1st Edition
The Construction of Reformed Identity in Jean Crespin's Livre des Martyrs All The True Christians
Between 1554 and 1570, the Genevan printer Jean Crespin compiled seven French-language editions of his martyrology. In The Construction of Reformed Identity in Jean Crespin’s Livre des Martyrs, Jameson Tucker explores how this martyrology helped to shape a distinct Reformed identity for its Protestant readership, with a particular interest in the stranger groups that Crespin included within his Livre des Martyrs.
By comparing each edition of the Livre des Martyrs, this book examines Crespin’s editorial processes and considers the impact that he intended his work to have on his readers. Through this, it provides a window into the Reformed Church and its members during the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion. This is the first volume to comparatively study all seven French-language editions of Crespin’s Livre des Martyrs and will be essential reading for all scholars of the Reformation and early modern France.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Hussites and Protestant History
Chapter 2: 'What little true light they had’: The Vaudois in history and martyrology
Chapter 3: The Alpine Vaudois in the 1550s and 1560s
Chapter 4: ‘Luther n’est point mort pour moy’: Crespin and Lutheran Martyrs
Chapter 5: The German Peasants' War
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Jameson Tucker is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Plymouth. His previous publications include 'From Fire to Iron: Martyrs and Massacre victims in Genevan martyrology' in Dying, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Early Modern Europe, edited by Liz Tingle and Jonathan Willis (2015).
'Tucker provides us with important insights into the composition and purpose of Crespin's martyrology. Analyzing a range of editions, he shows how the sufferings of past heretics were re-crafted to bolster the Reformed cause as well as to indicate its antecedents. It provides a valuable contribution towards understanding how faiths responded to persecution in the early modern period.'
Andrew Spicer, Oxford Brookes University, UK
