Abstract: If the word catholique designates “that which belongs to the Roman church” or even “that which only belongs to it”, this restriction was questioned in the sixteenth century. Protestants, denying their Roman adversaries any Catholic legitimacy, appropriated catholicité via a return to the early Church and the etymological value of catholique. The study of literary and administrative texts shows that this term was instrumentalised in the two papiste and huguenot camps of the debate.
