[Milton-L] attitudes to Calvin

[Erick Ramalho]

Dear Professor Doerksen,
   
   I’ve got some suggestions that might be of some use as regards your first question.Throughout my ongoing research on Milton’s Latin and Greek poems, I have found meaningful viewpoints shared by the poet in ‘In Quintus Novembris’ and Luther in his Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Kirche. The entanglement of both has led me to John Knox, particularly to his ‘The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’. Although (or mostly because) more properly termed a Presbyterian, Knox has promulgated most relevant elements to Calvinism not only in Scotland, but also in England. I believe a glance at his works, not only the aforementioned one, and the critique to it could provide you with wealthy material, alongside e.g. Donne, on early modern receptions to Calvin in the British Isles. 
   
  Regards,
   
  Erick Ramalho
   
  Centre for Shakespearean Studies (Brazil)


HANNIBAL HAMLIN <hamlin.22 at osu.edu> wrote:  This is obviously a huge question, and certainly generally beyond my scope, but I would suggest looking at the prefaces to English translations of Calvin.  Arthur Golding's translations of the Sermons on Job and the Commentaries on the Psalms were extremely popular, but he translated more of Calvin too, and he might provide useful comments.  On the matter of present-day assessments, I've found William Bouwsma's John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait extremely enlightening, especially in the way it connects the theology to Calvin's personal preoccupations, anxieties, and character.
 
Hannibal
 


----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel W. Doerksen" <dwd at unb.ca>
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008 12:59 pm
Subject: [Milton-L] attitudes to Calvin
To: milton-l at richmond.edu, Milton-L <milton-l at richmond.edu>


    > I have two questions for my colleagues in literary and/or historical studies involving England in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. (I am sending this to the Milton, Ficino, and H-Albion lists.]

> According to Andrew Pettegree, a tally of the revised Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, 1475-1640 indicates that English editions of Calvin’s works “easily outstripped all other continental writers, and dwarfed the production of native English theologians.” Pettegree also reports that Leedham-Green’s substantial survey of books recorded in Cambridge wills, carefully analyzed, confirms “the preeminent position of Calvin as the dominant theological influence in Elizabethan England.” He cites Francis Higman’s bibliographical studies showing that England was “far and away the biggest market for Calvin’s work in translation.” The fact that translaters and patrons of Calvin’s works in English included both puritans and people linked with the church establishment suggests that the preeminence of those works depended on Calvin’s “ability to appeal simultaneously to both the Elizabethan establishment and the emerging radical opposition,” thus pointing to what has
 been called the “Calvinist consensus” (Pettegree, “The Reception of Calvinism in Britain,” in Wilhelm H. Neuser, ed. Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor: Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture [Eerdmans 1994],  281-83).

> What I would like to know is: (1) What attitudes (undoubtedly a varying range) did the English have toward Calvin the person and the writer during the period 1558-1640? I am particularly interested in documentable evidence, such as the comments on Calvin I have already found in Hooker’s Laws and in Donne’s Sermons. (2) What attitudes do present-day scholars of literature and religion of that period have toward Calvin the person and the writer? 

> Thank you very much for any help you can give me.   
---------------------------------
  
> Spam
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> Daniel W. Doerksen, Ph.D.,  Honorary Research Professor (English)       
> University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, N.B. Canada  
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Hannibal Hamlin 
Associate Professor of English 
The Ohio State University 
Book Review Editor and Associate Editor, Reformation 

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