Reformations Meeter Center

This  week, join Meeter Center director Karin Maag for a show-and-tell  featuring amazing medals commemorating the Reformation from the Meeter  Center's collection. We are fortunate to have received an extensive set  of medals from a local collector, to add to the medals we already had -  many of these mark significant anniversaries of Calvin's life, but  others, like the ones featured in today's short video, highlight  significant dates or events that helped shape Reformed identity. The  iconography, symbols, and artistic talent together make these medals  truly engaging witnesses to the ongoing significance of the Reformation  well after the sixteenth century.

The video version of this podcast can be watched here: https://youtu.be/08QEBuOTLcU

We heard from Dr. Maximilian Miguel Scholz, assistant professor of History, Florida State University, speaking about his upcoming book, _Strange Brethren: Refugees, Religious Bonds, and Reformation in Frankfurt, 1554-1608_ (University of Virginia Press - release date January 17, 2022).  Following Max's presentation of the main themes of his book, we had responses from Dr. Jesse Spohnholz (Washington State University) and Dr. Mirjam van Veen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), both of whom have published works and ongoing projects on religious refugees in the early modern era. After that, we hed our open forum discussion by Zoom chat.

We were delighted to host another Reformation Conversations Webinar this fall, this time focusing on Dr. Bruce Gordon’s upcoming biography of the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli. The session took place on Thursday, Nov. 4, from 1 PM to 2:30 PM. Bruce Gordon is the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School, where he has served since 2008. His research focuses on the Reformation and its reception, especially in the Swiss lands. In 2009, he published his biography of John Calvin (Yale University Press), one of the best English-language biographies of the Genevan Reformer. Now he has turned his attention to the leading early Reformer of the city of Zurich in his monograph, _Huldrych Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet_, due to be released by Yale University Press on November 30, 2021.

Here is the recording of the final presentation in our summer 2021 webinar series, featuring Martin Klauber.  Dr. Klauber is an Affiliate Professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and our 2019 Emo Van Halsema fellowship recipient.  He began his fellowship with two weeks of study at the Meeter Center in 2019 and returned this year to complete his research.  His presentation is titled “Pierre Allix (1641-1717) Pastor at Charenton: Preparation for the Lord's Supper.” According to Philip Benedict, one of the key areas of Huguenot publications during the seventeenth century were devotional books designed to help prepare believers to partake of the Lord’s Supper. The pastors at the great temple at Charenton which served the Reformed community in Paris were at the forefront of these efforts.  Jean Claude, the famous Charenton pastor at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, also took his turn at this type of devotional literature in 1682 with his _L’examen de soy-mesme pour se bien preparer à la communion_. Claude’s treatise experienced a brief period in the sun for the first two years after its initial publication with seven French and one English edition. His colleague Pierre Allix penned a similar work, _Preparation à la Sainte Cene_. Allix saw his own work go through three editions in French and one in English. This presentation will focus on Allix and his _Preparation à la Sainte Cene_, showing how he contributed to the literature and practice of preparing for the Lord’s Supper for French Protestants. This event will took place on Friday, August 13th.

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Here is our next presentation in our summer webinar series, featuring Max Rogland.  Dr. Rogland is the Senior Minister at Rose Hill Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, and the 2021 recipient of our Emo Van Halsema Fellowship.  His presentation, titled  "Chasing the Wind? Pursuing the Annotations in the 1637 Statenbijbel (Dutch) Translation of Ecclesiastes,"  considers the link between the interpretation of Ecclesiastes and views on the book's authorship in the 16th and 17th centuries, taking the Annotations of the Statenvertaling as a starting point. According to these Annotations, "Many of the Learned are of the opinion, that Salomon wrote this Book in his old age, after that he had for many years together turned away from the right path of true godliness; but was now again converted unto God..." Such remarks not only indicate the existence of other interpretive approaches to the book but could even suggest that some voices were already denying its Solomonic authorship, as became common in later scholarship. In this presentation, Dr. Rogland seeks to clarify the Annotations' intent in their historical context.  Dr. Rogland's talk took place on Thursday, August 5th.

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Here is the next presentation in our summer webinar series, featuring Christine Kooi.  Dr. Kooi is the Lewis C. and Katheryn J. Price Professor of European History at Louisiana State University, and the 2020 recipient of our Friends of the Meeter Center Fellowship.  She will speak about her forthcoming book, _Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620_, which is slated to be published by Cambridge University Press next year.  This project is the first-ever book-length narrative in English of the Reformation in entirety of the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands). An attempt to synthesize more than a half-century's worth of scholarly research on religious change (Protestant and Catholic) in the Netherlands during the sixteenth century, it focuses on the relationship between religion and politics, especially its contribution to the Revolt of the Netherlands against the Habsburgs and the formation of the region's two successor states, the Dutch Republic and the Southern Netherlands.