ABSTRACT
One of the most dramatic and infl uential events of the early stages of Reformation in France-the notorious “Affair of the Placards”—occurred during the night of October 17, 1534. In the city of Paris as well as in other principal centers-including Orleans, Blois, Tours, and Rouenplacards proclaiming “Articles veritables sur les horribles, grandz et importables abuz de la Messe papalle” were posted in highly visible public venues, including the door of the king’s own bedchamber at the Château d’Amboise.1 The putative author of the placard, Antoine de Marcourt, was a member of the French evangelical-humanist avant-garde in the circle of Guillaume Briconnet, otherwise known as the “cercle” or “groupe de Meaux.”2 Members of the circle had lately come to view Martin Luther’s proposals for reform of the church and its teachings with considerable favor. Marcourt’s placard served to focus the reformers’ mounting criticism of traditional religion on the ritual central to the church’s own practice and self-understanding in the form of a direct appeal to popular judgment. In a classic early instance of challenge to the reigning paradigm of “representative publicity,” Marcourt’s appeal to public opinion in his attack on the doctrine of the Mass was interpreted by both the religious and civil establishment not only as a challenge to received church dogma, but also, owing to the provocative manner of its publication, as a direct assault on the authority of the monarchy itself.3 King Francis, the Archbishop of Paris, the doctors of the Sorbonne, and other leading clergy of the realm closed ranks and together mounted a swift and ferocious response aimed at quelling this upstart attempt to sway public opinion over the heads of the establishment. Many of the religious reformers associated with criticism of the church and the traditional teachings were either executed for sedition or driven into exile. Marcourt himself fl ed France along with other leading members of the circle of reformers, including Jean Calvin. In a dramatic and equally public response to the placards, Francis and his court processed solemnly
through the streets of the capital, the ritual purpose of which was to purify the capital from the “pollution” of the placards. Francis himself processed beneath a canopy carried by peers of the realm in the place where onlookers would normally expect to view the Host in a Corpus Christi procession; thereby the establishment underscored the intimate association of monarchical and sacramental “presence” and linked in dramatic fashion the defi nition of representative publicity with fundamental ontological claims.4
