Un théâtre de papier. Images de la controverse religieuse à l'époque moderne

The "Effigies praecipuorum, illustrium, atque praestantium aliquot theologorum", engraved in 1650 by Johann Schwyzer, shows a fictional religious dispute between pioneers of the Reformation such as Luther, Zwingli or Melanchthon and representatives of the Roman Church, whose duplicity is about to be revealed through the Bible. The controversy is played out here on the stage of a "paper theatre", whose actors, scenery props and staging are typical of the rich visual grammar developed by Protestant authors to explain a complex theological discourse and disseminate it widely. This contribution proposes to analyse how an artist like Schwyzer would use iconographic motifs familiar to readers of the time to illustrate the principle of a church guided by God's Word and enlightened by the Holy Spirit.