John Calvin
This man, undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, and
perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most perseveringly followed by
his disciples of any Western writer on theology, was born at Noyon
in Picardy, France, 10 July, 1509, and died at Geneva, 27 May,
1564. A generation divided him from Luther, whom he never met. By
birth, education, and temper these two protagonists of the
reforming movement were strongly contrasted. Luther was a Saxon
peasant, his father a miner; Calvin sprang from the French middle-
class, and his father, an attorney, had purchased the freedom of
the City of Noyon, where he practised civil and canon law. Luther
entered the Order of Augustinian Hermits, took a monk's vows, was
made a priest and incurred much odium by marrying a nun. Calvin
never was ordained in the Catholic Church; his training was
chiefly in law and the humanities; he took no vows. Luther's
eloquence made him popular by its force, humour, rudeness, and
vulgar style. Calvin spoke to the learned at all times, even when
preaching before multitudes. His manner is classical; he reasons
on system; he has little humour; instead of striking with a cudgel
he uses the weapons of a deadly logic and persuades by a teacher's
authority, not by a demagogue's calling of names. He writes French
as well as Luther writes German, and like him has been reckoned a
pioneer in the modern development of his native tongue. Lastly, if
we term the doctor of Wittenberg a mystic, we may sum up Calvin as
a scholastic; he gives articulate expression to the principles
which Luther had stormily thrown out upon the world in his
vehement pamphleteering; and the "Institutes" as they were left by
their author have remained ever since the standard of orthodox
Protestant belief in all the Churches known as "Reformed." His
French disciples called their sect "the religion"; such it has
proved to be outside the Roman world.
The family name, spelt in many ways, was Cauvin latinized
according to the custom of the age as Calvinus. For some unknown
reason the Reformer is commonly called Ma�tre Jean C. His mother,
Jeanne Le Franc, born in the Diocese of Cambrai, is mentioned as
"beautiful and devout"; she took her little son to various shrines
and brought him up a good Catholic. On the father's side, his
ancestors were seafaring men. His grandfather settled at Pont
l'Ev�que near Paris, and had two sons who became locksmiths; the
third was Gerard, who turned procurator at Noyon, and there his
four sons and two daughters saw the light. He lived in the Place
au Ble (Cornmarket). Noyon, a bishop's see, had long been a fief
of the powerful old family of Hangest, who treated it as their
personal property. But an everlasting quarrel, in which the city
took part, went on between the bishop and the chapter. Charles de
Hangest, nephew of the too well-known Georges d'Amboise,
Archbishop of Rouen, surrendered the bishopric in 1525 to his own
nephew John, becoming his vicar-general. John kept up the battle
with his canons until the Parliament of Paris intervened, upon
which he went to Rome, and at last died in Paris in 1577. This
prelate had Protestant kinsfolk; he is charged with having
fostered heresy which in those years was beginning to raise its
head among the French. Clerical dissensions, at all events,
allowed the new doctrines a promising field; and the Calvins were
more or less infected by them before 1530.
Gerard's four sons were made clerics and held benefices at a
tender age. The Reformer was given one when a boy of twelve, he
became Cure of Saint-Martin de Marteville in the Vermandois in
1527, and of Pont l'Eveque in 1529. Three of the boys attended the
local Coll�ge des Capettes, and there John proved himself an apt
scholar. But his people were intimate with greater folk, the de
Montmor, a branch of the line of Hangest, which led to his
accompanying some of their children to Paris in 1523, when his
mother was probably dead and his father had married again. The
latter died in 1531, under excommunication from the chapter for
not sending in his accounts. The old man's illness, not his lack
of honesty, was, we are told, the cause. Yet his son Charles,
nettled by the censure, drew towards the Protestant doctrines. He
was accused in 1534 of denying the Catholic dogma of the
Eucharist, and died out of the Church in 1536; his body was
publicly gibbeted as that of a recusant.
Meanwhile, young John was going through his own trials at the
University of Paris, the dean or syndic of which, Noel Bedier, had
stood up against Erasmus and bore hard upon Le F�vre d'Etaples
(Stapulensis), celebrated for his translation of the Bible into
French. Calvin, a "martinet", or oppidan, in the Coll�ege de la
Marche, made this man's acquaintance (he was from Picardy) and may
have glanced into his Latin commentary on St. Paul, dated 1512,
which Doumergue considers the first Protestant book emanating from
a French pen. Another influence tending the same way was that of
Corderius, Calvin's tutor, to whom he dedicated afterwards his
annotation of I Thessalonians, remarking, "if there be any good
thing in what I have published, I owe it to you". Corderius had an
excellent Latin style, his life was austere, and his "Colloquies"
earned him enduring fame. But he fell under suspicion of heresy,
and by Calvin's aid took refuge in Geneva, where he died September
1564. A third herald of the "New Learning" was George Cop,
physician to Francis I, in whose house Calvin found a welcome and
gave ear to the religious discussions which Cop favoured. And a
fourth was Pierre-Robert d'Olivet of Noyon, who also translated
the Scriptures, our youthful man of letters, his nephew, writing
(in 1535) a Latin preface to the Old Testament and a French one --
his first appearance as a native author -- to the New Testament.
By 1527, when no more than eighteen, Calvin's educatlon was
complete in its main lines. He had learned to be a humanist and a
reformer. The "sudden conversion" to a spiritual life in 1529, of
which he speaks, must not be taken quite literally. He had never
been an ardent Catholic; but the stories told at one time of his
ill-regulated conduct have no foundation; and by a very natural
process he went over to the side on which his family were taking
their stand. In 1528 he inscribed himself at Orleans as a law
student,made friends with Francis Daniel, and then went for a year
to Bourges, where he began preaching in private. Margaret
d'Angoul�me, sister of Francis I, and Duchess of Berry, was living
there with many heterodox Germans about her.
He is found again at Paris in 1531. Wolmar had taught him Greek at
Bourges; from Vatable he learned Hebrew; and he entertained some
relations with the erudite Budaeus. About this date he printed a
commentary on Seneca's "De Clementi�". It was merely an exercise
in scholarship, having no political significance. Francis I was,
indeed, handling Protestants severely, and Calvin, now Doctor of
Law at Orleans, composed, so the story runs, an oration on
Christian philosophy which Nicholas Cop delivered on All Saints'
Day, 1532, both writer and speaker having to take instant flight
from pursuit by the royal inquisitors. This legend has been
rejected by modern critics. Calvin spent some time, however, with
Canon du Tillet at Angoul�me under a feigned designation. In May,
1534, he went to Noyon, gave up his benefice, and, it is said, was
imprisoned. But he got away to Nerac in Bearn, the residence of
the Duchess Margaret, and there again encountered Le F�vre, whose
French Bible had been condemned by the Sorbonne to the flames. His
next visit to Paris fell out during a violent campaign of the
Lutherans against the Mass, which brought on reprisals, Etienne de
la Forge and others were burnt in the Place de Gr�ve; and Calvin
accompanied by du Tillet, escaped -- though not without adventures
-- to Metz and Strasburg. In the latter city Bucer reigned
supreme. The leading reformers dictated laws from the pulpit to
their adherents, and this journey proved a decisive one for the
French humanist, who, though by nature timid and shy, committed
himself to a war on paper with his own sovereign. The famous
letter to Francis I is dated 23 August, 1535. It served as a
prologue to the "Institutes", of which the first edition came out
in March, 1536, not in French but in Latin. Calvin's apology for
lecturing the king was, that placards denouncing the Protestants
as rebels had been posted up all over the realm. Francis I did not
read these pages, but if he had done so he would have discovered
in them a plea, not for toleration, which the Reformer utterly
scorned, but for doing away with Catholicism in favour of the new
gospel. There could be only one true Church, said the young
theologian, therefore kings ought to make an utter end of popery.
(For an account of the "Institutes" see CALVINISM.) The second
edition belongs to 1539, the first French translation to 1541; the
final Latin, as revised by its author, is of 1559; but that in
common use, dated 1560, has additions by his disciples. "It was
more God's work than mine", said Calvin, who took for his motto
"Omnia ad Dei gloriam", and in allusion to the change he had
undergone in 1529 assumed for his device a hand stretched out from
a burning heart.
A much disputed chapter in Calvin's biography is the visit which
he was long thought to have paid at Ferraro to the Protestant
Duchess Renee, daughter of Louis XII. Many stories clustered about
his journey, now given up by the best-informed writers. All we
know for certain is that the Reformer, after settling his family
affairs and bringing over two of his brothers and sisters to the
views he had adopted undertook, in consequence of the war between
Charles V and Francis I, to reach Bale by way of Geneva, in July,
1536. At Geneva the Swiss preacher Fare, then looking for help in
his propaganda, besought him with such vehemence to stay and teach
theology that, as Calvin himself relates, he was terrified into
submission. We are not accustomed to fancy the austere prophet so
easily frightened. But as a student and recluse new to public
responsibilities, he may well have hesitated before plunging into
the troubled waters of Geneva, then at their stormiest period. No
portrait of him belonging to this time is extant. Later he is
represented as of middle height, with bent shoulders, piercing
eyes, and a large forehead; his hair was of an auburn tinge. Study
and fasting occasioned the severe headaches from which he suffered
continually. In private life he was cheerful but sensitive, not to
say overbearing, his friends treated him with delicate
consideration. His habits were simple; he cared nothing for
wealth, and he never allowed himself a holiday. His
correspondence, of which 4271 letters remain, turns chiefly on
doctrinal subjects. Yet his strong, reserved character told on all
with whom he came in contact; Geneva submitted to his theocratic
rule, and the Reformed Churches accepted his teaching as though it
were infallible.
Such was the stranger whom Farel recommended to his fellow
Protestants, "this Frenchman", chosen to lecture on the Bible in a
city divided against itself. Geneva had about 15,000 inhabitants.
Its bishop had long been its prince limited, however, by popular
privileges. The vidomne, or mayor, was the Count of Savoy, and to
his family the bishopric seemed a property which, from 1450, they
bestowed on their younger children. John of Savoy, illegitimate
son of the previous bishop, sold his rights to the duke, who was
head of the clan, and died in 1519 at Pignerol. Jean de la Baume,
last of its ecclesiastical princes, abandoned the city, which
reeeived Protestant teachers from Berne in 1519 and from Fribourg
in 1526. In 1527 the arms of Savoy were torn down; in 1530 the
Catholic party underwent defeat, and Geneva became independent. It
had two councils, but the final verdict on public measures rested
with the people. These appointed Farel, a convert of Le Fevre, as
their preacher in 1534. A discussion between the two Churches from
30 May to 24 June,1535 ended in victory for the Protestants. The
altars were desecrated, the sacred images broken, the Mass done
away with. Bernese troops entered and "the Gospel" was accepted,
21 May, 1536. This implied persecution of Catholics by the
councils which acted both as Church and State. Priests were thrown
into prison; citizens were fined for not attending sermons. At
Z�rich, Basle, and Berne the same laws were established.
Toleration did not enter into the ideas of the time.
But though Calvin had not introduced this legislation, it was
mainly by his influence that in January, 1537 the "articles" were
voted which insisted on communion four times a year, set spies on
delinquents, established a moral censorship, and punished the
unruly with excommunication. There was to be a children's
catechism, which he drew up; it ranks among his best writings. The
city now broke into "jurants" and "nonjurors" for many would not
swear to the "articles"; indeed, they never were completely
accepted. Questions had arisen with Berne touching points that
Calvin judged to be indifferent. He made a figure in the debates
at Lausanne defending the freedom of Geneva. But disorders ensued
at home, where recusancy was yet rife; in 1538 the council exiled
Farel, Calvin, and the blind evangelist, Couraud. The Reformer
went to Strasburg, became the guest of Capito and Bucer, and in
1539 was explaining the New Testament to French refugees at fifty
two florins a year. Cardinal Sadolet had addressed an open letter
to the Genevans, which their exile now answered. Sadolet urged
that schism was a crime; Calvin replied that the Roman Church was
corrupt. He gained applause by his keen debating powers at
Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon. But he complains of his poverty and
ill-health, which did not prevent him from marrying at this time
Idelette de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist whom he had
converted. Nothing more is known of this lady, except that she
brought him a son who died almost at birth in 1542, and that her
own death took place in 1549.
After some negotiation Ami Perrin, commissioner for Geneva,
persuaded Calvin to return. He did so, not very willingly, on 13
September, 1541. His entry was modest enough. The church
constitution now recognized "pastors, doctors, elders, deacons"
but supreme power was given to the magistrate. Ministers had the
spiritual weapon of God's word; the consistory never, as such,
wielded the secular arm Preachers, led by Calvin, and the
councils, instigated by his opponents, came frequently into
collision. Yet the ordinances of 1541 were maintained; the clergy,
assisted by lay elders, governed despotically and in detail the
actions of every citizen. A presbyterian Sparta might be seen at
Geneva; it set an example to later Puritans, who did all in their
power to imitate its discipline. The pattern held up was that of
the Old Testament, although Christians were supposed to enjoy
Gospel liberty. In November, 1552, the Council declared that
Calvin's "Institutes" were a "holy doctrine which no man might
speak against." Thus the State issued dogmatic decrees, the force
of which had been anticipated earlier, as when Jacques Gouet was
imprisoned on charges of impiety in June, 1547, and after severe
torture was beheaded in July. Some of the accusations brought
against the unhappy young man were frivolous, others doubtful.
What share, if any, Calvin took in this judgment is not easy to
ascertain. The execution of however must be laid at his door; it
has given greater offence by far than the banishment of Castellio
or the penalties inflicted on Bolsec -- moderate men opposed to
extreme views in discipline and doctrine, who fell under suspicion
as reactionary. The Reformer did not shrink from his self-
appointed task. Within five years fifty-eight sentences of death
and seventy-six of exile, besides numerous committals of the most
eminent citizens to prison, took place in Geneva. The iron yoke
could not be shaken off. In 1555, under Ami Perrin, a sort of
revolt was attempted. No blood was shed, but Perrin lost the day,
and Calvin's theocracy triumphed.
"I am more deeply scandalized", wrote Gibbon "at the single
execution of Servetus than at the hecatombs which have blazed in
the autos-da-fe of Spain and Portugal". He ascribes the enmity of
Calvin to personal malice and perhaps envy. The facts of the case
are pretty well ascertained. Born in 1511, perhaps at Tudela,
Michael Served y Reves studied at Toulouse and was present in
Bologna at the coronation of Charles V. He travelled in Germany
and brought out in 1531 at Hagenau his treatise "De Trinitatis
Erroribus". a strong Unitarian work which made much commotion
among the more orthodox Reformers. He met Calvin and disputed with
him at Paris in 1534, became corrector of the press at Lyons; gave
attention to medicine, discovered the lesser circulation of the
blood, and entered into a fatal correspondence with the dictator
of Geneva touching a new volume "Christianismi Restitutio," which
he intended to publish. In 1546 the exchange of letters ceased.
The Reformer called Servetus arrogant (he had dared to criticize
the "Institutes" in marginal glosses), and uttered the significant
menace, "If he comes here and I have any authority, I will never
let him leave the place alive." The "Restitutio" appeared in 1553.
Calvin at once had its author delated to the Dominican inquisitor
Ory at Lyons, sending on to him the man's letters of 1545-46 and
these glosses. Hereupon the Spaniard was imprisoned at Vienne, but
he escaped by friendly connivance, and was burnt there only in
effigy. Some extraordinary fascination drew him to Geneva, from
which he intended to pass the Alps. He arrived on 13 August, 1553.
The next day Calvin, who had remarked him at the sermon, got his
critic arrested, the preacher's own secretary coming forward to
accuse him. Calvin drew up forty articles of charge under three
heads, concerning the nature of God, infant baptism, and the
attack which Servetus had ventured on his own teaching. The
council hesitated before taking a deadly decision, but the
dictator, reinforced by Farel, drove them on. In prison the
culprit suffered much and loudly complained. The Bernese and other
Swiss voted for some indefinite penalty. But to Calvin his power
in Geneva seemed lost, while the stigma of heresy; as he insisted,
would cling to all Protestants if this innovator were not put to
death. "Let the world see" Bullinger counselled him, "that Geneva
wills the glory of Christ."
Accordingly, sentence was pronounced 26 October, 1553, of burning
at the stake. "Tomorrow he dies," wrote Calvin to Farel. When the
deed was done, the Reformer alleged that he had been anxious to
mitigate the punishment, but of this fact no record appears in the
documents. He disputed with Servetus on the day of execution and
saw the end. A defence and apology next year received the adhesion
of the Genevan ministers. Melanchthon, who had taken deep umbrage
at the blasphemies of the Spanish Unitarian, strongly approved in
well-known words. But a group that included Castellio published at
Basle in 1554 a pamphlet with the title, "Should heretics be
persecuted?" It is considered the first plea for toleration in
modern times. Beza replied by an argument for the affirmative,
couched in violent terms; and Calvin, whose favorite disciple he
was, translated it into French in 1559. The dialogue, "Vaticanus",
written against the "Pope of Geneva" by Castellio, did not get
into print until 1612. Freedom of opinion, as Gibbon remarks, "was
the consequence rather than the design of the Reformation."
Another victim to his fiery zeal was Gentile, one of an Italian
sect in Geneva, which also numbered among its adherents Alciati
and Gribaldo. As more or less Unitarian in their views, they were
required to sign a confession drawn up by Calvin in 1558. Gentile
subscribed it reluctantly, but in the upshot he was condemned and
imprisoned as a perjurer. He escaped only to be twice incarcerated
at Berne, where in 1566, he was beheaded. Calvin's impassioned
polemic against these Italians betrays fear of the Socinianism
which was to lay waste his vineyard. Politically he leaned on the
French refugees, now abounding in the city, and more than equal in
energy -- if not in numbers -- to the older native factions.
Opposition died out. His continual preaching, represented by 2300
sermons extant in the manuscripts and a vast correspondence, gave
to the Reformer an influence without example in his closing years.
He wrote to Edward VI, helped in revising the Book of Common
Prayer, and intervened between the rival English parties abroad
during the Marian period. In the Huguenot troubles he sided with
the more moderate. His censure of the conspiracy of Amboise in
1560 does him honour. One great literary institution founded by
him, the College, afterwards the University, of Geneva, flourished
exceedingly. The students were mostly French. When Beza was rector
it had nearly 1500 students of various grades.
Geneva now sent out pastors to the French congregations and was
looked upon as the Protestant Rome. Through Knox, "the Scottish
champion of the Swiss Reformation", who had been preacher to the
exiles in that city, his native land accepted the discipline of
the Presbytery and the doctrine of predestination as expounded in
Calvin's "Institutes". The Puritans in England were also
descendants of the French theologian. His dislike of theatres,
dancing and the amenities of society was fully shared by them. The
town on Lake Leman was described as without crime and destitute of
amusements. Calvin declaimed against the "Libertines", but there
is no evidence that any such people had a footing inside its walls
The cold, hard, but upright disposition characteristic of the
Reformed Churches, less genial than that derived from Luther, is
due entirely to their founder himself. Its essence is a
concentrated pride, a love of disputation, a scorn of opponents.
The only art that it tolerates is music, and that not
instrumental. It will have no Christian feasts in its calendar,
and it is austere to the verge of Manichaean hatred of the body.
When dogma fails the Calvinist, he becomes, as in the instance of
Carlyle, almost a pure Stoic. "At Geneva, as for a time in
Scotland," says J. A. Froude, "moral sins were treated as crimes
to be punished by the magistrate." The Bible was a code of law,
administered by the clergy. Down to his dying day Calvin preached
and taught. By no means an aged man, he was worn out in these
frequent controversies. On 25 April, 1564, he made his will,
leaving 225 French crowns, of which he bequeathed ten to his
college, ten to the poor, and the remainder to his nephews and
nieces. His last letter was addressed to Farel. He was buried
without pomp, in a spot which is not now ascertainable. In the
year 1900 a monument of expiation was erected to Servetus in the
Place Champel. Geneva has long since ceased to be the head of
Calvinism. It is a rallying point for Free Thought, Socialist
propaganda, and Nihilist conspiracies. But in history it stands
out as the Sparta of the Reformed churches, and Calvin is its
Lycurgus.
WILLlAM BARRY
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
http://www.knight.org/advent
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
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