Christian Martens
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.
Recent publications:
Ferrer-Bartomeu, Jérémie, and Martens, Christian. 2022. "Une journée particulière (20 octobre 1602). Le renouvellement de l'alliance entre Henri IV et les ambassadeurs des Ligues suisses au sortir des guerres de Religion : recharge sacrale, traditions politiques et innovations diplomatiques dans le manuscrit fr. 10717 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France" Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 177: 109-149.
Martens, Christian. 2024. "François Hotman and the Critique of Gratian’s Decree: From the Investigation of Early Councils (De statu primitivae Ecclesiae, 1553) to the Rewriting of Europe’s Legal History (Antitribonian, 1567)" Religions 15, no. 10: 1187. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15101187Link opens in a new window
Geonget, Stéphan, and Martens, Christian. 2025 (in print). "Histoire et sources littéraires" in Prévost, Xavier, and Sanchi, Luigi-Alberto (ed.), Introduction à l'humanisme juridique. Auteurs, oeuvres, idées, formes, destinées, Geneva: Droz: 245-260.
Martens, Christian. (Accepted, forthcoming). "La radicalisation de François Hotman. La polémique de 1575 autour de la Francogallia : invective poétique, macaronée rabelaisienne et réécriture partisane" Dix-Septième Siècle 309.
Book reviews:
Martens, Christian. 2023. "Book review of Bruder, Anthony J., Recovering the Medieval in the French Renaissance. Claude Fauchet's Veilles ou Observations, Geneva: Droz, 2024" Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 101, no. 4: 991-993.
Mellet, Paul-Alexis, and Martens, Christian. 2023. "Book review of Schwab, Maren Elisabeth, and Grafton, Anthony, The Art of Discovery. Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2022" Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Humanisme 85, no. 3: 713-717.
Ferrer-Bartomeu, Jérémie, and Martens, Christian. 2024. "Book review of Schapira, Nicolas, Maîtres et secrétaires (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle). L'exercice du pouvoir dans la France d'Ancien Régime, Paris: Albin Michel, 2020" Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 71n no. 2: 168-170. https://doi.org/10.3917/rhmc.712.0169Link opens in a new window
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-XIIth 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