56th Annual Erasmus Lecture

The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies proudly presents the 56th Annual Erasmus Lecture:

"Protestant and Catholic Polemics in the Arab East 1698-1798"
Nabil Matar, University of Minnesota
Thursday, November 5, 2020
4 to 6 pm
Online Lecture
Regsitration required (click the Register button above)

The Protestant and the Catholic reformations resulted in devastating religious wars, followed by imperialist wars between Britain and France. In the Ottoman East of the eighteenth century, these wars were fought on paper and from pulpits and printing presses by local Catholic and Maronite clergy, by Protestant English residents, and by pamphleteers from Halle. This Arabic manuscript and printed corpus shows the divisive impact and the cultural challenges of proselytization, at the same time that it reveals the institutionalization of the European missionary ‘project’ – in a manner that was alien to the religious societies of the Ottoman regions.

Nabil Matar (bio) is Professor of English, Presidential Professor in the President’s Interdisciplinary Initiative on Arts and Humanities, and Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities at the University of Minnesota. He has published numerous books and articles on relations between early modern Britain, Western Europe, and the Islamic Mediterranean, and has two forthcoming books: Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517- 1798 (Brill 2020) and Luther and the Papacy through Arab Eyes 1517-1798 (Palgrave 2022).