greater than the city of Jerusalem
15	For the second Friday of Advent	Recapitulation: sin, calamity, and Noah/the obstinate heretic, damned to all the devils, who does not escape punishment and burning, his correction serving as an example/sin as infirmity, ignorance, and pride; and oath-taking and blasphemy
16	For the second Saturday of Advent	The multitude of sins/the righteousness and obedience of Noah/the multitude in error/The heretic/The anti-world/living according to one’s pleasure/definition of a good preacher according to the world/Human justice, justification by faith and good works
17	For the Third Sunday of Advent, at the rector’s procession	The state of man/the state of priesthood: the priest seeks the honor of serving Jesus Christ/like the king’s first chamberlain, the constable, the admiral—four lines of titles—the first almoner, chamberlain, first panetier. To labor for the ministry of Jesus Christ/the priest represents God/yet there is also anti-clericalism, (a strong) reformation, and the tribulations of the apostles in the service of Jesus Christ/Predestination: although we do not know whether we are predestined or among the number of the damned, nevertheless Scripture wills that each person should hope that he will be saved, and thus that he is predestined. The conscience of man
18	Another sermon of the Third Sunday of Advent	Recap on the theme of the minister of Jesus Christ/Apostle Hard times/one must endure/The controversies with the heretics: chastity/abstaining from meat during Lent/purgatory/transubstantiation/The preachers of the world speak for their own pleasure and to please others/the things that a good preacher must do
19	For the Third Monday of Advent	The evils: pride, avarice, lechery, fraud, theft, slander, hypocrisy/The misdeeds of men/to be cast into the fire/Tribulation and glory/Masters and mistresses who do not attend their parish Mass
20	Third Tuesday for the Third Tuesday of Advent	Recap: the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes/Morality: vain glory/The anti-heretical theme: works that displease God/repentance that is hypocritical/they believe in a God who is not God/Penance/The new doctors/the devils have faith, but they ignore works/A priest becomes a priest in order to gain benefices/The Ark of Noah: the Church and salvation
21	For the Third Wednesday of Advent	The works of the heretics are not accepted by God/Excommunication: mortal sin leads to excommunication/Christians who commit mortal sins must be won back through steadfastness/One does not excommunicate unbelievers but mortal sinners—fornicators, the avaricious, slanderers, drunkards; one must not associate with them, whether in drinking or eating/We are in continual struggle and battle: the Church militant/The Council cannot err in matters of faith/The heretics have neither union nor concord/Invectives against the heretics: they entered the Church like foxes, lived like lions, and died like dogs—tyrants, hypocrisies, and heresies
22	For the Third Thursday of Advent	Attacks of the heretics: the metaphor of the Church as a body/The heretics’ charity is only apparent. They say they believe in God—they lie/They will not die, will not change color; they do not know constancy, but are obstinate, presumptuous, scandalous/The scoundrels will endure fire to uphold their diabolical errors/One must listen to the sermons, beginning with those that expose the reputations of others among people who take no more account of the poor than of dogs/People who regard the poor no more than a dog—they should be hanged or burned
23	For the Third Friday of Advent	The difference between man and beasts/Transubstantiation
24	For the Third Saturday of Advent	Recap/the operation of the Holy Spirit/the Holy Sacrament/Baptism/the operation of the body of God through the Virgin Mary/Transubstantiation/the anti-heretical theme
25	For the Fourth Sunday of Advent	The coming of Jesus Christ/joy and denunciation/working in hope in God
26	Another sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent	The metaphor of family and friendship with Jesus Christ/Mercy toward your neighbor/fraternity/The anti-heretical theme: a man who errs obstinately is a heretic/The anti-heretical theme: Truth and lies/three kinds of lies
27	For the Fourth Monday of Advent, the Feast of Saint Thomas	Unbelief (Saint Thomas)/Tradition and the heretic: one must first see whether the doctrine is in conformity with the Gospel; for every testimony, it is sufficient to acknowledge the tradition of the Church/The Gospel and words, tradition: the controversy where the heretic says that there is nothing “written”/Transubstantiation/the true sacrifice and oblation for the living and for the dead/Purgatory
28	For the Fourth Tuesday of Advent	Charity/Tribulation/Tyranny: persecution of the Church/Heresy: persecution of the Church
29	For the Fourth Wednesday, Christmas Eve Vigil	The mystery of God/The secret of the Virgin Mary/The article of faith, against the heretics
30	For the day and feast of the Nativity of our Lord	The birth of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary/The anti-heretical theme and the Church/converting the heretics.
31	For the Feast Day of Saint Stephen	The nature of God and the nature of man/The anti-heretical theme: the philosophers and the wise of this world
32	Another sermon for the Feast Day of Saint Stephen	The quarrel of Satan is lies, deceit, malice, and deception: Cain/Satan/the anti-clerical theme: it is a great disgrace for an ecclesiastical person to meddle in temporal affairs/the qualities of a Bishop or Curate/a good knight/the first martyr
33	For the Feast Day of Saint John the Evangelist	The grace and goodness of God/the knowledge of Jesus Christ/The penance for sin/the judgment of God/Morality: simony/The anti-heretical theme
34	Another sermon for the said day	Good works and morality/The priests and the heretics/The idolater
35	For the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents	The nature of man and the grace of God/The Holy Sacrament of the Mass/Death/the Passion of Jesus Christ
36	Another sermon for the Holy Innocents	Virtue and the Devil/the birth of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, the Church, the priests/the heretic, the Devil/morality: women, the benefices of priests/the tyrants, the proud Tribulations/works and will/martyrdom
37	For the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas	The law of Moses and the law of the Gospel/the Church and the servants
38	For the Day and Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord Jesus Christ	The greatness of Mary and Jesus Christ/the interpretation of the Bible; anti-heretical invectives/the worldly are true fools/the anti-heretical theme/the heretic and the Virgin Mary/morality
39	For the Day and Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord Jesus Christ	Piety/the anti-clerical theme/Contrition death/morality and sin/the superiority of the Church
40	Another sermon for the said day	Another sermon for the said day/the knowledge of God/afflicting oneself for God/the Devil, the tyrants, the wicked, the apostates
41	For the Day and Feast of Saint Genevieve	Death: to prepare oneself to die well so that we are not taken unawares by death/the judgment of God/the anti-heretical theme: the ten virgins/works and faith/venial sin/mortal sin/the soul and the body
42	Another sermon for the Day of Saint Genevieve	The wise and prudent virgins/carnality and the chastity of maidens/the marriage of priests/the abstinence from wine and meat of Saint Genevieve/obedience to superiors/the anti-heretical theme: invectives
43	For the Day and Feast of the Kings	King Ahaziah, an idolater, did not eat with the heretics/King Hezekiah and the grace of God/King Herod: a dissemble/the traits displeasing to God: the proud, the liars, the murderers/wisdom: one must follow good preaching and seek counsel from righteous people
44	Another sermon for the said day	To seek out the priests/to preach against abuses To have trust in God/the knowledge of God The anti-heretical theme turned outward and thus toward the other (works)
45	For the Sunday within the Octave of the Kings	The mercy and grace of God/humility and charity/the universal priesthood must be denounced/the sacrifice of the altar/fasting, keeping vigil, and testing the body in the love and knowledge of God/the heretics and the saints, the righteous/the wicked/the proud/Holy Scripture: great rage in saying that the Church has erred
46	Autre sermon pour le dimanche dedans les octaves des Rois	Recap/the Holy Sacrament of the Altar and the heretics the anti-morality: the perishable world/the anti-heretical theme/the Church before Scripture/the error of the sacramentarians
47	For the First Sunday after the Octave of the Kings	The grace of one’s own—works/the servant who seeks profit/the body of the church militant/the church does not err/preaching according to the church/the shepherd/the priests’ money/the responsibility of the shepherd, the money of the priests, the men-at-arms/simple clothing, amendment, contrition, penance/we are assailed by great wars and assaults both spiritual and bodily/on one side heresies greater than ever before, and on the other temporal wars/heretical neighbors must be denounced/revealed and reported to superiors/this is love/Poverty
48	Another sermon for the First Sunday after the Octave of the Kings	The sacrament of marriage/faith, hope, charity/the anti-heretical theme/the Church militant/the Church cannot fail/praying for the dead/the heretics say that Jesus Christ died for us, that he did penance, and that we should do no penance/tribulations
49	For the Second Sunday after the Octave of the Kings	Controversy: one must not be too wise/one must not say that everything we do is sin, for we can indeed do and accomplish good works by the grace of God/works/tribulations/vengeance belongs to God, be at peace with all men/one must endure the adversities that it pleases God to send us
50	Another sermon for the said day	The definition of preaching/free and frank will and the commandments/to confess to the priest/the Church commands preaching/the anti-heretical theme: they have not shown their doctrine to the Church and have not had its approval, they bring a new doctrine/errors prevail/he wishes that this miracle be kept secret/the duty of a priest: it is to be able to show on the Day of Judgment that I have preached to you and have done my duty
51	For the Third Sunday after the Octave of the Kings	True charity/the world and God/the providence of God: salvation/Justification by faith and works
52	Another sermon for the Third Sunday after the Octave of the Kings	The knowledge of God/the ship or the Church/the heretics must return to the Lord in faith/tribulation—a flood of both heretics and other evildoers/do not associate with them/the Apocalypse/the Church of God covered by the waves of heresies/Free will and the plan of God/the sleeping God/The Mass and charity to obtain salvation Grace and works
53	Another sermon for Septuagesima Sunday	Labor and work/the Last Day/the end of times/Man of reason will not be saved without his works/the bishops teach the articles of faith/each person must be concerned for the salvation of his neighbor/love and charity and the grace of God/simony
54	For Sexagesima Sunday	God and the world/affliction/confession/love for God: laboring for him/the false prophets, sowers of discord and lies: anti-heretical theme—it is a known fact that through fear of punishment one might acknowledge God, confess his error and his fault, and be saved/yet his spirit is more enraged
55	Another sermon for Sexagesima Sunday	What preachers must do/what listeners must do/the world and God/tribulation/the humility of priests
56	For Quinquagesima Sunday	The virtues: faith, hope, and charity/the anti-heretical theme: justification by faith/the priest’s power to absolve and remit sins/the pride of the heretics/the new translation of the Bible/education/the question of language (anti-humanism)/prophecy and language/the charity of the heretics is mere appearance and outward show/Do not take revenge for the injury done to you/charity
57	Another sermon for the said day	Union with God/ancient anti-philosophers, abusing their knowledge of God/the world and God
58	Four sermons, not yet printed before this year 1565	Nature, the Bible as testimony to Jesus Christ/Saint Augustine and the Lutheran/the Lutheran does not want to hear talk of going to confession/the sacrament of penance/(the heretics) not all believe in the Truth of the Gospel/the attack against priests who “canvass” for civic offices
59	Another sermon for Saint Andrew	The good life and good teaching of priests/the heretics misunderstand Scripture/their life is more corrupt than that of Lucifer/the law and the prophets/the intentions of preaching
60	Pour le jour & fête de sainte Barbe	A union with God. To live and die with God/rejection of the works of the Lutherans/faith and works/Lutherans as Antichrists/new corrupted milk/language and translation: barbarism/Lutheran idolatry/purgatory
61	For the Day and Feast of Saint Matthias	The manner of preaching/dispute with a philosopher/article of faith The legitimacy of the Church The charity of God The heretics against the Apostles/the corruption of good morals gives bad counsel/the students/traitors in the Church of God
62	For the Day of the Purification of the Virgin Mary	The law/one obeys only God/Holy Scripture teaches liberty, not the lust taught by the heretics/the enrollment (or consecration) of the Virgin Mary/the Holy Mass, commemoration for the dead/against false opinions, one must live according to the custom of the Church, the universal Church of God/the heretics say that nothing should be believed unless it is expressly written in Holy Scripture Separate yourselves from them/the heretics hide and dissemble/the uncleanness of woman and the defiled man Faith and works/the fear of being separated from God comes from charity/the heretics would lie because of their reception of Holy Scripture/the heretics do not have the Spirit/the Spirit is to go to the temple/several (heretics) go there to seduce an honest girl/the Holy Sacrament of marriage
63	Another sermon for the said day	The mercy of God/the faith of God and the faith of the devils, or of the heretics/the heretics abandon all good works/the law of Moses: the flesh acts out of fear/and the evangelical law/the flesh and the servitude in which we once were/worldliness and God/the priests do not say a word about the blasphemies against the name of God
64	For the Day and Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter	The knowledge of God/Duality: world and God, flesh and spirit, faith and works/hope in God/despair and sins/venial sin and mortal sin/penance/the soul is washed and purified by the sacrament of baptism and the sacrament of penance/my damnation would be final if I had remained unfaithful/on the Day of Judgment unfaithfulness condemns us/many Turks and unbelievers do works that are good in themselves
65	Another sermon for the said day	The world and God/people do not want to go to the sermon/a poor woman who is wanton/she does not want to go to the sermon for fear that she will be reproved for her clothing, feasting, and pleasures/let us go to the school of God, like Saint Peter/Saint Peter, the Church, the figure of the stone from which the water came forth—this was the figure of Jesus Christ, the true stone/people who have returned to their unbelief/there have been some very foolish ones; this is to show that the faith of the Roman Church is not founded upon and does not rest on the stability of a single person, but on the Church of God/the heretics say that the Pope is only the bishop of Rome/man is not commended before God because of his office and dignity/the action of a bishop may be good, but its merit is charity/the anti-miracles/to master one’s own passion—a great miracle/criticism of the Pope: I do not speak to belittle the Pope or his authority, but I say that it would be better in his heart and by his works to know God and to serve him, proclaiming that all good things come from him, rather than only to know him on paper

), not to mention other topoi that concern God and provide a framework for doctrinal discussion. For example, in the second sermon, in order to recall the two Catholic traditions, he discusses the Word of God; in the thirtieth sermon, he introduces the Virgin Mary through the narration of the birth of Christ. Similar references are also found in the 6th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 26th, 36th, 37th, 38th, 51st, 54th, 55th, 57th, 58th, 60th, 61st, 63rd, and 65th sermons (See the corresponding sermons in the Table A1).

This Christocentric orientation is also underscored by Larissa Taylor in her study, Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation. She interprets Le Picart as a reformer, and, in drawing a comparison with Rabelais, she suggests that while Rabelais placed emphasis on prayer, the goodness of God, and the relationship between faith and salvation, Le Picart, by contrast, was primarily concerned with ensuring that his listeners understood that it is Jesus Christ alone who brings salvation (Taylor 1999, p. 79).

For Le Picart, the better we know God, the more we love Him: “I have no other knowledge of God than through faith; I cannot offer a perfect love without having a perfect knowledge; and just as our knowledge of God is imperfect, so too the love and the union that we have with God are imperfect.”13 This necessity of knowledge of God stems from a profound zeal. According to Michel de Certeau, Le Picart belongs to the mystical current known as theologia affectus, which, situated beyond “spiritual things” and holy institutions, ultimately resorts to a purifying process grounded in the affectus of the soul. These are the motions of God: the Word that awakens faith, the illumination that reveals understanding, and the universal truth. Such notions are embodied in three central themes: interior religion, devotion to Christ, and union with the unfathomable Will of God (De Certeau 2005, p. 141).

Love for God thus constitutes a central element and a driving force in the words of this “zélé”(zealous) priest. The sermons from the collection Advent à Caresme that address the theme of the love of God are as follows: 1. Knowledge of God; 2. Recapitulation on the knowledge of God; 6. Love for God (enduring in hope); 7. The Figure of Jesus Christ (the saints); 10. Love of God (fear of God’s judgment); 13. Love of God (preserving love even in hell); 26. Friendship with Jesus Christ (mercy toward neighbors, anti-heretical theme); 30. The birth of Jesus Christ (and the Virgin Mary). 36. The birth of Jesus Christ (and the Virgin Mary); 37. The Law of Moses and the Law of the Gospel; 38. The greatness of Mary and Jesus Christ; 51. The World and God (the sin of the world); 54. God and the world: Love for God (affliction/confession); 55. The World and God (tribulation); 57. Union with God/the World and God; 58. Nature and the Bible as Testimony to Jesus Christ; 60. “United and joined with God”: Living and Dying with God (union with God); 61. The Charity of God (anti-heretical theme); 63. The Mercy of God: Worldliness and God (faith in God); and 65. The world and God (the depravity of the world) 14.

This profound divine affection gives rise to union with the unfathomable God, and these sermons are particularly devoted to this theme, although other sermons also touch upon it. The union that Le Picart sought to strengthen in the minds of his listeners was rooted above all in the ancient covenant, in comparison with which the manifestation of great charity was offered to the people of the New Testament era: “God therefore sent his Son into this world in visible form, in the nature of man, for he appeared as man like us, having flesh and bone, which he took from the blessed womb of the glorious Virgin Mary by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Christians, see how much more God shows us greater charity than to the ancients. In the Law of Moses He sent them angels, patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He sent servants and prophets such as Moses, etc. And this demonstrates the will of God, who desires that the world should be saved”15.

In this narrative on Judaic anthropology, the old covenant—founded on the Law—was transformed from the relationship of the Jewish people with God into a spiritual covenant with Jesus Christ in the era of the New Testament. The divine covenant as expressed in the two Testaments is presented as a manifestation of God’s favor and charity toward humankind. The Old Testament embodies a legal tradition that stretches back to the Genesis of the world’s history, where the ancient promise of God was first established. Le Picart frequently reiterates the history of the traditional Church, often tracing it back to the era of the patriarchs—Moses, Abraham, and others. For example, when speaking of “The Promulgation of the Ten Commandments”, he declares: “Christians, this is a great thing: when God wished to give the Law of Moses on Mount Sinai, thunder was heard, and one saw lightning and smoke”16. Or again: “If the children are not worthy of being granted grace, the parents are indeed deserving of it. Thus, grace is sometimes granted to the child who does not deserve it, out of love for the father who has rendered good service to the republic. In the same way, Abraham and the other Patriarchs had well merited before God that He should extend His grace to their children”17.

The figures of the Old Testament serve as prefigurations of Jesus Christ, meant to reveal the greatness and glory of his coming. Christ’s self-sacrifice, culminating in the Passion, ultimately manifests the profound charity of God. The Promise thus becomes a gracious testament, an oath issuing from the very hand of God, whereas the Law delivered on Mount Sinai constitutes a strict covenant, a bilateral contract. According to François Le Picart, this “carnal law of Moses”18 represents only an intermediate stage, intended to prepare for the fulfillment of the Promise, which requires a new covenant under “a law of the spirit”19 of charity and mercy, the covenant foretold by Jeremiah and of which Christ is the mediator. As Le Picart explains: “The law was not instituted to endure forever, but until our Lord; this is called the time of correction, this correction being set forth in Saint Matthew... And when our Lord died, all was consummated: that is to say, the end of the prophecies and of the law. The law, therefore, was not given to save, but to restrain sins”20. In this new covenant, man can be saved only through his purifying affectus—union with Christ, the awaited Messiah, in whom the distant Promise made to the patriarchs finally finds its fulfillment in the present age.

Separation from God is therefore deemed unacceptable, and the incomplete union of the Catholic community haunted the mentality of the preacher in this turbulent moment, when the tendency of the “flock” to separate from their “shepherds”, or to follow the “wolves”—namely, Lutheran thought—began to infiltrate and became increasingly difficult to control within the kingdom, a moment of “pollution” by heresy, as Natalie Zemon Davis has so aptly described (Devis 1973). Le Picart’s sermons likewise reveal an urgent desire to persuade the faithful to remain pure in this world until the end: “Let us purge ourselves of these people, and may the land be rid of them and emptied. Let us pray to God that He may rise up and that His enemies may be scattered. Our Lord is sleeping as He did in the boat, and thus it is necessary to awaken Him. Let us purge ourselves in this way, and we shall be presented in Jerusalem before God, in the triumphant Church”21.

At this moment, Le Picart, as a militant priest, expresses his desire to assume actively and urgently the role of a “purifier”: “For the office of a bishop, of a curate, is to enlighten, to purge, and to bring to perfection. God has placed me in my office, and if I abandon it and devote myself entirely to temporal matters, that is most indecent and vile for an ecclesiastical prelate”22.

Moreover, the contemporary Catholic Church is not merely, as Natalie Zemon Davis suggests, a community or an abstract union to be purged and healed. Rather, as Le Picart repeatedly insists in his sermons, it is a true Noah’s Ark in this prophetic age—an eschatological iconography that the preacher paints for the audiences of the capital. This Noah’s Ark floats upon the deluge of the end times, a deluge of heretics seeking to subvert the traditional Church. The heretics are no longer simply intruders or figures of alterity; they represent the ultimate outcome of the collective sins accumulated by the Catholic community. They are the symbols of the Flood and the harbingers of the end of time, the signs of the final catastrophe that Le Picart ceaselessly prophesies. Thus, the Catholic Church is the union drawn together more tightly than ever, the only earthly path to salvation: “Noah’s Ark represents the Church; and just as all those who were outside the Ark were lost, and only Noah and his family were saved, because they were in the Ark, so too all those who are outside the Catholic Church are outside the way of salvation; and only those who are within the Church will be saved”23.

The preacher’s anxiety also stemmed from a realistic concern about the dangers facing the Church—an historical anguish over its destiny. Even though the precise dates of the delivery of his sermons cannot be identified with certainty, references to “Luther” occur frequently in Le Picart’s preaching, for example: “And as we have said, there are some disciples of Martin Luther who speak and act worse than he himself”24. According to partial estimates, he mentions Luther forty-one times in the Advent à Caresme collection, eighteen times in Pasques à Trinité, seven times in Caresme à Pasques, forty-three times in Trinité à l’Advent, and seven times in Noël à Caresme. Larissa Taylor identifies the years 1533–1534 as “decisive years” for Le Picart, a turning point in which he increasingly oriented himself toward these ideological struggles. As Le Picart polemically declares in his sermons: “If we are all men of good will, desiring to serve God, Spiritu et non litera… let us pray to God for those who stray from the Catholic faith. There is nothing more to fear than the persecution of the heretics: for they wish to abolish the service of God, to shut the gate of paradise. We are all gathered together in order to be saved and to go to God, and they wish to close the gates to us. They wish to take away the holy sacraments, to destroy the churches; they wish to deprive us of the faith which so many righteous men have held until now. They wish to cast off all obedience owed to the Pope and to the Most Christian King of France, and they wish that we follow I know not what man. Let us not place our souls at risk, but let us hold fast to the Catholic faith of the Church, and pray to God that we do not fall into error”25.

The years 1533 and 1534 marked the beginning of the religious conflicts, a period characterized by acute tension between the evangelicals and the defenders of Catholicism. The theologians of the Faculty of Theology actively sought to oppose the innovators of the faith, both the Erasmians and the Lutherans, who were often difficult to distinguish from one another. On 29 March 1533, François Le Picart was elected among the six bachelors of the Faculty of Theology with the mission of countering, indeed of combating, the popular preaching of Gérard Roussel, who was preaching at the Louvre before Princess Marguerite of Navarre (Crouzet 2015, p. 90). Le Picart’s sermons thus became a fundamental pillar for the preservation of the orthodoxy of the traditional Church, expressed through his harangues imbued with unwavering faith: “In short, through hearing every man is capable of becoming a Christian. And for this reason, from all antiquity, it has always been the custom preserved in the Church to teach by word of mouth. This is also still continued today through preaching”26. Le Picart’s election and sermons situate him at the very forefront of the Sorbonne’s campaign against evangelical preaching.

As the editor Nicolas Chesneau also states in the epistle: “I commend to you the increase and stability of the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ in us and in all our neighbors; may it please Him to grant us the grace not to fall, and to those who have fallen and gone astray, may God grant them the grace to return to the true knowledge of God and to their salvation. Finally, I commend to you the sick and the poor, etc”27.

This profound love for God forms a powerful foundation of emotion for all these exhortations: everything rests upon the love of God, the unfathomable love for Him, within which defilements can never be accepted and are destined to be swept away by this overwhelming fire.

3. Sins, Repentance, and Punishments

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 3:2)—this phrase undoubtedly struck the preacher.

In his collection Aduent à Caresme, Le Picart makes clear the twofold sense of “Advent.” The first refers to the Incarnation of God: “This time is called Advent, that is to say, we commemorate the coming of our Lord, of his Incarnation, who came for us into this world… That is to say, the Word, the Son of God, became man; this is the first coming of our Lord, when he chose to be incarnate in the womb of the glorious Virgin Mary, and we continually commemorate it in this time of Advent”28.

The second refers to the coming of God at the end of the world, for the Last Judgment: “That is to say, the judgment of God is approaching; therefore it is no longer the time to offend, especially in this season when we are closer to judgment than ever before […] At the time when our Lord came, salvation was nearer than before the coming of our Lord”29.

Le Picart’s central argument in explaining the reason for the appearance of heretics—taken as a sign of the second coming of God—rests nonetheless on the sins committed by Catholics themselves (see sermons 2, 4, 5, 6, 25, 28, 34, 35, 36, 38, 43, 45, 54 in Table A1). It is “our own sin” that has “raised the storm,” a sin rooted within the Catholic community itself. Sin therefore occupies an unavoidable and heavily weighted place in Le Picart’s sermons.

Collective sin must be repented, and the preacher’s tone is always insistent: “It is no longer the time to be lazy, nor to sleep, for we have sinned in the past. And he who does evil, he sleeps; this sleep signifies the state of sin,” for “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”30. It is these sins that lead to catastrophes, of which heresy is the most serious form. Such catastrophes are the consequences that the faithful must endure: “Do you know what raises the storm and agitates the ship and the Church of God? It is our sins; and if we are willing to amend ourselves and wholeheartedly return to God, I am assured by His word that He will calm Himself before nightfall, and will cause the storm and the heresies to cease”31.

On the question of whether Le Picart was a violently anti-heretical preacher, Larissa Taylor does not fully agree with Denis Crouzet. She regards him rather as a reformer, a preacher who proclaimed the love and assurance of God. Historians each have their reasons, for in Le Picart there is indeed a strong emphasis on the love of God, as we have just discussed. Jean Delumeau speaks of a “contradiction,” as Jérôme Baschet observes: “He [Jean Delumeau] testifies to a powerful will to conquer consciences and to purify Christianity. It is in this perspective that one sees the pair guilt/salvation (or again preaching/confession, discourse/practice) reaching its maximum tension” (Baschet and Delumeau 1984). This might provides an interesting explanation that helps to better understand such a dichotomy. Love for God intertwines with a profound sense of guilt, generating an intensity of anguish, a more melancholic, sensitive, and ambivalent dimension to this pure love, which becomes a distant ideal—a pilgrimage toward the inaccessible before the end of the world.

The sins of humankind are accumulated and “multiplied.” Le Picart’s depictions of sin are grounded in a Pauline soteriology that strongly emphasizes the dichotomy between human vulnerability and divine greatness, with particular insistence on the frailty of man. In his collection Aduent à Caresme, for example, Le Picart most frequently cites verses from Paul’s epistles, His sermons often begin with a verse from the Pauline letters in Latin; the very first sentence of the Aduent à Caresme collection opens with “QUAECUNQUE scripta sunt, ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt, ut per patientiam & consolationem scripturarum spem habeamus” (“Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that through patience and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope,” Romans 15:4). As Larissa Taylor observes, his use of Paul’s epistles is remarkably frequent, particularly the letters to the Romans and to the Corinthians, which together account for 24% of all his New Testament citations32.

As Saint Paul clearly explains in his epistles, the Fall of Adam rendered man profoundly vulnerable, for apart from Redemption he is now “sold under the power of sin” (Rom. 7:14). Indeed, he is still capable of desiring the good, but not of accomplishing it (Rom. 7:15–18), and he is necessarily destined for eternal death, which is the “wages” or “fulfillment” of sin (Rom. 6:21–23; 7:24)33. In this soteriology, Le Picart readily aligns himself with the Pauline tradition.

This is also a fundamental point of his theology: the sin of man is set forth in order to be contrasted with the love of God: “We are sin, ignorance, and weakness. If I look at myself, I shall see in me nothing but ignorance and weakness, and more evil than good; I shall recognize my instability and inconstancy from day to day, from hour to hour, from moment to moment; and seeing this, I have only reason to mistrust and to be discouraged”34. It is impossible for man to attain the remission of sins except by relying on the teachings of Jesus Christ: “In order that I may not fall into despair of my salvation, I must look higher: for all around me there is nothing but sin; but I look to the means of my salvation, which is Jesus Christ”35.

Jesus Christ is thus presented as the only possible path to salvation: “And in whom do you place your trust? In Jesus Christ; through Him I shall have what I cannot have through myself… the blood of Jesus Christ… weakness proceeded from his sin. By this he shows that we cannot obtain remission without relying on Jesus Christ. Never does God accept any work as pleasing unless it has been founded upon our Lord Jesus Christ, his Son. He is our goal, our end, toward which we must strive, and all our works must be done in the name of Jesus, so that God may regard them”36.

Thus, although the epistles of Saint Paul also inspired Martin Luther in his well-known argument on justification by faith, Le Picart nonetheless developed a different interpretation. He emphasized and expanded upon the dimensions of guilt in Paul’s epistles, defining and listing mortal and venial sins by stating, “Venial sin diminishes the fervor of devotion, but it does not place man outside the state of grace and salvation. This is what mortal sin does: it removes grace and charity and places one in a state of damnation” (Hu 2022). Or again, in his repeated catalogues of mortal and venial sins: “You see that mortal sin accompanied by obstinacy is the cause of excommunication… for unbelievers are not excommunicated. And if there is one of your Christian brothers who is a fornicator, covetous, a slanderer, a drunkard, I forbid you, as a minister of God, to communicate with him, neither in drinking nor in eating… Seeing this enormous sin, he delivered the fornicator to the devil, to torment him, in order that he might be saved.” This incapacity to save oneself does not lead to a soteriology of justification by faith alone but rather to a justification that also depends on works—on the vigilant supervision of moral actions and concrete religious practices. The sins enumerated were, unfortunately, already deeply ingrained within the Catholic community. It was thus necessary to examine oneself and repent of one’s deeds, in order to prepare rightly for salvation at the approach of the end times, and to recognize sins clearly in this abyssal and anxious moment, when catastrophes seemed all but imminent.

In the crucial years after 1520, therefore, one had to reckon with multiple forms of Paulinism: a Lutheran Paulinism, an Erasmian or evangelical Paulinism, and a Paulinism of defense of the Roman Church. As René Benoist also attests in the epistle to Le Picart’s sermons: “Following the doctrine of Saint Paul, who wishes the true or false teaching of ministers to be discerned by spiritual and good Christians, who, being endowed with and guided by the Holy Spirit, take pleasure only in good, heavenly, and divine things, just as the reprobate and carnal take delight only in hearing or reading carnal, earthly, and evil things”37.

The epistles of Saint Paul are not, however, Le Picart’s only sources for his moral critiques. He also inscribes a “dark tableau,” a gallery of iconographies drawn from the Old Testament, a moral painting shaped nonetheless by an eschatological atmosphere, an air of the end of the world. When he cites exempla, he repeatedly invokes Jonah, Noah, or Cain, seeking to render them into vivid images that make repentance for sins all the more urgent. For example, in the Advent à Caresme collection, there are five consecutive sermons (from folio 66 verso to folio 86 verso) that repeatedly address the sins of human history through Old Testament narratives. The Fall of Adam is presented as original sin, while Cain’s fratricide symbolizes terrestrial sins multiplying without end: “Afterward God made a juridical correction: He cast Adam out of earthly paradise, He made him passible, mortal, so that all his posterity, seeing him in such poverty and misery, might take care not to offend. Similarly, Cain… was not amended, but became worse. He killed his brother… Lamech, he saw the punishment of Cain… And yet sins became greater, and as men multiplied”38.

On the story of Jonah, he proclaims that repentance is indispensable if the faithful are ultimately to be reconciled with God: “When Jonah had preached to the people of Nineveh and had warned them, by God’s command, that within four days the city would be overthrown and destroyed, and all its inhabitants would perish, the King of Nineveh descended from his throne, removed his pompous garments, and clothed himself with sackcloth. He put ashes upon his head as a sign of penitence, and commanded both great and small to fast, and that neither food nor drink be given even to the beasts, so that their voices might cry for mercy to God”39. Repentance is demanded of believers as a divine imperative: “God waits; He does not punish immediately, but this is to see if man will repent… Noah announced to the people, saying: Repent, for God will punish you”40.

In parallel with these calls to repentance and the somber depictions of sin, punishments frequently follow and accompany them. Yet these punishments are not to be feared absolutely, one must not imitate the example of Cain—the central figure of sin in the sermon entitled “For the Second Thursday of Advent”41—in which it is admitted that the obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge sin and take awareness of it stems from fear of temporal punishment: “When Cain heard of his sin, where did he look? To the punishment, not to the guilt, which he feared to incur because of his sin. Had he taken care to ask God’s pardon, saying: Lord, forgive me… But he feared only the punishment. He who offends is deprived of God; through sin man is cast away from the face of God… Many do not care at all about having lost the grace of God, they do not think of this; but they are sad, melancholic. About what? About the punishment”42.

Another terrifying punishment is the privation of the love of God: “Contrition is nothing other than a sorrow, for the love of God, at having offended Him”43. This imposes upon believers the idea of a transcendent law, manifested through the psychological weight of guilt and betrayal when offenses are committed against God. One cannot resist but must learn to recognize this sorrow of the soul, for the purpose of repentance is to regain the grace of God—that is, for the faithful to return to the Lord and to preserve their relationship with Him. Sorrow and love are thus bound together; this is essential, for love requires sorrow, and sorrow opens onto love. And sorrow is also a profound detestation of sin.

On the pain of guilt, there are also tribulations, or trials, that one must endure in order to be saved: “The storm and the inundation of water are the tribulation that man has in this world. And the means to be saved is tribulation…The august and narrow gate is tribulation, which leads and guides into Paradise. And it is impossible to enter except through the cross: the cross of our Lord does not suffice for those who are endowed with reason, for we too must bear our own cross, which is tribulation and adversity”44.

Thus are evoked the “infernal” theaters: this terrifying suspense before the Judgment at the end of the world is itself a sign of God’s long-suffering and benevolence. If man does not repent, God will destroy everything: “Here you see first the mercy and long-suffering of God, how He waits—it is so that we may amend ourselves. When one does not amend, there is the danger that God will destroy everything”45. Or “For the love of God, think on it, Christians, for it will not be time to think on it when one is in the depths of hell”46.

Seeking to instill in his audience the idea that divine wrath is not confined to the events recounted in the Old Testament, Le Picart does not hesitate to attribute to it the misfortunes that befell France, thereby making even more tangible the risks faced by those who disobey God: “Now then, my friends, you have seen how we were afraid during the war; it is possible that God was in suspense and said: Shall I destroy Paris? We see towns and villages destroyed and razed; we are near to this ourselves—the enemies came close to us and could easily have entered this city. Let us consider why God permitted the city of Boulogne, which is a key of France, to be taken by our enemy. Whence does this come? It is because of our faults. God has given us peace, not because we deserved it… We began with pomp, gilding, and lasciviousness—this is the cause that provoked God to send the Flood. Let us look closely to see whether pleasure and lasciviousness are not more unbridled than they were then. Do we not fear that He will send another Flood? There is danger that God will pronounce His judgment, which He has long kept in suspense. This city of Paris is no more than the city of Jerusalem”47. The urgency of the situation was thus not limited to the preacher’s imagination, but burst forth in the real world. There was no longer time to be idle: “It is no longer the time to be lazy, nor to sleep, for we have sinned in the past. And he who does evil, he sleeps; this sleep signifies the state of sin”48.

This depiction of hell—a system of sin and punishment—is embedded within the expectation of the end of the world, where the coming of the end, like a backdrop star, lends the moral harangues a profoundly dark and urgent dimension, reinforced by the catastrophes described in the Old Testament. It conveys a polyvalent emotion, combining at once the horror of the Apocalypse, divine love, the fear of punishment, and, finally, the infernal abyss.

4. Prophetic Visions and Holy Wars

“Apocalypse, Flood, calamity, tempest, and other catastrophes”—such are the designations that normally signify the end of the world in the prophecies of François Le Picart. The theme of the end times occupies a specific place in his sermons. For Le Picart, the present age is one in which numerous sins spread synchronically throughout the kingdom: “Lies and error are approved”, and “the goods are welcomed for today, while virtue and truth are contradicted and rejected.” It is also an age of catastrophes: “The sea is this world, in which the just and the servants of God endure. By the providence of God… tribulation comes from the will of God, such as plague, war, famine… the Church of God will be attacked on all sides”49. All these are signs of the coming of the end of the world.

The reminiscence of prophesied catastrophes reaches back to the Old Testament, even for the “conscience” marked by stigma: “The punishments of the Flood, of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram are the effects of the justice of God”50. It extends as well to the Apocalypse of the New Testament: “As it is said in the Apocalypse: Quia nec calidus, nec frigidus es incipiam te evomere de ore meo…” (“Because you are neither hot nor cold, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth”)51.

As has been said, the typical sign of the coming of the end of the world at this moment is the resurgence of heretics. The heretics thus become the target and the symbolic enemy of this apocalyptic age, as Le Picart explicitly states on fol. 281 verso of the Advent to Lent collection: “Here then is a great storm that has arisen upon the sea. Note that the man living today, who does not feel the calamity and misery that is against the Church, deserves to be the enemy of God, as it is said in the Apocalypse: Quia nec calidus, nec frigidus es incipiam te evomere de ore meo… This is a sign of a seared conscience, and that we are lukewarm, that our hearts are not pierced for this great calamity of the Church.” For him, heresy also reduces to an issue of hell itself: “It was also said to that heretic, ‘My friend, confess yourself to the priest,’” to which he added: “he replied, ‘there is no need,’ and thus he is damned with all the devils”52.

Le Picart indeed addresses his listeners in an imperative manner, seeking to awaken them to the peril of heresy with an almost urgent tone: “For the love of God, think on it, Christians, for it will not be time to think on it when one is in the depths of hell”53.

The only means, however, of passing through all the tribulations of the Apocalypse is, first of all, never to leave Noah’s Ark—the symbol of the house of God—and under no circumstances to follow the Protestants, which would mean losing God and drowning in the storm-tossed ocean of life. The future, according to Le Picart, is already prophesied, and the Church of God will remain steadfast and mobilized in this war: “The sea is this world, in which the just and the servants of God endure. By the providence of God… the Church of God will be assailed on all sides, but it will never be filled with waves, it will never be swallowed up nor overcome”54.

The heretics “make war against their mother the Church”: “What dishonor it would be to a mother if she saw her child, whom she has nourished and nursed, contradict her and be contrary to her? … And today the household members of the Church of God, those whom she has nourished and nursed, who have received the holy sacrament of Baptism, make war against their mother the Church, when instead they ought to defend her and stand firm for her”55. The preacher’s desire to eradicate the heretics is intense, and he does not conceal it, identifying them as a pollution from which Christian society must be delivered. As we have already noted in the first section, this is not only a matter of purification for the sake of a pure faith, but also for the fulfillment of the end times, for the urgent and vividly visualized cause of salvation: “Let us purge ourselves of these people, and let the country be rid of them and emptied. Let us pray to God that He may arise, and that His enemies may be scattered. Our Lord sleeps as He did in the ship, and therefore, He must be awakened. Let us purge ourselves in this way, and we shall be presented in Jerusalem before God, in the triumphant Church”56.

The call to purification in order to become the “true lamb” of God on the cross is emphasized: “How is one purged by the beasts? Christians, it was a shadow and figure of the true lamb on the cross”57. For Le Picart, a double movement of purgation is necessary: on the one hand, the purgation of those who have placed themselves outside the Church, who must be rejected and punished, and on the other, an internal purgation for each believer, who must enter into penitence and purge himself of his sins.

The war has already begun, and what is crucial in this war is what the preacher seeks to reveal to those who have not yet perceived that it has started. And if there is war, the faithful must be transformed into warriors to act against those who undermine the Church by deceiving Christians and turning them away from the true faith before the end of the world. This is precisely what François Le Picart declares: “So also the curate, when he sleeps and is absent and does not care for his flock, the wolf comes to snatch them away and devour them”58. And again: “The priest must also carefully examine what sins the penitent has committed: for if it is a secret sin and he does not say that he is a heretic, an adulterer, or the like, and he does not amend himself, he is a Judas”59.

The just endure sufferings: “if he wishes to speak the truth, it is said that he is nothing but a mutineer, that he sows sedition among the people, that he is a hypocrite”60—a fragment that is autobiographical. Here, the “mutineer” is not the enemy of God, but the preacher himself who speaks for God and in defense of His Church. Le Picart presents himself as an example of the righteous who, in the present, becomes the object of persecution, in a world that is eschatologically inverted. This also corresponds to what actually happened to Le Picart, who was exiled by King Francis I in 1533 because of his seditious words. Siderander had emphasized and criticized this in martial terms by referring to a later episode after Le Picart’s death, when a wave of panic preaching swelled in Paris: “Afterwards, they tried to create a tumult and to rouse the people so that they would not fall into heresy… One of our masters, surnamed the soul of fire Picard, preached nothing but blood and murder, and incited the Parisians to kill, making fine promises to those who took part in it”61. The editor Nicolas Chesneau also expressed very explicitly from the Catholic perspective that the words of François Le Picart served precisely as a sword in those years of publication, the 1560s: “What a gospel, alas! What charitable zeal! That a preacher should carry at his side a cruel sword”62.

Le Picart delivers a violent vision of the heretics, which he integrates into the regret and mortification of sins toward which he sought to lead his audience. In order to compensate for what they had committed against divine expectations, they must pray to God to remove and annihilate the heresies that were continually spreading: “It has long been that God sleeps, and that He is prayed to remove and abolish heresies, but our sins, and perseverance in evil, prevent it”63. Prayer, then, is like seeking to awaken God and to incite Him to take up the sword to punish those who on earth have delivered themselves to Satan.

Moreover, Le Picart affirms that it is also the responsibility of the authorities, who cannot possibly remain inactive: “Meanwhile, those who have charge and authority over others, both in spiritual and temporal matters, sleep, and do not fulfill their duty to admonish and to correct sins. The storm, the scandals arise, and sins increase, while virtue and charity grow cold and are entirely lost… the devil sows the tares of errors and wickedness to make God forgotten and to rob Him of His savor: just as students debauch and spoil everything when they do not see their regents and masters, but when they see them, they are restrained from doing evil, they dare not utter a word”64.

After citing all the tribulations and adversities that surround Christian souls faithful to the Church, Le Picart, in order to remain credible and to draw the faithful to himself, is obliged to conclude with a note of hope. For the faithful, adversities are rather trials to be endured, at the end of which those who have resisted and fought against the deceptions of Satan will be at the side of the Lord. It is a triumphant war, as illustrated in Antoine Caron’s drawing “Triumph of the War”: “Do you not know well that after the rain comes fair weather? So too it is necessary that there be heresies. And God allows evils to be done so that errors may be recognized… We too must marvel that we have escaped so many dangers by the goodness and mercy of God, and still hope that God will deliver us from them”65. Through the words of Le Picart, the listeners experienced constant oscillation between excitement and depression, between salvation and damnation. And it is within this very oscillation that they were meant to become conscious of the threat weighing upon the Church and thus upon each of them individually. Should we not discern in Le Picart’s homiletics an incubator of violence?

For Le Picart, this new covenant brought about by union with Christ struggles to take shape in the life of the Christian, for it entails the necessity of examining all of one’s actions and of consenting to sacrifices in order to atone for one’s faults. His descriptions of hell thus provide the Christian with an additional motivation to overcome earthly eschatological hardships and to adopt a conduct of fideism and a consolidation of faith: “The Christian fears nothing other than being separated from God. It is all the same to me to endure, provided that I am not separated from the grace of God. If I were in the very depths of hell, and could love God there, it would be all the same to me. But the fire of hell serves to make one renounce and despise God: and one is not in hell without a preceding offense, there is both guilt and punishment… But if I could be there with the grace of God, I would not care about being in hell… To desire to go to paradise merely to be free from suffering is a small thing: but the perfect one does not look to that”66.

He forged the dark collective imaginations of Protestants, corresponding to Denis Crouzet’s argument, which included images of demonization, animalization, dehumanization, and infernalization (Crouzet 1989). First, with respect to demonization, for example: “There are many mansions in hell: An adulterer will be punished more severely than a thief, an unfaithful heretic will be punished more severely than a mere thief. Nevertheless, all will be eternally damned in hell: But there is a distinction and degrees of punishments, just as in paradise there is a diversity of mansions”67. Regarding animalization: “The hireling, who is not the shepherd, to whom the sheep do not truly belong, when he sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and flees”68. Or he compares heretics to foxes or other animals: “Christians, one must beware of the devil, he is a cunning fox, and a sly trickster […]”69. There are also many vegetalizations: “Our Lord calls the heretics thorns and thistles. Why? The thorn casts a great shadow. There is great darkness among the thorns, where serpents hide; there is no clarity, no light, nor truth. The sun of justice does not shine there. There is only darkness, error, and falsehood, hypocrisy, and ignorance”70, or again he says: “If you desire to eat a fig, do you look for it among thorns? If you have an appetite to drink wine or eat grapes, do you look for them among thistles? No, that is to say, our Lord calls the heretics thorns and thistles. Why? The thorn casts a great shadow, there is great darkness among the thorns where serpents hide”71. Most of these descriptions are referred back to the Bible; they are a reformulation of biblical iconographies within this contemporary anti-heretical struggle.

Dehumanizations are equally brutal, with organs often emphasized in his readings: “Let us rather allow our heart to be torn from our belly than bend from ecclesiastical tradition”72. As Denis Crouzet has aptly observed: “I was struck by the frequency of mutilations inflicted on the faces of the massacred, operating in a register of meaning different from that of state justice: gouging out of eyes, cutting off noses and lips, cropping of ears. Through the practice of such mutilations, the death of the heretic anticipates hell” (Crouzet 1989).

In this dark portrayal of hell, in this urgency of repentance and consolidation of faith, we may discern an embryonic form of holy war on the eve of the end times, one that zealous Catholics of the 1560s—and later the ligueurs and the “Holy Union”—would propagate in the following decades. This war, which first existed in the collective imagination before becoming factually realized in collective violence, served not only to combat heresy but also to push back the boundaries of the known world, and thus to approach the very borders of hell. It was a war rooted in and motivated by the love of God, by the fear of losing union with God, and by the desire to respond to God’s love through repentance for ingratitude, impure faith, and immoral lives that failed to abide by the Ten Commandments of God. It represented the final opportunity to purify oneself and accept God’s mercy before the end of time: “Do you not fear the example of the wicked? … And in the presence of the whole world on the Day of Judgment, Reuelabuntur pudenda tua. Do you think your vice is secret? All will be revealed”73.

Le Picart does not hesitate, moreover, to strive to propagate conflict. He states, for example: “The good and the life of man consist in the victory he achieves over the enemy; if he is defeated, he is captive … If I have victory, I shall be crowned, and the outcome will be to live eternally with God … This is no small matter, no children’s game. In this conflict, it is a question of eternal life, either to win it or to lose it”74. He does not hesitate either to stimulate all kinds of violence against heretics, whether through descriptions of brutal biblical theaters: “Mattathias saw a Jew who was offering incense to an idol, he took his sword and killed him. […] And Phinehas also saw a Jew who was consorting with a Midianite woman, and he pierced them both through, which pleased God; this is to avenge God and seek His honor. This is to avenge God”75, Or through “incitements” to burn heretics alive, as defined in the edicts of pacification,76 directed explicitly against heretics: “The heretic who does not recant is to be burned”77, Or again: “The obstinate heretic, damned to all the devils, is nonetheless to be punished and burned; his correction serves as an example”78. It is, without doubt, a war for God: “Let us then arm ourselves against him in order to fight well, and let us take courage”79.

5. The Reception of the Preaching

From imagination to the act of violence, there remained but a single step, which, unfortunately, was quickly taken. This is attested by a ruling of the Parlement of Paris noted by James Farge in a major editorial work published in 2015. The ruling of 26 March 1547 informs us that a certain Jean Thouzeau was killed near the church of St-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie by “several people of the populace” because, during Le Picart’s preaching, he had uttered words against the Virgin Mary. Following this, the Parlement ordered an inquiry not only into the life of the man who had been killed but also into those who had slain him (Farge 2015).

We cannot find much records on his impacts on the populace violences for the studies of the direct social receptions; however, the eulogy of François Le Picart written by the priest Artus Désiré itself demonstrates Le Picart’s influence on the population, the ones who read his sermons. He sings of the preacher’s sanctity and describes his funeral, which was attended by more than 20,000 Parisians in “tears” and “sorrow” (Désiré 1557). The biography of Hilarion de Coste revealed that three or four hours after his death, Le Picart was laid out, his face uncovered and his hands clasped, in the middle of the courtyard of his residence. A large number of Parisians had flocked there to come and gaze upon him. “And the poor and simple folk, who contemplated his saintly life and doctrine, touched their books and rosaries to his hands” (de Coste 1658).

Artus Désiré, described by Denis Crouzet as the “essential prophet” and a striking pamphleteer before the crises, was identified by F. S. Giese as the author of a series of pamphlets produced between 1545 and 1562 (out of a total of 112 for the period from 1545 to 1587). These pamphlets combined images and texts to reveal to readers the diabolical truth of heresy, expressed through prophetic phrasing and imagery. Assuming a maximum print run of 800 to 1000 copies per edition, this amounts to an impressive range of 60,000 to 70,000 copies for the period preceding the wars80. The early writings of Artus Désiré are symptomatic of an eschatological vision of the present, “he was doubtless the prophet through whom the impulse of violence took hold among the ‘good’ Catholics”.81

In his eulogy of Le Picart, Les regretz et complainctes de Passepartout et Bruitquicourt sur la mémoire renouvellée du trespas en bout de l’an de feu tresnoble et venerable personne Maistre François Picart, docteur en théologie et grand doyen de sainct Germain l’Aucerroys, we can see that the role of the “preacher,” marked by virulence, is emphasized primarily by Artus Désiré: “He preached with such great zeal that through his preaching” (Désiré 1557). If Le Picart were still alive, the number of heretics would be smaller, owing to the power of his sermons: “If you had had your share of his great preachings and holy admonitions, in times of fasting and prayer”82, “Alas, he was indeed among the greatest in sound judgment… that he could not have delivered any sermon without fervent zeal… that in all the sermons he gave”83.

For Artus Désiré, Le Picart is “in horror of the schismatics”84. In fact, Artus Désiré transforms his eulogy into a fervent and vehement anti-heretical pamphlet, sustained by an expression of anxiety for salvation and by a powerful denunciation of sin. He emphasizes that Le Picart delivered a message of total efficacy, one that continued to have performative force even after his death. For he left behind a kind of meaningful key that could only make the clergy’s engagement against the Reformers a victorious struggle. What he said still holds true for the present, and the same effect must necessarily be produced as when he preached: “For his time passed so well in the ecclesiastical estate that there is no lecherous heretic who could have said (unless he lies) that he did not live honorably”85. It should be noted that here the issue is less about the duty to kill than about the duty to convert those who have renounced their faith.

The invectives of Artus Désiré are filled with sarcasm and formulated in the second person singular, which allows us to grasp the manner in which Le Picart spoke in his sermons. It is interesting to note that Désiré seems to seek to bring the preacher’s words back to life, reproducing or parodying them in an appeal to the heretics to emerge from their blindness: “Weep then, weep all together […] whom death has so greatly saddened, weep until you can weep no more. Where are you now, dissolute people? You wretched ones, you heretical folk, you miserable schismatics who all rejoice in this—weep, boldly, as we do […] it is possible that through preaching he might have taken from you your stubborn obstinacy […] for you will die as Lutherans, in your beds one of these mornings. Weep then, weep, cursed dogs, weep, accursed and reprobate ones.”

Désiré, as a Catholic propagandist claiming Le Picart’s legacy, thus mocks the heretics with a combative aggressiveness: “Those (heretics) who in their filthy mosque make a damned man their prophet; Likewise in your iniquitous temple you make a god of a heretic who has his burial in hell.There is nothing truer than this, but the wicked, corrupted, are in such obstinate error that they will die in this heresy.Let us leave them in their filth and return to this holy man, Who takes his rest and sleeps in heaven, beside his worthy mistress”86. Le Picart is now in heaven, a saint among saints, and his life in service of the Truth has made him the opposite of those who are destined for eternal death. And in this libel and eulogy, where libel blends with eulogy, this war also intertwines with the life of this preacher before the real wars began.

Moreover, Jean Calvin mentions François Le Picart numerous times, and those descriptions demonstrate that he was a figure who could not be ignored. For example, in the Actes du Synode de Trente, avec l’antidote (Engammare and Vial-Bergon 2004), the Reformer, more violently, chose to argue ad hominem and to inveigh against him personally rather than against Le Picart’s discourse itself, which he described as “devoid of brains”: “it is clear that the master is completely devoid of brains, belongs to the class of fanatics, and is little better than a madman” (John Calvin 1958). In the treatise, Des scandales qui empeschent aujourd’hui beaucoup de gens de venir à la pure doctrine de l’Évangile, & en desbauchent d’autres, published in Geneva in 1550, he emphasizes what he identifies as Le Picart’s fanaticism: “Master François Le Picard, doctor of Paris, shouting in his accustomed manner like a man out of his senses, has indeed dared to say that in Geneva all religion is denied”(Jean Calvin 1550).

The preacher’s dominant mode is speech as a cry, and thus an anti-speech—an untamed, completely irresponsible, uncontrollable expression because it comes from a madman. A madman whose influence spreads to those who listen, insofar as they take him for the opposite of what he is, being entirely bewitched by him. Calvin also acknowledges that François Le Picart exercises a certain authority among Catholic followers: “True, he is a brainless and frenzied man; but he is of such reputation among his own that everything he has chirped will be regarded as if an angel had spoken” (ibid).

As for his precedence and innovation in the field of preaching, although further meticulous study is needed, several indications suggest that he was a true pioneer. First of all, the fact that his sermons were chosen to be printed by Nicolas Chesneau during the years of the Wars of Religion is significant, considering that Le Picart had already died in 1556. Nicolas Chesneau, a successful printer active in the 1560s, as Luc Racaut has shown, developed the in-octavo format in response to public demand—reflecting the anxiety and thirst for information among literate laypeople during those turbulent years (Racaut 2009). In particular, their concern for religious debates coincided with what Andrew Pettegree has called the “pamphlet moment” (Pettegree 2005). Chesneau thus emerged as an active participant in the transformation of the print market.

Furthermore, Chesneau jumped into the battle against Queen Catherine Medeci’s policy of conciliation with the parlement of Paris87 and with the University of Sorbonne, as the publication of the sermons of the doctor of Faculty—François Le Picart. After the Edict of January 1562, regulation of the book trade was established at a time when there was still consensus between the Crown and the Church regarding censorship of Protestant authors. However, the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris had been granted the authority to issue permissions for religious books, while the parlement of Paris controlled commercial privileges—thus holding effective control over the printing industry—so they were slow to censor books and preachers that defended the Catholic cause in the face of royal opposition. Not only in 1562, but throughout the subsequent Edicts of Pacification, the University of Paris and parlement of Paris consistently opposed royal efforts at reconciliation. This situation allowed printers such as Chesneau to publish authors who explicitly attacked royal conciliation policies and continued to denigrate Protestant adversaries throughout the Wars of Religion88. We can see the publication of François Le Picart’s sermons by Chesneau during of 1561 and 1562, as recorded in the USTC—for example, Advent à Carême (1562) and Pasques à Trinité (1561, 1562). The favorable reception of Chesneau’s pamphlets in the capital, the anti-protestant ambition of printers, and the protection offered by the “conservative party” (the University of Paris and the Parlement of Paris) all contributed to the repeated reprinting of Le Picart’s sermons. Combined with the interruption of sermon printing after 1533, as noted by Larissa Taylor (Taylor 1992), these factors help us hypothesize the considerable success of François Le Picart’s sermons. As is also shown in a letter from Pierre Siderander to Jacques Bédrot, dated 28 March 1533, he defended a position favorable to the king by criticizing the preacher who had attacked King Francis I and his sister, Marguerite of Navarre, for their presumed sympathy toward the Reformation: “Le Picart and others, who are held in high esteem here… attack and insult the king in their preaching… confident in the authority of the Sorbonne.” (Herminjard 1866–1897, p. 54).

François Le Picart was among the first preachers to articulate a violent, eschatological form of anti-Protestant propaganda. By 1533–1534, he was highly active in the struggle against Protestantism. During this period, he was exiled by Francis I together with one of the earliest ultra-catholiques, Noël Bédier, the dean of the Faculty of Theology of Paris. His sermons are compared to the sermons of the first-generation preachers, like the predications of Claude de Longwy, who insisted in 1528 before the Lyon Council on the reform of both the clergy and the laity and on a collective effort aimed at “restoring discipline, ritual, and morals” as the best means to respond to the heretics89. And preachers like Guillaume Pépin, who realized the serious situation of the heresies, as seen in his sermon published in 1518, “De destructione vici Lutherianorum, I, hereticorum civitatis Ninive” (On the Destruction of the Lutheran Quarter, I, of the Heretical City of Nineveh), deal entirely with heretics, brimming with commonplaces. Nevertheless, he also spared no effort to curb the propagation of heresy. He argues that heretics can only lead many good Catholics astray when they mix within the community of the faithful, and that the only results can be wars, discord, and other dissensions. He considers bishops and parish priests as the first line of defense. He preached against heretics early in the Reformation period. Among all of Pépin’s printed sermons, according to Larissa Taylor, his ideas on heresy were never as developed as in his discourse on the destruction of Nineveh90. And for Thomas Illyricus, in another sermon dated 1522, he mentions “a small book on the power of the Sovereign Pontiff”. He states that he prefers to clearly teach the Truth rather than present the viewpoints of the heretics and spread them directly, all without ever mentioning Luther91.

As we have seen, those by Picart focus much more on dissenters of the faith, whom he calls Lutherans or heretics. He discusses all the controversies, including vital issues. For example, the motif of the Holy Sacrament is debated in almost every one of his sermons. The anti-heretical struggle was, without a doubt, the primary concern for François Le Picart, against the backdrop of the period from 1533 to 1556, when the climate became tense. We follow Taylor in her argument: “Heresy is one of the main themes in this lengthy sermon collection, and there is hardly one sermon in which the problem is not addressed”92. Critiquing the themes proposed by the heretics was a matter of urgency for him. It was necessary to respond to the distorted Protestant interpretations of the Bible without delay, as allowing these interpretations to flourish was to profane the glory of God and to expose the people to divine justice: “by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and by their cunning to deceitfully seduce”93. It is necessary to respond with purer teachings: “We must be firmer and more steadfast in the observance and maintenance of our ancient religion, without letting ourselves be shaken”94. Moreover, orthodoxy was formed progressively through the struggles between the Faculty of Theology and the Lutherans or those sympathetic to Lutheranism, as well as with the humanists, and it must be noted that Le Picart was one of the theologians who signed the 25 Articles of Faith in the year of 153495.

However, the study of Le Picart’s influence on subsequent preachers, especially the priests of the Leagues, still calls for a broader comparative inquiry into rhetorical forms and theological emphases. Nonetheless, this militant and eschatological orientation appeared in many of the later sermons of major Catholic orators, as in the sermons of Simon Vigor, where eschatology was expressed with striking clarity: “And in truth, there is nothing that should more strongly deter us from sin than the thought that we must die, and after death be presented before God to be judged strictly” (Vigor 1588). Similarly, in the fervent words of the Leaguer Feuardent—who disseminated an apocalyptic eschatology during the wars, especially from 1588 onward, when the terrible news from Blois reached Paris—the faithful were urged to remain steadfast, being “ardent, devout, fervently zealous for the honor of God, and fruitful in thought” (Pithou 1998–2000, p. 955).

6. Conclusions: The Prophetic Voice at the Threshold of the End

Before the Wars of Religion, François Le Picart presented himself as a prophet announcing the future of the “Most Christian Kingdom”, which he believed to be gravely shaken by Lutheranism—a sign, in his view, of the approaching end of time for all Christendom. In this guilty sixteenth century, according to millenarian prophecies, the emergence of Lutheranism marked the climax of an apocalyptic struggle whose root cause lay in the internalized sin of the Catholic community.

Faith, therefore, had to be rebuilt and reaffirmed; the faithful needed better instruction—an effort embodied in Le Picart’s harangues on the knowledge of God, the love of God, and, by contrast, the vulnerability of humankind when confronted with divine greatness. To help his audience better grasp the contemporary situation, he evoked the degradation of morality, the appearance of heresy, the deluge, the catastrophes, and the holy wars. Humanity, he declared, lives in the imminence of the end times; biblical scenes are being reenacted before their eyes; and repentance must come first, for the cause of all these calamities lies in humanity’s own sins. Then, the faithful must endure the torments and trials that God sends as opportunities for confession and purification; finally, the violence directed against heretics becomes, in his preaching, the ultimate form of purification for the Christian kingdom—a vital combat in this apocalyptic and chaotic world.

Thus, François Le Picart emerges as a forerunner among the “prophets” who propagated anti-Protestant violence before the French Wars of Religion. He emphasized an eschatological culture, attacked heretics from the earliest years of the Reformation, and encouraged both imagined and physical violence against them. His zealous and vehement rhetoric deeply influenced his contemporaries, maybe even up to the years of the Catholic League, when the propaganda of holy wars found its full resonance in that turbulent period of French history.