John Calvin

**Jean Cauvin**, or **Jean Calvin**  (English: **John Calvin**, July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564), was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation who was a central developer of the system of Christian theology that is called Calvinism or Reformed theology. In Geneva, he rejected papal authority and established a new scheme of civic and ecclesiastical governance. He is famous for his teachings and writings and infamous for his role in the execution of Michael Servetus.

## Early life

Calvin was born with the name Jean Chauvin (or Cauvin, Latin: _Calvinus_) in Noyon, Picardy (now Oise department), France, to Gérard Cauvin and Jeanne Lefranc. In 1523, Calvin's father, a lawyer, sent his 14-year-old son to the University of Paris to study thehumanities and law. By 1532, he had attained a Doctor of Law degree at Orléans.

In 1536, he settled in Geneva, Switzerland. After being expelled from the city, he served as a pastor in Strasbourg from 1538 to 1541, when he returned to Geneva, where he lived until his death.

## Thought

Calvin trained to be a lawyer. He studied with some of the best teachers of the Renaissance in France. Some of the training used newer humanistic methods of trying to understand to deal with a text directly. His training was important for Calvin. When he started to believe in Evangelicalism, he used those methods with the Bible, which he used form his thoughts. He taught and preached what he believed that the Bible taught.

Reformers such as Jan Hus and Martin Luther are seen as original thinkers who started a movement. Calvin was a great logician. And organised a movement but did not start as much doctrine. He knew very well the writings of the early Church Fathers and the great medieval scholastics. Earlier Reformers also influenced Calvin, who did not disagree with all medieval scholastics but used them and adapted their thoughts according to his understanding of the Bible.

Calvin is often associated with the doctrines of predestination and election. He had similar ideas to those of other magisterial Reformers about them.

## Last years (1555–1564)

Calvin's power was very great in his last years. He was known all around the world as a reformer who was different from Luther. Mainly, Luther and Calvin respected each other. However, Luther and a Zürich reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, thought differently about the Eucharist. Calvin's thoughts about it made Luther believe that Calvin agreed with Zwingli. However, Calvin was sad that the reformers were not all together. He tried to join them together by signing the _Consensus Tigurinus_, an agreement between the Zürich and the Geneva churches.

Calvin's greatest help to the English-speaking people was by giving protection to Marian exiles in Geneva starting in 1555. With the city's protection, they could make their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham. They later carried many of Calvin's ideas back to England and Scotland. However, Calvin was most interested in trying to change his homeland, France. He helped the building of churches by giving out literature and offering ministers. Between 1555 and 1562, over 100 ministers were sent to France.

In Geneva, Calvin mainly wanted to make a _collège_, a school for children. A site was chosen on March 25, 1558. The school was opened on June 5, 1559. It was divided into two parts. One part was a grammar school, which was called the _collège_ or _schola privata_. The other part was an advanced school, the _académie_ or _schola publica_. In five years, there were 1,200 students in the grammar school and 300 in the advanced school. The _collège_ later became the Collège Calvin, one of the college preparatory schools of Geneva. The _académie_ became the University of Geneva.

In autumn 1558, Calvin became ill with a fever. He was afraid that he would die before he could finish the last revision of his _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, which made him force himself to work. The last edition became much longer and so Calvin called it a new work. The second-last edition had 21 chapters, but the last edition had 80 since he put more detail in the material that was already there though he did not really add more subjects.

He became better, but he soon strained his voice while he was preaching, which made him cough violently. He had burst a blood vessel in his lungs. His health became much worse afterward. He preached his last sermon in St. Pierre Cathedral on February 6, 1564. On April 25, he made his will in which he left a little money to his family and to the _collège_. A few days later, the ministers of the church came to visit him. He died on May 27 of septicaemia. The farewell is recorded in _Discours d'adieu aux ministres_.

The next day, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Cimetière de Plainpalais. The exact spot of the grave is unknown. However, a stone was added in the 19th century to mark a grave that has traditionally been thought to be Calvin's.

### General collections

- Writings of Calvin at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL)

### Theological works

- _Institutes of the Christian Religion_ at CCEL
- _Psychopannychia_
- Jean Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, https://books.google.com/books?id=6iMBAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Tracts+relating+to+the+Reformation+%22

### Commentaries

- Calvin's Commentaries on the Bible at CCEL
- _Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles_, (with Calvin's dedication to Edward VI), tr. by John Owens, Edingurgh, The Calvin Translation Society, 1855.

### Letters

- Jules Bonnet, _Letters of John Calvin_, Carlisle, Penn: Banner of Truth Trust 1980.

### Secondary sources

- Bernard Cottret, _Calvin, a Biography_, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans, 2001.
- Roland Bainton (1974). _Women of the Reformation in England and France_. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. .
- John Farrell, "The Terrors of Reform," chapter five of _Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau_. Cornell University Press, 2006.
- John Foxe. An Account of the Life of John Calvin

## Other websites

- St Peter's Cathedral in Geneva

## Infobox (person)

- **name**: John Calvin
- **image**: John Calvin - best likeness.jpg
- **caption**: Engraving from the original oil painting
in the University Library of Geneva
- **birth place**: Noyon, Picardy, France
- **death place**: Geneva City, Geneva, Switzerland
- **occupation**: Pastor and theologian
- **spouse**: Idelette de Bure
- **parents**: Gérard Cauvin and Jeanne Lefranc