Tag Archives: john calvin

JI Spring Colloquium Schedule

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This Spring we have an exciting array of scholars that are scheduled to speak in a variety of venues. We hope you will be able to join us either in person or online. Also, I wanted to take a moment to remind you and encourage you to consider a few things. Through our Colloquium series, since August 2015, we have had opportunity in person and online to present to about 2,500 attendees and viewers globally. That is simultaneously encouraging and daunting. It is tremendously encouraging because, as you may or may not know, the Junius Institute is fueled and funded overwhelmingly and primarily by the ardor, love, and zeal of its volunteers. These selfless volunteers have devoted their gifts, time, and effort to make this possible for the public good of a global audience of students, scholars, pastors, and the interested general public. It is daunting because as our reach has grown, our support has not kept pace. We are asking for your timely assistance. Please donate either by a one time gift or regularly. Your support builds people. Your support builds students, scholars, and pastors, globally. Your support makes the colloquium series into a rich conversation with scholars globally and helps academies, seminaries, and even churches. Your gift of whatever size helps us defray travel costs, meals, lodging, multimedia presentations, and so forth. It also reaches people. It keeps our projects and presentations free. That’s right, free to the public. So if you can give, please do, it helps scholars travel, eat, sleep, and speak. It helps students learn and scholars as well as pastors reflect. We also delight in providing a platform for students, new scholars, and established scholars to speak. I have the pleasure of receiving notes and e-mails from you–our viewers–from time to time thanking us for the content and the conversation. Your encouragement both in word and gift is necessary: it helps us keep going in so many ways.

Without any more adieu it is my pleasure to let you know about the colloquium schedule for the remainder of the Spring. The links below are to our presentations that have either already occurred or soon will.

I look forward to seeing you either here in Grand Rapids or online, and thank you for your support,

Todd Rester, Director

Junius Institute Colloquium
Spring 2016 Schedule

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Textbooks at the University of Paris and the Early Calvin

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Meeting of doctors at the university of ParisI just thought I’d footnote my three most recent added authors to PRDL: Aelius Donatus (fl. 4th c. AD), Dionysius Cato (fl. 4th c. AD), and Alexandre de Villedieu (c. 1170-1250, and who deserves to be present if only for his somewhat Augustinian place of primary residence).

I have been fiddling with early Calvin, and these are the texts noted by Thurot as typically being used in the University of Paris in the late Middle Ages in the first two grades of preparatory grammatical study.

According to Thurot, Donatus and Cato were the first grade level of the preparatory study, Alexandre the second, and Peter of Spain’s Summulae logicales (which we already have in PRDL) was the third of the three degrees or levels. And, by the way, Charles Thurot, De l’organisation de l’enseignement dans l’Université de Paris au Moyen-Âge (Paris: Dezorby, 1850) is available from Google Books. There is, of course, more recent scholarship but Thurot is still worth consulting.

By all accounts, the 12-13 year-olds who got through this course without particular mental damage were quite proficient, albeit not singing, “Peter of Spain, I adore you.”

Now you can prep your Latin using the texts that Calvin probably used. Check out the annotated Alexandre and ask whether any of us could pass the course!