John Calvin (1509-1564) was born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, Picardy, sixty miles northeast of Paris. His father was Gerad Cauvin (Calvinus was the Latinized form of his name) and his mother was Jeanne la France of Cambrai. John was the second of five sons. His father was a notary public, who was primarily employed in the service of the bishop of Noyon and was attorney for its cathedral chapter, and as a result John, while still a child before the age of twelve, obtained ecclesiastical benefices from the bishop to pay for his education as a priest. Gerad was also friend of a powerful noble family of Hangest, which gave two bishops to Noyon in his lifetime. At an early age John became friendly with the sons of one this local noble family, Joachim de Hangest, sire de Montmer, who suggested, when his sons were going to Paris for further education, that John should accompany them to study at the University of Paris for the priesthood. John's father agreed. John entered the University of Paris in August 1523. After spending a few months at the College de la Marche, John enrolled in the College de Montaigu. He was instructed in Latin by Mathurein Cordier (1479-1564), to whom he owed the foundation of his brilliant style. When his father had a quarrel with the cathedral chapter of Noyon in 1527, Gerad decided that his son should give up all thought of the priesthood. He therefore ordered John to study law at the University of Orleans where Pierre del'Estoile (1480-1537), who was a famous jurist, was teaching. While there John also took lectures at University of Bourges from Andrea Alciati (1493-1550), the humanist legal scholar.
It was probably while at Bourges that John became a Protestant. Earlier at College de Montaigu he may have met John Major, the Scottish conciliarist, and at Orleans and Bourges he studied Greek under the German teacher Melchior Wolmar (1496-1561), a humanist with strong Protestant leanings. When his father died in 1531, John returned to Paris to continue his literary studies, although he did go back to the University of Orleans for a term to complete his law course. In April 1532 Calvin, typical of a young humanist scholars of that day, published his first book, a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, titled Commentary on Seneca's Treatise on Clemency. While in Paris he became involved with the Protestants there and he soon became one of the leaders in the Protestant movement in Paris. Between the spring of 1532 and the beginning of 1534 Calvin experienced a "sudden conversion"; but almost nothing is known of its circumstances. All we know is that God spoke to him through the Scriptures and God's will must be obeyed. He turned his full attention to biblical studies. When his friend Nicholas Cop was elected rector of the University of Paris, Calvin helped him to prepare his rectoral address delivered on November 1, 1533, which was an attack upon the church and a demand for reform, using language borrowed from Erasmus and Luther. The result was an explosion of anti-Protestant feeling and the King of France enjoined action against the "Lutherans". As a result Calvin and Cop had to leave Paris. Calvin found sanctuary in the home of a friend, Louis du Tillet, in Angouleme. Although he later returned for a short time to Paris, Calvin's reputation as one of les Reformes soon made it necessary for him to leave again. During this period on May 4, 1534, he went to Noyon to resign his ecclesiastical benefices. There he was imprisoned for a brief time. Though soon released, Calvin found France a perilous place for him, especially after Antoine Marcourt posted his injudicious theses against the mass in October 1534. Marcourt's placards had been followed by a sharp renewal of persecution, one of the victims being Calvin's friend the Parisian merchant, Estienne de la Forge.
For next three years he spent his time traveling in France, Switzerland, and Italy. He had to keep on the move to avoid arrest or persecution. And by about the New Year's day of 1534 Calvin was safely in Protestant Basle. And in 1534 he published his first religious work, Psychopannychia, an attack upon the doctrine of soul sleep after death. Soon afterwards Olivetan's French translation of the Bible was published with a preface by Calvin. The French king, Francis I, was coquetting for the aid of German Protestants against Charles V, and therefore, to justify French persecutions, issued a public letter in February 1535, charging the French Protestantism with anarchistic aims, such as no government could tolerate. Calvin felt that he must defend his slandered fellow believers. He therefore quickly completed a work he had begun in Angoulieme, and at Basle in March 1536 he published a slim volume of seven chapters with the title Christianae Religionis Institutio [Institute of the Christian Religion], prefaced by a letter to Francis I of France defending the Protestants against their royal slanders. The work was a short summary of the Christian faith and this work, whose author was virtually unknown at the time, became popular among Protestants as both an able exposition and a persuasive apology for the Protestant faith. Its author of twenty-six years became the leader of French Protestantism.
After some months wandering around France, in July 1536 Calvin with his brother Antoine and his half sister Marie headed for Strasbourg, a Protestant city, but because of fighting between France and the empire he had to travel through Switzerland via Geneva, where he planned to stay only one night. The Protestant leader and preacher William Guillaume Farel, who brought about reform in Geneva, heard of the presence of the young scholar and went to persuade Calvin to stay and help him in completing the work there. Calvin at first refused, but when Farel threatened to put a curse of God upon him, he consented reluctantly. Calvin was a lecturer on the Bible, but was not appointed one of the preachers till a year later. Over Farel he exercised great influence. Their first joint effort was to aid the Bernese ministers and civil authorities in the effective establishment of the Reformation throughout Vaud and in Lausanne, which had just come under Bernese control. Calvin and Farel soon ran into strong opposition. They were unjustly charged with Arianism by Pierre Caroli, then of Lusanne. They vindicated their orthodoxy easily, but not until great publicity had been given to the matter. When they attempted to introduce into a notoriously profligate society a measure of church discipline, they made enemies. And when the two reformers refused to obey the city government that demanded that they accept the liturgy of Berne, their opponents used this as an excuse to force them to leave the city. Farel moved to Neuchatel, while Calvin accepted the invitation of Martin Bucer and he set out again for Strasbourg.
The three years at Strasbourg was the happiest of his life. Although poor, he seemed to enjoy his life there. He married Idelette de Bure, widow of an Anabaptist whom Calvin had converted to the Protestant position. She bore him one son, who live only a few days. Soon after he arrived in Strasbourg, Calvin became pastor of the French refugee congregation which he organized along what he believed to be New Testament lines. He drew up a liturgy and prepared a psalm book made up of his own and Clement Marot's French metrical translations. He also prepared a commentary on Romans and took part as a representative of Strasbourg in colloquies with Lutherans and Romanist at Worms and Regensberg. Through these activities his fame as biblical scholar and theologian spread.
Calvin would have probably stayed in Strasbourg the rest of his life, if it had not been for Cardinal Sadoteto's attempt to bring Geneva back under Roman control. After Calvin and Farel had left Geneva, no one arose to take leadership of the church there. The result was confusion and conflict. The supporters of the Romanist saw an opportunity to undo the Reformer's work. In March 1539, Jacopo Cardinal Sadoleto, a well-known humanist, wrote a letter urging the Genevans to submit to the pope. Since there was no one in Geneva that seemed to be capable of answering it, they sent the letter to Calvin at Strasbourg. He answered it very effectively. About this time Calvin's friends got control of the city government and they asked Calvin to return. Although he had no desire to return, under the exhortations once again of Farel, he finally agreed to go, reentering the city on September 13, 1541.
Calvin remained there the rest of his life as the leader of the Reformed church. As pastor of the Eglise St. Pierre he spent much of time in preaching. Although he held no government office, nor was he a citizen of the city until he was invited to be in 1559, Calvin dominated the whole community. Geneva had for a long time a Europe-wide reputation for immorality; Calvin set about to reform the community, which was no easy task. He drew up a new form of government for the church with wide powers of oversight over the city's population. And he help in the revision of the city's laws to make them more humane, and he was responsible for establishing a universal system of education for the young. He also took part in arranging for the care of the poor and the aged. He sought to make Geneva a Christian commonwealth, in practice as well as in doctrine.
But Calvin's greatest influence came through his writings. He revised his Strasbourg liturgy and psalmer. He wrote commentaries on twenty-three of the Old Testament books and on all of the New Testament except the Apocalypse. In addition he produced a large number of devotional, doctrinal, and polemical pamphlets. He expanded his Institutes from a small book of six chapters to a large book of seventy-nine chapters in four books published in 1559; it went through five editions. Calvin also translated the original Latin versions into French. These works were widely distributed and read throughtout Europe. His works have been since then translated into many different languages, including English. As a result his theological teachings, as well as his political and social views have exerted a strong influence on both Christian and non-Christian thinking.
Calvin's attempt to make Geneva a model of a perfect Christian community attracted refugees in large numbers from all over Europe, from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland and England, from almost every country of Europe. These became an important factor in the life of Geneva. Calvin himself, and all of his associated ministers, were foreigners. Opposition to his strenuous rule appear almost from the beginning of his ministry, but by 1548 with the influx of these other foreigners the opposition grown very serious. The opposition was made up of two elements: those to whom any discipline would have been irksome; and those of the Old Genevan families who felt that Calvin, his fellow ministers, and the refugees were foreigners, were imposing a foreign yoke on a city with a heroic tradition of independence. Calvin had his severest struggle from 1548 to 1555, from the time that some of the older inhabitants began to fear that they would be swamped politically by the refugees, until the refugees, almost all of whom were eager supporters of Calvin, achieved what had been dreaded and made Calvin's position unshakable.
All during this period Calvin stood in peril of having his Geneavan work overthrown. There were many cases that threatened Calvin's position, but two of them were especially important. The first was that caused by Jerome Hermes Bolsec, a former monk of Paris, now a Protestant physician in Veigy, near Geneva. In the Congregation Bolsec charged Calvin with error in teaching predestination. That was an attack on Calvin's authority, for his sole hold on Geneva was as an interpreter of the Scriptures. If he was wrong in this teaching, he would be discredited as a teacher and his authority would be gone. Calvin took Bolsec's charges before the city government in October 1551. This resulted in Bolsec's trial. When the opinion of other Swiss governments were asked, it became evident that they did not attach as much weight to predestination as did Calvin. With difficulty Calvin procured Bolsec's banishment, and the episode led Calvin to put more strenuous insistence on the importance of predestination as a Christian truth than ever before. As for Bolsec, after his banishment he eventually returned to the Roman communion and he avenged himself on Calvin by a very slanderous biography.
Calvin was barely holding on to his power, when in February 1553, the elections, which had for some years been fairly balanced, turned decidedly in favor of Calvin's opponents. His fall seemed inevitable. But he was rescued and put on the path to ultimate victory with the arrival in Geneva of Miguel Servetus. This is other case we referred to above. Servetus was a Spaniard, almost the same age as Calvin, and undoubtedly a man of great genius. In 1531 he published his De Trinitatis Erroribus [The Error of Trinity]. He was compelled to conceal his identity, and he studied medicine under the name of Villeneuve, being the real discoverer of the pulmonary circulation of the blood. He settled in Vienne in France, where he developed a large practice. He was working secretly on his Restitution of Christianity, which he published early in 1553. He thought that the Nicene doctrine of Trinity, the Chalcedonian Christology, and infant baptism were the chief sources of corruption of the church. As early as 1545, he had begun correspondence with Calvin, whose Institutes he criticized. The identity of Servetus and his authorship were unmasked to the Roman ecclesiastic authorities in Lyons, by Calvin's friend, Guillaume Trie, who, a little later, supplied further proof obtained from Calvin himself. Servetus was condemned to be burned, but before the sentence could be carried out, he escaped from the prison in Vienne. He made his way to Geneva, and was there arrested in August 1553. His condemnation now became a test of strength between Calvin and the opposition, which did not dare come out openly in defense of so notorious a heretic, but made it as difficult for Calvin as they could. Thus Servetus hoped for a favorable outcome and demanded that Calvin be exiled and Calvin's goods adjudged to him. The trial ended in Servetus' conviction and he died by fire on October 27, 1553. Though a few voices of protest were raised, most men agreed with Melanchthon that it was "justly done". The event freed the Swiss churches from any imputation of unorthodoxy on the doctrine of the Trinity, while Calvin's opponents had ruined themselves by making difficult the punishment of one whom the general opinion of that age condemned.
Calvin's situation improved. The elections of 1554 were decidedly in Calvin's favor, and the elections of 1555 even more so. In January 1555 Calvin secured permanent recognition of the right of the Consistoire to proceed to excommunication without govermental interference. The now largely Calvinist government proceeded, the same year, to make its position secure by admitting a considerable number of the refugees to the franchise. A small riot on the evening of May 16, 1555, begun by Calvin's opponents, became the occasion of executing and banishing of their leaders as traitors. The party favorable to Calvin was the undisputed master of Geneva.
Calvin crowned his Genevan work by the foundation in 1559 of the "Genevan Academy", which later became the University of Geneva. It became immediately a great center of Reformed theological instruction, as distinguished from the Lutheran, and great seminary from which ministers in great numbers were sent back not only to France, but to the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, England and Scotland.
Calvin's wife, Idelette died in 1546, leaving her husband a sad and lonely man. He did not ever think of remarrying, although he could have. He needed the care of loving wife, since he was not one who could take care of himself. The result was that he suffered from stomach ulcers and similar illnesses to the end of his life. These weaknesses of the flesh did not hinder him from working intensively almost up to the time of his death on May 27, 1564. At the age of fifty-four, Calvin literally burned himself out in the service of God.
Calvin's influence extended far beyond Geneva. Because of his Institutes, his pattern of church government in Geneva, his academy, his commentaries, and his constant correspondence, he inspired the ideals and moulded the thought of the Protestants in France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and of the English Puritans. His influence penetrated Poland and Hungary, and before his death Calvinism had even taken root in southwestern Germany.
John Knox
In Scoland John Knox who was born sometime between 1505 and 1515 (his eary
life is obscure) and was educated at St. Andrews, was ordained to the
pristhood and converted to Protestantism. He was called as preacher at St.
Andrews' Castle. When the Castle fell to the French, Knox was taken prisoner
and was forced to serve as a galley slave. When freed in early 1549, Knox
went to England and was appointed preacher at Berwick, where he attacked the
Mass as idolatrous, and was summoned to answer for his views before the
Council of the North at Newcastle (1550). He returned to Scotland but with the
accession of Mary "Queen of Scots" he was forced to flee in 1554 from Scotland
and eventually ended up in Geneva, where he became an ardent disciple of Calvin
and labored on Genevan version of the English Bible, later so valued by the
English Puritans. At Calvin's urging Knox became pastor of the English
congregation at Frankfurt in 1554. A dispute over the Book of Common
Prayer led to his ouster and return to Geneva in 1555. The same year
he went back to Scotland and openly preached Protestant doctrine. He was
summoned to appear in Edinburgh in May 1556 on the charge of heresy, but
the regent's intervention resulted in a quashing of the summons. He left
Scotland that year to become the pastor of the English congregation in
Geneva. There he wrote a tract that argued that female sovereignty
contravened natural law. It was aimed primarly at Mary Tudor, but shortly
after its appearance Elizabeth was crowned, making Knox's name odious in
Elizabeth's court. Even Calvin was displeased.
In 1558 Elizabeth became Queen of England and Mary Stuart "Queen of Scots" denounced her as an illegitimate usrper and proclaimed herself as the rightful occupant of the English throne. The Prostestant lords in Scotland sought Knox's return. He returned on May 2, 1559, to Scotland to inspire the advocates of Scottish independence and of Protestantism. They revolted against the regent Mary. She had French troops at her disposal and both sides armed for combat. Both sides proved to be fairly equal, and a stalemate resulted. On July 10, 1559, Henry II of France died and Mary's husband, Francis II, became king in his stead. French reinforcements were promptly sent to the regent in Scotland. Matters went badly for the reformers. But in January, 1560, English help arrived and the contest dragged on. On June 11, 1560, the regent died, and Mary's cause died with her. On July 6 a treaty was made between France and England by which the French troops were withdrawn from Scotland, and Frenchmen were debarred from all important posts in the government. The revolution had triumphed through English aid, but without forfeiting Scotish national independence, and its inspirer had been Knox.
The victorious party now pushed its triumph in the Scotish Parliament. On August 17, 1560, a Calvinist confession of faith, largely prepared by Knox, was adopted as the creed of the realm. A week later they the same body abolished papal jurisdiction, and forbade the mass on the pain of death for the third offense. Knox and his associates now preceded to complete their work. In December, 1560, a meeting was held that was regarded as the first Scottish "General Assembly". In January, 1561, the First Book of Discipline was presented to the Parliament. It was a remarkable document, attempting to apply the system worked out by Calvin to a whole kingdom, although the Presbyterian system was far from thoroughly worked out yet. In each parish there would be a minister and elders holding office with the consent of the congregation. Minister and elders constituted the disciplinary board -- later called "session" -- with power of excommunication. In the larger towns there were to be meetings for discussion, out of which "presbyteries" later were to grow; over groups of ministers and congregations were synods, and over all was the "General Assembly". Knox would have the church, education, and the poor supported from old church property, but here the Book met the resistance of Parliament, which did not adopt it, although many of the body approved. The ecclesiastical constitution gradually came into force; but the nobles so possessed themselves of church propeties that the church was one of poorest in Christendom. All observances not having Scriptural authority was swept away. Sunday was the only holy day remaining. For the conduct of public worship, Knox prepared a Book of Common Order, sometimes called "Knox's Liturgy", which was approved by the "General Assembly" in 1564. It was largely based on that of the English congregation in Geneva, which was in turn modeled on that of Calvin. It allowed for more free prayer, the forms given being regarded as models, the strict employment was not obligatory, though the general order and content of the service were definite enough. Knox died on November 24, 1572.