ABSTRACT
The history of early modern French religious books is an inherently provocative subject. To a degree the era's many doctrinal controversies aggrandized and aggravated print culture. Highly competitive printers, Catholic and Protestant alike, capitalized - at their own risk and peril - on an age of opinion and polemic. The logistics, rhythms, religious implications and cultural ramifications of this enterprise are now far better understood as the history of the book in Europe has itself become a robust field of scholarly research and publication. One can now catalogue many studies devoted to the catalytic role of printed books in the formation of religious dissent, in the codification of church doctrines, in the sharpening of antagonisms between faiths and sects, and in the genesis of official - especially royal - censorship aimed at the irreverent and subversive.1
