Calvin’s Tormentors: Understanding the Conflicts That Shaped the Reformer

Description

Calvin’s Tormentors offers a unique approach to John Calvin by introducing the individuals and groups who, through their opposition to Calvin’s theology and politics, helped shape the Reformer, his theology, and his historical and religious legacy.

Respected church historian Gary Jenkins details how the polemical struggles that dominated the Reformation characterized Calvin to such a degree that understanding his interlocutors helps us better understand Calvin himself in all his foibles, frailties, brilliance, and candor. Jenkins shows how Calvin had to defend or rethink his theology in light of his tormentors’ challenges. The book reveals Calvin as a subtle thinker whose intellectual life wore the marks of the controversies he endured, giving readers a more nuanced view of Calvin’s life and thought. The book highlights the central theological ideas of the Swiss Reformation and introduces figures and movements often excluded from standard texts, making it an outstanding textbook for courses on Calvin and the Protestant Reformation.

Contents
1. Louis du Tillet and Calvin the Nicodemite: The Fitful Separation
from the Whore of Babyon’s Church
2. Pierre Caroli and Calvin: Arianism, Sabellianism, and the Heretical Farellistae
3. Sadoleto: The Erasmian from Rome
4. Michael Servetus: The Primus Adversarius
5. Sebastian Castellio: Colaboring Admirer to Belligerent Vilifier
6. Calvin and the Enfants de Genève: Flatulence in a Purely Reformed Church
7. François Baudouin: An Odyssey of Werewolves and Brothel Keepers
8. Jerome Bolsec: No Insult or Vicious Defamation Good Enough
9. Jocahim Westphal: Calvin the Reluctant Zuricher
10. The Radicals: Italia as More Trouble Than Iberia
Matteo Gribaldi: The Origin of Later Radicalism
Francisco Stancaro: Turning Calvin into a Tritheist
Giorgio Biandrata: The Tritheist Apostle to the Poles (and Valentino Gentili, His Silas)
Laelius and Faustus Soccinii: Calvin’s Thought Fermenting
Conclusion
Indexes