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Shortly after 1479 the French town of Amiens incorporated a group of newcomers: artisan weavers (called sayeteurs) from Arras who probably had had to flee their town after the conquest by the French king Louis XI. These weavers introduced in Amiens a commercially successful industry of woollen cloth mixed with silk, the sayeterie. For the weavers themselves, however, the financing of their production was quite difficult: they had to buy first wool and silk from merchants in the halle and after two weeks of weaving, the prices given for cloth might have dropped considerably. Consequently, most sayeteurs were only very modestly wealthy or actually poor.As David Lee Rosenberg (1978) has shown, a relatively large group of sayeteurs and woolcombers joined the first Protestant community in Amiens during the years c. 1550 to 1565. His study of literacy among them, based on the absence of signatures in legal documents, shows that a large group among the sayeteurs was illiterate, or at least not able to sign a contract (however, this still leaves open the possibility that they did master the skill of reading). The low level of literacy found by Rosenberg contradicts general assumptions about the relation between Protestantism and literacy.A post-mortem inventory made on 26 July 1521 of the estate of the sayeteur Jehan Baillet (Amiens, Archives communales FF 166/13) suggests that at least this sayeteur was able to read and to write and that he was an active participant in religious live at least 30 years before the first Protestant communities appeared in France.The inventory consists of only six pages and it was visibly written on the spot, because the writing is irregular and there are many erasures. This inventory was most likely made as part of a legal procedure for the execution of the will of Jehan Baillet, because piece of clothing in black velvet with silver buttons and a silk belt are described as having been bequeathed to a certain Angneline Baillet (“legate a Angneline Baillet”). Consequenty, it can be inferred that the inventory mainly lists the goods that remained after the execution of Jehan Baillet’s will and that he probably had more possessions that were not mentioned.Jehan Baillet lived in a house surrounded by a small plot of land near the Porte de Beauvais on the southern edge of Amiens. The house counted two rooms and a kitchen downstairs, and three smaller rooms upstairs; the inventory mentions a weaver’s loom in one of the latter rooms. Most of his belongings are of little worth. For instance, most of the bed sheets are made from hemp and these were used and full of holes. The inventory also mentions furniture: chairs, wooden benches, tables, beds, two dressers, and “a little chair to go sermons” (une caielle pour aller au sermon), a strong sign of Jehan Baillet’s engagement in religious life.Jehan Baillet also had several paintings on cloth. The only iconography mentioned in the inventory is religious: an image of Saint Stephen, another sign of Jehan’s religiosity.A small room upstairs is called “escriptoire” and “estude” in the inventory: a place usually used for administration, letter writing, the storage of books, and for reading. The inventory mentions quills (pennes), probably a small container with sand (ung grabeler) used for removing excess ink, and a writing table (ung escriptoire). All this is proof of Jehan Baillet’s writing and reading skills. The inventory also lists a “small book” in this room, unfortunately without specifying its content.Earlier studies of the inventories from Amiens, as Alfred Labarre’s study Le livre dans la vie amiénoise du seizième siècle (1971) never noticed Jehan Baillet’s book and it is to be expected that there are still more books hidden in the thousands of pages with hastily scribbled inventories.For the weaver Jehan Baillet it is certain that he was literate, that he had access to written texts, and that he was participating in religious life, in his home and in places elsewhere in Amiens where sermons were to be heard. He was not motivated to do so by the Reformation, because in 1521 Luther had not yet divided the Church, but his knowledge and literacy might have rendered him receptive to the message of the Reformation.Margriet Hoogvliet