ABSTRACT
The notion of the idol, the false image, was one way to make sense of deviation; but for others it seemed that every image, every representation, was already a misrepresentation. Already in Louis Richeome's treatise is the play of image and meaning adopted by Jean Bansilion. Richeome was a definitive product of the culture of French Jesuit humanism in the second half of the sixteenth century; educated at the College de Clermont under Juan de Maldonado, in 1586 he went on to teaching and ecclesiastical posts around the country. When L'Idolatrie huguenote was published, Richeome was serving as assistant to the superior general Claudio Acquaviva in Rome; he had conceived the work two years prior, but found little time amid his travels and duties to accomplish it. Richeome's purpose was to establish a narrative of the origins of Calvinism, an aetiology.
