02/07/2026 17:20 - 19:30

HALL: Pola - A206b

Contact: Braghi G.

Chair: Braghi G.

This panel introduces "Epistolae John Calvin", an international project launched by the Stichting Calvin's Reforming Correspondence (calvin-digital.nl) - in collaboration with with the Theologische Universiteit Utrecht, FSCIRE, the Huygens Instituut (KNAW), and Éditions Droz (Geneva) - to deliver a new critical edition of the surviving letters of John Calvin (1509-1564). Approximately 3,200 letters to and from Calvin are extant, in Latin and in French. The project's core aim is to publish, annotate, and historically embed this corpus in hybrid form: as a sequence of printed volumes in the Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia denuo recognita (Droz) - resuming and extending the editorial work that advanced with the publications by Cornelis Augustijn and Frans van Stam - as well as a digital environment designed to support further research. By revisiting the correspondence with contemporary critical standards and by integrating sources and findings that have emerged since the foundational nineteenth-century editorial enterprises (notably the Corpus Reformatorum), "Epistolae John Calvin" treats the reformer's epistolary as a dense documentary interface shedding light on pastoral practice, political theology, ecclesiastical conflict, and transregional information flows (from Geneva to France, the Swiss Confederation, and beyond). This panel invites contributions from Calvin scholars, Reformation historians, and historians of sixteenth-century Christianity engaging with epistles as sources for social and intellectual history, and the role of communication networks in the learned "republic of letters" in the sixteenth century. It will also welcome digital humanities papers, tackling specific topics such as editorial challenges (variants, attribution, transmission), the methodological questions raised by hybrid editions, and the opportunities and risks of moving from monumental print editions to hybrid and data-rich critical infrastructures.