Chapter 17 Of ‘Conversion’ and ‘Reversal’: Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and His Adoptions of Jean Pierre Camus in the Context of the Counter-Reformation, Reform Catholicism, and Jansenism
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Abstract
Of old civil (and Lutheran) Nuremberg decent, Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (1606–1658) translated (‘dollmetscht’) a variety of French authors connected to Jansenism, the Counter-Reformation, and Reform Catholicism, amongst them the Bishop of Belley, Jean Pierre Camus (1584–1652). Camus’ popular collection of crime stories (The Bloody Amphitheatre [L’Amphithéâtre sanglant], 1630) tells – amongst other things – of the successful reconversion of the French Huguenots. How does Harsdörffer handle this narration in his adaption The Great Showplace of Bloody Crime Stories (Der grosse Schau-Platz jämmerlicher Mordgeschichten, 1649/50)? As I will demonstrate, a literary analysis needs a grounded contextualisation of the theological framework and textual strategies of the Counter-Reformation. Moreover, Harsdörffer’s interests in Jansenism and Reform Catholicism after the Peace of Westphalia need to be clarified. Such a historic reconstruction of the denominational interests involved in his writings allows for an understanding of Harsdörffer’s argumentative switching from ‘Conversion’ (‘Bekehrung’) to ‘Reversal’ (‘Verkehrung’).