- Thursday, June 29, 2017
- 2:00 PM–3:00 PM
- Meeter Center
Join us in the Meeter Center (fourth floor of Hekman Library) for a free public presentation by our visiting fellow, Kristen Coan Howard: "Reformation and Transformation: From Convent to Hospital in Calvin's Geneva"
Amongst its many changes in both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the Protestant Reformation led to the desacralization of formerly holy spaces. In Geneva, after an initial wave of iconoclastic action in which Protestants smashed crucifixes, beheaded statues of saints, and tossed religious images into wells, the city magistrates were left with the practical matter of what to do with formerly holy spaces. The former Convent of Saint Clare, the only women's religious house in the city, was quickly transformed into a new General Hospital that offered care and hospitality to the city's impoverished population. Utilizing the holdings of the Meeter Center, this talk will examine the transformation of this sacred space into a new, secular space that upheld the Reformation desire to care for the (worthy) poor.
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Kristen Coan Howard, Ph.D. student in History at the University of Arizona, holds a Meeter Center Student Fellowship.
Location details
Meeter Center, fourth floor of Hekman Library
