Jonathan A. Reid

Professor
Ph.D., University of Arizona
Offices: Erwin 219 and Brewster A-306
Email: reidj@ecu.edu
Phone: 252-328-2558

Jonathan A. Reid is a scholar of late medieval and early modern Europe whose research focuses on the intellectual, religious, social, political, and diplomatic history of sixteenth-century France. After taking an A.B. with honors in European History at the University of Chicago, he completed a Ph.D. with distinction under the direction of Heiko A. Oberman (†) in the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, Department of History, at the University of Arizona (2001). There, he studied Medieval History with Alan E. Bernstein and Renaissance History with Donald Weinstein (†). While conducting dissertation research in Paris, he attended Bernard Roussel’s seminars on the French Reformation at the École pratique des Hautes Études. He enjoyed two terms (1999, 2001–2002) as a post-doctoral research fellow on the University of St. Andrews’ “Sixteenth Century French Book Project” under the direction of Andrew Pettegree. In 2002, he joined the Department of History at East Carolina University. He was promoted to Professor in 2022.

Dr. Reid teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate history courses as well as topical courses in the Great Books and Honors programs. He is a member of the Classical Studies and Religious Studies programs and serves as Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program.

Reid’s monograph, King’s Sister – Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549) and her Evangelical Network, reconstructs for the first time the collective career of a prominent group of évangéliques whose members, under the guidance of Francis I’s sister, Marguerite, attempted to bring about renewal of the French Church along ‘Protestant’ theological lines. Though they failed to win over the king, their efforts played a significant role in advancing the evangelical cause in France as well as to a lesser degree in early Reformation Europe.

Currently he is working on several projects related to the development of religious dissent in France. His next monograph, Reformation in the French Cities, 1520–1563, will provide the first comprehensive account of the impact of indigenous evangelical and foreign Protestant reformation movements in France’s towns and burgs in the forty-year build up to the outbreak of religious civil war in 1562.

He has been the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Grant (1995–1996), a Bourse Chateaubriand from the French Government (1997–1998), the Carl S. Meyer Prize from the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference for the best paper read by a young scholar (2006), and research grants from East Carolina University and The Renaissance Society of America. He serves as Co-Editor of the journal Explorations in Renaissance Culture.

Selected Publications:

Books

King’s Sister – Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549) and her Evangelical Network, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

Co-edited with Luc Deitz and Tim Kircher, Neo-Latin and the Humanities: Essays in Honour of Charles Fantazzi (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014).

Chapters

“‘Without Women and Children’: No Reformation in France” in Women Reformers in Early Modern Europe: Profiles, Texts, and Contexts, edited by Kirsi I. Stjerna (Knoxville, TN: Fortress Press, 2022), 369¬¬–382.

“A Prayer for Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII and Their ‘Children’: A Portal to Early Reformation England’s entente évangélique with France” in Reformation, Religious Culture and Print in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Andrew Pettegree, volume 1, edited by Arthur der Weduwen and Malcolm Walsby (Leiden: Brill Academic Press, 2022), 131–149.

“Erasmus’s Call for Vernacular Scriptures and the Biblical Program of Lefèvre d’Étaples,” in 1516 Le Nouveau Testament d’Érasme: Regards sur l’Europe des humanistes, edited by Thierry Amalou with Alexandre Vanautgaerden (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020). 155–172.

“The Meaux Group and John Calvin,” in John Calvin in Early Context edited by Brian Brewer and David Whitford (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 58–95.

“French Religious Politics” in John Calvin in Context, edited by R. Ward Holder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 41–18.

“Imagination and Influence: The Creative Powers of Marguerite de Navarre at Work at Court and in the World,” for Women and Power at the French Renaissance Court, edited by Susan Broomhall (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018), 263–286.

“Lay Leadership in the Reformed Communities during the Huguenot Revolution, 1559–1563,” in Emancipating Calvin: Culture and Confessional Identity in Francophone Reformed Communities, edited by Karen E. Spierling, and Eric A. de Boer, and R. Ward Holder (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 101–124.

“Marguerite de Navarre and Evangelical Reform,” in A Companion to Marguerite de Navarre, edited by Mary McKinley and Gary Ferguson (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 29–58.

“Marguerite de Navarre, la sœur fidèle,” in Les conseillers de François Ier, edited by Cédric Michon (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), 415–437.

“French Evangelical Networks to 1555: Proto-churches?” in La Réforme en France et en Italie: Contacts, comparaisons et contrastes, edited by Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), 105–124.

“France,” in The Reformation World, edited by Andrew Pettegree (London: Routledge Press, 2000), 211–224.

Works in Progress

Reformation and Revolt in the French Cities, 1520–1563. Monograph. A study of the origins of one of Europe’s first ideological revolution: the rise of the French Reformed churches and their precipitation of thirty-six years of intractable religious civil war.

“French Evangelical’s ‘Reformation of Ritual’: Preaching, Confession, and the Eucharist.”

“A Neo-Latin Poet at a Reformation Crossroads: Nicolas Bourbon and His Suppressed 1530 Epigrammata.”

Courses Offered

GRBK 2400: Great Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
HIST 1030: World Civilizations to 1600
HIST 3413: A History of Christianity since 1300
HIST 3415: The Middle Ages
HIST 3420: Early Modern Europe to 1648
HIST 5350: The Renaissance in European History
HIST 5360: The Reformation
HIST 6900: Historiography: Introduction to Research
HIST 6920: European History Seminar
HNRS 2316: Interdisciplinary Honors Seminar in Social Sciences
MRST 2400: Introduction to Medieval Studies
MRST 2500: Introduction to Renaissance and Reformation Studies
MRST 5000: Medieval and Renaissance France