Philip Benedict

Philip Benedict (born 20 August 1949) is an American historian of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, currently holding the title of Professor Emeritus (profeseur honoraire) at the University of Geneva’s Institute for Reformation History (l'Institut d'histoire de la Réformation).

Early life Benedict was born in Washington, D.C., on 20 August 1949 to the astrophysicist William S. Benedict and the medical doctor and print collector Ruth B. Benedict. He has stated that he is agnostic and that his parents raised him in a secular Jewish household, wholly disconnected from the Calvinism in which he would come to specialize. Benedict graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington DC in 1966.

Training Benedict received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1970, where he studied early modern European history with H.G. Koenigsberger. He completed his M.A. in 1972 and his Ph.D. in 1975 at Princeton University, under the direction of Theodore K. Rabb and Lawrence Stone. While conducting his dissertation research in France, Benedict also followed the seminar of Denis Richet at what was then the VIe Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études. His Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism was awarded the 2003 Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church History, and the 2004 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize from The Renaissance Society of America.

In contrast to Denis Crouzet and Natalie Davis, who have explored the motivations and psychology behind Roman Catholic religious violence in early modern France, Benedict has asserted various motivations and reasons that Huguenots engaged in religious violence against Catholics. Benedict has stated that three important factors inspired French Protestants to wage war against their Catholic adversaries: (1) John Calvin’s condemnation of “Nicodemism,” (2) Reformed polemical treatises and sermons against Catholic images, and (3) the Huguenot belief that the 1562 Edict of January was under direct assault by overzealous Catholics, and thus needed to be defended by force of arms.

Career Benedict became a Professor Emeritus (professeur honoraire) at the University of Geneva in 2015. He held the title of professeur ordinaire at the University of Geneva's Institute for Reformation History for nine years prior to his retirement. Benedict served as the Director of the Institute from 2006–2009.

Benedict taught at Brown University for 26 years, where he was the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies.

Several late medieval and early modern historians have credited him with supervising their dissertations, including Michael Breen, Larissa Taylor, and Liam Brockey. Taylor and Brockey's first books, both of which began as dissertations under Benedict's supervision, have gone on to win major book prizes.

Works

Monographs

Revised and abridged French translation,

Edited and co-edited volumes

Selected chapters in edited volumes

Selected articles

Awarded the Nancy Lyman Roelker Prize by the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference.