CASTELLIO
CORRESPONDENCE PROJECT
Project
The
goal of this website is to produce an
online, open-access, collaborative critical edition of Sebastian Castellio’s
correspondence, starting from this Chronological
List of Castellio’s Correspondence. This process will no doubt take several
years and will be ongoing, but there are many useful tools at our disposal.
First, almost all of the published letters are now in the public domain and
available online. Second, the University Library of Basel, which possesses the
vast majority of the surviving correspondence, has made manuscript images
available online of all of the relevant letters (and many others). Third, the
Rotterdam Library and the Bürgerbibliothek in Bern have generously granted
permission to make images of most of the remaining manuscripts available
online.
Historical Background
Sebastian
Castellio (1515-1563) was one of the most important Christian humanist thinkers
of the sixteenth century and an important early advocate for religious
toleration. He was born in Savoy and undertook humanist studies in Lyon. He
taught for a few years in Geneva, but his conflicts with John Calvin led him to
leave in 1544. From Geneva, he moved to Basel, where he wrote his first works
on religious toleration following the execution of Michael Servetus. Castellio
also clashed with the Calvinists on the subjects of biblical translation and
exegesis, as well as on the doctrine of predestination and a variety of other
issues.
Castellio
had many friends, however, and he carried on an extensive correspondence with
humanists and admirers all over Europe. Unfortunately, the vast majority of his
letters have been lost, but more than two dozen survive, as do more than eighty
addressed to him. A few of these letters are published in the Calvini Opera, and his biographer
Ferdinand Buisson published many more, but some letters remain unpublished in
modern editions, and Buisson published some letters only in excerpts. No
critical edition of Castellio’s correspondence has yet been published.
How Can You Participate?
This
project depends on the cooperation of the academic community, including
graduate students, professors, and independent researchers. If you would like
to participate, please email your name,
affiliation, and research interests, so that editing instructions and further
information can be made available to you. Contributors will be acknowledged on
this page, roughly in order of the combined quantity and quality of their
contributions to the project. This project will involve three main phases:
1.
Obtain
accurate transcriptions of all the letters (current project phase)
2. Annotate the letters with historical and
theological notes
3. Translate the letters into English (and
other languages if there is interest).
Even
before the letters have been critically annotated, this site can be useful for
researchers. Available right now is a Chronological
List of Castellio’s Correspondence, which links to individual pages for
each letter and has a link to a spreadsheet of the correspondence, which can be
uploaded into Palladio or other network mapping program. Each letter page
presents information about the letter, as well as links to published versions
in the public domain and available manuscript images. There is also a Bibliography
and List of Abbrevations, with links to public domain versions of almost
all of Castellio’s works.
Contact Information |
Contributors |
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Michael
W. Bruening, Ph.D. (Project Editor and Administrator) |
Carlos
Gilly, Universität Basel |
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Professor
of History |
J. H. M. de Waardt,
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
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Missouri
University of Science and Technology |
Ueli Zahnd,
Université de Genève |
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