FREE ESSAY ON CALVIN

CALVIN

This man, undoubtedly the greatest of ../cathen/12495a.htm divines, and perhaps, after
../cathen/02084a.htm, 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 ../cathen/09438b.htm, 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
../cathen/12495a.htm belief in all the Churches known as ../cathen/12710a.htm 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 Maitre Jean C.
His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, born in the ../cathen/03209c.htm, 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'Eveque 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 ../cathen/12495a.htm 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
College 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 ../cathen/12495a.htm doctrines. He was accused in 1534 of denying the
Catholic dogma of the ../cathen/05572c.htm, 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 ../cathen/05510b.htm and bore
hard upon ../cathen/09114b.htm (Stapulensis), celebrated for his translation of the Bible
into French. Calvin, a martinet, or oppidan, in the Colleege 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 ../cathen/12495a.htm 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'Angouleme, 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 Clementia. It was merely an exercise in
scholarship, having no political significance. Francis I was, indeed, handling
../cathen/12495a.htm 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 Angouleme 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 Fevre, 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 ../cathen/10006a.htm, which brought on reprisals, Etienne de la Forge and
others were burnt in the Place de Greve; 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 ../cathen/12495a.htm 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 ../cathen/03198a.htm) 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 ../cathen/12495a.htm 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 ../cathen/03625a.htm 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 ../cathen/12710a.htm accepted his
teaching as though it were infallible. 
Such was the stranger whom Farel recommended to his fellow ../cathen/12495a.htm, 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 received ../cathen/12495a.htm 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
../cathen/12495a.htm. 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 Zurich, 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 ../cathen/03625a.htm. 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
../cathen/06612a.htm, 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 ../cathen/12495a.htm 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 ../cathen/12700b.htm. 
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
../cathen/14113a.htm 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 ../cathen/02678c.htm, and intervened between the rival English
parties abroad during the ../cathen/09766a.htm period. In the ../cathen/07527b.htm
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
../cathen/12495a.htm Rome. Through ../cathen/08680a.htm, 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 ../cathen/12710a.htm, 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 ../cathen/06021b.htm in its calendar, and it is austere to
the verge of ../cathen/09591a.htm hatred of the body. When dogma fails the
../cathen/03198a.htm, 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 ../cathen/03198a.htm. It is a rallying point for
../cathen/06258b.htm, ../cathen/14062a.htm propaganda, and ../cathen/11074a.htm
conspiracies. But in history it stands out as the Sparta of the ../cathen/12710a.htm, and
Calvin is its