Abstract
Language and church unity: Calvin’s 1545 Catechism in LatinIn 1545 Calvin wrote a catechism. He defended the fact that he had done it in Latin, saying: “I judge it useful that there should be public testimonies, whereby churches which, though widely separated by space, agree in the doctrine of Christ, may mutually recognize each other.” Although he was constantly being accused by the Roman Catholic Church of being a schismatic, Calvin’s ecumenical intentions were above re-proach. At every opportunity he stressed the sinfulness of schism from a church that bears the marks of the true church. By the time of the Reformation Latin wasn’t regarded any more as a “holy” language, but as a role model for other languages. Although the reformers increasingly propagated the use of the vernacular in religious service, they still maintained cor-respondence with each other in Latin and wrote many of their treatises in this language. The art of printing presented the same phenomenon: both vernacular and Latin (especially academic works), were produced and distributed. Calvin’s “Catechism” of 1545, written in Latin, was soon translated into many languages, even into Greek and Hebrew. Thereby Calvin reached his goal of promoting unity of faith between the different reformation churches. The fact that the catechism was written in Latin gave it a special status as church-historical document: a symbol of Calvin’s hope for church unity.
Copyright information
- Ownership of copyright in terms of the Work remains with the authors.
- The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the Work, provided attribution is given to the place and detail of original publication, as set out in the official citation of the Work published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the Work on the authors’ or their institutions’ websites or institutional repositories.
Publication and user license
- The authors grant the title owner and the publisher an irrevocable license and first right and perpetual subsequent right to (a) publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Work in any form/medium, (b) to translate the Work into other languages, create adaptations, summaries or extracts of the Work or other derivative works based on the Work and exercise all of the rights set forth in (a) above in such translations, adaptations, summaries, extracts and derivative works, (c) to license others to do any or all of the above, and (d) to register the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the Definitive Work.
- The authors acknowledge and accept the user licence under which the Work will be published as set out in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (Creative Commons Attribution License South Africa)
- The undersigned warrant that they have the authority to license these publication rights and that no portion of the copyright to the Work has been assigned or licensed previously to any other party.
Disclaimer: The publisher, editors and title owner accept no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed by any other person in this Work. Consequently, they will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this Work.
In cases where a manuscript is NOT accepted for publication by the editorial board, the portions of this agreement regarding the publishing licensing shall be null and void and the authors will be free to submit this manuscript to any other publication for first publication.
Our copyright policies are author-friendly and protect the rights of our authors and publishing partners.