Revisiting a controversy dividing Protestants and Catholics in La Rochelle Philippe Vincent’s Sermon contre les danses (1634)

In 1634, the consistory of the Reformed Church of La Rochelle asked Ph. Vincent to publish his preaching against dances. In 1606, J. Boiseul, pastor of Marennes, had printed in La Rochelle a Treatise on dances. Five years after the surrender of La Rochelle, the dance is denounced here as a political instrument aiming at opposing to the catholic morality, a Calvinist morality more in conformity with the social standards and the artistic practices of the king and the nobility.