Calvin and the Book

The Protestant Reformation has long had the reputation as being a movement of 'the Book', led by reformers like John Calvin who were 'men of the Book'. The essays in this volume reveal many of the underlying complexities of these terms. Building on research and scholarly discussions of recent decades, these authors delve into a variety of topics related to John Calvin and the printed word, ranging from the physical changes in printed texts in the first decades of the Reformation to Calvin's thinking about the relationship of two books - the Bible and his own Institutes - to Christian doctrine. Calvin remains a towering figure in the Protestant Reformation, whose theology and religious views are still often cast as rigid and unchanging. These essays emphasize, in contrast, the evolutions and transitions that were fundamental to Calvin's own participation in the Reformation and to the ways that his leadership influenced developments in Reformed Christianity in the following centuries. The contributors, international experts on the history of Calvin and Reformed Protestantantism and on Calvin's theology, bring a wide variety of historical and theological approaches to bear on the question of Calvin's relationship to the printed word. Taken all together, these essays will push specialists and general readers to rethink standard assumptions about Calvin's influence on Reformed Christianity and, in particular, about the interplay among theology, Reformed discipline, religious education efforts, and the printed word in early modern Europe.

Karen E. Spierling, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History at Denison University, Granville, OH, USA.