Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné

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Merle d'Aubigné, etching from 1872.

Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (born August 16, 1794 in Eaux-Vives near Geneva , † October 21, 1872 in Geneva) was a Swiss Reformed theologian and church historian .

Live and act

Merle d'Aubigné came from a Huguenot family . His father Robert Merle d'Aubigné (1755–1799) was a businessman.

During his visit to the Faculté de théologie in Geneva , he turned to the Geneva Réveil under the influence of the Scottish Robert Haldane . After taking part in the Wartburg Festival in 1817, a trip abroad after studying theology took him to Berlin . During his eight-month study at Berlin University , he was mainly influenced by the church historian August Neander .

From 1818 he was pastor of the French Reformed congregation in Hamburg for five years . As a respected revival preacher , he soon exerted great influence in the revival movement . The foundation of the mission association, which began its work in 1822, was his initiative. On the other hand, he was exposed to growing criticism of his sermons, especially from the educated middle class, which is why he did not renew his five-year contract. In October 1823 he was called by King Wilhelm I of Holland to Brussels, where he worked as a preacher of the Eglise chrétienne protestante française-allemande and as a chaplain at court.

The Belgian Revolution of 1830 led to the destruction of the community, so that he returned to Geneva in 1831, where the Société évangélique de Genève had been founded at the end of January 1831 . At their preachers' school, Merle d'Aubigné taught church history and Christian doctrine from 1832. A preaching ban imposed by the state church against him and other pietistic pastors led Merle d'Aubigné to become a member of a congregation independent of the state church, although he was actually against a split. This community held its services from 1835 in the Chapelle L'Oratoire and in 1849 joined other independent communities to form the Eglise évangélique . From 1840 to 1868 Merle d'Aubigné was also president of the Société évangélique and one of the most influential representatives of the Geneva Réveil.

Merle d'Aubigné had many contacts in England and was a committed advocate of the Evangelical Alliance . In 1845 he traveled to the Synod of the Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh , where on May 28, 1845 next to Thomas Chalmers a . a. Frédéric Monod from Paris was also present. Merle d'Aubigné said that "ecclesiastical unity will always remain external if it is not determined by the Spirit of Christ, the spirit of love and faith."

His main scientific work Histoire de la Réformation du seizième siècle is dedicated to the early period of the Reformation in Germany. It appeared in five volumes between 1835 and 1853 and has been translated into most European languages. From 1862 to 1877 an eight-volume edition was published that was expanded to include the later period of the Reformation. The Italian translation Storia della Riforma del secolo decimosesto , published in Lausanne in 1847–1849, was put on the index by decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1852 .

Works (selection)

  • Discours sur étude de l'histoire du christianisme et son utilité pour l'époque actuelle. Paris and Geneva, 1832 ( digitized ).
  • Le Luthéranisme et la Réforme ou leur diversité essentielle à leur unité. Paris 1844 ( digitized ).
  • Histoire de la Réformation du seizième siècle. Paris 1835-1853; reissued 1861–1862, in 5 volumes
  • Histoire de la Réformation en Europe au temps de Calvin. 8 volumes, 1862–1877

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gabriel Mützenberg / GL: Merle, Jean-Henri (d'Aubigné). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ^ Gerhard Lindemann : For piety in freedom. The history of the Evangelical Alliance in the Age of Liberalism (1846-1879). Lit, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-8258-8920-3 , pp. 43-45.
  3. Merle d'Aubigné, Jean Henri. In: Jesús Martínez de Bujanda , Marcella Richter: Index des livres interdits: Index librorum prohibitorum 1600–1966. Médiaspaul, Montréal 2002, ISBN 2-89420-522-8 , p. 611 (French, digitized ).