Question

John Calvin was a French protestant who founded _________. a. the Anglican Church c. the Protestant Church in Switzerland b. the Church of England d. the Institute of Huguenots

Answer 1

John Calvin was born in 1509. He died in 1564. John Calvin was the son of a lawyer. He was born in Noyon, Picardy and was therefore a Frenchman. Calvin developed a love for scholarship and literature.

In 1523 he went to the University of Paris where he studied theology.

To maintain himself while a student, Calvin secured a small chaplaincy attached to Noyon Cathedral.

In 1528 he went to Orleans to study Law, and one year later Calvin went to Bourges also to study Law.

Calvin was pressurised by his father to study Law but in 1531 his father died giving Calvin the freedom to resume his religious studies.

In the same year that his father died, Calvin went to the College de France in Paris to study Greek. This college was noted for its Humanistic approach to learning. In fact, all the colleges that Calvin attended had Humanistic leanings and it was only natural that this influenced Calvin. He became an admirer of Erasmus.

At some point between 1528 and 1533 he experienced a "sudden conversion" and grasped Protestantism. "God subdued my soul to docility by a sudden conversion" was how Calvin described this experience.

Many historians look on the time from 1531 to 1533 as being the key time as this was the first time that he had been free from his father’s ‘shackles’. Calvin was highly critical of the abuses in the French Catholic church but he never doubted that he was God’s chosen instrument in the spiritual regeneration of the world.

At this time in France his ideas would have been heretical especially after the Day of the Placards incident when Francis I felt personally threatened by the Protestants and joined with the Sorbonne and the Parlément of Paris to hunt out heretics. Calvin lived at a dangerous time for heretics and in 1533 he fled Paris. In the following year 24 heretics were burned at the stake. For three years (1533 to 1536) he roamed France, Italy and Switzerland.

In 1536 the first edition of "Institutes of the Christian Religion" was published in Basle. It was revised on a number of occasions and the final edition was published in 1559. This book was a clear explanation of his religious beliefs. The later versions expanded on how his church should be organised.

In July 1536, Calvin went to Geneva which became the centre of his work. He had been trying to go to Strasbourg but the spread of the Habsburg-Valois Wars made him detour to Geneva where a fiery Protestant called Guillaume Farel persuaded him to stay.

Geneva was a French-speaking Swiss city. At the time of Calvin’s arrival the city was struggling to achieve independence against two authorities who were trying to exercise control over Geneva. The first was the Dukes of Savoy and the second was the Bishop of Geneva. Geneva was not yet part of Switzerland (not until 1815) and the city allied with the cantons of Bern and Fribourg against Savoy. The bishop fled Geneva and Savoy was defeated in 1535.

In May 1536 the city adopted religious reform:

1) monasteries were dissolved

2) Mass was abolished

3) Papal authority renounced

But within Geneva itself a struggle took place between those who wanted mild reform (such as no compulsory church attendance) and those who demanded radical reform such as Calvin and Farel. The split was deeper than this however. The mild reformers were called the Libertines and they wanted magistrates firmly in control of the clergy. Calvin wanted a city controlled by the clergy - a theocracy. In 1538, the Libertines won the day and Farel and Calvin fled the city and went to Strasbourg.

From 1538 to 1541 Calvin stayed in Strasbourg. Here he learned a lot about the ideas of Martin Bucer; a moderate Protestant reformer from Germany. Calvin was especially interested in Bucer’s ideas on ecclesiastical organisation.

In 1540 Calvin attended a Catholic/Protestant conference at Hagenau and in the following year he attended similar conferences at Worms and Regensburg.

In September 1541 Calvin returned to Geneva after the Libertines had fallen from power in 1540. It took Calvin 14 years before he could fully impose his version of liturgy, doctrine, organisation of the church and moral behaviour.

Calvin’s services were plain and simple. He placed great importance on the sermon. His sermons were very logical and learned. Though he himself liked music, he distrusted its use in religious services believing that it distracted people from the matter in hand - the worship and the seeking knowledge of God. Musical instruments were banned from churches - though congregational singing was permitted and this proved to be both popular and an effective way of ‘spreading’ the message. All matters relating to worship came from the Scriptures - so psalms took the place of hymns in services.