Idolatry and Accommodation: “Histoires” and Their Natural-Philosophical Interpretations in Simon Goulart’s Commentaires et annotations sur la Sepmaine de Du Bartas (1583)

This paper focuses on a specific instance of early modern Calvinist natural theology:

what hermeneutics did reading the book of Nature through the spectacles of Scripture entail in Simon Goulart’s Commentaires et annotations sur la Sepmaine de Du Bartas? Goulart systematically reduces “idolatrous” mythological fables to their natural-philosophical content. He distinguishes these deceitful fables or “histories” from the natural-philosophical lessons that God accommodated to man’s understanding in the true “histories” of Scripture. However, this paper shows that the dismantling of idolatrous fables and the natural-philosophical interpretation of divine accommodation rely on the same rhetorical processes, namely allegory and narrative