ABSTRACT
Sixteenth-century media is marked by the interconnectedness between the written and the oral. Preaching constituted the greatest point of contact between clergy and laity during this period. The style of Catholic polemic is often marked by orality following the criteria that have been identified by Peter Matheson in The Rhetoric of the Reformation: rhythm, repetition, alliteration, antithesis, and parallel. The work of historians of early modern polemic suggests that there was an evolution between the literature of persuasion at the beginning of the Reformation and the emergence of modern 'propaganda' towards the end of the sixteenth century. The Catholic tracts examined here probably belong to an interim hybrid category. Catholic propaganda offers us an inestimable hindsight into the mentality of the first decade of the French Wars of Religion, a sensitive period which can be characterized as 'make or break' for the Reformation.
