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Title: Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (Renaissance Society of America Reprint Text Series, 14) by Larissa Juliet Taylor ISBN: 0802085571 Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr Pub. Date: 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent book, questionable conclusions
Comment: Soldiers of Christ is an excellent work. It is both interesting and erudite, and even accessible for the non-specialist, which is a treat in a work this strong on the facts. She uses graphs and tables to good effect, the book is clearly broken up with thematic subheadings, and the appendix of preacher's biographies in the back was interesting and turned the names she threw around into recognizable men.
Taylor uses 1,600 sermons from over 20 different preachers covering 100 years of history to paint a very detailed picture of preaching in the middle ages. This includes covering the sermon itself, (theology: Old Testament vs New Testament, use of Patristic Fathers, Medieval Scholastics etc), how the sermons were received, how preachers were received in towns (some were welcomed into town as conquering heroes while others were chased out of town with a pitchfork) and the preachers views on things such as gender equality, the role of the poor etc. She also covers the ideas of heresy and heterodoxy to great effect.

This book only gets four stars however because of what I thought was her "stealth theory" that underlines the work. While it magnificently covers all aspects of preaching at this time, don't let her subtitle or conclusions fool you. The bulk of these sermons are pre-Reformation, and definitely Catholic. This is not what you would otherwise guess from the subtitle or general tenor of this work. Only about 3% of the actual sermons in this book are from Protestant sources. While there are good historical reasons for this paucity (writing something which had a very good chance of getting you immolated was a definite deterrent) she bases her conclusions on what prove to be pre-selected standards. She concludes that the Reformation was begun not by Luther, but much earlier by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, she claims, things weren't really so bad after all, and the Roman Catholic Church was really quite progressive and warm. Unfortunately this begs the $20 million question then. If the late medieval Catholic Church was a vibrant institution well serving the needs of its flock, why was there such a massive and positive response to the reformers?
Unfortunately the answer is not to be found in this otherwise brilliant and elucidating work.