Goals of this Project

The most important goal of this project is to create an accessible scholarly digital edition of Morland's vital, yet often overlooked text that centrally highlights important elements of Cromwellian religio-political statecraft aspirations in Europe and at home.

The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of the Piemont is a dense and fascinating text spanning both a deep exegesis of so-called Primitive Christianity, a history of the medieval heretical sect the Waldensians, the connections to the later Italian Waldenses and a full accounting the atrocious massacre of this group at the order of the Duke of Savoy. Additionally, this text provides the operations of the Cromwellian foreign office as it provides the speeches presented to the heads of important Protestant states.

This project seeks to unify these two sections through a full explication of the hermeneutical, scholarly, and contextual references by providing copious framing notes and referential connections highlighting and demonstrating the complex interweaving this book reflects.

Also in this process, I will be questioning Morland's authorship throughout by providing evidence of similar adjacent work by others such as Jean Legér and others.

Through this process, it is my aim to demonstrate how this book was an operational tool of the Cromwellian regime and reflects the aims developed by Cromwell himself and his chief strategists to create a Protestant International Alliance.

Additionally, I will provide a more complete biography of Samuel Morland himself by looking at his life and works both surrounding this mission and how other works by Morland, like his Urim of Conscious fit within larger philosophical and religious projects he and others are associated with.