Calvin Meets Voltaire

Eighteenth-century Geneva offers a fascinating glimpse into the encounter between the Reformation and the Enlightenment in the figurative meeting of Calvin and Voltaire. This research supports a revisionist understanding of religion and the Enlightenment, moves beyond a simplistic paradigm of 'decline' and secularization, and highlights how Geneva’s French connection ultimately uprooted a society still largely committed to its Protestant-Reformation origins.