Life Writing in Reformation Europe : Lives of Reformers By Friends, Disciples and Foes (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History)

302 Pages·2008·1.14 MB·English

by  Irena Dorota Backus

Life Writing in Reformation Europe
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Life Writing in
Reformation Europe
Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes
IRENA BACKUS
© Irena Backus 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission
of the publisher.
Irena Backus has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
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Croft Road 101 Cherry Street
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Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Backus, Irena Dorota, 1950–
Life writing in Reformation Europe: lives of reformers by friends, disciples
and foes. – (St Andrews studies in Reformation history) 1. Calvin, Jean,
1509–1564 2. Calvinists – Biography – History and criticism 3. Protestants
– Biography – History and criticism 4. Biography – 16th century 5. Biography
– 17th century 6. Christian biography – Europe
I. Title
284.2’0922
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Backus, Irena Dorota, 1950–
Life writing in Reformation Europe: lives of reformers by friends, disciples
and foes / By Irena Backus.
p. cm.—(St Andrews studies in Reformation history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-6055-2 (alk. paper)
1. Reformation—Biography. 2. Europe—Church history—16th century. 3.
Europe—Church history—17th century. I. Title.
BR307.B33 2007
274’.060922—dc22
2007035129
ISBN 978-0-7546-6055-2
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
Contents
Introduction vii
Biography and Religious Biography: Pagan and Christian Models,
and What Happened to Them in the Reformation Period
1 Luther: Instrument of God or Satan’s Brood. Main 1
Developments in Luther Biography, 1546–81
2 Lives of Chief Swiss Reformers: Hagiographies, Historical 47
Accounts and Exempla
3 Zurich Lives in the Latter Part of the Sixteenth Century 97
4 Early Lives of Calvin and Beza by Friends and Foes 125
5 Post-Masson Views of Calvin: Catholic and Protestant 187
Images of Calvin in the Seventeenth Century, or the Birth
of ‘Calvinography’
Concluding Remarks 229
Bibliography 235
Index 253
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Introduction
Biography and Religious Biography:
Pagan and Christian Models, and
What Happened to Them in the
Reformation Period
Sixteenth-century Lives of the Continental reformers have not been the
object of any serious general study so far.1 Although emanating from
a wide variety of pens, the Lives written between 1533 and the mid-
seventeenth century comprise a coherent and identifiable genre which falls
into two subgenres: Lives of the reformers as restorers of true faith, and
Lives of them as heretics. The latter subgenre was practically unknown
in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and constitutes a specific feature
of literary production of the Reformation period. One of my aims will
be to isolate it and consider its place in religious biographical literature.
The authors of Lives portraying the reformers as restorers of true faith,
who were naturally favourable to the Reformation, could look to ancient
Greek and Roman Lives, such as those written in the imperial era by
Plutarch or Suetonius, and to Lives of the saints. For obvious reasons,
they could not exploit either model to the full. The present work is not
intended to be a general survey, but rather a study of specific issues to do
with Life-writing and more specifically the writing of Lives of reformers
in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. After a brief introduction
to the concepts of biography and religious biography, and a reminder of
1 Swiss and Genevan reformers have been particularly neglected. For modern studies
of Luther’s Lives by Herte and others, see Chapter 1 below. For Genevan reformers, cf. article
by Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard, ‘Une Histoire d’excellenspersonnages’, in Ilona Zinguer
and Myriam Yardeni (eds), Les deux Réformes chrétiennes. Propagande et diffusion (Leiden:
Brill, 2004), pp. 43–59. See also Daniel Ménager, ‘Théodore de Bèze, biographe de Calvin’,
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance,45 (1983): 231–55, and Jean-Robert Armogathe,
‘Les vies de Calvin aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, in Philippe Joutard (ed.), Historiographie de
la Réforme (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1977), pp. 45–59. Armogathe briefly examines
hostile Lives of Calvin, esp. Florimond de Raemond, Bolsec, Papire Masson (the author of
the Vita Calvini later attributed by Maimbourg and others to Jacques Gillot), Richelieu. He
is interested, as he points out, not so much in biography as genre as in religious controversy
carried over to the biographical terrain. He concludes that Calvin’s Catholic adversaries
intended their biographies of him as counter-examples to the Lives of the saints. As for the
Lives of Swiss reformers, we might mention Christian Moser’s critical edition (in progress) of
the Lives of Bullinger by Simler, Lavater and Stucki. I shall be discussing these among other
Swiss Lives in Chapter 2 below.
viii LIFE WRITING IN REFORMATION EUROPE
the genesis of both these genres, I shall examine in the chapters to follow
a representative sample of Lives depicting the reformers as saints and as
heretics, outlining the dependence of these accounts on classical models,
but also stressing their original features that mark them out as product
of their age and circumstances. I shall be interested in the way certain
biographies or biographical details crossed national boundaries and
assumed a European dimension thus generating a lasting image or images
of certain reformers, Luther and Calvin in particular. I shall treat the
Reformation in chronological order, beginning with a selection of Lives of
Luther, then going on to examine the Lives of the major Swiss reformers,
and finally ending with those of the Genevan reformation leaders, Calvin
and Beza. The present work does not claim to exhaust the genre or the
topic of Life-writing in Reformation Europe. Concentrating on selected
Lives of the chief reformers, I shall sketch out their genesis, method and
aims as well as showing context and likely readership where possible.
Focusing on the influence of contemporary or near-contemporary Lives
(both favourable and hostile) on the reception of Reformation, I hope to
demonstrate that the portrayal of an individual was emphatically not the
prime object of most Lives of the reformers, and contemporary historians
should be careful before they treat any of these writings as documentary
evidence about Luther, Calvin or Beza. In this instance, chronological
proximity does not mean greater accuracy, and we should beware of
making statements such as ‘Beza, Calvin’s biographer says …’.
Greek and Roman Biography
The paragraphs that follow do not set out to add anything new to what we
know already about antique biography writing, but are intended to serve as
a general reminder of the nature of the biographical genre and its evolution
in history.2 It is important to remember that biography in Antiquity, and
especially in Greece, was not a clearly defined genre, and that the term
covered types of writing as different from one another as an encomium,
a detailed account of a person’s life or simply a catalogue of deeds of a
great man. Truthfulness did not apply as a criterion, and some antique
biography is frankly fanciful. The impulse to celebrate individuals finds
its earliest expression in the dirge and the funeral oration. Organisation
of literary works around the experiences of an individual goes all the
way back to Homer. Moreover, from the fifth century BC onwards, all
Greek historians tended to insert biographical sketches into accounts of
2 For an excellent succinct account, see C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Biography, Greek and Roman’,
in Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth (eds), The Oxford Companion to Classical
Civilization (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 116–18.
INTRODUCTION ix
wars, and so on. Thus Thucydides included selective sketches of several
figures, notably Pausanias and Themistocles. Biography was not always
serious and not always an expression of respect or reverence, Ion of Chios’
Epidemiai, a book of anecdotes about contemporary figures, being a case
in point. In the fourth century BC, Isocrates published Evagoras, which
was no more than an enumeration of the king of Salamis’ virtues in a loose
chronological framework. In a similar style, Xenophon in his Agesilaus
gave first a catalogue of his hero’s achievements followed by an account
of his virtues. He also developed the personality of Socrates in his Socratic
Memoirs. According to Pelling,3 Aristotle gave biographical writing a
new impetus by awakening interest in social and ethical history. This
furthered a more critical approach to subjects of biographical accounts,
and also the writing of more generalised Lives. Thus a fashion developed
for collections of Lives in series or identifiable socio-cultural groups – for
example Lives of the poets, Lives of philosophers, Lives of military leaders,
a completely separate genre from the encomium. This became the standard
way of presenting intellectual history. It also influenced the presentation
of political history, although the latter had other forms of expression such
as universal history, local chronicles, and so on, which also increasingly
accommodated sketches of individual figures. In about 240 BC, Antigonus
of Carystus displayed a far greater accuracy than had been the practice
hitherto in his Lives of contemporary philosophers. Christian Gospels have
points of contact with the earlier Greek tradition, with their charismatic
hero and their anecdotal structure. A far greater seriousness was to be
displayed by Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and the later Greek and Roman
biographical writings.
Before addressing the later Roman Empire period, a few words need
to be said about early Roman biography and its specific features. Roman
biography was not wholly derived from the Greek. Romans had their own
political and family customs which meant that they found it important to
record the deeds of the great via encomia, funeral laudations, dirges and
sepulchral inscriptions, and to keep the imagines or likenesses of deceased
ancestors. Their competitive quest for glory also led to the cultivation of self-
justificatory and apologetic accounts either in the form of autobiography or
in the form of biography. These accounts benefited from the development
of forensic rhetoric in the late republic period. Thus the death of Cato the
Younger inspired works by Cicero and Brutus which were answered first by
Aulus Hirtius and then by Caesar in his Anticato, which was refuted in turn
by Munatius Rufus. Pelling notes rightly4 that these works represent the
beginning of an important literature, a blend of martyrology and ideological
propaganda, which came to cluster round the Stoic opposition to the first-
3 Ibid., p. 116.
4 Ibid., pp. 117–18.