Professor Mark Greengrass

M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.), FRHistS., FSA

Professor Emeritus of Early Modern History

16th-17th c. France; French Wars of Religion

Office Hours:

m.greengrass@sheffield.ac.uk

Jessop West 3.03

Major Publications

Biography

Mark Greengrass joined the Department of Medieval and Modern History in 1973. His research interests concentrate on the history of Europe in the post-reformation period, with particular emphasis on the political and religious history of France and the intellectual history of Europe more generally. You may still discover copies of his France in the Age of Henri IV, (London and New York, Longman, 1995) and The European Reformation (c.1500-1618), (London and New York, Longman, 1998) on the shelves of discerning bookshops. His interests in European intellectual history are represented by the collaborative collection that he edited with M.P. Leslie and T. Raylor, Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation. Studies in Intellectual Communication,, (Cambridge, C.U.P., 1994). More recently, he co-edited (with Penny Roberts and Keith Cameron) a series of studies on the difficulties in accommodating religious difference in early-modern France under the title: The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France, (Bern, Peter Lang, 2000). His most recent publication is Governing Passions. Pacification and Reformation in the French Kingdom (Oxford, O.U.P., 2007), a study of the 'ideologies' of reform and peace among the French notables in the civil wars, and why they did not have the success that was hoped for them. He is currently working on a volume for the Penguin 'History of Europe' series, edited by David Cannadine, and due for completion at the end of 2008.

He directed the Hartlib Papers Project which transcribed, edited and published the unique manuscript collections of Samuel Hartlib, a seventeenth-century man of science, housed in Sheffields University Library. The project completed its work in 2002 when the second edition of the two CD-ROM set was published by HRiOnline. He now directs for the University of Sheffield the British Academy John Foxe Project, which published a remarkable CD-ROM facsimile edition of the 1583 edition of Foxe's famous martyrology (the Acts and Monuments) with Oxford University Press in 2002. The project is now working towards completing the online publication of the complete variorum edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs for the end of 2008.

He has received grants and fellowships from the British Academy, the AHRB/AHRC, the Knowledge Transfer Scheme, the Pilgrim Trust, the Aurelius Trust, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes-Etudes, Paris, the Coalfield Regeneration Trust. He has been professeur invité at l'Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (1985-6), l'Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) (2001), the Centre de la Renaissance, l'Université François-Rabelais (Tours) (2001), and the Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University, USA.

He has a related interest in the application of ICT technologies to Arts and Humanities Research. He is an Associate Director of the AHRC ICT Methods Network Programme, and has directed several projects in that field. These include

• The 'Materialising Sheffield Project' – the application of VR techniques to the study of Sheffield's industrial archaeology
• The 'Armadillo' Project – the application of advanced semantic web data-mining techniques to distributed historical materials (with the Department of Computing Science, University of Sheffield)
• The 'RePAH' Project – a knowledge-gathering project to identify the online information-gathering techniques of Arts and Humanities scholars, and envisage what kind of research portal would most fit their needs for the future (with the Knowledge Media Centre, De Montfort University)

The forthcoming edited book (with Lorna Hughes), Virtual History and Archaeology (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008) explores how archaeologists and historians have common challenges in using ICT to assist their research.

He has published extensively in learned journals and has twice been awarded the Nancy Lyman Roelker prize by the American Society for Sixteenth Century Studies.

Membership of Professional Bodies

• Member of the editorial board of French History and co-editor (with Tim Baycroft) of its reviews section
• UK Member of the editorial board of Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
• Fellow of the Huguenot Society for Great Britain and Ireland
• Member of Advisory Committee, British History Online [IHR]; HUMBUL Advisory Group; AHDS (History) Advisory Group; Trustee and Member of the Board for the Society for the Study of French History; Advisory Board of the Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology.

He has published extensively in learned journals and is a member of the editorial boards of French History and Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Huguenot Society for Great Britain and Ireland.

Research

Current Research

I am currently writing the Penguin History of Europe for the period from 1517-1648. The work is organised around the theme of Europe's extraordinary communicative energy – the energy which drove the Reformation and subtly changed the political and social fabric of Europe, creating new divisions and defining new aspirations. I am planning to write a more extensive history of the French Reformation and to study the intellectual world of the French notables in the age of Henri IV. I also want to study the truth-claims and their presentational strategies in sixteenth-century martyrologies.

Research Interests

I teach sixteenth and seventeenth-century European history. My interests mainly relate to how individuals and groups sought to understand their own emotions – especially fear, anger and love. I am also working on French Calvinist conduct books, and on ideas of reform in France in the civil wars (especially around the Estates General). A separate research interest is in the application of ICT to Arts and Humanities Research.

Research Supervision

Current PhD Students:

Mark Critchlow - 'League Memories: Recollections of Catholic Political Engagement in late Sixteenth-Century Paris.'

Responsibilities

(Department) Convenor of the Research Committee; member of the Department's Standing Committee; member of its Postgraduate Committee (University): Chair of the HriOnline Committee and Member of the HRI Board.

Selected Publications

Books

- The Virtual Presentation of the Past (ed., with Lorna Hughes) (Ashgate, 2008)

-  Governing Passions, Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

- Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation, Studies in Intellectual Communication (ed., with Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

- Religion, Politics, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (edited by Ian W. Archer) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

- The Longman Companion to the European Reformation, c.1500-1618 (Longman Companions To History) (Longman, 1998)

- The French Reformation (Historical Association Studies) (Wiley-Blackwell, 1987)

Essays and Articles

- 'Miracles and the Peregrination of the Holy in the French Wars of Religion' in José Pedro Paiva (ed.), Religious ceremonials and images: power and social meaning (1400-1750), (Coimbra, Palimage Editores, 2002), pp. 389-414

- 'Samuel Hartlib and the Commonwealth of Learning' in John Barnard et al. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol IV, (Cambridge, C.U.P., 2002)

- 'Informal Networks in Sixteenth-Century French Protestantism' in Ray Mentzer and Andrew Spicer, Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 1559-1665, (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2001), ch. 6, pp. 78-97.

- 'Financing the Cause: protestant mobilisation and accountability in France (1562-1589)' in Philip Benedict and Henk van Nierop (eds) Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555-1585, (Amsterdam, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999), pp. 233-254 [joint winner of the Nancy L. Roelker prize, awarded by the Sixteenth Century Studies Society, 2000].