First week - From Monday 19 to Friday 23 May 2014

The Huguenots and the Gueux : The Construction of Reformed Churches and the Politics of the Reformation in France and the Low Countries, 1555-1610

Faculty : Philip Benedict

The growth and political struggles of Reformed churches in France and the Netherlands not only offer numerous points of comparison and contrast ; the links between the Calvinist movements in the two countries may have been closer than recent studies carried out within purely national parameters tend to suggest. Building upon my recent research that suggests the extent to which the early institutional development and political strategies of French churches prefigured key episodes of the Reformation in the Low Countries, this course will examine a series of comparable situations and moments in the history of these two “revolutionary reformations”. We will seek to determine how fruitfully the insights and approaches of each national historiography can illuminate the other, to ascertain the extent of direct connections between the two movements, and to discover whether the early church leaders in either country learned from the experience of the other. Specific questions to be examined may include : How did each movement seek to impose uniformity of practices and doctrines after the “magnificent anarchy” of the early Reformation? What strategies did they pursue to convince the political authorities to grant them tolerance ? How were their first ministers formed, and how did their formation and prior experience shape their political behavior and theological orientation as ministers ? How did the Reformed behave when they found themselves in a position of power ? How did they recover and regroup from disaster ? How did they adjust to the difficult realization that they would not ultimately be able to impose Reformed doctrine and discipline on the entire population ?

Note : This will be Prof. Benedict’s last course prior to retirement.

Schedule

1. Lecture - The initial construction of the churches and their strategies for gaining legal recognition.
Seminar - Discussion of selected documents of the two churches, notably their confessions of faith and petitions to figures of authority.

2. Lecture - The first generation of ministers.
Seminar - Discussion of the biography and careers of a variety of individual ministers ; analysis of a large data base concerning the initial French ministers.

3. Lecture - The Reformed in positions of power.
Seminar - Discussion of selected documents revealing the changes implemented in the organization of church-state relations in towns and regions where the Reformed gained the upper hand.

4. Lecture - Recovering from disaster.
Seminar - Discussion of selected documents revealing the regrouping and reorganization of the two movements after the collapse of the Wonderyear in the Netherlands in 1566 and the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre in France in 1572.

5. Lecture - Adapting to reality.
Seminar - Discussion of selected documents revealing how each movement adapted to the recognition that it would not ultimately be able to impose its doctrine and discipline on the entire population and/or the character of the relations established between ministers, magistrates and princes in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

General conclusions

Second week - From Monday 26 to Friday 30 May 2014

Pagan Antiquity in the Early Modern Era. Religion, Philosophy and History

Faculty : Irena Backus and Maria-Cristina Pitassi

Late Middle Ages tended to adapt pagan thought and literature to the Christian framework, the classic examples here being Aquinas’ integration of Aristotle into theology and the work Ovide moralisé compiled by an anonymous author in the 14th century. This “inclusive” approach underwent changes in the Renaissance whose goal was to return to ancient sources and to discredit scholastic thought. This led inevitably to a rediscovery of new aspects of paganism , which served to diversify and put in a different light the relationship between pagan and Christian religions. Ancient paganism thus functioned in the 16th and 17th centuries as a gauge of different conceptions that Christian culture (in all its facets) had of its own identity and of the history and religion of “the other”. The problems and questions to do with the origins of ancient religions, the relationship between the Greek and Roman Pantheon and biblical (especially Old Testament) tradition as well as questions relating to the value of pagan philosophy and ethics posed a challenge to the concept of truth which could be either “inclusive” or “exclusive”. These questions and problems brought in their wake a reevaluation of “idolatry” which appealed to theological, sociological and psychological criteria. These naturally could be and were eventually also applied to Christianity. This is why different interpretations of pagan thought and religion which were elaborated in the period stretching from Renaissance humanism to the early Enlightenment tell us as much about the images of pagan Antiquity constructed by early modern thinkers as they do about these thinkers’ understanding of themselves, their religion and their tradition. Paganism during that period was the subject of historical and linguistic research but it also fed interconfessional controversy as both Protestants and Catholics tended to view the adversary as a repository of remnants or a revival of Ancient errors.

The aim of this course is to examine chronologically from a triple standpoint the relationship between the Christian tradition and pagan thought and religion from the Renaissance to the early 18th century.

1. Hermeneutical standpoint (how did early modernity understand Greek and Roman religion ? How did it situate itself in relation to ancient rituals and beliefs ? How did it relate truth to antiquity ?)
2. Historical standpoint (when and how did the interest in Greek and Roman gods arise ? What were the genealogies proposed ? How did enquiries motivated by apologetic or scholarly interest prepare the ground for history of religions ? ).
3. Moral standpoint (once the mediaeval absorption of the pagan in the Christian ceases to be the common practice, what is the importance of ethical values of the ancient world ? Can the ancient conceptions of virtue prove useful to Christianity ?).

Schedule

1. Lecture - Ancient and Christian wisdom in the Renaissance. From Ficino’s Theologia platonica to Erasmus’ “Saint Socrates” - by Irena Backus.
Seminar - Reading and analysis of related texts.

2. Lecture - Genealogy and analogy. Pagan gods viewed from different perspectives : between Apologetics and History. - by Maria-Cristina Pitassi.
Seminar - Reading and analysis of related texts.

3. Lecture - 17th century theories of idolatry - by Maria-Cristina Pitassi.
Seminar - reading and analysis of related texts.

4. Lecture - “Everyone is someone’s pagan”. Paganism and confessional polemics in the 16th and 17th century - by Irena Backus and Maria-Cristina Pitassi.
Seminar - Reading and analysis of related texts.

5. Lecture - Ancient pagan philosophy and morality : 17th century uses of the ethical model of Aristotle and other ancient philosophers - by Irena Backus.
Seminar - Reading and analysis of related texts.

General conclusions