
Sam Kennerley
Hannah Seeger Davis Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2020-2021 to 2021-2022
- DegreePh.D., History, University of Cambridge, 2018DissertationThe Reception of John Chrysostom and the Study of Ancient Christianity in Early Modern Europe, c.1440-1600Research ProjectWriting Greek back into the History of Greek Patristics: Two Case-studies from Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Rome
Sam Kennerley is a historian of ideas, whose research explores patristic scholarship, religious plurality, and learned correspondence in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe. Dr. Kennerley studied at the University of St Andrews and Trinity College, Cambridge, before taking up a Research Fellowship at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He has published about the patristic scholarship of Roger Ascham, Josse Clichtove, and Desiderius Erasmus, as well as about the Ethiopian community of early modern Rome. A book based on his PhD thesis, The Reception of John Chrysostom in Early Modern Europe, is under contract with Walter de Gruyter.
About the Research Project
Writing Greek back into the History of Greek Patristics: Two Case-studies from Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Rome
Dr. Kennerley pursued two research projects while at the Seeger Centre. The first of these studied a Greek edition of the fifth-century exegete Theodoret of Cyrus that was planned and printed in Rome between 1545 and 1547. Drawing upon the correspondence of Marcello Cervini, Dr. Kennerley showed how this edition stimulated protests among the Greek community of Rome, so exposing the possibilities for religious dissent that were available to Greek Christians just after the re-creation of the Roman Inquisition. The results of this research were published in Erudition and the Republic of Letters. Dr. Kennerley’s second project was to finish his book The Reception of John Chrysostom in Early Modern Europe, which explores the contents and motivations of Greek manuscripts and Latin translations created in the millennium-and-more between Chrysostom’s death and 1626. Dr. Kennerley completed the draft of this book while at Princeton, and it is expected to be published by Walter de Gruyter in 2022.
Publications
- The Reception of John Chrysostom in Early Modern Europe: Translating and Reading a Greek Church Father from 1417 to 1624De Gruyter,
- Rome and the Maronites in the Renaissance and ReformationRoutledge,
