But to a
Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness.
Even as they sought the purity of Christ's Church, the
Genevan pastors endeavored to provide assistance and guidance for the people of God as they struggled with personal sin and plodded along the pilgrim's path of repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.
Naphy cites his own research almost exclusively, squandering an opportunity to signal trends in the social, political, and cultural history of Geneva, including the editorial projects of
Genevan archive documents that both stem from and nourish these research interests.
This one-sided emphasis on his person obscures the fact that Vernet wrote a shelf of books and was such an influential figure that he was the representative
Genevan theologian of his day.
While many of their institutional features were modeled after the
Genevan church and were shaped by Calvin's ideas, the ecclesiological views of Martin Bucer, Pierre Viret, and John a Lasco were also important influences, as were the institutional models provided by the early Reformed churches in the Pays de Vaud and the refugee churches of Strasbourg and London.
In her final chapter Backus evaluates the historical attitudes that shaped the works of Lutherans (Melanchthon's Chronicon Carionis [but does not address the contribution of Caspar Peucer to this work, studied recently by Uwe Neddermeyer and Barbara Bauer], David Chytraeus, Flacius's Catalogus and the
Genevan Calvinist Simon Goulart's reworking of it, the Magdeburg Centuries) and Roman Catholics (Conrad Braun, Caesar Baronius, and two Catalogs of Heretics).
A hagiographical tone colors much that is said about the
Genevan reformer and his spiritual descendants.
Naphy extensively mined the Registres du Conseil and criminal trial records in the
Genevan State Archives for details of episodes and subsequent trials of engraisseurs, most notably in 1530, 1545, and 1570-71.
Thus, to note just two examples from my own field of specialization, we have unearthed a staggering wealth of new sources pertaining to the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, even as the records of the
Genevan Consistory in the sixteenth century have become more accessible, throwing important light on the way the Anabaptists and the
Genevan church functioned.(15) On the whole, however, it is not that new unearthed "facts" have altered the traditional understanding; rather, new perspectives have been imposed on old facts that were known, but ignored.
In general the
Genevan and Zurich interpretations avoid associating the imagery of the text with any concrete personages or events of their own time.