Sober, Strict, and Scriptural: Collective Memories of John Calvin, 1800-2000

Calvinism’s influence and reputation have received ample scholarly attention. But how John Calvin himself – his person, character, and deeds – was remembered, commemorated, and memorialized, is a question few historians have addressed. Focussing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this volume aims to open up the subject with chapters on Calvin’s monumentalization in statues and museums, his appearance in novels, children’s books, and travel writing, his iconic function for Hungarian nationalists and Presbyterian missionaries to China, his reputation among Mormons and freethinkers, and his rivalry with Michael Servetus in French Protestant memory. The result is a fresh contribution to the field of religious memory studies and an invitation to further comparative research.

Contributors include: R. Bryan Bademan, Patrick Cabanel, R. Scott Clark, Thomas J. Davis, Stephen S. Francis, Joe B. Fulton, Botond Gaál, Stefan Laube, Johan de Niet, Herman Paul, James Rigney, Michèle Sacquin, Jonathan Seitz, Robert Vosloo, Bart Wallet, and Valentine Zuber.

Johan de Niet, Ph.D. (2006), studied History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His Ph.D. dissertation deals with the the history of the pastoral market in the Netherlands. He published on Dutch cultural and religious history and collective memory.

Herman Paul, Ph.D. (2006), is Assistant Professor of Historical Theory at Leiden University and a research fellow in modern intellectual history at the University of Groningen. His research interests include historiography, philosophy of history, religious history, and memory studies.

Bart Wallet, MA, studied history and Hebrew at the University of Amsterdam and specialized in Jewish and religious history. Presently finishing his Ph.D. thesis on early modern Yiddish historiography, he lectures in Jewish history at the Catholic University Leuven.