ABSTRACT
The French of the early sixteenth century had a series of contradictory traditions concerning the pope. On the one hand the King of France was the Most Christian King, the eldest son of the Church, boasting a long tradition of supporting and protecting the papacy. This chapter examines that proposition with regard to texts in the vernacular, looking not so much at the arguments used against the pope as at the sort of texts in which they were deployed, how the texts were published and at what groups of readers they appear to have been aimed. In trying to assess these texts it should first be noted that, prior to this episode, writing in Louis's reign exhibits very little criticism of the pope. If this composition is intended as propaganda it seems to be neatly missing both the wider and the narrower audiences that the authors have identified.
