July 12-23, 2021
About the Workshop
Our next French Paleography Workshop with Dr. Tom Lambert, sponsored jointly by the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies and the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, has been deferred to July 12-23, 2021, due to the current Covid-19 pandemic. This two-week course provides beginning paleographers the skills to read and interpret a variety of handwritten 16th-century French texts. Utilizing the Meeter Center's substantial number of original 16th century French manuscripts and texts, a broad range of documents will be included in the course, including: criminal proceedings, sermons, deliberations of the Geneva City Council and the Consistory of Geneva, wills, contracts, royal letters, and other documents. The workshop will be held every morning for three hours, Monday through Friday.
The course is currently full, but if any vacancies emerge, we will first turn to our waiting list and then (if space remains) open the opportunity for applicants in spring 2021.
Quick Look
- For: undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars with strong reading knowledge of French
- Stipend: $500
- Length of Course: 2 weeks
About the Instructor
Tom Lambert, Ph.D., has taught the French Paleography course at the Meeter Center seven times. He began his study of paleography under the tutelage of Professor Robert M. Kingdon in 1989. Later that year, also under Kingdon’s direction, Lambert began working on the Geneva Consistory Project, which was then transcribing the Registers of the Consistory for the period of John Calvin’s ministry. In 1991 he took an intensive six-week summer course from Bernard Barbiche of France’s prestigious school of archival sciences, the École des Chartes. From 1992 to 1995 he lived in Geneva, working daily in the State Archives, finally producing a critical edition of the Registres du Consistoire de Genève au temps de Calvin, tome I (1542-1544), with Isabella Watt in 1996. He finished his Ph.D. dissertation on daily religion in Reformation Geneva in February 1998. Tom worked full time on the Consistory project until 2011, publishing seven volumes of the registers with Isabella Watt and Wallace MacDonald. He now owns a tiny inn in Yosemite National Park and maintains the websites for a few large hotels.