“La Bible et la réforme/Réforme”; presentation by Margriet Hoogvliet, 35th Romanistentag

“La Bible et la réforme/Réforme”

Sektion 4: 73 Konfessionsdynamiken in den romanischen Literaturen der Frühen Neuzeit/ Dynamiques confessionnelles dans les littératures romanes de la première modernité

DYNAMIK – BEGEGNUNG – MIGRATION, 35th Romanistentag, Universität Zürich, Switzerland (08-12 October 2017)

English summary:
Shared religious reading practices and confessionally undefined French Bible translations in the early sixteenth century

After 1520 the theologians of the Sorbonne sharply condemned new French translations of the Bible and they were highly suspicious of religious books in French. In line with their ideas, several town councils decided to confiscate religious books in French. On the other side of the confessional divide, the followers of l’Évangélisme and later the Protestants were actively promoting active reading practices of the French Bible translation an indispensable element of lay religiosity. Modern research has often taken the confessional polarization at face value and has generally accepted a simple binary division with regard to religious reading practices by lay people, with specific and clearly distinguishable Roman Catholic and Protestant reading cultures. In my paper I will challenge this idea by discussing textual, codicological, and archival evidence showing that several French Bibles, bible-based texts and other religious texts were read by both Roman Catholic and Protestant lay people. The theologians of the Sorbonne did not target all religious texts in the vernacular, and, surprisingly, some of them were printed and sold in Paris without any hindrance. In spite of the polarizing disputes, lay people from Roman Catholic and Protestants backgrounds shared in many aspects a very similar religious reading culture. Moreover, and confirming Thierry Wanegffelen’s book Ni Rome, ni Genève (1997) many lay people were highly interested in the religious debates of their times and they did not always made a clear confessional choice.

Programme du colloque Dynamiques confessionnelles 170911


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Margriet Hoogvliet (November 1, 2017). “La Bible et la réforme/Réforme”; presentation by Margriet Hoogvliet, 35th Romanistentag. Cities of Readers. Retrieved November 16, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/taoh


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