ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Reformed perceptions of sin and the development of structures for moral cleansing. The analysis, furthermore, draws heavily upon the Calvinist congregations of southern France where the Reformation set deep roots and for which the surviving records are particularly rich. The intense Reformed effort to encourage virtue and punish vice centered squarely on the local church and its consistory. Pastors and elders in Protestant towns and villages throughout the French realm systematically identified and admonished sinners. John Bossy has suggested that the Reformation in both its Protestant and Catholic forms involved a shift in the conceptualization of sin: a growing emphasis upon the Ten Commandments and diminishing attention to the seven deadly sins. The penitential discipline meted out by the consistory had a close association with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The occasion was, after all, a sacral communal meal, which denoted in both real and symbolic manner, the community of believers.
