Week 2 – Reading Notes
Trohler, Daniel. “The Lasting Legacy of the European Reformation of the 16th Century: Protestant
Foundations of Modern Educational Reasoning.” Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 42. No2.
(2021): 258-276.
1. Author’s Credentials: Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Vienna;
specializes in the history and historiography of education and the cultural construction of
education
2. Research Questions:
a. How did the ideas of the Protestant Reformers regarding social and political order affect
later developments in education?
b. In what ways did religious ideas become assimilated in Western culture after the
Reformation, and how did they manifest themselves in the area of education?
3. Methodology: This is a work of intellectual and religious history that focuses on education.
4. Key Conclusions:
a. Elements of the primary 20th century models in education can be directly connected to
three Protestant denominations formed in 16th and 17th century Europe
b. “Basic religious orientations have been handed down by no longer depend on the church
at all.” (259) – Religious ideas were so ingrained in the culture that they existed on their
own.
c. In educational ideas, religious ideas dominate although they are not openly expressed as
such. They are central to modern educational theory.
d. As Protestantism transformed in the mid-seventeenth century, so too did ideas about
social and political organization. Theses ideas left indelible marks on the ways in which
the three main faith traditions (Lutheranism, Congregational Calvinism influenced by
Zwingli, and Presbyterian Calvinism) viewed everything, including education.
5. Evidence:
a. C. Wolff, Theologia Naturalis, Medodo Scientifica Pertractata: Pars Prior (1739)
b. J.J. Winclelmann, Reflections of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks: With
Instructions for the Connoisseur, and an Essay on Grace in Works of Art (1755)
c. N. Webster, The American Spelling Book: Containing the Rudiments of the English
Language for Use of Schools in the United States (1809)
d. N. Webster, “On the Education of Youth in America” (1790)
e. S.V. Pufendorf De Jure Naturae Et Gentium (1672)
f. J. Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books (1667)
g. J. Milton, Paradise Regained: A Poem in IV Books (1671)
h. Multiple secondary and edited sources
6. How does this book or article differ from established interpretations or how does the author bring
new ways of understanding the topic?
a. The institutional secularization of the West following the Enlightenment did not extend
to culture or to education
b. Part of the Cambridge school of intellectual history
c. Instead of seeing religion as increasingly marginalized as secularization took hold,
Trohler sees religious ideas being utilized and assimilated over time in ways that were
both visible and invisible
Witte, Jr., John. “Rights, Resistance, and Revolution in the Western Tradition: Early Protestant
Foundations.” Law and History Review, Vol. 26. No. 3 (Fall, 2008): 545-570.
1. Author’s Credentials: Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the
Study of Law and Religion at Emory University; author of The Reformation of Rights: Law,
Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism
2. Research Questions:
a. How did “rights talk” develop in Protestant traditions before the Enlightenment?
b. How did the followers of John Calvin develop a theory of rights and constitutional theory
that affected later revolutions?
3. Methodology: The article is a work of religious and political history. It explores the ways in
which Calvinist Protestantism developed ideas during the French Wars of Religion that
influenced views on the rights of man and the ways in which the theology influenced views on
government and rebellion.
4. Key Conclusions:
a. Theodore Beza’s Rights of Rulers brought together ideas from the classical and patristic
worlds with Catholic and Protestant writings to form a political philosophy based on the
doctrine of the covenant.
b. Beza’s Rights of Rulers influenced Locke’s Two Treatises of Government
c. The ideas of Beza influenced more than just politics. It shaped ideas of marital ideas of
the husband’s rule over the wife.
d. “Beza made the rights of political subjects not a consequence but a condition of good
government.” (568) If the authority did not govern properly, the people had a right to
rebel.
e. John Calvin was not as militant as his successors. As those who came after him came
under increased oppression, they developed theological rationale for resistance to
authority.
5. Evidence:
a. Theodore Beza, Concerning the Rights of Rulers Over Their Subjects and the Duties of
Subjects toward their Rulers.
b. The Magdeburg Confession
c. Theodore Beza, Lex Dei moralis, ceremonialis et politica (1577)
d. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
6. How does this book or article differ from established interpretations or how does the author bring
new ways of understanding the topic?
a. Connecting Calvinism under Beza and the ways in which he developed the political
philosophy of rights and resistance adds new depth to understanding later revolutionary
movements.
b. Scholars of American history, particularly the American founding, trace the ideas of the
American Revolution to Locke, but generally no further. Connecting the followers of
Calvin creates a deeper thread that links New England Congregationalism and their ideas
of liberty.
Bossy, John. Christianity in the West, 1400-1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
1. Author’s Credentials: educated by the Jesuits and at Cambridge; Professor of History at the
University of York
2. Research Questions:
a. How did individuals experience Christianity during the period identified?
b. How was religion undermined during the period?
c. In what ways did the Reformation change ideas about unity and community?
3. Methodology: This is a work of religious history.
4. Key Conclusions:
a. Traditional Christianity was one centered around the sacraments that brought people
together in ties of kinship and community
b. Shifts during the 16th & 17th centuries made religion more individualistic and defined
more by doctrine than by ritualistic sacraments which resulted in it being less social
c. With the Reformation came a trend toward exclusion rather than inclusion both in
Catholic and Protestant circles
d. The Reformation was not a break from medieval Christianity but a transition for people
5. Evidence:
a. Thomas Walsingham, Gesta abbatum monasterii sanci Albabi
b. Les Entrees royales francaises de 1328 a 1515
c. Secondary sources and edited collections of early sources
6. How does this book or article differ from established interpretations or how does the author bring
new ways of understanding the topic?
a. This work is a study of Christianity itself during the period, not a study of religious
institutions
b. Bossy fails to define orthodoxy in his work. Some critics have said that his work does not
give an overview of Christianity, but provides something that more idealized – he pulled
out and emphasized what he called “essentials” from a period that was highly complex
c. Bossy challenged assumptions that medieval Christianity was burdensome and needed to
be left behind and noted that the Reformation was not the break that it is believed to be
Diefendorf, Barbara. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
1. Author’s Credentials: Educated at UC Berkeley; authored several books on religion in France
during the Reformation period including Beneath the Cross
2. Research Questions:
a. What was the role of women in France during the Catholic Reformation?
b. How did women respond to the religious wars in France during the Catholic
Reformation?
c. How did the institutions founded by women in France during the Catholic Reformation
change the face of religion in France?
3. Methodology: This is a work of religious and social history focused on women.
4. Key Conclusions:
a. Elite women and their concerns were central to an outpouring of religious sentiment that
led to the foundation of at least 48 religious houses for women in Paris
i. There was active participation between women and men, laypeople and clerics in
the changing emphasis on Catholic spirituality from the end of the Wars of
Religion to the Fronde
b. The shift in spirituality from asceticism to active work in teaching and charity was
founded in both an internal dynamic of belief and an external dynamic of the period in
which these women lived.
i. Women used the trauma of the period to turn their piety inward and imitate the
sufferings of Christ first with bodily mortification, but later developing into a
focus on the will rather than the body. This was the evolution from penitence to
charity.
ii. Thus the evolution from penitence to charity was the product of an internal
evolution of spiritual concerns informed by social conditions rather than a
gradual victory of women over church authorities bet on stifling their activities in
the world.
c. Diefendorf is concerned to show the crucial role that women played in determining the
character of the Catholic Reform in France not only through their spiritual proficiency
but also through their active efforts to found religious houses in Paris. If historians have
hitherto viewed women as subordinate Diefendorf argues they have been misled by
contemporary sources that employed a discourse of female obedience even when women
took the initiative.
5. Evidence:
a. Archives de l’Assistance publique
b. Archives du Carmel de Clamart
c. Archives du Carmel de Pontoise
d. Archives Lazaristes, Maison Mere de la Congregation de la Mission
e. Archives Nationales
f. Bibliotheque mazarine
g. Bibliotheque nationale de France
h. Bibliotheque Sainte Genevieve
i. Letters, diaries, and papers of individuals
j. Records of religious houses
6. How does this book or article differ from established interpretations or how does the author bring
new ways of understanding the topic?
a. Changes the focus of the Catholic Reformation from a male-dominated movement to one
in which women played an active and powerful role
b. Shifts the chronology of France’s Catholic Reformation
c. Challenges Bruneau’s thesis – finds nuances in the activities of women in Catholic
Reformation France – she expands the scope of the study to include women before
Bruneau.
d. Diefendorf disagrees with much work on the Catholic Reformation that has portrayed
women and their spiritual impulses as forcefully regulated by men. The differences are
especially apparent regarding enclosure, a requirement for female religious that many
historians have seen as imposed on unwilling women to contain them and their sexuality.
For Diefendorf, by contrast, many women themselves desired strict enclosure as a
protection against worldly concerns and as a religious ideal.
e. Most studies like this have focused on Spain and Italy. Women in France might be a
better study because they had better inheritance rights and wealth than in other counties
and wealth means power.
1. Citation: Beza, Theodore. Concerning the Rights of Rulers Over Their Subjects and the Duty of
Subjects Towards Their Rulers (1574).
2. Key Conclusions: The establishment of a governmental authority constitutes a covenant
relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Both have rights and responsibilities that they are
duty bound to uphold. If that covenant is broken by the ruler, the people have the right to rebel
against the ruler and set up a new authority. The covenant is a three-way agreement between God,
the people and the civil magistrate.
3. Primary sources: Theodore Beza was a successor to John Calvin. In this source, he outlines what
he viewed as the covenantal relationship between the ruler and the ruled. The ideas he expressed
were foundational to later Enlightenment political philosophers.
1. Citation: De Thou, “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day.”
2. Key Conclusions: The source outlines some of the background to the Massacre in relation to the
murder of Coligny and the desecration of his corpse. It names some of the men involved in the
action and recounts the orders under which they acted. It also recounts the response of Coligny to
the threat of death.
3. Primary sources: This is an eyewitness account of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. De
Thou was a stateman and historian who was a young man at the time. The source provides a
perspective on the event that is important for understanding what took place.
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