Reformed Founders is a free guide to the people who founded the Reformed tradition: who they were, what they taught, and how they connect, in their own words wherever possible.
Who writes it
I’m Casey, and I care about faith and making good information easy to find and digest. My hope is this site allows you to read the founders of the Reformed tradition in their own words, and to share them with sources you can check.
How every page is checked
- Every fact has a footnote. Dates and events come from recognized reference works, mainly Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz. Wikipedia helps find sources, but it’s never cited as one.
- Every quote is checked word for word against the public-domain edition it cites, down to the page.
- Disagreements stay visible. When a date is uncertain or historians differ, the page says so.
- The hard parts stay in. The execution of Michael Servetus, Zurich’s treatment of the Anabaptists, Bucer’s compromises, and Knox’s attack on rule by women are all on their pages.
- Each page shows the date its sources were last checked.
How AI helps
I use AI tools to research, draft, and build this site. They find and check sources, draft pages, and build the WordPress theme. Every quote is checked against its source text, every fact has a footnote you can follow, and I read and approve every page before it’s published.
The portraits
The portraits of Zwingli, Bucer, Bullinger, Calvin, and Knox are woodcuts from Theodore Beza’s Icones (1580), a book of reformers’ portraits made in their own century, reproduced from a 1906 facsimile. Beza’s own portrait is a 1599 engraving by Hendrick Hondius. All are in the public domain. See Read the sources for the originals.
Corrections
Found a mistake? Email info@reformedfounders.org with the page and what’s wrong, and a source if you have one.