The Library of Lausanne Academy in the 16th Century: The Theological Corpus, from the Reformation to Early Orthodoxy

Abstract

In 1537, the first theology courses in Lausanne were dispensed in order to form what would become the Lausanne Academy in the 1540s. That same year, books started to be acquired in order to form an academic library, constituting a tool for the professorial and ministerial personnel in Lausanne. At the end of the sixteenth century, all the books in the library of the Academy received ex-libris. Preserved at the Bibliothèque Cantonale Universitaire de Lausanne, these books were classified in a catalogue of 578 titles. Thus, this reconstituted the sixteenth century academic library. Its study—here focusing on the theological titles in particular—sheds light on the diachronic intellectual climate surrounding the Lausanne Academy, such as confessionalization, the shift of the emphasis from humanism to scholasticism, and the consequences of intra and extra-Protestant polemics.