ABSTRACT
The printed word was read and commented on by ministers and preachers; it was owned and handled by the faithful; it permeated the entire religious life of Protestant communities. For them, the return to the true faith was inseparable from entry into the civilisation of the printed word.'1 This observation strikes a chord with anyone who has worked on sixteenth-century French Calvinism. Books - particularly the French Bible and books of psalms, biblical commentaries and polemic - undoubtedly played a critical role in the building of French Calvinism as a mass movement. But France is a huge land of great contrasts and regional variation, and the fate of the book is one prime example of this. One of the conundrums facing historians of southern France, a region noted for its precocious absorption of the Reformed religion in the sixteenth century, is the near absence of indigenous Protestant printing operations within the region, and the delay in establishing presses in the Huguenot strongholds of the area.2
