Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies)

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Summary: A thorough, scholarly, deftly presented case study
Review: Choosing Death: Suicide And Calvinism In Early Modern Geneva by Jeffrey R. Watt (Associate Professor in History, University of Mississippi) is a thorough, scholarly, deftly presented case study of the Republic of Geneva and its history of suicide. From views of the suicide in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that regarded self-destruction as the result of demonic possession, and that harshly appropriated the property of those who took their own lives, to the late eighteenth century turn of thought that recognized the role that mental illness and personal trauma often played in suicide. Choosing Death is a fascinating, informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking social history of an admittedly grim subject within the historical context of a proud and sovereign European nation.

Rating:
Summary: A Small Caveat
Review: This is an excellent book, but I have to take issue with its subtitle. By 1750 Calvinism was no longer a majority opinion in Geneva, at least, not the orthodox variety that had made Geneva synonomous with Calvinism. The ideas of the enlightenment had so thoroughly affected the Reformed movement that no conclusions can be drawn from Geneva's place as the capital of calvinism and the increase in suicides there.In fact, a very good case could be made for the opposite. Although a scion of the famous Turretin family was Geneva's leading theologian at the time, it was his watering down of his father and grandfather's calvinism that he was best known for. A better subtitle would have been "Suicide after the decline of Calvinism in Geneva".