Biography

Dr. Michael Bruening is a specialist in the history of the Reformation and teaches courses at S&T on European history from Ancient Rome through Tudor/Stuart England. His first book, Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528-1559 (Springer, 2005), is an investigation of the early Reformation in the French-speaking Switzerland outside of Geneva. It has also been published in French translation as Le premier champ de bataille du calvinisme: Conflits et Réforme dans le Pays de Vaud, 1528-1559 (Antipodes, 2011). The leading Protestant reformer of the Pays de Vaud, and one of John Calvin’s closest friends, was Pierre Viret. In 2012, Dr. Bruening published a critical edition of Viret’s previously unedited correspondence, Epistolae Petri Vireti: The Previously Unedited Letters and a Register of Pierre Viret’s Correspondence (Droz, 2012). On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation, Dr. Bruening published a reader for courses on the Reformation, A Reformation Sourcebook: Documents from an Age of Debate (University of Toronto Press, 2017). Most recently, he published an investigation of French-speaking Protestants who did not identify with the Calvinist majority, Refusing to Kiss the Slipper: Opposition to Calvinism in the Francophone Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2021). He is currently working on an online edition of Sebastian Castellio’s correspondence and on history of the conflicts between Calvin and Castellio.

Education

• Ph.D., 2002, University of Arizona, History, Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies
• M.A., 1994, University of Virginia, History
• B.A., 1992, University of Virginia, Religious Studies