The Fifty-First Season of the
TORONTO RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION COLLOQUIUM Founded by Natalie Zemon Davis and James K. McConica in 1964
Richard Raiswell (University of Prince Edward Island)
“‘Satan is the seducer of them all’: Calvinist Geography and the Encounter with India” Thursday, 25 February 2016, 4:00 p.m. Victoria College, Room 215 (please note, the room is in the Old Vic building, second floor) This lecture is presented in partnership with the Department of History, University of Toronto This paper will look at the emergence of a Calvinist conception of geography, and its implications for the European assimilation of geographical intelligence about India in the early part of the seventeenth century. For Calvinist travellers, India is part of an argument a contrariis writ large across the breadth of creation, a figure juxtaposed against Europe in order to amplify its virtues. To them, India—as part of God’s horrible rhetoric—can be nothing else other than a land possessed by the devil. Richard Raiswell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Prince Edward Island and Fellow at the CRRS. He is currently working on two book projects: a sourcebook on the medieval devil and an examination of the influence of Calvinism in the assessment of geographical intelligence. Image from Jan Huygens van Linschoten's Itinerario (Amsterdam, 1596), p. 119.