Anja Göing (Cambridge)

Reshaping Zwingli: Conversations about Education in Zurich 1560-1580

Views on education in the early modern period were astonishingly diverse. They ranged from theories of child-rearing and schooling to concrete discussions of the education of individuals in all its social and cultural complexity. School education was therefore seen as only part of a process that would ultimately ensure successful entry into the various communities that determined or advised the reach and direction of adult life. Among these communities were those formed by the church, the town, the professional guilds and also, the family. This study deals with one aspect of this complex picture, the search for a conceptual frame of public education in the 16th century. The focus of the research is the Zurich Lectorium, an institution of higher education planned by Huldrych Zwingli 1523-1525 in the wake of humanism and according to the demands of the reforming church.
On a micro level, this project aims to show how teachers dealt with students and to identify their didactic and disciplinary methods. My book searches for answers on the institutional level of the school, by scrutinizing school regulations, school minutes, and textbooks. It is planned to write a second volume about the students, comprising a close look at immatriculation lists and life documents, their notebooks and annotations, their letters, and finally, their lectures, sermons and written books.