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17 - Refugees

from Part III - Empire and Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2019

R. Ward Holder
Affiliation:
Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire
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Summary

John Calvin may be the most famous Reformation-era refugee.1 Born in northern France, Calvin fled probable persecution in 1534, finally settling in his new home of Geneva in 1541, where he became a towering religious reformer. Historians have treated Calvin not just as a reformer of Geneva but also as a reformer in Geneva, who understood the Reformation as part of a broader international (or perhaps better put, universal) struggle for truth in a battle that went beyond the confines of any civic jurisdiction. During Calvin’s time, Geneva – a city of about 10,000 inhabitants – doubled in size as a result of Reformed Protestant refugees coming from France. As Geneva became known as a welcome asylum for Reformed Protestants fleeing persecution, refugees came from elsewhere as well. As the English exile John Bale living in Geneva wrote of that city, “[I]s it not wonderful that Spaniards, Italians, Scots, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, disagreeing in manners, speech, and apparel … being coupled only with the yoke of Christ, should live so lovingly and friendly … like a spiritual and Christian congregation.”2 Reformed Refugees fled France not just for Geneva, but for Strasbourg, Basel, Metz, Montbéliard, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, English Protestants made temporary homes in Basel, Zurich, Wesel, and other continental cities. Estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 Flemish and Walloon Protestants fled the Low Countries for cities in England and the Holy Roman Empire, including London, Cologne, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. Like Geneva, exile centers like Emden and Wesel doubled in size by the 1560s and 1570s. There is no doubt that these experiences profoundly shaped Calvin and his co-religionists. But how distinctive were those changes? To answer that question, this chapter will summarize the experience of religious expulsion as a mass phenomenon across the long sixteenth century (1490s–1610s).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Suggested Further Readings

Burke, Peter. Exile and Expatriates in the History of Knowledge, 1500–2000. Waltham, MA: Brandais University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, Matthew. Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain. New York: The New Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Janssen, Geert H. The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luu, Lien Bich. Immigrants and the Industries of London, 1500–1700. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.Google Scholar
Oberman, Heiko. John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees. Geneva: Librarie Droz, 2009.Google Scholar
Ray, Jonathan. After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry. New York: New York University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Rodriquez, Mercedes Garcia-Arenal, and Wiegers, Gerard A., eds. The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Spohnholz, Jesse, and Waite, Gary, eds. Exile and Religious Identity, 1500–1800. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014.Google Scholar
Terpstra, Nicholas. Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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