ABSTRACT
In terms of the periodization of history, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have traditionally been regarded as the opening of the modern era. A major talking point in theological and political thought of late medieval and early modern Europe was the degree of authority inhering in sovereign forces. Catholicism had become indigenous to a French popular culture that had been in process of being assembled preachers taking a major part in its slow construction throughout the medieval centuries. In the sixteenth century, Catholicism continued to embrace and be embraced by popular culture, though its devotional intensity could dwindle, as it seems to have done between c. Yet it rests on the assumption that there existed a single, homogeneous popular culture largely equated with pre-literacy, with play, carnival and pleasure at the mercy of a single elite culture, largely equated with a work ethic, with self-restraint, education and rationality. Popular culture was of course no more monolithic than was elite culture.
