International RefoRC Colloquium Reformed Majorities and Minorities: Confessional Boundaries and Contested Identities Warsaw, 22–24 September 2014 BOOK OF ABSTRACTS International RefoRC colloquium organized by the Committee on the Study of the Reformation in Poland and East-Central Europe, Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw, Poland in cooperation with Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek, Emden, Germany Organizing Committee: Prof. Piotr Wilczek, Dr. Simon Burton, Dr. Michał Choptiany (Warsaw) Prof. Herman Selderhuis (Emden) Contact to the Organizers: reformed.conference.warsaw@gmail.com http://reform.al.uw.edu.pl Official Sponsor Official Media Partner Mihály Balázs (University of Szeged) Aus der Mehrheit in die Minderheit. Der Weg des siebenbürgischen Antitrinitarismus im 16-17. Jahrhundert Die Studie erörtert das Thema auf der Grundlage neuester Forschungsergebnisse. Die minutiösen und auf bislang unbekannten Quellen basierenden Untersuchungen der jüngsten Vergangenheit führten nämlich zu neuen Erkenntnissen bezüglich des siebenbürgischen Antitrinitarismus. Während in den 1960-80er Jahren die doktrinellen Fragen im Mittelpunkt standen, kann nun das Augenmerk darauf gerichtet werden, in welchem Milieu und wie tief die unterschiedlichen Varianten des Antitrinitarismus Wurzeln schlagen konnten. Vor allem kamen durch die Untersuchung von neuen Dokumenten zu Laufbahnen siebenbürgischer Adelsfamilien bemerkenswerte Ergebnisse ans Tageslicht. Auf dieser Grundlage kann festgestellt werden, dass bis Mitte der 1570er Jahre die gebildetsten Vertreter des siebenbürgischen Adels die Förderer des Antitrinitarismus waren. Es kann sogar behauptet werden, dass die Mehrheit von ihnen sogar den radikalsten nonadorantistischen Antitrinitarismus akzeptierten. Ab Anfang der 1580er Jahre änderte sich jedoch die Situation und der immer mehr an Position verlierende Antitrinitarismus geriet selbst innerhalb der ungarischen Bevölkerung Siebenbürgens in Minderheit. In der Studie wird darüber hinaus auf die Frage eingegangen, was für eine Selbstreflexion diesen Vorgang begleitete und wie sich dabei die vielfältigen Formen des Überlebens im ersten Dittel des 17. Jahrhunderts herausbildeten. Jan-Andrea Bernhard-Schmid (Universität Zürich) Die italienische Fremdengemeinde in Pińczów bei Krakau: Wiederentdeckte und unbekannte Schriften aus Zürcher Archiven In Kleinpolen bildeten sich seit den 50er Jahren verschiedene reformatorische Gemeinden, so z.B. in Pińczów, wo sich seit 1559 gar nonkonformistische Ausländer niederlassen konnten: Viele radikale, nonkonformistische Italiener machten von dieser Möglichkeit Gebrauch, so dass sich daselbst eine italienische Fremdengemeinde bildete, die sich in verschiedene religiöse Richtungen spaltete. Verständlich, dass sich Anfang der 60er Jahre verschiedene Synoden mit diesen verschiedenen „Richtungen“ zu befassen hatten, unter anderem in Krakau, Pińczów und Xions (Książ). In dieser Zeit bemühte sich Francesco Lismanini um eine stärkere Anbindung des polnischen Protestantismus an Zürich bzw. die helvetische Richtung der Reformation. Abgesehen von dem regen Briefwechsel Lismaninis mit Vertretern der Zürcher Kirche sandte er verschiedene Dokumente zur Begutachtung nach Zürich, insbesondere auch eine Confessio de Sancta Trinitate contra eos qui ecclesias minoris Poloniae Arrianismi ..., die von verschiedenen polnischen Landsmännern unterschrieben wurde. Letztere als Einblattdruck erschienene Confessio sowie andere die genannte Thematik betreffende, bislang weitgehend unbekannte Handschriften aus Zürcher Archiven können unser bisheriges Wissen über die Richtungsauseinandersetzungen des kleinpolnischen Protestantismus zu Beginn der 60er Jahre wesentlich differenzieren. 1 Dariusz Bryćko (Tolle Lege Institute, Columbia, SC) ‘Greeted by the Spirit of Christian Philanthropy’: William B. Sprague on Behalf of the Nineteenth-Century Polish Exiles in Albany, New York The fall of the November Uprising (1830–1831) brought about massive persecutions and deportations of Polish political activists by tsarist Russia. Immigration was on the rise and around 1834 over two hundred Polish refugees reached the shores of North America; twenty-six of them arrived in Albany, the capitol of New York State. Their presence was quickly noticed by the minister of Second Presbyterian Church, William B. Sprague (1795–1876), who was a prolific historian, biographer, the editor of the Annals of the American Pulpit, and owner of one of the world’s largest collections of autographs (including those of the signatories of the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution, of early modern European Reformers, and supposedly even of St. Augustine). On May 11, 1934, Sprague delivered a moving sermon based on Hebrews 13:3 discussing the nature of charity and urging his congregants to assist these Polish refugees. The sermon gained interest among Albany’s Protestant community, as it was shortly thereafter repeated at the Tuesday evening gathering of the Second Dutch Reformed Congregation, and later was printed and sold. Also, Sprague’s sermon proved to be an effective tool: by the time it was printed, each refugee was granted employment and a place to live. The goal of our essay is to provide the historical backdrop against which Sprague’s sermon is to be interpreted, and to ask broader questions concerning the nature of Polish-Presbyterian connections, especially in light of Jan Łaski’s (1499–1560) earlier contributions to international Presbyterianism. Simon Burton (University of Warsaw) From Minority Discourse to Universal Method: Polish Chapters in the Evolution of Ramism In recent years scholars of Reformed thought have shown renewed interest in Ramism. While earlier scholarship, especially that of Perry Miller, tended to assume an intimate connection between Ramist method and Reformed theology, recent scholarship has argued for a more complex and ambiguous relationship. For Ramism was generally rejected in the heartlands of Reformed theology – due to both its perceived anti-Aristotelianism and its heterodox associations – and became, as Howard Hotson has persuasively argued, a phenomenon of the margins. Yet although a minority discourse it is also clear that Ramist methodologies gained a significant foothold within Reformed thought, and indeed in the Protestant world more widely, for a variety of pragmatic and theological reasons. In this paper I will seek to explore the way in which such pragmatic and theological considerations motivated the adoption of Ramism in minority contexts and fuelled its ongoing transformation. I will do so by focus on two connected case studies. The first concerns Bartholomäus Keckermann, who while a vociferous critic of Ramus became one of the most important and innovative proponents of Ramistic methodology. For as much as Keckermann viewed Ramism itself as woefully inadequate for theological purposes, he discovered it to be an indispensable tool in his efforts to reform the educational system of his native Danzig, and thus revitalise its embattled Reformed community. While Keckermann was attracted to Ramism chiefly – although not wholly – for pragmatic reasons, the same cannot be said for Jan Amos 2 Comenius, the second of our case studies. Although strictly neither Ramist nor Reformed, Comenius, a leader of the Bohemian brethren, had important affinities with both. In particular, the Ramist account of an ordered, objective and exemplaristic universe, which he had been exposed to as a student at the Reformed academy of Herborn, fused easily with his own pansophic vision. In this way Ramism became an important, if implicit, component of his own programme of universal reform – in aspiration, at least, the very antithesis of a minority discourse. From Keckermann to Comenius (via Johann Heinrich Alsted) we can therefore chart the way in which different minority experiences, within the broader Reformed community, shaped the evolution of Ramism and prepared the way for universal reformation. Alessandra Celati (Università di Pisa) A Peculiar Reformed Minority: Italian Protestant Physicians between Religious Propaganda, Inquisition Repression and Freedom of Thought My paper focuses on the reception of the Reformation in the 16th-century Italian medical context. Inquisition trials show that many physicians absorbed Protestant ideas, they were often leaders of reformed groups, and they were significantly active in spreading reformed doctrines and books in Italy. But what was specific to the medical religious dissidence, regarding intellectual elaboration and social practice? To what extent was Italian physicians’ religious non-conformism exposed to the Inquisition repression? And did the medical profession have any kind of impact on the wider horizon of the European Reformation? The minutes of Inquisition trials and physicians’ correspondence with Protestants abroad are the main resources of my study. I am analyzing this subject in my PhD and I would like to present some preliminary results. Acting in a Catholic context, Italian Protestant physicians could only epitomise a reformed minority. However, because of their social role in the community, they were not only able to promote non-Catholic doctrines, but they could also do this in potentially highly receptive environments, such as in hospitals and at deathbeds. This on the one hand exposed the medical community to strict control from the Inquisition, but on the other hand made physicians’ reformed activities particularly pervasive. Moreover, many physicians embraced various forms of non-Catholic ideas, interpreting them on the basis of their intellectual liveliness and as a result of the peculiarity of the Italian religious and political situation. The cases of doctors who ended up sliding out of both the Roman Church’s and the Reformation’s doctrinal boundaries, who then travelled across Europe and stayed in contact with scholars belonging to all sorts of denominations, suggest that they were trying to overcome religious boundaries at the very moment when the different confessions were entrenching themselves in positions of doctrinal rigidity. Thereby they became representative of early modern Europe’s path to freedom of thought. 3 Michał Choptiany (University of Warsaw) Comets, Letters and Confessions: The Culture of Interconfessional Scholarly Dispute in Stanisław Lubieniecki’s Theatrum cometicum Published in Amsterdam between 1667 and 1668, the Theatrum cometicum of Stanislaw Lubieniecki (1623−1675), a Socinian nobleman, astronomer, theologian and historian, is the opus magnum of the Polish theologian and historian, who after the banishment of the Polish Brethren from Poland in 1658 worked in the Netherlands. Lubieniecki managed to collect information and observations on the comets of 1664 and 1665 as well as to gather a great amount of data that documented more than 400 comets that occurred in the period between the biblical flood and 1665. This unprecedented work of an erudite, encyclopaedic Baroque mind still remains a puzzle and lacks critical attention, which it certainly deserves. The first part of the work by Lubieniecki is also a printed monument of the early modern community of scholars, respublica litteraria. In his scholarly and scientific enterprise related to comets Lubieniecki managed to establish a wide network of correspondents such as Johann Ernest de Rautenstein, Giovanni Battista Riccioli SJ, Athanasius Kircher SJ, Henry Oldenburg and Johannes Hevelius. These scholars represented various confessional backgrounds and despite their religious affiliations it seems that they managed to create a dynamic and intense platform for exchange of empirical observations, historical arguments and philosophical and theological speculations, which is documented in the form of hundreds and thousands of letters written to and by Lubieniecki who at that time resided in Hamburg. The existing studies of Lubieniecki’s opus magnum were basically focused on selected portions of the vast corpus of correspondence gathered in the pages of Theatrum, the exchange of letters between Lubieniecki, Hevelius and Oldenburg in particular, and it still deserves further study. The aim of my paper will be twofold: (1) to give a sketch of the general map of Lubieniecki’s network of correspondents and (2) to provide a preliminary analysis of the role of the confessional identity within this network. Gábor Ittzés (Károli Gáspár University, Budapest) From Bullinger to Specker and Garcaeus: The Reformed Origins of the Lutheran Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul in the Sixteenth Century German Lutheran theologians developed a rich body of literature on the immortality of the soul in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Many of those texts were interrelated as later authors drew, often without acknowledgement, on earlier works. I will examine two, relatively early, and arguably also interconnected, texts from that corpus: the Strasbourg preacher Melchior Specker’s Vom Leiblichen Todt (1560) and Johannes Garcaeus, Jr.’s Sterbbüchlein (1573) and suggest that an independent formative influence on both was a sermon from the Swiss Reformed theologian Heinrich Bullinger’s 1557 Decades (Haußbuch). The paper will examine those connections through a careful analysis of the sources, focusing on thematic, structural, and textual affinities between them. Beyond the philological level, the case can serve to explore the fluidity of confessional boundaries and doctrinal ‘cross-fertilisation’ in the age of confessionalisation. 4 Barbara A. Kaminska (University of California, Santa Barbara) Religious Minority between Triumph and Persecution: Frans Hogenberg’s Hedge-preaching outside Antwerp and the Flemish Community in Cologne This paper analyzes a print by Frans Hogenberg, a Lutheran immigrant in Cologne, showing an episode from the history of Antwerp immediately preceding the 1566 Iconoclasm. During the so-called Wonder Year, Spanish rulers of the Low Countries allowed Protestant ministers to preach outside the city walls. As eyewitnesses noted, those sermons attracted thousands of listeners, who for the first time could learn about sectarian doctrines without the threat of persecution. However, the outbreak of the Iconoclastic Fury soon led to the prohibition of the hedge-preaching and forced thousands of dissidents, including Hogenberg, into exile. I propose that his engraving offers a complex approach to recent events in the Netherlands and the situation of the Flemish community in Cologne. In its collective memory, hedgepreaching epitomized a short-lived victory of clandestine Protestant congregations. But, as I argue, Hogenberg’s image is hardly one of triumph: the disturbingly large spatial distance between crowds in the foreground and their hometown in the background, gallows in the very center of the composition and the presence of armed soldiers belie the success of a compromise with Spanish authorities. By depicting a few sermons taking place at the same time, the print further implies divisions within Netherlandish society, which according to written accounts contributed to the later failure of the Revolt. Finally, the engraving belonged to a cycle Scenes of the Religious and Civil Wars from the History of the Netherlands intended to alleviate hostility against immigrants in Cologne – the accompanying German inscription explains that it was simply the errors of the Catholic Church that caused people’s interest in the new teachings. Therefore, rather than visualizing a victory of a confessional minority, the print sought to secure its presence in the adopted homeland, and to encourage selfreflection and reconciliation among the exiles. Gizella Keserű (University of Szeged) The Limits of Brotherly Cooperation. Polish Brethren and Transylvanian Unitarians in the Seventeenth Century An overview of the sensitive changes of attitudes and connections between Polish and Transylvanian Brethren should start from a deep point: the legacy of Dávids dispute with Sozzini. As from early 1590s Nonadorantism was not only not restricted, but by the turn of century was accepted again by most of the ministers and believers in Transylvania. In this light the invitation of Valentin Radecke and his elevation to the episcopate needs to be examined, and much more his work as first minister of the city and bishop. The growth of a pro-Socinian wing in Kolozsvár and the prints born in these discussion and those prints of the Racovian press, which possibly were inspired by this quarrel with their brothers. The year 1638: Ruar refuses to be the most high instance in the dangerous discussion of two parties in Kolozsvár. Which side is in a worse situation after parliaments in both countries put restrictions on them? Growing number of Polish Brethren in the next decades and their influence on the change of the destination of Unitarian grand tours. The early remonstrant turn in Árkosi’s meditations. Resistance to that: official prayer and song books at the end of century still not accepting deep modification of theology, though questions posed to those invited to synods suggest the strong influence of late Socinian and remonstrant 5 thought. Strong signs of future changes are the discussions around a new confession of faith, which will be accepted only in the 18th century. Jakub Koryl (Jagiellonian University, Cracow) Sources of Collectivity: Mythical Groundwork of Early Modern Identities This paper aims at answering the fundamental question of how it happened that within the original oikumene different denominations began to use self-defensive or self-affirmative claims which implied strong negative assertions that isolated one community from another? I will take into consideration two concepts: myth and identity as the driving factors of advocating one’s contribution and refusing to acknowledge the part of other. I will not discuss particular communities. I will give myself up to the overlooked conditions of possibility that provided religious and political collectivities with indispensable groundwork for the possible appearance of the features distinguishing one collectivity from another. It is nothing but myth that allows us to recognize particular and mutually distinctive identities. Myth will be discussed as a necessary condition for the emergence of early modern identities. Myths referred either to persons and places, or were concerned with a given set of values – of which the myth of reformatio was the most recent, yet most recurring during the 16th century. A Historical-semantic examination of the reformatio concept will be undertaken in order to reveal the transition from the notion’s classical and religiously impartial usage to its functioning as a historiosophical myth. As a myth reformatio has become the name of the properly conducted renewal of Christianity, while its substance consisted of inner and outward signs of churches, necessary for collective self-understanding. The proposed paper aims at revealing the chauvinistic motivations of religious collectivities, since the commonly used myth of reformatio had to justify collectivities’ own positive contribution to the renewal of Christianity. One and the same affirmative and descriptive statement was also an expression of exclusive religious property. As a matter of fact that pan-European work on myth was not accompanied by philosophical reconsideration regarding identity, a retrial that would be suitable for the unprecedented needs of collective self. Until the end of the 17 th century identity was still retaining its traditional metaphysical-logical form and consequently had nothing to do with myth as a verbalized set of beliefs. To provide a useful guide for the recognition of a particular community with its distinctive features that enable self-understanding, we need an apperceptive rather than substantial form of identity. For that reason I will discuss relevant passages of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke. Before we discuss the distinctive features that define a particular majority or minority, we first ought to think through how it happened that identity ceased to be a metaphysical issue, and became an imprint of socio-political and religious consciousness. By pointing out historical evidences that support our present theorems (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Socinianism, etc.), the proposed paper makes any future, substantive, and not ideological, discussion on their historical equivalents possible. 6 Borbála Lovas (MTA-ELTE HECE) Catholics or Calvinists? The Target of Enyedi’s Unitarian Sermons in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Transylvania György Enyedi, the third bishop of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania (1592– 1597), was the dominant figure of his age, being a noted classical scholar, translator of Boccaccio and Heliodorus, and teacher of philosophy. The aim of this paper is show how his sermon collection, which aired criticisms against the dominant Catholic minority in Transylvania, was used after his death by his followers against the increasingly powerful and numerous Calvinist Church. These sermons survive in a dozen seventeenth-century handwritten codices in Cluj-Napoca, Târgu Mureș, and Sárospatak. His printed work, the Explicationes, was the first detailed articulation of Unitarian doctrines and a criticism of the Trinity, mentioned his own sermons, and was the target of scholarly theological debates. The manuscripts of his sermon collection, which have long been neglected by scholarship in favour of his printed works, show how Enyedi’s theological ideas and political arguments were adapted for use by preachers in a variety of contexts for the reception of laity. These texts, including what should be said in a discussion about belief and how to act as a faithful Unitarian, is currently being edited for the time in order to provide a clearer picture of interfaith arguments and Enyedi’s role in the Transylvanian reformation. Magdalena Luszczynska (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Inter-Faith Disputation, Christian Hebraism, and a Leadership Campaign: The Multidimensional Character of Marcin Czechowic’s Anti-Jewish Polemics In the formative years of the Arian church (1560s-1590s) the theology, ideology, and group identity of the movement were under constant and heated discussion. An oft-used strategy aimed at legitimising one’s beliefs whilst disparaging the opponent’s views was labelling the latter’s views 'judaising.' Typically, the use of Jewish imagery drew upon lingering stereotypes and did not engage with Judaism in depth. In this respect, Marcin Czechowic’s anti-Jewish polemics: 1575 Jewish Chats and 1581 Odpis Jakoba Zyda, strike us as different. I posit that analysis of Czechowic's rhetoric in Jewish Charts reveals the text's two polemical strata: a traditional, inter-faith disputation with a Jew became a framework for an intra-faith discussion with Czechowic’s Arian opponents. I shall analyse types of polemical moves, the contents of the arguments Czechowic presents, as well as his ostensible rhetorical goals in order to substantiate this claim. In contrast, Odpis makes the Jewish praxis and ideology its central point. Although the rhetorical agenda remains the same – Czechowic promotes his ideology and dismisses the views of Arian 'judaisers' -- his tactic differs. Czechowic resorts to a broad variety of Jewish sources, often accepting them as authoritative and scrutinizes anti-Jewish folk stories and Jewish customs. I argue that although the main source of Czechowic's learning are Latin works of Christian Hebraists, Odpis plays an important role in transmission of knowledge about Jews and Judaism becoming an avant-garde of Christian Hebraism and Ethnography in the milieu of the Polish Brethren. I conclude that presenting his doctrine in the form of an interfaith disputation with a Jew - the ultimate 'other,' conflating the arguments of his Arian opponents with traditional Jewish anti-Christian arguments, whilst claiming deep familiarity with Jewish learning was a conscious political decision of Czechowic, who aimed at unification of the Arian movement and self-promotion as its leader. 7 Marta Małkus (Museum of the Wschowa Land) Katholiken in lutheranischer Stadt. Der Fall Wschowas (Fraustadts) in der frühen Neuzeit Im Laufe des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts kam es zur Entstehung im Stadtraum Wschowas (Fraustadt) – einer Königsstadt, die unmittelbar an der Grenze an Schlesien gelegen war – von künstlerischen Stiftungen in Bezug auf die Aktivitäten katholischer ind lutheranischer Kirche. Vom Jahr 1552, als die Lehre von Martin Luther in die Stadt getroffen hat und die meisten von Bürgerlichen gewonnen hat, können wir über die lutheranische Dominanz auf allen Ebenen des Lebens sagen: im Magistrat, in der Wirtschaft und der Religionsphäre. In den Händen der Lutheraner befanden sich Güter, die bisher den Besitz katholischer Kirche ausmachten: Gotteshäuser, Friedhöfe und Schule. Bis zum Jahr 1732 bildeten die Bürger des lutheranischen Bekenntnisses ausschließlich den Stadtrat. Sie gehörten auch den Behörden der Zünfte an und beherrschten den Handel. In der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts – während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges – wurde die Stadt, wie das ganze großpolnischschlesische Grenzgebiet, zu einem Zufluchtsort für die religiösen Flüchtlinge aus Böhmen, Deutschland und benachbartem Schlesien. “Fraustädtisches Zion” – wie es die Stadt von Samuel Friedrich Lauterbach bezeichnet wurde – macht sich auf der konfessionellen Landkarte Europas erkennbar. Erst in der Zeit der Gegenreformation erfolgte – nicht so einfach in diesen Realien – der Prozeß der Rekatholisierung der Stadt. Er erfolgte dank der Unterstützung des hiesigen Adels, der Bemühungen kirchlicher Hierarchen und der 1629 wieder in die Stadt gezogenen Franziskaner. Davon, dass diese Aktivitäten intensiv und gewissermaßen von außen aufgedrängt waren, zeigt die Tatsache, dass die Stärke katholischer Pfarrgemeinde – trotz des Zurückbekommens von den Katholiken der Pfarrkirche (1604), der Schule (1607) und der Kirche des zu Wschowa (Fraustadt) gehörten Dorfs Przyczyna Górna(Ober Prtschen) (1642) – sehr niedrig war (1663 zählte sie nur 70 Seelen). Das Wiederbekommen der von den Protestanten übernommenen kirchlichen Güter und des Friedhofs und die Missionstätigkeit der Franziskaner hatten keine Massenkonversionen zur Folge. Ein merklicher Aufschwung der katholischen Gemeinde erfolgte erst in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, als die Jesuiten in der Stadt erschienen. Christopher Matthews (Southern California Seminary, San Diego & Al Ándalus Theological Seminary, Sevilla) A Reformed Hiding Place in Sixteenth-Century Seville. The Significance of the Monastery of St. Isidore Monasteries historically preserved the missionary life of the Church during the darkest times of the Middle Ages. A particular monastery in southern Spain served an even greater mission as a hiding place for reformation literature, a secret place of theological reflection for the growing Spanish reformation, as well as the quiet location to begin the first translation of the entire Bible into modern Spanish. From the daring smuggling efforts of Julian Hernandez between Geneva and Seville to the distribution of those materials within the underground reformed church, the monastery served as a hiding place and distribution point in a critical time in Spanish history. All this took place in the very shadow of the headquarters of the Holy Spanish Inquisition in Seville. The monastery also served as the theological crucible for monks such as Antonio del 8 Corro, nephew of an Inquisition council member who supplied him with forbidden books to review and discuss with his fellow monks. This presentation will introduce the participants to the monastery of St. Isidore in its most splendid moments of the Spanish Reformation in Seville (1530 to 1560), select stories of the impact of key Spanish monks such as Dr. Juan Perez de Pineda, Antonio del Corro, and Casiodoro de Reina and their contributions to Bible translation and teaching, including newly translated commentaries written by these men for display. Joanna Partyka (University of Warsaw) English Protestants and Women’s Freedom to Write Scholars who are interested in women’s literacy and their role in the culture of the 16th and 17th century observe that in Britain just then “for the first time significant numbers of women from diverse social ranks were able to read. A small proportion of them also began to write and publish, more than 300 authors producing over 800 first editions” (Nigel Wheale, Writing and Society: Literacy, Print, and Politics in Britain, 1590-1660, p. 110). The aim of the paper is to link up this interesting phenomenon to the Puritan tradition of journal-keeping and to the Quaker movement which was open to women’s preaching. The intimate diary played the important role in selfexamination; the manuals instructing one how to write a spiritual diary (e.g. John Beadle's Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian, 1656), were addressed also to women. Quaker women were obliged to write down their prophetic judgments. It seems that some of these women made use of that concession to write in order to create literature. To prove it I will mention inter alia Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet (both Puritans), Lady Anne Clifford, as well as the oldest known British female diarykeeper Lady Margaret Hoby, and Margaret Fell, the "mother of Quakerism". Paweł Rutkowski (University of Warsaw) Witches, Frogs and Papists: Representing Quakers in Seventeenth-Century England The appearance and spread of George Fox's movement, known as Quakers, in England in the mid-17th century came as a shock to many due to the new religious group's theological uniqueness and social radicalism. The reaction of the Anglican majority (as well as of smaller Protestant sects) was that of confusion, fear and hostility. Contemporary sources reveal several ways of coping with the new adversary that had to be recognized, labelled and, eventually, discredited. The present paper will focus on three well-established strategies that the anti-Quaker texts apparently made extensive use of: a) accusing the Quakers of practising sorcery and witchcraft; b) using dehumanizing bestial metaphors with respect to them; and, last but not least, c) identifying them with Roman Catholics (Papists), the arch-enemy of Protestant polemicists. The three strategies often merged and reinforced one another, thus emphasizing even further the negative image of the Quakers in the English popular mind and justifying their systematic persecution. 9 Maximilian Scholz (Yale University) Reformed Survival in Frankfurt am Main, 1555–1618 Late sixteenth-century Frankfurt am Main presents an ideal setting for an investigation into the history of Reformed minorities in early modern Europe. Between 1555 and 1618, the city played host to three independent, though closely related, congregations of Reformed refugees: one English, one French, and one Dutch. Frankfurt’s city council had given these three Reformed communities permission to live within the city walls, but this legal toleration did not translate into popular tolerance. On the contrary, Frankfurt’s citizenry—which was overwhelmingly Lutheran— campaigned against the Reformed minorities in the city. This paper asks the broad question: How did Reformed refugees navigate Frankfurt’s dangerous cityscape? This larger question is broken down into two smaller parts. Firstly, it is important to discover how the refugees gained admission to Frankfurt in the first place. Secondly, this paper examines specific episodes of conflict between the refugees and the native Frankfurters to learn the nature of these conflicts and ways in which the refugees survived them. This paper uses both civic records and community records to weave a story of refugees living in a state of flux between the two extremes of animosity and acceptance. Their precarious situation forced them to reshape their community structures, which in turn could either ameliorate or exacerbate their fraught relationship to Frankfurt. Oana-Valentina Sorescu-Iudean (Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien & Universität Regensburg) Will-Witnessing and Confessionalization in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: A Study of Last Wills and Testaments from Sibiu (Hermannstadt) The long-standing historiographical tradition which focused on the analysis of last wills and testaments in the medieval and early modern periods has yielded significant findings, which have greatly contributed to the history of the process of confessionalization. Several perspectives have been employed in this approach, privileging for instance the testamentary behavior’s capacity to give insight into testators’ confessional affinities; the transmission and dissemination of wealth and property; attitudes towards death, kinship, and community. Theoretically grounded in the study of confessionalization and joint quantitative and qualitative approaches towards the reconstruction of the early modern social fabric, the present study aims to discuss the practice of witnessing in will-making, in the context of the religious, legal, and political norms governing it. The object of this study will be a corpus of 18th century Transylvanian Saxon last wills from the city archives of Sibiu (Hermannstadt), diverse from both a social and a confessional perspective. While the majority of the German inhabitants of 18 th century Sibiu were formally part of the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession, testamentary behavior from a confessional perspective was still heterogeneous, thus signaling the fact that the process of the implementation of evangelical norms and beliefs was far from over. By conducting a contextualization of the practice of witnessing in the process of will making, we hope to reconstitute some of the social and kinship networks which functioned during the time within the different communities from Sibiu, and to draw 10 attention to the significance of this practice from the perspective of confessional interaction and community self-definition. Felicita Tramontana (Università degli Studi di Palermo) An Unusual Setting: Catholics Meeting Protestants in the Ottoman Middle East Historical research has amply been concerned with the relationships between Catholics and Protestants in Europe. In this framework scholars have been concerned with religious minorities in lands that were ruled by both Catholic and Protestant rulers, but what happened when both Catholics and members of the Reformed Churches were minorities (or foreigners) living under a hostile political ruler? My paper contributes an answer to this question focusing on encounters and interactions between Protestants and Catholics in the Ottoman Middle East. More specifically it explores the encounters between the members of the reformed churches and the Franciscan friars of the Custody of the Holy Land during the 17 th century. These encounters were mostly linked to the tasks performed by the friars in fulfilment of parish duties among the merchants’ colonies in Lebanon and Syria and in hosting visitors from Europe in Jerusalem. They are amply attested by different Franciscan sources: the Navis Peregrinorum (ed. Zimolong, 1938), a register in which the names of all the pilgrims arrived and hosted at the St. Savior monastery of Jerusalem were recorded; the Registro delle conversioni e delle riconciliazioni (Archive of the Custody of the Holy Land, Jerusalem), that attests Protestants’ conversion to Catholicism occurred in all the places in the Eastern Mediterranean where the Franciscans had houses; the Chronicles written in the 17th century (Francesco da Serino, Pietro Verniero da Montepeloso, edited by G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente Francescano, 1903-32 and Juan de Calahorra, Historia Chronologica, 1684). Through the analysis of Franciscan sources and focusing on a few episodes the paper highlights the influence of extra-European space on contacts between Catholics and Protestants. The questions the paper seeks to answer are: under which circumstances did Franciscans and Protestants interact with each other in the Middle East? Was the relationship between Protestants and Catholic monks influenced by the lack of organized Protestant Churches in the 17th century Middle East? Did (and if so in which circumstances) Protestants seek for the assistance (spiritual and material) of the Franciscans? How did being under Muslim rule influence the behavior of Catholic Missionaries toward Protestants, and more generally how did it influence the relationship between Protestants and Catholics? Leon van den Broeke (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) The Walloon Church in the Northern Netherlands: Reformed Minority within the Reformed Majority The Protestant Church in the Netherlands includes fourteen Walloon congregations. After the recall of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 there had been 82 congregations. This makes me curious about the acceptation of the Walloon minority by and its organization within the Reformed majority in the Northern Netherlands (Dutch Reformed Church). In 1578 the Synod of Dordrecht decided that Dutch and Walloon churches were allowed to gather in separate church councils, classis 11 assemblies and particular synods on account of the language difference. The acceptation of the Walloons was not only related to the same Calvinistic doctrine, but also to their social and economic context. As it is the intention of the organizers of the conference to pay attention to issues surrounding the survey and analysis of primary sources, I focus on the Walloon classes. Its French acts give a wonderful insight into the Walloon organization (Cf. Guillaume H.M. Posthumus Meyjes/Hans Bots (ed.), Live des Actes des Eglises Wallones aux Pays-Bas 1601-1697, Den Haag: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Kleinse Serie 101)). In addition, the synodical (Dutch) acts of the Dutch Reformed Church and its church orders reveal the acceptance by and the organization within the Reformed majority. Acceptation and organization go hand in hand, and reveal something about the freedom of religion; at least this seems to be the case for the Walloon minority. Piotr Wilczek (University of Warsaw) The Polish Reception of John Calvin's Works in the Context of the History of Christianity in Poland In my lecture I would like to present Calvin’s contacts with Poland and the reception of his work in the context of the history of Christianity in Poland. I believe that is interesting to discuss the reception of Calvin’s thought in Poland not only during the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, spanning the early modern period, but also in the 19th century, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was under Russian, Prussian, and Austrian partitions and did not exist as a separate state. It is interesting as well to extend this analysis to the 20th and 21st centuries, when the reception of Calvin’s thought took place in a predominantly Roman Catholic country and society with only a very small minority belonging to the Reformed church and other Protestant churches. The topic of this lecture was inspired by an annotated bibliography entitled John Calvin in Poland, compiled by Wiesław Mincer, edited by myself, and published in 2012 as the 3rd volume in a book series The Reformation in Poland and East-Central Europe. It is available now in an electronic format and anyone who is interested can download it for free from the publisher’s website (click on: http://www.sublupa.pl/pl/p/Jan-Kalwin-w-Polsce.-Bibliografia/208, go to: Pliki do pobrania, which means files for download and you will find a file Calvin_in_Poland in epub, mobi and pdf formats). In this bibliography 528 items, published between 1548 and 2012 are included – books, treatises, articles, essays, poems, and book reviews devoted to John Calvin and, at the same time, related to Poland. 12