Post Tenebras Lux is a Latin phrase that translates as “light after darkness”. It appears as Post tenebras spero lucem (“After darkness I hope for light”) in the Vulgate version of Job 17:12.
The phrase was adopted as a Calvinist motto, and later as a motto for the entire Protestant Reformation. It is used by John Calvin’s adopted city of Geneva, Switzerland, on its coins. As a mark of its role in the Calvinist movement, the motto is engraved on the Reformation Wall in Geneva and on the Huguenot Monument in Franschhoek, South Africa.
Title page of the first edition of Part I of Don Quixote (1605), with the motto Post tenebras spero lucem in the strapwork around the central device.
A new kind of society – a society built on goodness