Bridging the sixteenth- and the twentieth-centuries: Roland Bainton as a transitional figure in historical scholarship

The dissertation explores the career of Yale Reformation historian Roland H. Bainton. Chapter two analyzes the roles of Bainton's two personal mentors, his father Herbert Bainton and Cornell historian George Lincoln Burr, in fostering Bainton's social ethic and academic interest in religious liberty in the sixteenth-century. Chapter four explores the historical context and maturation of Bainton's social activism, discussing the roles of World War I and II, the interwar years, and the Cold War in shaping Bainton's social conscience. Chapter four evaluates the relationship between Bainton's personal sense of contemporary social justice and his Reformation scholarship, most notably through his scholarship of the anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus. Chapter five analyzes how Bainton's liberal Protestant views influenced his Reformation scholarship including figures such as Erasmus and Luther. The chapter explores how much of Bainton's historical scholarship can be interpreted as apologies for liberal Protestant thought against currents of fundamentalism and neo-orthodoxy present in contemporary society. Chapter six evaluates Bainton's role in the professionalization of the American historical profession, particularly in the era of Renaissance and Reformation studies. The chapter discusses Bainton's role in assisting emigre scholars, including Paul Oskar Kristeller and Hans Baron, who fled totalitarian Europe in the interwar years as well as the role that Bainton would play in establishing Reformation and Renaissance learned societies in North America and setting professional standards.