The Calvinist International
I’m reading Alan Jacobs’ recent book The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis. I’m more persuaded by some aspects of it, less so by others, and stimulated by all. I likely will not have time to write up a full review, which would in any case probably be longer than […]
Some time ago, I started a little series on Calvin’s use of classical authors in the Institutes. In the first two parts, we looked at Calvin’s references to Plato and to Vergil and Lucretius. In this installment, we will see what use he makes of the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-AD 17/18). As far as I […]
Continuing an exercise begun the other day… Calvin refers to the Roman poets Vergil and Lucretius exactly once in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in the same passage of 1.5.5, “The Knowledge of God Conspicuous in the Creation, and Continual Government of the World.” The passage begins with a criticism of Aristotle, to which we […]
In a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, Irena Backus notes Martin Luther’s generic versatility in the composition of poetry (pp. 331-2, unfortunately not available in the preview). He was capable of satirical extremes that make many modern readers uncomfortable: for instance, a professor he fired from the University of Wittenberg (“for dedicating his first published […]
Much of what I do on this site is devoted to a kind of ressourcement of what one might call Protestant Christian humanism, though I very rarely use that term here. Such a project involves things I care about deeply and think to be of foundational importance. At the same time, it is critical to remember […]
Like many other poets of the sixteenth century, George Buchanan wrote classicizing Latin paraphrases of the Psalter. Here is his version of Psalm 117: Omnes ubique gentium quos solis ambit orbita, rerum parentis optimi laudes libenter pangite. agnoscite indulgentiam benignius nos in dies foventis, et constantiam promissa certam reddere. In rather wooden English:1 Everyone, everywhere […]
As I’ve noted before, Beza includes tributes to some non-/proto-Protestants in his Icones. One of those is Girolamo Savonarola, a Florentine Dominican friar hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498. After a brief section in prose, Beza appends a verse-eulogy by Marcantonio Flaminio (interestingly; since generally Beza uses his own poems): singularis tuae pietatis…quam […]
This is a brief addendum to yesterday’s post on David Chytraeus’ comments on Exodus 1. I post it because it demonstrates the kind of humanism and concern for the artes that used to be present among theologians. The fourth locus treated in chapter 1, Chytraeus says, is the principle “We must obey God rather than men,” and […]
Niels Hemmingsen makes use of the standard division of the law into three uses in the Enchiridion Theologicum (I may return at some point to his discussion more broadly). The first use (usus) he discusses is the usus politicus, the “political” or “civil” use of the law, which consists in “external discipline” (externa disciplina). He notes that his […]
While we’re on the subject of Martin Luther and Classical authors, a comment in which he compares Aesop and Jerome, about whom he expresses a deep ambivalence. This is also from his Tabletalk (no. 445). Ergo nullum doctorem scio, quem aeque oderim, cum tamen ardentissime eum amaverim et legerim. In Aesopo certe plus est eruditionis quam in toto […]