Annotated overview/selection of Dick Wursten's publications edited for
on-screen reading. The reproductive copyright rests with the publishers,
intellectual copyright with the author. For a complete publication list,
see Google
Scholar and ResearchGate.
Dissertation (2010)
Clément Marot and Religion. A Re-assessment in
the Light of his Psalm Paraphrases(Brill's
Series in Church History 44). Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2010. ix + 435
pp.
Marot is remembered for his chansons and epigrams, but he also wrote
the psalm versifications that became the core of the Huguenot
Psalter. Reading the successive versions of those paraphrases as
evidence in their own right, this study argues that his religious
position was neither courtly convenience nor crypto-Calvinism, but a
considered pursuit of the 'Hebrew truth'. That places him squarely
within French humanist reform, among the évangélique
Clément Marot
Clément Marot, the Learned Poet:
Jewish Medieval Exegesis and the Genevan PsalterReformation
and Renaissance Review 12.1 (2010), 71–107. Seeing Marot as a
learned poet rather than only a court poet explains both
why he translated the Classics and how he versified the Hebrew
Psalter. His Psalm 110 follows an unusual Jewish reading — an oracle
on the enthronement of an ancient king rather than a messianic
prophecy — which the Genevans afterwards adjusted.
“Dear Doctor Bouchart, I am no Lutheran”Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance
LXX (2008), no. 3, 567–578. A close reading of the Epistre à M.
Bouchart, dated between the Wonder-Year (1533) and the
Affaire des Placards (1534). En passant, the story of Marot
imprisoned for having eaten bacon is demythologised.
New light on Marot's
final days, his tomb and laudatory epitaph in TurinStudi
Francesi 161 (anno LIV, fasc. II, maggio–agosto 2010),
293–303; re-edited for reading on screen. The exact spot of the
epitaph in Turin Cathedral — effaced by the Inquisition — could be
established. With a reproduction and photographs.
From
Pious Poems to Protestant Hymns: Cult, Culture and the Psalms of
Clément MarotIn Music and Religious
Education in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2023),
143–168. doi:10.1163/9789004470392_008.
Calvinist psalmody and Marot's psalms are so closely associated that
the association is mistaken for an origin. They began elsewhere: as
pious court poems in the evangelical circles around Marguerite de
Navarre, a decade before Calvin set any of them to a tune. Following
the printed record from 1530 to 1550 shows two distinct lineages — a
cultural one, by far the larger, and a liturgical one — and explains
why the poems went on being read, set to music and sung well outside
the Reformed churches.
Summary
in English on
the Marot site
François Vatable
François Vatable, so much more than a ‘name’Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance
LXXIII (2011), no. 3, 557–591. Appointed royal lecturer of Hebrew in
Paris in 1530, Vatable is remembered almost solely for the 1545
Latin Bible of Robert Estienne. He did a great deal more: Aristotle
from the Greek, the Hebrew Old Testament, and several further
Estienne editions. Also available: the
full text with footnotes · illustrations
from the 1540 Bible
Bach's and Calov's Bible Commentary
The
Calov Bible of Johann Sebastian BachBach's
markings in his personal copy of Abraham Calov's Bible commentary.
The full texts marked by Bach (in English, partly also in German),
with succinct commentary. Also a tribute to the 1985 editor: Howard
H. Cox, ‘The Scholarly Detective: Investigating Bach’s Personal
Bible’ (title of his essay on his editing, published in ‘Bach’ 25/1,
1994, pp. 28-45)
Review
article. In 2017 book publisher Dingeman van Wijnen released
a facsimile edition of the entire Calov Bible Commentary. Since
then, all 4,500 pages are available in sharp and full-colour
reproductions, bound in three hefty volumes. Researchers no longer
have to rely on the black-and-white photographs from Cox’s edition.
Anyone wishing to consult the marked passages can access and read
them, adding as much context to his reading as he wishes (in
theory at least, since the facsimile costs €5,500).
In 2024 A 'Companion Volume' to Bach's Calov Bible was published
(ed. Albert Clement). I
wrote a review of this publication(including a summary of the
'scholarly state of the question').
& cetera
Jean Calvin and Renée de
France in Ferrara (1536) - revisited
[original 'Back to Basics:
Rereading the “Ferrarese Imbroglio” of 1536 in Light of
Primary Sources', in K. D. Peebles and G.
Scarlatta (eds.), Representing the Life and Legacy of
Renée de France (Queenship and Power; Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2021), 97–126. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-69121-9_4
In this article I show, by returning directly to the primary
sources, that while Calvin’s presence in Ferrara in spring
1536 is certain, his role there is pure legend. He played no
part in the liturgical and political "Ferrarese Lenten
affair," being an unknown twenty-six-year-old traveling under
an alias. The myth of his influence and intimacy with Duchess
Renée was invented by Théodore de Bèze and embellished by
nineteenth-century scholars. In truth, Calvin’s first letter
to Renée apologizes for writing to a stranger, proving
they had never spoken. What emerges is not personal sentiment,
but a strategic alliance in which Calvin needed the duchess
far more than she needed him.
Théodore de BèzeTheologian
and neo-Latin poet. My contribution to an anthology.