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

Historians and religious scholars examine how Swiss Reformation leader Calvin (1509-64) was perceived, remembered, represented, constructed, and manipulated by advocates and adversaries over the course of the past two centuries. Among the contexts they explore are 19th-century Catholic France, the reformer and legislator seen by French Protestants, Hungarian religion, a marginalized memory in Germany, missionary memory and Chinese Protestant identity, Calvin as a negative boundary marker in American Lutheran self-identity 1871-1934, his image within Mormonism, and Mark Twain's burlesque of him as The French Barber. Only people are indexed. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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.