Current Research

Christian Martens is a Joint PhD Candidate at the Institute for Reformation History of the University of Geneva and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance of the University of Warwick. His doctoral project is funded by the Swiss National Fund (Doc.CH) and titled: ‘François Hotman: Writing and Making History in Times of Religious Conflict’ (‘François Hotman historien. Contribution à l’étude de la pratique renaissante et réformée de l’histoire’). It purports to renew the research on the French jurist François Hotman by broadening the up-until-now mostly political interpretation of his work. It aims to sketch a new hermeneutic framework grounded in his activity as both a prominent Protestant historian and a representative of legal humanism. The end goal is to produce a unified analysis not only of Hotman’s better known works, like the Francogallia (1573) and the Antitribonian (1567), but also of his less researched juridic writings.

Christian also collaborates on multiple projects in Swiss history. He is currently co-editing, with Paul-Alexis Mellet, Calvin’s Supplex exhortatio (1543) for the Calvini Opera Omnia (Droz) and, with Jérémie Ferrer-Bartomeu, a contemporary account of the oath-taking ceremony celebrating the renewal in 1602 of the alliance between the French and the Swiss for the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes.

Background

Christian Martens studied French and Latin Philology (2015-2020) and Philosophy at the Université catholique de Louvain (2020-2023). His first Master’s thesis examined the development, diffusion and historiographical reception of the so-called Pseudo-Turpin’s Chronicle, a prose version of the Chanson de Roland written in mid-XII^th century Compostela (‘Huit siècle de Pseudo-Turpin. Études sur la diffusion et la reception d’une fausse chronique médiévale’). His second Master’s thesis explored the potential theoretical tools available to integrate Hayden White’s rhetorical and Gérard Genette’s narratological turns into a more coherent theory of historiography (‘L’univocité de l’histoire. Contribution à l’étude de l’opération historiographique’).

Contact:

Christian.martens@unige.ch

Christian.Martens@warwick.ac.uk