From Meaux to Geneva: a critical examination of evangelical theology in France before Calvin, with particular reference to the homilies called “Epistles and Gospels for the 52 Sundays of the Year” (1525–31)

It is commonly thought that there was no indigenous reforming movement in France during the early phase of the Protestant Reformation and that the growth of the Reformed movement in France from the 1550s onward was essentially due to the vision and theological insights John Calvin and his fellow reformers in French-speaking Switzerland. This view has been recently challenged by new research arguing for the existence of an organised and self-conscious reforming movement in France around the figure of Marguerite de Navarre. In this thesis I argue that this organised reforming movement had not only a coherent reforming program but also benefitted from the distinctive theological insights of the humanist and theologian Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples. Lefèvre’s theological views were clearly evangelical, in the early sixteenth century sense of the word, although they were not as far-reaching as the French reformers exiled in Switzerland would have liked. I argue this through an analysis of a series of homilies and other theological documents published in France in 1520s and 1530s by Lefèvre and his circle of clerics and humanists working together in the diocese of Meaux. I conclude by arguing that this original evangelical theology was motivated not so much by fear or philosophical presuppositions but by a clear strategic choice.