Grand Rapids, Mich. (August 30, 2013)—Scholars now have a new tool for the early modern religious and philosophical history in its academic context. From the beginning of the Reformation at the University of Wittenberg to the establishment of the Academy of Geneva, schools were integral to movements of reform as they arose in the sixteenth century and perpetuated themselves into the seventeenth century. PRDL Scholastica, a new project of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research of Calvin Theological Seminary, will facilitate the understanding of this history by allowing the scholar to survey faculties and academic disputations over large stretches of time.

For almost two years, editors of PRDL culled names and dates of appointment for faculty from a variety of sources—online university faculty records, secondary sources on universities, biographical encyclopedias, title pages of primary source disputations, and the personal research of members of the PRDL editorial and advisory boards—resulting in a growing database of over 200 schools and 2,300 faculty appointments.
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