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COMMUNITY EVENTS
Friday, November 20, 2009
JOHN CALVIN AND SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO:
TWO VISIONS OF REFORMED FRANCE |
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PROFESSOR BRUCE GORDON
Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale Divinity School
Author of Calvin (Yale
University Press, 2009) |
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ABOUT THE LECTURE
Of all John Calvin's many opponents, arguably the one he feared
most was the Savoyard humanist Sebastian Castellio. They had
briefly been friends in the early 1540s, but their relationship
turned to enmity when Calvin scorned the man who was his only
real rival when it came to learning. The two men clashed over
Castellio's translations of the Bible into Latin and French,
which the reformer of Geneva thought were horrific in their
paganizing of scripture. When the Spaniard Michael Servetus was
put to death, Castellio produced his work on toleration, which
was aimed directly at Calvin. Until their deaths, only months
apart, these two men were locked in venomous struggle over the
nature of the Christian faith.
What lay behind it, however, was the fate of France and its
Reformation. Calvin and his colleagues in Geneva conceived of
reform in the kingdom in terms of the purification of religion.
The true followers of the Gospel should be prepared to face
exile or martyrdom as the only authentic responses to
persecution. Many Frenchmen and women did not heed that call.
They chose another path, one of conformity to the Catholic
church while harboring Protestant views. This was much more in
line with the teaching of Castellio, who emphasized the
spiritual nature of religion. Calvin's vitriol against Castellio
was all the more fierce because he understood that the
Savoyard's arguments were so persuasive and more attractive. It
was a battle for the soul of French Protestantism.
This lecture will examine the nature of their debate at this
crucial moment in the history of France as the religious wars
commenced. The differences between the two men not only cast
light on the diversity of views within the Reformation, but also
on the emergence of new forms of early-modern thought.
ABOUT BRUCE GORDON
Bruce Gordon is Professor of Reformation History at Yale
Divinity School. He is a recognized leading authority on
late-medieval and early-modern religious history, in particular
the Swiss and German Reformations. His award-winning The
Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002)
marked the first comprehensive study of the subject. In May of
this year his biography of John Calvin appeared with Yale
University Press. His first book, Clerical Reformation and
the Rural Reformation (1992), examined the creation of the
Protestant ministry in Zurich in the sixteenth century. He has
edited books on the development of Protestant historical
writing, (Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth
Century Europe, Ashgate, 1996); on death and dying (The
Place of
the Dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, with
Peter Marshall, Cambridge University Press, 2000); and the Swiss
Reformer Heinrich Bullinger (Architect of Reformation,
with Emidio Campi, Baker, 2004). He currently heads a project on
the Protestant Latin Bible of the sixteenth century funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom.
He is preparing a translation and commentary on
Ludwig Lavater’s De spectris, the principal
sixteenth-century Protestant work on ghosts. He serves on the
editorial board of two monograph series: St. Andrews Studies in
Reformation History (Ashgate), and Zürcher Beiträge zur
Reformationsgeschichte (Theologischer Verlag Zürich).
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Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Institute for
the Study of Religion and Culture, the Group for
Early Modern Studies (GEMS), and the UA Medieval,
Renaissance, and Reformation Committee (UAMARRC).
Noon-1:15 pm, Louise Foucar
Marshall Building, Room 490
Lecture is free and open to the public. |
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SAVE THE DATE • Wednesday, March 24, 2010 |
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PROFESSOR DR. HEINZ SCHILLING
Professor of History, Humboldt
University, Berlin
Winner of the 2002 Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for History
Honorary Doctor of Theology, University of Göttingen, 2009
Two of his most
recent monographs are:
• Early Modern European Civilisation and its
Political and Cultural Dynamics
(Hanover
und London : Brandeis University Press of New
England/Historical Society of Israel, 2008)
•
Konfessionalisierung und
Staatsinteressen. Internationale Beziehungen, 1559-1660 [Confessionalization
and State Interests: International Relations, 1559-1660]
(Paderborn:
Schöningh, 2007)
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