Examines the disputes about the eucharist that were carried out in the popular press in 16th-century France. This book focuses on the way in which power is symbolized in eucharistic doctrine, and how representations of power in the context of theological discussion influenced understandings of power in other spheres of life.

In the public religious controversies of sixteenth-century France, no subject received more attention or provoked greater passion that the eucharist. In this study of Reformation theologies of the eucharist, Christopher Elwood contends that the doctrine for which French Protestants argued played a pivotal role in the development of Calvinist revolutionary politics. By focusing on the new understandings of signs and symbols purveyed in Protestant writing on the sacrament of the Lords Supper, Elwood shows how adherents to the Reformation movement came to interpret the nature of power and the relation between society and the sacred in ways that departed radically from the views of their Catholic neighbors. The clash of religious, social, and political ideals focused in interpretations of the sacrament led eventually to political violence that tore France apart in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The central chapters of the book provide an admirably clear exposition of the nuances of Reformed eucharistic teachings ... The book is a valuable addition to the history of sixteenth-century eucharistic theology.