Raymond A. Mentzer
Departmental Chair
Daniel J. Krumm Family Professor of Reformation
Studies
Raymond Mentzer received his Ph.D.
from the University of Wisconsin in 1973. He joined the University of Iowa faculty in 2001 as the Daniel J. Krumm Family Chair in Reformation Studies, Department of Religious Studies.
Research:
Dr. Mentzer’s research program focuses on the French Reformed community during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He is especially interested in the manner whereby Protestant church leaders as well as ordinary members of the congregation translated new theological insights into a system of approved moral conduct and a set of everyday devotional habits. He has published a series of books and journal articles on the prosecution of French Protestants for heresy, the family and its role in the formation of confessional identity in early modern France, the application of Reformed church discipline, and the development of the French Reformed liturgy. He is currently preparing an inventory of the extant ecclesiastical disciplinary records for the French Reformed Churches during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It, in turn, will serve as the springboard for a more encompassing book-length project on social discipline and the Reformation in France.
Teaching:
Dr. Mentzer regularly teaches a series of courses on early modern European religious history and the Reformation. All are cross-listed in the Departments of History and Religious Studies.
- 016:035 (032:025) Medieval Religion and Culture
- 016:036 (032:026 Modern Religious and Culture
- 16E:085 (032:085) Early Modern Catholicism
- 16E:123 (032:154) Religion and Conflict: Early Modern Period
- 016:192 (032:192) Traditions of Religious Reform
- 016:223 (032:223) Seminar: Reformation Culture and Theology
Selected Publications (for complete list, please see Dr. Mentzer's CV):
- Dire l’interdit: The Vocabulary of Censure and Exclusion in the Early Modern Reformed Tradition. Co-edited with Philippe Chareyre and Françoise Moreil. Brill Series in Church History 40. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
- La mesure du fait religieux: L’approche méthodologique des registres consistoriaux dans l’espace calvinien XVI-XVIIIe siècle. Co-edited with Philippe Chareyre. Special issue of Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 153: 4 (octobre-novembre-décembre 2007).
- La construction de l’identité réformée aux 16e
et 17e siècles: le rôle des consistoires. Vie des Huguenots 37. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006. - Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685 . Co-edited with Andrew Spicer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Sin and the Calvinists: Morals Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 32. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 1994. Second edition, 2002.
- Blood and Belief: Family Survival and Confessional Identity among the Provincial Huguenot Nobility. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1994.
- Heresy Proceedings in Languedoc, 1500-1560. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984.
Awards & Service:
- Lewis Memorial Prize, Huguenot Heritage, 2009
- Professeur invité, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III, 2009
- Harold J. Grimm Prize, Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, 2008
- President, Society for Reformation Research, 2006-2007
- Director, Department of Religious Studies, 2003-present
- Directeur d’études associé, École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), 2003
- Camargo Foundation Fellow, 1998
- National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, 1997-98
- J.K. Cameron Faculty Fellow, University of St. Andrews, 1997
- President , Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, 1997
- National Huguenot Society Book Prize, 1997