Calvin Is Driven From Paris
Author: Fairbairn, A. M.;Audin, Jean M. V.
By A. M. Fairbairn
He Makes Geneva The Stronghold Of Protestantism, 1533
Among what may be called the second generation of Protestant reformers,
the great leader was John Calvin. By his writings, and by his directive and
administrative work, he exerted a strong influence upon the reformed churches
in his own day and upon the theology and polity of later times. He was born
in France in 1509, and while still in early manhood, having become familiar
with classical learning, with law, and especially with theology, he ardently
embraced the Protestant faith and began to preach the reformed doctrines.
Calvin spent some time in Paris, then a centre of the "New Learning" and
of religious ferment, and there he felt the effects of raging persecution. The
publication of his great work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion,
marked an epoch in the history of Protestantism. Though differing on certain
points from the teachings of Luther, it was a powerful exposition of the
Protestant faith as Calvin understood it, severely logical in form, and
especially distinguished by its stern doctrines relating to divine
sovereignty.
When in 1536 Calvin went to live in Geneva, it was already a Protestant
city. He became virtually its ruler and made it a kind of theocracy, or
rather a "religious republic," which he administered with vigorous laws
enforced with the greatest strictness. Zealous Protestants from many
countries gathered at Geneva, and from there the influence of Calvin, somewhat
modified by that of his Swiss predecessor Zwingli, spread rapidly into France,
England, Scotland, and Germany. At the time of Calvin's death (1564) there
were three types of Protestantism established in the world - his own, and
those of Luther and Zwingli. In Great Britain, and afterward in America, the
Calvinistic type came to play a most important part in religious and national
development.
Two estimates of Calvin, the first from a Protestant point of view, the
second that of a Roman Catholic writer, are here presented.
A. M. Fairbairn
In 1528 Calvin's father, perhaps illuminated by the disputes in his
cathedral chapter, discovered that the law was a surer road to wealth and
honor than the church, and decided that his son should leave theology for
jurisprudence. The son, nothing loath, obeyed, and left Paris for Orleans,
possibly, as he descended the steps of the College de Montaigu, brushing
shoulders with a Spanish freshman named Ignatius Loyola. In Orleans Calvin
studied law under Pierre de l'Estoile, who is described as jurisconsultorum
Gallorum facile princeps, and as eclipsing in classical knowledge Reuchlin,
Aleander, and Erasmus; and Greek under Wolmar, in whose house he met for the
first time Theodore Beza, then a boy about ten years of age.
After a year in Orleans he went to Bourges, attracted by the fame of the
Italian jurist Alciati, whose ungainliness of body and speech and vanity of
mind his students loved to satirize and even by occasional rebellion to
chasten. In 1531 Gerard Calvin died and his son, in 1532, published his first
work, a commentary on Seneca's de Clementia. His purpose has been construed
by the light of his late career; and some have seen in the book a veiled
defence of the Huguenot martyrs, others a cryptic censure of Francis I, and
yet others a prophetic dissociation of himself from Stoicism. But there is no
mystery in the matter; the work is that of a scholar who has no special
interest in either theology or the Bible. This may be statistically
illustrated: Calvin cites twenty-two Greek authors and fifty-five Latin, the
quotations being most abundant and from many books; but in his whole treatise
there are only three Biblical texts expressly cited, and those from the
Vulgate.
The man is cultivated and learned, writes elegant Latin, is a good judge
of Latinity, criticises like any modern the mind and style, the knowledge and
philosophy, the manner, the purpose, and the ethical ideas of Seneca; but the
passion for religion has not as yet penetrated as it did later into his very
bones. Erasmus is in Calvin's eyes the ornament of letters, though his large
edition of Seneca is not all it ought to have been; but even Erasmus could not
at twenty-three have produced a work so finished in its scholarship, so real
in its learning, or so wide in its outlook.
The events of the next few months are obscure, but we know enough to see
how forces, internal and external, were working toward change. In the second
half of 1532 and the earlier half of 1533 Calvin was in Orleans, studying,
teaching, practising the law, and acting in the university as proctor for the
Picard nation; then he went to Noyon, and in October he was once more in
Paris. The capital was agitated; Francis was absent, and his sister, Margaret
of Navarre, held her court there, favoring the new doctrines, encouraging the
preachers, the chief among them being her own almoner, Gerard Roussel.
Two letters of Calvin to Francis Daniel belong to this date and place;
and in them we find a changed note. One speaks of "the troublous times," and
the other narrates two events: first, it describes a play "pungent with gall
and vinegar," which the students had performed in the College of Navarre to
satirize the Queen; and secondly, the action of certain factious theologians
who had prohibited Margaret's Mirror of a Sinful Soul. She had complained to
the King, and he had intervened. The matter came before the university, and
Nicolas Cop, the rector, had spoken strongly against the arrogant doctors and
in defence of the Queen, "mother of all the virtues and of all good learning."
Le Clerc, a parish priest, the author of the mischief, defended his
performance as a task to which he had been formally appointed, praising the
King, the Queen as woman and as author, contrasting her book with "such an
obscene production" as Pantagruel, and finally saying that the book had been
published without the approval of the faculty and was set aside only as
"liable to suspicion."
Two or three days later, on November 1, 1533, came the famous rectorial
address which Calvin wrote, and Cop revised and delivered, and which shows how
far the humanist had travelled since April 4, 1532, the date of the de
Clementia. He is now alive to the religious question, though he has not
carried it to its logical and practical conclusion. Two fresh influences have
evidently come into his life, the New Testament of Erasmus and certain sermons
by Luther. The exordium of the address reproduces, almost literally, some
sentences from Erasmus' Paraclesis, including those which unfold his idea of
the philosophia Christiana; while the body of it repeats Luther's exposition
of the beatitudes and his distinction between law and gospel, with the
involved doctrines of grace and faith. Yet "Ave gratia plena" is retained in
the exordium; and at the end the peacemakers are praised, who follow the
example of Christ and contend not with the sword, but with the word of truth.
This address enables us to seize Calvin in the very act and article of
change; he has come under a double influence. Erasmus has compelled him to
compare the ideal of Christ with the church of his own day; and Luther has
given him a notion of grace which has convinced his reason and taken
possession of his imagination. He has thus ceased to be a humanist and a
papist, but has not yet become a reformer. And a reformer was precisely what
his conscience, his country, and his reason compelled him to become. Francis
was flagrantly immoral, but a fanatic in religion; and mercy was not a virtue
congenial to either church or state. Calvin had seen the Protestants from
within; he knew their honesty, their honor, the purity of their motives, and
the integrity of their lives; and he judged, as a jurist would, that a man who
had all the virtues of citizenship ought not to be oppressed and treated as
unfit for civil office or even as a criminal by the state. This is no
conjecture, for it is confirmed by the testimony he bears to the influence
exercised over him by the martyred Etienne de la Forge. He thus saw that a
changed mind meant a changed religion, and a changed religion a change of
abode. Cop had to flee from Paris, and so had Calvin.
In the May of 1534 he went to Noyon, laid down his offices, was
imprisoned, liberated, and while there he seems to have finally renounced
Catholicism. But he feared the forces of disorder which lurked in
Protestantism, and which seemed embodied in the Anabaptists. Hence at Orleans
he composed a treatise against one of their favorite beliefs, the sleep of the
soul between death and judgment. Conscious personal being was in itself too
precious, and in the sight of God too sacred, to be allowed to suffer even a
temporary lapse. But to serve the cause he loved was impossible with the
stake waiting for him, its fires scorching his face, and kindly friends
endangered by his presence. And so, in the winter of 1534, he retired from
France and settled at Basel.
Now a city where Protestantism reigned, where learning flourished, and
where men so unlike as Erasmus and Farel - the fervid preacher of reform -
could do their work unhindered, was certain to make a deep impression on a
fugitive harassed and expatriated on account of religion; and the impression
it made can be read in the Christianae Religionis Institutio, and especially
in the prefatory Letter to Francis I. The Institutio is Calvin's positive
interpretation of the Christian religion: the Letter is learned, eloquent,
elegant, dignified, the address of a subject to his sovereign, yet of a
subject who knows that his place in the state is as legal, though not as
authoritative, as the sovereign's. It throbs with a noble indignation against
injustice, and with a noble enthusiasm for freedom and truth. It is one of
the great epistles of the world, a splendid apology for the oppressed and
arraignment of the oppressors. It does not implore toleration as a
concession, but claims freedom as a right.
Its author is a young man of but twenty-six, yet he speaks with the
gravity of age. He tells the King that his first duty is to be just; that to
punish unheard is but to inflict violence and perpetrate fraud. Those for
whom he speaks are, though simple and godly men, yet charged with crimes that,
were they true, ought to condemn them to a thousand fires and gibbets. These
charges the King is bound to investigate, for he is a minister of God, and if
he fails to serve the God whose minister he is, then he is a robber and no
king.
Then he asks, "Who are our accusers?" and he turns on the priests like a
new Erasmus, who does not, like the old, delight in satire for its own sake or
in a literature which scourges men by holding up the mirror to vice, but who
feels the sublimity of virtue so deeply that witticisms at the expense of vice
are abhorrent to him. He takes up the charges in detail: it is said that the
doctrine is new, doubtful, and uncertain, unconfirmed by miracles, opposed to
the fathers and ancient custom, schismatical and productive of schism, and
that its fruits are sects, seditions, license. On no point is he so emphatic
as the repudiation of the personal charges: the people he pleads for have
never raised their voice in faction or sought to subvert law and order; they
fear God sincerely and worship him in truth, praying even in exile for the
royal person and house.
The book which this address to the King introduces is a sketch or
programme of reform in religion. The first edition of the Institutio is
distinguished from all later editions by the emphasis it lays, not on dogma,
but on morals, on worship, and on polity. Calvin conceives the Gospel as a
new law which ought to be embodied in a new life, individual and social. What
came later to be known as Calvinism may be stated in an occasional sentence or
implied in a paragraph, but it is not the substance or determinative idea of
the book. The problem discussed has been set by the studies and the
experience of the author; he has read the New Testament as a humanist learned
in the law, and he has been startled by the contrast between its ideal and the
reality which confronts him. And he proceeds in a thoroughly juridical
fashion, just as Tertullian before him, and as Grotius and Selden after him.
Without a document he can decide nothing; he needs a written law or actual
custom; and his book falls into divisions which these suggest.
Hence his first chapter is concerned with duty or conduct as prescribed
by the Ten Commandments; his second with faith as contained in the apostolic
symbol; his third with prayer as fixed by the words of Christ; his fourth with
the sacrament as given in the Scriptures; his fifth with the false sacraments
as defined by tradition and enforced by Catholic custom; and his sixth with
Christian liberty or the relation of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities.
But though the book is, as compared with what it became later, limited in
scope and contents - the last edition which left the author's hand in 1559 had
grown from a work in six chapters to one in four books and eighty chapters -
yet its constructive power, its critical force, its large outlook impress the
student. We have here none of Luther's scholasticism, or of Melanchthon's
deft manipulation of incompatible elements; but we have the first thoughts on
religion of a mind trained by ancient literature to the criticism of life.
The Institutio bears the date "Mense Martio; Anno 1536"; but Calvin,
without waiting till his book was on the market, made a hurried journey to
Ferrara, whose Duchess, Renee, a daughter of Louis XII, stood in active
sympathy with the reformers. The reasons for this brief visit are very
obscure; but it may have been undertaken in the hope of mitigating, by the
help of Renee, the severity of the persecutions in France. On his return
Calvin ventured, tradition says, to Noyon, probably for the sake of family
affairs; but he certainly reached Paris; and, while in the second half of July
making his way into Germany, he arrived at Geneva. An old friend, possibly
Louis du Tillet, discovered him, and told Farel; and Farel, in sore straits
for a helper, besought him, and indeed in the name of the Almighty commanded
him, to stay. Calvin was reluctant, for he was reserved and shy, and
conceived his vocation to be the scholar's rather than the preacher's; but the
entreaties of Farel, half tearful, half minatory, prevailed. And thus
Calvin's connection with Geneva began.
Calvin's life from this point onward falls into three parts: his first
stay in Geneva from July, 1536, to March, 1538; his residence in Strasburg
from September, 1538, to September, 1541; and his second stay in Geneva from
the last date till his death, May 27, 1564. In the first period, he, in
company with Farel, made an attempt to organize the church and reform the mind
and manners of Geneva, and failed; his exile, formally voted by the council,
was the penalty of his failure. In the second period he was professor of
theology and French preacher at Strasburg, a trusted divine and adviser, a
delegate to the Protestant churches of Germany, which he learned to know
better, making the acquaintance of Melanchthon, and becoming more appreciative
of Luther.
At Strasburg some of his best literary work was done - his Letter to
Cardinal Sadoleto (in its way his most perfect production), his Commentary on
the Romans, a Treatise on the Lord's Supper, the second Latin and the first
French edition of his Institutio. In the third period he introduced and
completed his legislation at Geneva, taught, preached, and published there,
watched the churches everywhere, and conducted the most extensive
correspondence of his day. In these twenty-eight years he did a work which
changed the face of Christendom.
We come then to Calvin's legislative achievements as his main title to
name and fame. But two points must here be noted. In the first place, while
his theology was less original and effective than his legislation or polity,
yet he so construed the former as to make the latter its logical and indeed
inevitable outcome. The polity was a deduction from the theology, which may
be defined as a science of the divine will as a moral will, aiming at the
complete moralization of man, whether as a unit or as a society. The two were
thus so organically connected that each lent strength to the other, the system
to the church and the church to the system, while other and more potently
reasonable theologies either died or lived a feeble and struggling life.
Secondly, the legislation was made possible and practicable by Geneva,
probably the only place in Europe where it could have been enacted and
enforced. We have learned enough concerning Genevan history and institutions
to understand why this should have been the case. The city was small, free,
homogeneous, distinguished by a strong local patriotism, a stalwart communal
life. In obedience to these instincts it had just emancipated itself from the
ecclesiastical Prince and its ancient religious system; and the change thus
accomplished was, though disguised in a religious habit, yet essentially
political. For the council which abolished the bishop had made itself heir to
his faculties and functions; it could only dismiss him as civil lord by
dismissing him as the ecclesiastical head of Geneva, and in so doing it
assumed the right to succeed as well as to supersede him in both capacities.
This, however, involved a notable inversion of old ideas; before the
change the ecclesiastical authority had been civil, but because of the change
the civil authority became ecclesiastical. If theocracy means the rule of the
church or the sovereignty of the clergy in the state, then the ancient
constitution of Geneva was theocratic; if democracy means the sovereignty of
the people in church as well as in state, then the change had made it
democratic. And it was just after the change had been effected that Calvin's
connection with the city began.
Its chief pastor had persuaded him to stay as a colleague, and the
council appointed him professor and preacher. He was young, exactly
twenty-seven years of age, full of high ideals, but inexperienced,
unacquainted with men, without any knowledge of Geneva and the state of things
there. He could therefore make no terms, could only stay to do his duty.
What that duty was soon became apparent. Geneva had not become any more moral
in character because it had changed its mind in religion. It had two months
before Calvin's arrival sworn to live according to the holy evangelical law
and Word of God; but it did not seem to understand its own oath. And the man
whom his intellectual sincerity and moral integrity had driven out of
Catholicism could not hold office in any church which made light of conviction
and conduct; and so he at once set himself to organize a church that should be
efficaciously moral.
He built on the ancient Genevan idea, that the city is a church; only he
wished to make the church to be primary and real. The theocracy, which had
been construed as the reign of the clergy, he would interpret as ideal and
realize as a reign of God. The citizens, who had assumed control of their own
spiritual destinies and ecclesiastical affairs, he wanted to instruct in their
responsibilities and discipline into obedience. And he would do it in the way
of a jurist who believes in the harmony of law and custom; he would by
positive enactments train the city, which conceived itself to be a church, to
be and behave as if it were indeed a church, living according to the gospel
which it had sworn to obey.
Thus a confession of faith was drawn up which the people were to adopt as
their own, and so attain clarity and concordance of mind concerning God and
his Word; and a catechism was composed which was to be made the basis of
religious instruction in both the school and the family, for the citizen as
well as the child. Worship was to be carefully regulated, psalm-books
prepared, psalm-singing cultivated; the preacher was to interpret the Word,
and the pastor to supervise the flock.
The Lord's Supper was to be celebrated monthly, but only those who were
morally fit or worthy were to be allowed to communicate. The church, in order
that it might fulfil its functions and guard the holy table, must have the
right of excommunication. It was not enough that a man should be a citizen or
a councillor to be admitted to the Lord's Supper; his mind must be Christian
and his conduct Christlike. Without faith the rite was profaned, the presence
of Christ was not realized. Moreover, since matrimonial cases were many and
infelicity sprang both from differences of faith and impurity of conduct, a
board, composed partly of magistrates and partly of ministers, was to be
appointed to deal with them; and it was to have the power to exclude from the
church those who either did not believe its doctrines or did not obey its
commandments.
These were drastic proposals to be made to a city which had just
dismissed its bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a reformation
of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them inoperative. A
card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were
arrested because they had adorned the bride too gayly; an adulterer was driven
with the partner of his guilt through the streets by the common hangman, and
then banished. These things taxed the temper of the city sorely; it was not
unfamiliar with legislation of the kind, but it had not been accustomed to see
it enforced. Hence, men who came to be known as "libertines," though they
were both patriotic and moral and only craved freedom, rose and said: "This is
an intolerable tyranny; we will not allow any man to be lord over our
consciences." And about the same time Calvin's orthodoxy was challenged. Two
Anabaptists arrived and demanded liberty to prophesy; and Peter Caroli charged
him with heresy as to the Trinity. He would not use the Athanasian creed; and
he defended himself by reasons that the scholar who knows its history will
respect. The end soon came. When he heard that he had been sentenced to
banishment he said, "If I had served men this would have been a poor reward,
but I have served Him who never fails to perform what he has promised."
In 1541 Geneva recalled Calvin, and he obeyed as one who goes to fulfil
an imperative but unwelcome duty. There is nothing more pathetic in the
literature of the period than his hesitancies and fears. He tells Farel that
he would rather die a hundred times than again take up that cross "in qua
millies quotidie pereundum esset." And he writes to Viret that it were better
to perish once for all than "in illa carnificina iterum torqueri." But he
loved Geneva, and it was in evil case. Rome was plotting to reclaim it; Savoy
was watching her opportunity, the patriots feared to go forward, and even the
timid dared not go back. So the necessities of the city, divided between its
factions and its foes, constituted an appeal which Calvin could not resist;
but he did not yield unconditionally. He went back as the legislator who was
to frame laws for its church; and he so adapted them to the civil constitution
and the constitution to them, that he raised the little city of Geneva to be
the Protestant Rome.
The Ordonnances ecclesiastiques may be described as Calvin's programme of
Genevan reform, or his method for applying to the local and external church
the government which our Lord had instituted and the Apostles had realized.
These ordinances expressed his historical sense and gratified his religious
temper, while adapting the church to the city, so that the city might become a
better church. To explain in detail how he proposed to do this is impossible
within our limits; and we shall therefore confine ourselves to the most
important of the factors he created, the ministry.
The ministerial ideal embodied in these ecclesiastical ordinances may be
said to have had certain indirect but international results; it compelled
Calvin to develop his system of education; it supplied the reformed church,
especially in France, with the men which it needed to fight its battles and to
form the iron in its blood; it presented the reformed church everywhere with
an intellectual and educational ideal, which must be realized if its work was
to be done; and it created the modern preacher, defining the sphere of his
activity and setting up for his imitation a noble and lofty example.
Calvin soon found that the reformed faith could live in a democratic city
only by an enlightened pulpit speaking to enlightened citizens, and that an
educated ministry was helpless without an educated people. His method for
creating both entitles him to rank among the foremost makers of modern
education. As a humanist he believed in the classical languages and
literatures - there is a tradition which says that he read through Cicero once
a year - and so "he built his system on the solid rock of Graeco-Roman
antiquity." Yet he did not neglect religion; he so trained the boys of Geneva
through his catechism that each was said to be able to give a reason for his
faith "like a doctor of the Sorbonne." He believed in the unity of knowledge
and the community of learning, placing the magistrate and the minister, the
citizen and the pastor, in the hands of the same teacher, and binding the
school and the university together. The boy learned in the one and the man
studied in the other, but the school was the way to the university, the
university was the goal of the school.
In nothing does the pedagogic genius of Calvin more appear than in his
fine jealousy as to the character and competence whether of masters or
professors, and in his unwearied quest after qualified men. His letters teem
with references to the men in various lands and many universities whom he was
seeking to bring to Geneva. The first rector, Antoine Saunier, was a notable
man; and he never rested till he had secured his dear old teacher, Mathurin
Cordier. Castellio was a schoolmaster; Theodore Beza was head of college and
academy, or school and university, together; and Calvin himself was a
professor of theology. The success of the college was great; the success of
the academy was greater. Men came from all quarters - English, Italians,
Spanish, Germans, Russians, ministers, jurists, old men, young men, all with
the passion to learn in their blood - to jostle each other among the thousand
hearers who met to listen to the great reformer. But France was the main
feeder of the academy; Frenchmen filled its chairs, occupied its benches,
learned in it the courage to live and the will to die. From Geneva books
poured into France; and the French church was ever appealing for ministers,
yet never appealed in vain.
Within eleven years, 1555-1566 - Calvin died in 1564 - it is known that
Geneva sent one hundred sixty-one pastors into France; how many more may have
gone unrecorded we cannot tell. And they were learned men, strenuous,
fearless, praised by a French bishop as modest, grave, saintly, with the name
of Jesus Christ ever on their lips. Charles IX implored the magistrates of
Geneva to stop the supply and withdraw the men already sent; but the
magistrates replied that the preachers had been sent not by them, but by their
ministers, who believed that the sovereign duty of all princes and kings was
to do homage to Him who had given to them their dominion. It was small wonder
that the Venetian Suriano should describe Geneva as "the mine whence came the
ore of heresy"; or that the Protestants should gather courage as they heard
the men from Geneva sing psalms in the face of torture and death.
It was indeed a very different France which the eyes of the dying Calvin
saw from that which the young man had seen thirty years before. Religious
hate was even more bitter and vindictive; war had come and made persecution
more ferocious; but the Huguenots had grown numerous, potent, respected,
feared, and disputed with Catholicism the supremacy of the kingdom. And
Calvin had done it, not by arms nor by threats, nor by encouragement of
sedition or insurrection - to such action he was ever resolutely opposed - but
by the agency of the men whom he formed in Geneva, and by their persuasive
speech. The reformed minister was essentially a preacher, intellectual,
exegetical, argumentative, seriously concerned with the subjects that most
appealed to the serious-minded.
Modern oratory may be said to begin with him, and indeed to be his
creation. He helped to make the vernacular tongues of Western Europe
literary. He accustomed the people to hear the gravest and most sacred themes
discussed in the language which they knew; and the themes ennobled the
language, the language was never allowed to degrade the themes. And there was
no tongue and no people that he influenced more than the French. Calvin made
Bossuet and Massillon possible; as a preacher he found his successor in
Bourdaloue; and a literary critic who does not love him has expressed a doubt
as to whether Pascal could be more eloquent or was so profound. And the ideal
then realized in Geneva exercised an influence far beyond France. It extended
into Holland, which in the strength of the reformed faith resisted Charles V
and his son, achieved independence, and created the freest and best educated
state on the continent of Europe.
John Knox breathed for a while the atmosphere of Geneva, was subdued into
the likeness of the man who had made it, and when he went home he copied its
education and tried to repeat its reformation. English reformers, fleeing
from martyrdom, found a refuge within its hospitable walls, and, returning to
England, attempted to establish a Genevan discipline, and failed, but
succeeded in forming the Puritan character. If the author of the Ordonnances
ecclesiastiques accomplished, whether directly or indirectly, so much, we need
not hesitate to term him a notable friend to civilization.
