This article presents François Bonivard (the pre-Reformation Prior of Geneva’s Cluniac monastery) and his Des Difformes Reformateurs, the premier example of his satirical and polemical skills. In this, he attacks the violence and immorality accompanying and undermining the Reformation. Opposed to the corruption of the “old” faith, he was a strong critic of the inflammatory preachers of the “new” as well as their followers’ violence and avarice. This work emphasises that the desire for an ethical, non-violent Reformation (e.g. Erasmus and Castellio) could be found even in Calvin’s Geneva.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Naphy, W. G., (2025), "François Bonivard and his Difformes Reformateurs", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Naphy, W. G. "François Bonivard and his Difformes Reformateurs." Renaissance and Reformation 32 (2): 2010. 57-80. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v32i2.11549. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.