Dr. Mentzer joined the University of Iowa faculty in 2001 as the first Daniel J. Krumm Family Chair in Reformation Studies.

His research program focuses on the French Reformed community during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He is especially interested in the manner whereby Protestant church leaders as well as ordinary members of the congregation translated new theological insights into a system of approved moral conduct and a set of everyday devotional habits. He has published a series of books and journal articles on the prosecution of French Protestants for heresy, the family and its role in the formation of confessional identity in early modern France, the application of Reformed church discipline, and the development of the French Reformed liturgy. Among his recent books are an inventory of the extant ecclesiastical disciplinary records for the French Reformed Churches during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and an edited volume focusing on the Huguenots from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

Research interests

• Reformation studies
• Early modern European religious history

Selected publications

For complete list, please see Dr. Mentzer's CV:

• A Companion to the Huguenots. Coedited with Bertrand Van Ruymbeke. Brill Companion Series 68. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
• Les registres des consistoires des Églises réformées de France, XVIe - XVIIe siècles. Un inventaire. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 526. Archives des Églises réformées de France 4. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2014.
• Agir pour l’Église. Ministères et charges ecclésiastiques dans les Églises réformés (XVIe-XIXe siècle. Coedited with Didier Poton. Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2014.
• Dire l’interdit: The Vocabulary of Censure and Exclusion in the Early Modern Reformed Tradition. Co-edited with Philippe Chareyre and Françoise Moreil. Brill Series in Church History 40. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
• La mesure du fait religieux: L’approche méthodologique des registres consistoriaux dans l’espace calvinien XVI-XVIIIe siècle. Co-edited with Philippe Chareyre. Special issue of Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 153: 4 (octobre-novembre-décembre 2007).
• La construction de l’identité réformée aux 16eet 17e siècles: le rôle des consistoires. Vie des Huguenots 37. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.
• Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685 . Co-edited with Andrew Spicer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Sin and the Calvinists: Morals Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 32. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 1994. Second edition, 2002.
• Blood and Belief: Family Survival and Confessional Identity among the Provincial Huguenot Nobility. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1994.
• Heresy Proceedings in Languedoc, 1500-1560. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984.

Courses taught

Dr. Mentzer regularly teaches a series of courses on early modern European religious history and the Reformation. All are cross-listed in the Departments of History and Religious Studies.

• RELS:1225 (HIST:1425) Medieval Religion and Culture
• RELS:1250 (HIST:1450) Modern Religion and Culture
• RELS:3385 (HIST:3485) Early Modern Catholicism
• RELS:3190 (HIST:3190) Medieval to Modern: The Birth of Protestantism
• RELS:4155 (HIST 4455) Religion and Conflict: Early Modern Period
• RELS:6475 (HIST:6475) Seminar: Reformation Culture and Theology

Awards, honors, and grants

• Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, French Ministry of Education, 2017
• Regents Award for Faculty Excellent, 2015
• Professeur invité, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, 2011
• Professeur invité, Université d’Angers, 2011
• Lewis Memorial Prize, Huguenot Heritage, 2009
• Professeur invité, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III, 2009
• Harold J. Grimm Prize, Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, 2008
• President, Society for Reformation Research, 2006-2007
• Director, Department of Religious Studies, 2003-12
• Directeur d’études associé, École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), 1997 and 2003
• Camargo Foundation Fellow, 1998
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, 1997-98
• J.K. Cameron Faculty Fellow, University of St. Andrews, 1997
• President , Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, 1997
• National Huguenot Society Book Prize, 1997