Book Description
This book examines the disputes about the eucharist that were carried out in the popular press in 16th-century France. Elwood's focus is on the way in which power is symbolized in eucharist doctrine, and how representations of power in the context of theological discussion influenced understandings of power in other spheres of life. By concentrating on writings that were accessible to and likely read by a popular lay audience, Elwood seeks to discover what ideas concerning the eucharist were actually conveyed by readers. His central argument is that the Calvinist eucharist theory propounded in the 16th century included a way on construing power and the relation between the sacred and society that contributed in a very significant way to the ideological, social, and political unrest that characterized the Reformation period.
The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the public religious controversies of sixteenth-century France, no subject received more attention or provoked greater passion that the eucharist. In this study of Reformation theologies of the eucharist, Christopher Elwood contends that the doctrine for which French Protestants argued played a pivotal role in the development of Calvinist revolutionary politics. By focusing on the new understandings of signs and symbols purveyed in Protestant writing on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Elwood shows how adherants to the Reformation movement came to interpret the nature of power and the relation between society and the sacred in ways that departed radically from the views of their Catholic neighbors. The clash of religious, social, and political ideals focused in interpretations of the sacrament led eventually to political violence that tore France apart in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The Body Broken will engage scholars and students of Renaissance and Reformation Europe, theologians, social historians, historians of religion, and readers interested in connections between religious ideas and the mobilization of popular movements.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
In a masterpiece of concise exposition, Elwood demonstrates how Calvin's fundamental re-ordering of the sacraments was elaborated and expanded by a tight circle of friends and followers whose writings quickly became normative for French evangelism (Andrew Pettegree is Director, St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute). — Andrew Pettegree
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