As they were facing rising demands for a reformation of the Church in the 1520s, several cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy resorted to an original combination of scholarly theological discussion and public trial. The goal of this new kind of religious disputation hosted by the magistrates was to restore religious unity and peace in the community. Zurich, Bern, Geneva and other cantons convened meetings of the clergy at which the Reformed proposals were confronted with the Scriptures. In my doctoral thesis on this unprecedented form of controversy, I show how the disputations were staged as a forum where clerics ready to be guided by the divine Word could bring forth the Truth. A scholarly debate, a political act and a Christian assembly, this type of religious disputation is a unique observatory for understanding how the Reformed ideas could take hold in the Swiss Confederacy and what the Reformation changed in the government of cities, in the production of knowledge and in the definition of religious truth.
Publications
Le choix de religion. Le rôle de l’autorité politique dans les disputes religieuses des années 1520
Fabrice Flückiger
Revue suisse d'histoire, vol. 60(3), pp. 277-301
Fabrice Flückiger
Caliban. French Journal of English Studies, 67-68, 2023, pp. 135-161
Fabrice Flückiger
Jérémie Foa, Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Les disputes et la conversion religieuse de l’Antiquité au XVIIe siècle, PUR, Rennes, 2022, pp. 147-161
Wahrheit im Gespräch. Glaubensdisputationen in der Schweizer Reformation
Fabrice Flückiger
Peter Opitz, Ariane Albisser, Die Zürcher Reformation in Europa. Beiträge der Tagung des Instituts für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte 6.–8. Februar 2019 in Zürich, TVZ, Zürich, 2022, pp. 335-356
Dire le vrai. Une histoire de la dispute religieuse au début du XVIe siècle
Fabrice Flückiger
Alphil - Presses universitaires suisses, 2018
Fabrice Flückiger
Bertrand Forclaz, L’expérience de la différence religieuse dans l’Europe moderne, Alphil, Neuchâtel, 2013, pp. 67-88
Fabrice Flückiger
Revue historique vaudoise, vol. 119, 2011, pp. 59-74
