Below are the short paper proposals accepted for the Fourteenth Annual REFORC Conference on Early Modern Christianity, to be held May 22-24, 2025 at Central European University in Vienna. Short paper submission is closed.
Updated: March 25, 2025.
Sivert Angel (University of Oslo): Theological Elites and Farmers’ Revolts in 16th Century Norway
Konstantin Anikin (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg): Rolle der Bogomilen im Denken der Pietisten und der “lutherischen Orthodoxie”
Paolo Astorri (University of Copenhagen): Controlling Rebellious Thoughts: Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction on Thoughts in Protestant and Catholic Territories
Ruth Atherton (University of South Wales): Rebel with a Cause: Andreas Osiander and Pastoral Ministry in Nuremberg, 1522-1548
Doron Avraham (Bar Ilan University, Israel): Rebellion within Limits: German Pietism and the Contestation of Established Order
Dorottya Piroska B. Székely (Eötvös Loránd University – Faculty of Humanities): An Archbishop and his Network – Political and Religious Issues of the Kingdom of Hungary at the End of the Seventeenth Century
Luca Baschera (Universität Zürich, Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte): Prophets and Grammarians: On the Purpose and Method of Higher Education in Reformation Zurich
Peter Benka (Department of Slovak History, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava): Between Loyalty and Rebellion: Upper Hungarian Royal Towns in the 17th Century
Trevor Brisbin (United Church of Canada): Radical Reformation as Rebellion: Two Anabaptists, Empire, and the Subversion of Religious Hegemony
Theo Brok (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam): Crafting the History of Early Modern Dutch Anabaptism: The Legacy of Willem Kühler (1874-1946)
Niels de Bruijn (KU Leuven): ‘Rebellious’ Thoughts on Usury in Early Modern Arminianism and Jansenism
Benedikt Brunner (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena): A Dangerous Man with a Dangerous Book? Melchior Hoffman and the Anabaptist Dominion of Münster
Priscilla Bucher (Aix-Marseille Université): Religious Reform or Political Coup? Rethinking the Confrontation between Mary of Guise and the Lords of the Congregation during the Scottish Reformation (1557-1560)
Konrad Buzała (The Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw): Reformation and Counter-Reformation Origins of Modernity: Two Opposing Narratives in the Works of Brad S. Gregory and Richard H. Popkin
Ian Campbell (Queen’s University Belfast): Jesuit versus Franciscan Understandings of Natural Law, Religion and Rebellion
Mei-Hsin Chen (University of Navarra): Martin Luther’s Stance on Religious Images: A Moderate Approach to Iconoclasm
Susan Cogan (Utah State University): Religion and Rebellion in a Gentry Household: Kidnapping and Child Custody in English Reformation Families
Maria Craciun (Babes-Bolyai): The Reformation of the Common Man: Confessional Diversity and Social Strife in Early Modern Transylvania
Ben Crosby (McGill University): Richard Hooker, Guy de Bres, and the Rhetoric of Anabaptist Violence in Elizabethan England
Sarah Killam Crosby (McGill University): To “study in the book of the crucifix”: Katherine Parr’s Theology of the Atonement in The Lamentation of a Sinner
Sofia Degli Esposti (University of Pavia): Loyal Subjects or Rebels? England, the Huguenots, and Political Justification in the Wars of Religion
Stefaniia Demchuk (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv): Baroque as Rebellion: The Politics and Iconography of Status and Power in Early Seventeenth-century Ukraine
Nicolò Di Dio (Italian Doctoral School of Religious Studies): The “Exhortation aux Princes” and the Struggle for Religious Pacification in France: the Rise of Civil Tolerance
Sonam Dickey (University of Mysore): Silent Resistance: Buddhist Nonviolent Rebellion and Monastic Dissent Against Political and Religious Authority
Damian Domke (University of Heidelberg, History Department): Against Adversaries, Tyrants and the Antichrist. Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), his Political Calvinism and the Uprising in Opava at the Beginning of the 17th Century
Colin Donnelly (Virginia Theological Seminary): Rebellion and Radicalism in Early English Evangelical Theology
Aneke Dornbusch (Universität Bonn): A Female Revolt in Augsburg? The Curious Case of Katharina Vöglin
Marek Druga (Institute of History of Slovak Academy of Sciences): The Waldensian Campaign against the Saints. On One aspect of Waldensian Theology and Preaching at the Turn of the 14th-15th Centuries
Ruth Ferris and Deirdre Raftery (University College Dublin): Soldiers of Christ and ‘Galloping Girls’: Rebellion, Conformity and Early Modern Influences on Institutes of Women Religious (Nuns) in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries
Erik Sporon Fiedler (University of Copenhagen): Rebelling against the Care for the Sick and the Poor? The Case of the Monte di Pietà in Light of the Reformation
Hanna Filipova (University of Gothenburg): “Bacchus’ Ecclesiastical State”: Offensive Political Humor and the Formation of Peter the Great’s Counter-Court
Cristina Fontcuberta (Universitat de Barcelona): Image, Religion and Rebellion. Use and Absence of Combative Art in Early Modern Catalonia
Monika Frazer-Imregh (Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary): Rebellion Against Late Scholastic Philosophy – Ficino’s Return to Augustine and Neoplatonic Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul.
Emma Gabor: Healers or Heretics? Witchcraft and Christianity in Early Modern Europe
Giovanni Gellera (University of Geneva): Between Rebellion and Continuity: the Case of John Mair and His ‘Network’ (c.1500-1530)
Marco Giardini (independent scholar): (Pseudo-)Joachim and the Call to Church Reform in Germany: Different Appropriations of Joachimite Propheticism at the Beginning of the Reformation
Anja Goeing (Universität Zürich, Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte): Agents of Practice: Students and Networks at the Schola Tigurina in the 16th Century
Aza Goudriaan (ETF Leuven / Protestant Theological University, Utrecht): Gisbertus Voetius and Scholastic Views of Ignorance and Sin
Jake Griesel (George Whitefield College, Cape Town): John Pearson’s Defence of Prayer Book and King in Parliamentarian Cambridge amidst the Early English Civil War (1643)
Dario Gurashi: Dissimulandi nescius: Agrippa and Nicodemism.
Phillip Haberkern (Boston University): From Movement to Church: Bohemian Reflections on Ending a Revolution
Joar Haga (VID Specialized University): Ecclesial Communication during the Great Nordic War (1700-1721)
Endre Ádám Hamvas (HUN-REN RCH, Moravcsik Gyula Institute; Department for Medical Communication and Translation Studies Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical School University of Szeged): Hannibal Rosseli’s Pymander: the Corpus Hermeticum and the Catholic Revival
Sabine Hiebsch (Theologische Universiteit Utrecht): Aggressions against Lutheran Congregations in the Dutch Republic
Bernhard Holl (University of Potsdam): Defeated, yet Victorious: the Toledo Rebellion of 1449 and the Lasting Effects of its Pure-Blood Agenda
Andrew Hope (University of Oxford): Echoes of the Oldcastle Revolt in the N-Town Plays: Jesus as Heretic and Traitor
Mark Hutchinson (University of Gloucestershire): Christian Political Action and Conceptions of Estate in German and English Exchanges over the Crisis in the Palatinate, c. 1618-1624
Gábor Ittzés (Debrecen Reformed Theological University): The Death of Frederick the Wise and the Birth of the Lutheran Funeral Sermon
Maria Luísa Jacquinet (Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa): Echoes of the Reformation in the Catholic Refugee Communities in the 16th and 17th Centuries Portugal: a Case Study
Leonhard Jungwirth (Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät der Universität Wien): The Reception of the Peasantsʼ Wars in Austrian Protestantism
Jan van de Kamp (Theological University Apeldoorn): Reformation, Education and Rhetoric: Declamations at Wittenberg University, 1519-1560 and the Role of Philipp Melanchthon
Brandt Klawitter (NLA University College): Sex and Self-defense: The Surprising Significance of the Natural Affects in Reformation Wittenberg
Christine Kooi (Louisiana State University): Theological Rebellion in 1572
Jakub Koryl (Jagiellonian University, Krakow): The Responsibility for Philosophy in the Encounter with Theology: A Lutheran Alternative Take on Philosophy
Milda Kvizikevičiūtė (National Museum of Lithuania): Religious Aid Across Borders: How Lithuanian Protestants Sought Support in the 17th Century
Tapio Leinonen (University of Helsinki / University of Eastern Finland): Responding to the Revolts: Martin Luther on Masculinity and Leadership
Anna Lerch (University of Bern, Faculty of Theology): Fighting Nuns? Female Resistance during the Reformation
Urs Leu (Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte der Universität Zürich): Zwingli’s “Hohe Schule” and the Reformed Book Culture in Zurich.
Przemyslaw A. Lewicki (Makowski Academy of Reformed Theology): Polish Reformed Confession at Colloquium Charitativum 1645: Exploring Polish Reformed Theology in Search of Harmony
Diego Lucci (American University in Bulgaria): The Law of Nature, God’s Law, and the Right to Resist and Revolt in Hobbes and Locke
Arturo Massa (University of Bari Aldo Moro): Hagiography of Rebellion. The New Martyrs of the Reformation against Catholic Idolatry in the Sixteenth Century
Andreas Mazetti (The Newman Institute, Uppsala): Tracing the Roots of Tyranny: Explanations in the Annales Ecclesiastici for the deposition of Christian II of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
Yang Meng (University of Münster): “Faith in Liang-Zhi” and “Faith in Christ” — A Comparison of Wang Yangming’s and Martin Luther’s Thoughts on “Faith”
Laura-Marie Mork (Universität Osnabrück): Good Authority, Bad Authority – Discourse on Authority in the First Half of Gustav Vasas Reign
Barbara Müller (Universität Hamburg): Perseverance as Rebellion. Johannes Bugenhagen’s Defeat over the Hamburg (Beguine-) Convent opposite St Jacob’s Church
Christian Neddens (Europäische Melanchthon-Akademie, Bretten): Rebels – or Not? Cranach’s ‘Judith’ and Melanchthon’s ‘Confessio Augustana’ and the Role of ‘fiducia’ in Religion and Politics
Bonnie Noble (University of North Carolina at Charlotte): Intellectual Rebellion in Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors
Lars Cyril Nørgaard (Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark): Resisting Resistance
Seraphine Nzue-Agbadou (Charleston Southern University): The Choice between Reconversion-Death-or Exile: How Religious Violence Disrupted the Lives of French Huguenots in Some Southern Regions of France (1500-1600)
Luke O’Connell (Georgetown University): Just Rebels: An Analysis of Just War Theory in the Context of Religious Conflict in 17th Century Ireland
Katharina Opalka (Faculty of Protestant Theology/Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn): Power in the Protestant Church in light of the ForuM-Study
Lorenzo Paoli (Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, Université de Genève): Sources and Degrees of Resistance in Huguenot Monarchomach Treatises (1574–1579)
Willem Peek (The Warburg Institute): The ‘Laienkelch‘ in Hans Mielich’s Codex with 26 Motets by Cipriano de Rore: (Counter-)Reformation and Artistic Rebellion at the Court of Albrecht V of Bavaria
Gábor Petneházi (University of Innsbruck): Ethnicism and Rebellion. „Great Replacement” in Protestant Propaganda in 17th Century Hungary from Bocskai to Bethlen
Carlos Piccone-Camere (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú): The Capuchin Rebellion: Challenges of Living the Franciscan Rule in South American Missions
Philipp Pilhofer (Universität Wien): Protestantism in Austria in the (Long) 16th Century
Martin Pjecha (Central European University): Politics in Jan Comenius’s Holistic Vision of Coexistence
Svitlana Potapenko (Goethe University Frankfurt / National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine): The ‘Revolution’ of 1762, Kyrylo Rozumovsky, and the Fate of the Hetmanate
Noel Putnik (Institute of Ethnography, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts): Homo Integer in a World of Lies: Cornelius Agrippa on Corporeality and Knowledge.
Marta Quatrale (Freie Universität Berlin): Clashing Anthropologies and Intellectual Exchange: Humanism and Reformation in Tension
Stanislaw Rabiej (University of Warsaw): The Long-lasting Socio-religious Effects of the Battle of the “White Mountain” (1620) in Bohemia
Deirdre Raftery and Ruth Ferris (University College Dublin): Soldiers of Christ and ‘Galloping Girls’: Rebellion, Conformity and Early Modern Influences on Institutes of Women Religious (Nuns) in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries
Jeb Ralston (University of Geneva; Trinity International University): Original Sin and the Catholic Reformation Renouncing and Reclaiming Erasmus’s Reading of Romans 5:12
Robert Rebitsch (University Innsbruck): The Influence of Protestantism on the Peasants’ Uprisings of 1525/26 and 1626 in Austria
Clarisse Roche (United Arab Emirates University): Rebelling against Religious Moderation: Georg Eder’s Confessional Challenge to the Habsburg Middle Way in Sixteenth-century Vienna
Gideon Rossouw (Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary): The Concept of Consolatio in Antiquity and Early Modern Reformed Theology: a Case Study of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563)
Pieter Rouwendal (Theological University Apeldoorn): Calvin’s ‘conversio’ and Calvin’s ‘conversion’
Bernward Schmidt (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt): “Late Medieval” or “Catholic” Reform? Johannes Eck and Church Reform in Bavaria
Noemi Schürmann (University of Zurich): Saved by Marriage? Katharina Schütz Zell and Female Marital Agency in the Early Reformation
Brigitta Schvéd (Ludovika University of Public Service, Research Institute for Politics and Government): Hungary as the Bilanx of Europe? Discourse on the European Balance of Power and the Role of Hungary in Early Eighteenth-century English Political Press
Avner Shamir (University of Copenhagen): Faith or Law: Sixteenth-century Christian, Jewish, and Christian-Jewish Disputations
Fabian Sieber (Theologische Fakultät Fulda): A Revolution through Faith – Thomas Müntzer, Theology and the Peaceful Revolution of 1989
József Simon (University of Szeged, Hungary): From Natural Obligation to Resistance in Miklós Bethlen’s (1642-1714) Political Philosophy
Marie Škarpová (Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague): Rebellion by the Word of God: Jan Hus’s Discrediting of the Authority of the Council in His Letters
Volodymyr Sklokin (Ukrainian Catholic University/IAS CEU): The Late 18th-Century Justifications of the Revolt Against Tyranny: The Case of Roman Tsebrykov
Maria Kazimiera Staniszewska (independent scholar, Kraków, Poland): „Occultatae per Lutheranos et Hussitas”. The Image of Protestant Presence in the Canonical Visitations from Spiš Region (1655–1712). Between Propaganda and (Possible) Realities
Edit Szegedi (Universitatea Babes-Bolyai): The Forgotten Century and its Many Conflicts: Lutheranism in 17th Century Transylvania
Anna Szyrwińska-Hörig (Universität Vechta): Philipp Jakob Spener‘s Struggle Against Thomas Hobbes‘ Absolutism, or What Do We Know About the Philosophical Origins of Pietist Individualism
Neil Tarrant (UCL): The Italian Reformation in Exile? Francesco Pucci’s Early Theological Thought
Özge Terzi Yazıcı (Marmara University): Girolamo Savonarola: A Contrarian Voice in the Early Modern Period and a Pioneer of Reform
Dominik Tóth (Military History Institute and Museum): Hussites, Partisans, Guerillas – Analysis of Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan in the Context of Hussite Wars
Linde Van den Eede (KU Leuven): Preaching after the Fall: Jacobus Janssonius (1547-1625) and the Possibility of Knowledge in Seventeenth Century Women’s Convents
Jarrik Van Der Biest (KU Leuven): The Theologian behind the Philosopher: Libertus Fromondus (1587-1653) on the Cognitive Effects of Original Sin
Anat Vaturi (University of Haifa): To Rebel or not to Rebel? Protestant Responses to Catholic Violence in Reformation Cracow
Yasmin Vetter: The Marian Exile: A Peaceful Resistance?
Christian Westerink (ETF Leuven / Protestante Theologische Universiteit, Utrecht): “What, Then, Should Be Stated About the Ideas?” The Theory of Divine Ideas in the Loci Theologici of Johann Gerhard (1582-1637)
Roger Whittall, (Australian Lutheran College, Adelaide): Yves Congar on “True and False Reform”
Peter Wijnberger (PThU, Utrecht & ETF Leuven): Conflict or Agreement? Lutheran and Reformed Ideas on Christ ’s Omniscience
Marcin Wisłocki (University of Wrocław): Echoes of Caspar Schwenckfeld’s Theological Views in Early Modern Art
Jakub Wolak (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences): Between Contract and Covenant, or a Theologico-Political Solution to the Riddle of the Lubomirski Rebellion (1665–66)
Takayuki Yagi (Aoyama Gakuin University): Diego Álvarez and Synchronic Contingency: Advancing the Dominican Defense Against Molinism
Ueli Zahnd (Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, University of Geneva): Huldrych Zwingli’s Doctrine of Predestination
Márton Zászkaliczky (University of Szeged): Obedience and Disobedience, Self-defence and Rebellion in 16th Century Protestant Political Theology in Hungary
