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  • L'ordre du temps: L'invention de la ponctualité au XVIe siècle
  • Jeannine Olson
Max Engammare . L'ordre du temps: L'invention de la ponctualité au XVIe siècle. Geneva: Librairie Droz S. A., 2004. 264 pp. index. illus. bibl. €42. ISBN: 2-600-00914-0.

Much as Max Weber credited Reformed Protestants with a "spirit of capitalism" (235), Max Engammare suggests that Reformed Protestants had a consciousness of time that was unique in the sixteenth century. Moreover, just as the spirit of capitalism spread beyond Reformed Protestants, this Reformed attitude toward time spread to other parts of Europe and the Americas with the expansion of Reformed churches.

What was the particular attitude toward time held by Reformed Protestants? It was more than simply being on time. Punctuality is addressed in l'Ordre du temps, being on time for sermons, for instance; but the Reformed attitude toward time was more about making good use of one's time than about being on time, and specifically about being responsible for the use of one's time to God.

The responsibility one has to God to make good use of one's time was a theme that John Calvin reiterated again and again in his sermons. A responsible use of time for work and prayer was also reflected in the daily agenda of Reformed leaders whose daily habits we know, such as Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich and John Calvin. The Reformed also taught responsible use of a student's time in school, beginning with Calvin's teacher in Paris, Mathurin Cordier, who taught schoolboys in three Reformed cities: Neuchâtel, Lausanne, and Geneva from 1538 until he died in the same year as Calvin, 1564.

But was this attention to the responsible use of time before God unique to Reformed Protestants? Engammare says yes. Engammare asserts that whereas Catholics emphasized the use of spiritual space with churches and pilgrimage sites, the Reformed emphasized the use of time, symbolized by the Reformed preacher's hourglass in the pulpit, which controlled the length of sermons, sermons that the authorities in Geneva and elsewhere were eager to limit to a restrained period of time, especially on workdays. Although monasteries with their hours of prayer had organized monastic time before Calvin, and humanists such as Erasmus had complained of not having enough time, Calvin and his colleagues had added a moral dimension to the use of time. With Calvin and Reformed Protestantism, Christians stood responsible to God for the full and responsible use of time.

Besides his overall thesis, Engammare deals with other aspects of time: the introduction of the clock and the personal timepiece; the production of various kinds of calendars (Genevan, Huguenot, Shepherds); the gradual acceptance of the Gregorian calendar reform in country after country of Europe; the daily schedule at the Genevan collège; the hour of the day when specific individuals habitually arose from bed (Calvin, Bullinger, Montaigne, Henry IV). This book also contains an index by name and an up-to-date bibliography that reveals contemporary research related to time.

Where, then, can one find fault with this comprehensive book written by a scholar so skilled in languages, so hardworking, and so familiar with the materials? It is perhaps in his focus on Calvin and the Reformed tradition that Engammare [End Page 1371] is too eager to attribute to Calvinism an attitude toward time that is more widespread than his book would allow. Is it really fair to compare the daily agenda of a John Calvin and a Henry Bullinger, who worked for a living, to a gentleman of leisure such as Michel Montaigne or to Pierre de Ronsard? Were the humanists, and perhaps their ancient role models and others who could read, so lacking in consciousness of their responsibility to make good use of their time before God? Were Lutherans really so different from Calvinists in their attitude toward time? What of the influence on society of the world of commerce, which demanded punctuality at guild meetings, for instance, and fined those who were tardy? One has the suspicion that further research into other societies and regions contemporary with Calvin might prove Geneva and the...

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