In a treatise published in 1579, the vicar of the parochial church Saint-Eustache, René Benoist, compared the spiritual importance of the meeting of the Franciscan general chapter in Paris variously to a fountain and a trumpet. The effects of such an international gathering of holy men, he said, will be like “many spiritual fountains” that will soak “the field of the church with the revivifying waters of holy doctrine, praiseworthy life and edifying conversation.” The general chapter will be a trumpet that “will excite and encourage captains and soldiers in their combat” against spiritual disease. Supporting the general chapter, he insisted, will show the world that France was not as “ruined, deformed, soiled either in faith or morals as some have falsely and calumnously announced. …”

Benoist's praise of the Franciscans attending their octennial meeting reminds us that, zealotry aside, the political and spiritual influence of the Franciscans during the Wars of Religion owed a great deal to broad ranging support from the ecclesiastical hierarchy of France. Given the traditional rivalry between the mendicant and secular clergy, this support might seem surprising until we take into consideration the particularly contested nature of European spiritual life during the sixteenth century and, equally importantly, the diverse composition of the Catholic Church. At a time of spiritual crisis and European expansion, the French ecclesiastical hierarchy as well as the papacy relied on the mobile preaching ministry of the Franciscans and the other mendicant clergy to assert the spiritual authority of the Church. For the secular clergy of France, the Franciscan ministry provided the perfect counteragent to the missionizing of Calvinist preachers.