JOHN CALVIN

(1509 to 1564)

Calvin: An Overview

His Life and Works

His Legacy

Calvin's Writings

Calvin was a Frenchman, schooled in the new humanist tradition and prepared at the university to be a lawyer.  He fell in with a circle of French humanists who read with great interest the writings of Luther. Then, somewhere in the period 1532-1534 Calvin experienced a "sudden conversion" (the details of which unfortunately he never discussed publicly.)  From this point on his well organized mind was given over to theology rather than the law. At the same time his theological associations became very dangerous to an increasingly suspicious French king, Francis I. In 1536, Calvin felt compelled to write, with all respect to his monarch, a reply to Francis' suspicions about the "protestants": The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  It was Calvin's hope that Francis, through this long essay, would come to understand that the protestants posed no threat to his rule--but only sought to revitalize the original Christian ideal on which the whole Christian realm ought to be properly based. Though it was the most compelling theological treatise explaining the protestant position--it did not have its intended effect of swaying the views of Francis. Calvin was compelled to leave France--arriving in the summer of 1536 at Geneva, where the protestant reformer Farel prevailed upon Calvin to stay in the city and help him with the reformed movement which was growing rapidly there.  But for Calvin, this proved to be a stormy proposition.  Geneva was an unruly city, and Calvin's natural bent toward orderliness and discipline made him many enemies in the city.  In the spring of 1538 Calvin and Farel were both banished from Geneva. Calvin made his way to Bucer's Strasbourg where he spent a happy three years, marrying and helping out with the reformed movement there.  He wrote a revised edition of his Institutes and began his very important series of biblical commentaries with his study of Romans. But in 1541, the old group partisan to Calvin urgently requested his return to Geneva.  Calvin somewhat reluctantly decided to make his return--but on his terms. Upon his return, Calvin organized (accepting many compromises with the city Council) the religious life of the city around his new Ordinances--the foundation of "Reformed" polity.  He also founded there a training school for protestant (i.e., "Reformed") theologians, which would in time become the University of Geneva.

His Youth John Calvin was born in 1509 Jean Cauvin or Calvus, second son of a minor lawyer, Gérard, in the employ of the Lord of Noyon in the region of Picardy (northern France).  We have no details of his early youth--only the mention that he early served the noble family of Hangest de Montmor and was educated for an ecclesiastical career.  In 1521 he received a position with the chaplaincy in the cathedral of Noyon.  Two years later he traveled to Paris with the Hangests to undertake study at the Collège de la Marche under the direction of Mathurin Cordier.  Here he was quickly recognized for his skills in logical presentation.  Here also he established friendships with Nicholas and Michael Cop, sons of the king's personal physician; with a relative of his own, Olivétan (Pierre Robert) who was working on a translation of the Bible into French; and with the sons of the Hangests, especially Claude. The End of a Career Track with the Church In 1527 he became a curé and seemed destined to begin a brilliant move upward in an ecclesiastical career.  But his father, Gérard, not desiring that his son should take up the full priesthood, instead pressed his son to take up the more profitable career as lawyer.  In part Gérard Cauvin was also motivated by the knowledge that he was slipping from favor among the ecclesiastical circles of Noyon and his son's ecclesiastical career might thus itself be in jeopardy.   Furthermore, the Protestant Reformation was at that point well underway--and John, who (with the encouragement of Olivétan) had been drawn into scriptural debates about the true character of the church, was beginning to have doubts of his own about the Roman church.  In 1528 John thus journeyed to Orleans to begin law studies under the highly esteemed jurist, Pierre Taisan de l'Étoile. From Law to the Humanities Actually the young John found himself more attracted to the broader realm of humanism--which along with the Protestant Reformation was percolating through intellectual circles in Northern Europe at that time.  Thus in 1529 he moved to Bourges to study the humanities under Andrea Alciati.  A year later one of Calvin's friends from Orleans, Melchior Wolmar, joined him in Bourges.  It was Wolmar that taught Calvin Greek, and opened up to him the study of the New Testament in the original Greek. But his father's death in 1531 again changed Calvin's course--for he moved back to Paris, and into an environment of intellectual upheaval.  Classic latin scholastic study was rapidly being overthrown by broader investigations into other classic languages, the humanities, and wide-ranging socio-political speculation.  In Paris Calvin continued his studies of Greek--and now took up the study of Hebrew.  Also, in 1532 Calvin first demonstrated his writing skills--in publishing a commentary on Seneca's De clementia. Being Drawn into the Reformation Debates The period 1532-1534 was a major turning point theologically for Calvin.  He experience a personal conversion in his Christian faith--though we do not know the exact nature of that conversion.  It was also a time he was on the move--from Paris, to Orleans, to Noyon, back to Paris--moves that seemed to give him a clearer sense of a call to a place of leadership within the Reformation movement.  It was also a time of growing Protestant sentiments in Paris--due in part to the humanist influence there of Margaret of Angoulême, sister of French king Francis I. The Catholic party in Paris was not likely to take such developments lying down.  When during this time Calvin's old friend Nicolas Cop was elected rector of the University of Paris and delivered an innaugural address that was tinged with Protestant sentiments, he was ordered to appear before the Parliament of Paris.  Cop sensed his danger and fled to Basle in Switzerland.  Calvin was understood to have been influential in the preparation of that address and an order was issued that he be seized.  Calvin fled to Noyon and remained there until proceedings were dropped against him.  He then returned to Paris for a period, until he was invited in early 1534 to Angoulême by Louis du Tiller, a canon of the cathedral there. Calvin's Split with the Roman Church It was during this period in Angoulême that Calvin began research which ultimately undergirded his Institutes of the Christian Religion.  He was deeply interested in the reform of the Christian religion--sensing that this was going to be his call in life.  But the question remained:  was he going to try to reform the Roman church from within, or was he going to join the reform movement of the independent Protestants?  In early May of 1534 he announced his decision by resigning his old position of curé of Noyon and rector of Pont l'Évêque.  Soon thereafter he was arrested and imprisoned briefly on two separate occasions--though nothing came of either arrest, the case against him not being sufficiently strong.  Thereafter he continued his movements among such cities as Paris, Orleans and Poitiers.  In Poitiers he performed his first eucharist (holy communion) in the new Evangelical church of France. As the Reformation was a time of  breakdown of the old Catholic unity of Christian Europe, it was also the time of emergence of new Christian theological groupings.  One of the more radical of these new groupings were the Anabaptists.  Calvin was just as interested in addressing their theologies as he was the old church's  Thus during this time he began another work entitled Psychopannychia, addressing the Anabaptist belief in the slumber of the human soul after death.  This work brought attention to Calvin within the community of Reformers.  But it also brought more attention from the Catholic authorities as well.  So it was that Calvin decided to leave France with his friend from Angoulême, Louis du Tiller, to join the community of Protestant reformers in Basle. The First Edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion Now in Switzerland, Calvin took up a new challenge in 1535:  to write a treatise on the reformers' theology, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a work designed to persuade French King Francis I that the reformers' beliefs were in fact more authentically Christian than those of the Roman Church.  Francis had seemed to be willing to show some degree of tolerance of the Lutheran branch of the Reformation.  Calvin thus hoped to persuade him to extend that toleration to the French and Swiss Reformers.  But it was politics, not theology, that had decided Francis' policy.  Francis was tolerant of the German Reformation only because it had the support of the princes of Northern Germany--and he needed their support in his contest for power with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  Thus in the end, Calvin failed to achieve the purpose for which he ostensibly had written the Institutes.  Nonetheless, its clear statement on the beliefs of the reformers immediately made it a major theological rallying point for the Reformers of France and Switzerland--and moved Calvin into a position of leadership within the movement. Geneva: 1536-1538 Calvin made a return trip to France to close out his life in that country with the intention of then returning to Switzerland to settle permanently in Basle--or Western Germany at Strasbourg, where the Swiss Reformation had been accepted.  But because of a war between Francis I and Charles V, Calvin was forced to detour Eastern France and come into Switzerland by moving up the Rhone River from Lyons. But in then entering Switerland at Geneva, William (Guillaume) Farel, who had recently brought the reformed movement to that city, pounced on Calvin as a God-given opportunity to offer leadership to the movement in that city.  That was hardly on Calvin's agenda.  But Farel was so adamant in his entreaties that Calvin agreed to stay--at least for a while. In Geneva the momentum behind acceptance of the reformed movement was vastly more political than religious--and Calvin thus had his work cut out for him in bringing the citizens around to a true consent in their hearts with the ideas that he now lived for.  The citizens had accepted the movement mostly as a means of providing justification for revolt against the Duke of Savoy, whose rule over the city was widely unpopular.  It was now Calvin's purpose to bring them to a true understanding of the issues challenging the world of Christianity.  From his pulpit at St. Peter's Cathedral, Calvin began to preach from the letters of the Apostle Paul. But Calvin had an even more ambitious plan to bring the Genevans to full alignment with the reformation.  He (with Farel) compiled a statement of faith of 21 articles--and had the citizens in groups of 10 study and swear alliegance to these 21 articles as an undergirding for the building of a new Christian religious-moral order in Geneva.  Also, to further strengthen the underpining of this Christian commonwealth, Calvin set up schools in the city and designed a school curriculum which included strong doses of religious-moral instruction. This was a time of political and doctrinal turmoil in Europe.  Leadership within the reformed movement was fluid--as were its basic ideas.  Reformers could be as hostile to each other as to the Catholic church.  It was inevitable that Calvin should be drawn into this conflict (he had, after all on several occasions led the attack against the Anabaptists.)  Calvin himself was accused by Pierre Caroli, leader of the reform movement in nearby Lausanne, of being an Arian or Unitarian--and a Sabellian or Modalist.  Thus in 1537 Calvin had to defend himself before a synod in Berne Switzerland--where he was eventually vindicated and Caroli was banished from Lausanne. In the meantime, Calvin's theocratic austerity imposed over the free-spirited Genevois grew increasingly resented by voices among the latter.  Calvin was uncompromising in his insistence on these "Christian" standards--and a blow-up finally occurred when Calvin tried to discipline the citizens by witholding communion on Easter Sunday.  In the explosion, Calvin and his patron Farel were expelled from Geneva.  They appealed their cause to a synod in Zurich, offering to grant the Genevans a more traditional communion liturgy--which was a matter claimed by Calvin to be adiaphora or of actual indifference to him, provided that Calvin's opponents did not try to make the matter one of importance.  At the same time, Calvin pressed for synod approval of a number of administrative procedures designed to tighten the polity or ecclesiastical order among pastors and in the design of the worship services. At first Calvin's position was accepted by the synod.  But the opposition of the Bernese party was such that things moved against him--and a second banishment was issued.  Farel and Calvin thus moved on--Calvin eventually to Strasbourg and Farel to Neuchatel. Strasbourg: 1538-1541 Almost in the same measure that the Genevan years were very difficult for Calvin, the Strasbourg years were easy--yet still very productive.  Here Calvin met and married in 1540 widow Idelette de Bure, which proved for Calvin to be a very blessed union--though their only child born in 1542 lived only a few days and though Idelette herself died in 1549.  These were busy times for Calvin--writing, speaking and serving as type of Protestant diplomat at various gatherings.  During his Strasbourg years he rewrote and expanded the Institutes.  He also compiled a commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans.  In 1539 he, along with Bucer from Strasbourg, attended a conference sponsored by Emperor Charles V--who was trying to formulate some kind of Christian reunion between Catholics and Protestants.  Calvin also attended the diets of Hagenau, Worms and Regensburg.

Calvin was an urban European, steeped in the bourgeois mindset of the rising European urban "middle class."  Calvin's interest in reform of the crumbling medieval moral-legal order involved importantly a vision of the new urban order as central to a purified Christianity.  And his interest in reform did not limit itself merely to matters of religious doctrine--as was the case for Luther.  Calvin truly was interested in a comprehensive reordering of every aspect of post-medieval life:  political, economic, and social as well as theological. Importantly, he gave a theological rationale for the independent-mindedness of the urban commercial class--arming them with Scriptural justification for going their own way within God's creation.  Indeed, he encouraged them to establish purified political-economic-social orders as a way of purging Christendom of its corruption and of bringing glory to God in Jesus Christ.  He made their soul-searching independent-mindedness a matter of the greatest importance in their standing before God.  They not only had the right to be accountable to God alone as sovereign over them--they had the Christian duty to see that this was the case.  The supposition was that any earthly lord who positioned himself between them and God was going to be problematic in their "purified" relationship with God and their covenantal life in the purified Christian commonwealth. The followers of Calvin attempted to convince the rich and powerful kings of Europe that their movement had no treasonous instincts--and that they planned to be good citizens in the realms where they lived.  The kings were not convinced.  And rightly so.  Everything about Calvinism pointed to the idea of these people being accountable to no earthly ruler but to God alone.  Switzerland, which was the birthplace of Calvin's Reformed Movement was well recognized for its independent mindedness and refusal to acknowledge the rule of any princely lord over the land.  No, Calvin's Reformed Movement, or "Calvinism" was destined to bring a clash with traditional princely and priestly rulers who claimed to rule by "divine rights."  That was exactly what the Calvinists claimed for their own "self-rule":  self-rule by divine right--even by divine imperative.   There was no way these two mind-sets were going to work cooperatively.

Calvin's major works or writings:

Go to the history section: The Reformation (Early 1500s to Mid 1600s)   Miles H. Hodges