Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

Lord's Supper until the rebellious city conformed to the sworn

discipline. The Council deposed the two ministers (April 23), and

ordered them to leave the city within three days. The people

celebrated the dismissal with public rejoicings. `062127 Farel

accepted a call to Neuchatel; there he preached to the end of his days

(1565), and there a public monument honors his memory.

Calvin went to Strasbourg, then a free city subject only to the

emperor, and ministered to L'Eglise des Etrangers, a congregation of

Protestants chiefly from France. To eke out the fifty-two guilders

($1,300?) annually paid him by the church, he sold his library and

took students as boarders. Finding bachelorhood inconvenient in this

situation, he asked Farel and Bucer to search out a wife for him,

and listed specifications: "I am none of those insane lovers who, when

once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, embrace also her faults.

This only is the beauty which allures me- that she be chaste,

obliging, not fastidious, economical, patient, and careful for my

health." `062128 After two false starts he married (1540) Idelette

de Bure, a poor widow with several children. She bore him one child,

who died in infancy. When she passed away (1549) he wrote of her

with the private tenderness that underlay his public severity. He

lived in domestic loneliness the remaining fifteen years of his life.

While he labored in Strasbourg events moved on at Geneva. Encouraged

by the expulsion of Farel and Calvin, the exiled bishop planned a

triumphant return to his cathedral. As a preliminary step he persuaded

Iacopo Sadoleto to write an Epistle to the Genevese, urging them

to resume their Catholic worship and faith (1539). Sadoleto was a

gentleman of exceptional virtue for a cardinal and a humanist; he

had already advised the papacy to handle Protestant dissent gently,

and he later received under his protection at Carpentras heretical

Waldenses fleeing from massacre (1545). In a fine Latin learned

under the impeccable Bembo, he addressed "to his dearly beloved

Brethren, the Magistrates, Senate, and citizens of Geneva," twenty

pages of diplomatic courtesies and theological exhortation. He noted

the rapid division of Protestantism into warring sects, led, he

alleged, by crafty men avid for power; he compared this with the

centuries-long unity of the Roman Church, and asked whether it was

more likely that truth lay with those contradictory factions than with

a Catholic doctrine formed by the experience of ages and the assembled

intelligence of ecclesiastical councils. He concluded by offering to

Geneva whatever service it was in his power to give.

The Council thanked him for his compliments, and promised him a

further response. But no one could be found in Geneva who would

undertake to cross swords, or Latin, with the polished humanist.

Meanwhile a number of citizens asked to be released from their oath to

support the Confession of Faith and Discipline, and for a time it

seemed that the city would return to Catholicism. Calvin learned of

the situation, and in a reply to the Cardinal he rose with all the

power of his mind and pen to the defense of the Reformation. He

countered courtesy with courtesy, eloquence with eloquence, but he

would not yield an inch of his theology. He protested against the

implication that he had rebelled through personal ambition; he could

have risen to far greater comfort had he remained orthodox. He

admitted the divine foundation of the Catholic Church, but he

charged that the vices of the Renaissance popes proved the capture

of the papacy by Antichrist. To the wisdom of Church councils he

opposed the wisdom of the Bible, which Sadoleto had almost ignored. He

regretted that the corruption of the Church had necessitated secession

and division, but only so could the evils be cured. If Catholics and

Protestants would now co-operate to cleanse the doctrine, ritual,

and personnel of all the Christian churches, they would be rewarded

with a final unity in heaven with Christ. It was a powerful letter,

perhaps unappreciative of the incidental virtues of the Renaissance

popes, but otherwise phrased with a comity and dignity rare in the

controversies of the time. Luther, reading it in Wittenberg, hailed it

as quite annihilating the Cardinal; "I rejoice," he cried, "that God

raises up men who will... finish the war against Antichrist which I

began." `062129 The Council of Geneva was so impressed that it ordered

the two letters printed at the city's expense (1540) It began to

wonder whether, in banishing Calvin, it had lost the ablest man in the

Swiss Reform.

Other factors nourished the doubt. The ministers who had replaced

Farel and Calvin proved incompetent both in preaching and in

discipline. The public lost respect for them, and returned to the easy

morality of unreformed days. Gambling, drunkenness, street brawls,

adultery, flourished; lewd songs were publicly sung, persons romped

naked through the streets. `062130 Of the four syndics who had led the

movement to expel Farel and Calvin, one had to be condemned to death

for murder, another for forgery, a third for treason, and the fourth

died while trying to escape arrest. The businessmen who controlled the

Council must have frowned upon this disorder as impeding trade. The

Council itself had no taste for being replaced and perhaps

excommunicated by a restored bishop. Gradually a majority of the

members came to the idea of recalling Calvin. On May 1, 1541, the

Council annulled the sentence of banishment, and pronounced Farel

and Calvin to be honorable men. Deputation after deputation was sent

to Strasbourg to persuade Calvin to resume his pastorate at Geneva.

Farel forgave the city for not extending him a similar invitation, and

with noble generosity joined the deputations in urging Calvin to

return. But Calvin had made many friends in Strasbourg, felt

obligations there, and saw nothing but strife in store for him at

Geneva; "there is no place in the world that I fear more." He agreed

only to pay the city a visit. When he arrived (September 13, 1541)

he received so many honors, so many apologies, so many promises of

co-operation in reestablishing order and the Gospel, that he had not

the heart to refuse. On September 16 he wrote to Farel: "Your wish

is granted. I am held fast here. May God give His blessing." `062131

IV. THE CITY OF GOD

-

Calvin behaved, in the early years of his recall, with a

moderation and modesty that won all but a small minority to his

support. Eight assistant pastors were appointed, under him, to serve

St. Peter's and the other churches of the city. He labored twelve to

eighteen hours a day as preacher, administrator, professor of

theology, superintendent of churches and schools, adviser to municipal

councils, and regulator of public morals and church liturgy; meanwhile

he kept enlarging the Institutes, wrote commentaries on the Bible,

and maintained a correspondence second in extent only to that of

Erasmus, and surpassing it in influence. He slept little, ate

little, fasted frequently. His successor and biographer, Theodore de

Beze, marveled that one little man ( unicus homunculus ) could carry

so heavy and varied a burden.

His first task was the reorganization of the Reformed Church. At his

request the Small Council, soon after his return, appointed a

commission of five clergymen and six councilors, with Calvin at

their head, to formulate a new ecclesiastical code. On January 2,

1542, the Great Council ratified the resultant Ordonnances

ecclesiastiques, whose essential features are still accepted by the

Reformed and Presbyterian churches of Europe and America. The ministry

was divided into pastors, teachers, lay elders, and deacons. The

pastors of Geneva constituted "The Venerable Company," which

governed the Church and trained candidates for the ministry. No one

henceforth was to preach in Geneva without authorization by the

Company; the consent of the city council and the congregation was also

required, but episcopal ordinations- and bishops- were taboo. The

new clergy, while never claiming the miraculous powers of the Catholic

priests, and though decreeing themselves ineligible for civil

office, became under Calvin more powerful than any priesthood since

ancient Israel. The real law of a Christian state, said Calvin, must

be the Bible; the clergy are the proper interpreters of that law;

civil governments are subject to that law, and must enforce it as so

interpreted. The practical men in the councils may have had some

doubts on these points, but they appear to have felt that social order

was so profitable to the economy that some ecclesiastical

assumptions might for the time being go unchallenged. Through an

astonishing quarter of a century a theocracy of clergymen seemed to

dominate an oligarchy of merchants and men of affairs.

The authority of the clergy over Genevese life was exercised through

a Consistory or Presbytery composed of five pastors and twelve lay

elders, all chosen by the Council. As the pastors held tenure

throughout their ministry, and the elders for only a year, the

Consistory, in matters not vitally affecting business, was ruled by

its ecclesiastical members. It took the right to ordain the

religious worship and moral conduct of every inhabitant; it sent a

minister and an elder to visit every house and family annually; it

could summon any person before it for examination; it could publicly

reprove or excommunicate offenders, and could rely on the Council to

banish from the city those whom the Consistory banned from the Church.

Calvin held power as the head of this Consistory; from 1541 till his

death in 1564 his voice was the most influential in Geneva. His

dictatorship was one not of law or force but of will and character.

The intensity of his belief in his mission, and the completeness of

his devotion to his tasks, gave him a strength that no one could

successfully resist. Hildebrand, revived, could have rejoiced over

this apparent triumph of the Church over the state.

So empowered, the clergy first regulated religious worship. "The

whole household shall attend the sermons on Sunday, except when

someone shall be left at home to tend the children or the cattle. If

there is preaching on weekdays all who can must come." (Calvin

preached three or four times a week.) "Should anyone come after the

sermon has begun, let him be warned. If he does not amend, let him pay

a fine of three sous." `062132 No one was to be excused from

Protestant services on the plea of having a different or private

religious creed; Calvin was as thorough as any pope in rejecting

individualism of belief; this greatest legislator of Protestantism

completely repudiated that principle of private judgment with which

the new religion had begun. He had seen the fragmentation of the

Reformation into a hundred sects, and foresaw more; in Geneva he would

have none of them. There a body of learned divines would formulate

an authoritative creed; those Genevans who could not accept it would

have to seek other habitats. Persistent absence from Protestant

services, or continued refusal to take the Eucharist, was a punishable

offense. Heresy again became an insult to God and treason to the

state, and was to be punished with death. Catholicism, which had

preached this view of heresy, became heresy in its turn. Between

1542 and 1564 fifty-eight persons were put to death, and seventy-six

were banished, for violating the new code. Here, as elsewhere,

witchcraft was a capital crime; in one year, on the advice of the

Consistory, fourteen alleged witches were sent to the stake on the

charge that they had persuaded Satan to afflict Geneva with

plague. `062133

The Consistory made little distinction between religion and

morality. Conduct was to be guided as carefully as belief, for good

conduct was the goal of right belief. Calvin himself, austere and

severe, dreamed of a community so well regulated that its virtue would

prove his theology, and would shame the Catholicism that had

produced or tolerated the luxury and laxity of Rome. Discipline should

be the backbone of personality, enabling it to rise out of the

baseness of human nature to the erect stature of the self-conquered

man. The clergy must lead by example as well as precept; they may

marry and beget, but they must abstain from hunting, gambling,

feasting, commerce, and secular amusements, and accept annual

visitation and moral scrutiny by their ecclesiastical superiors.

To regulate lay conduct a system of domiciliary visits was

established: one or another of the elders visited, yearly, each

house in the quarter assigned to him, and questioned the occupants

on all phases of their lives. Consistory and Council joined in the

prohibition of gambling, card-playing, profanity, drunkenness, the

frequenting of taverns, dancing (which was then enhanced by kisses and

embraces), indecent or irreligious songs, excess in entertainment,

extravagance in living, immodesty in dress. The allowable color and

quantity of clothing, and the number of dishes permissible at a

meal, were specified by law. Jewelry and lace were frowned upon. A

woman was jailed for arranging her hair to an immoral

height. `062134 Theatrical performances were limited to religious

plays, and then these too were forbidden. Children were to be named

not after saints in the Catholic calendar but preferably after Old

Testament characters; an obstinate father served four days in prison

for insisting on naming his son Claude instead of Abraham. `062135

Censorship of the press was taken over from Catholic and secular

precedents, and enlarged (1560): books of erroneous religious

doctrine, or of immoral tendency, were banned; Montaigne's Essays

and Rousseau's Emile were later to fall under this proscription.

To speak disrespectfully of Calvin or the clergy was a

crime. `062136 A first violation of these ordinances was punished with

a reprimand, further violation with fines, persistent violation with

imprisonment or banishment. Fornication was to be punished with

exile or drowning; adultery, blasphemy, or idolatry, with death. In

one extraordinary instance a child was beheaded for striking its

parents. `062137 In the years 1558-59 there were 414 prosecutions

for moral offenses; between 1542 and 1564 there were seventy-six

banishments and fifty-eight executions; the total population of Geneva

was then about 20,000. `062138 As everywhere in the sixteenth century,

torture was often used to obtain confessions or evidence.

Regulation was extended to education, society, and the economic

life. Calvin established schools and an academy, searched through

Western Europe for good teachers of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and

theology, and trained young ministers who carried his gospel into

France, Holland, Scotland, and England with all the ardor and devotion

of Jesuit missionaries in Asia; in eleven years (1555-66) Geneva

sent 161 such envoys into France, many of whom sang Huguenot psalms as

they suffered martyrdom. Calvin considered class divisions natural,

and his legislation protected rank and dignity by prescribing the

quality of dress, and the limits of activity for each class. `062139

Every person was expected to accept his place in society, and to

perform its duties without envy of his betters or complaint of his

lot. Begging was banned, and indiscriminate charity was replaced by

careful communal administration of poor relief.

Calvinism gave to hard work, sobriety, diligence, frugality, and

thrift a religious sanction and laurel that may have shared in

developing the industrious temper of the modern Protestant

businessman; but this relationship has been overstressed. `062140

Capitalism was more highly developed in Catholic Florence and Flanders

before the Reformation than in Calvin's Geneva. Calvin rejected

individualism in economics as well as in religion and morals. The unit

of society, in his view, was not the free individual (with whom Luther

had begun his revolt) but the city-state community, whose members were

bound to it in rigorous law and discipline. "No member of the

Christian community," he wrote, "holds his gifts to himself, or for

his private use, but shares them among his fellow members; nor does he

derive benefit save from those things which proceed from the common

profit of the body as a whole." `062141 He had no sympathy with

acquisitive speculation or ruthless accumulation. `062142 Like some

late-medieval Catholic theorists, he permitted interest on loans,

but in theory he limited it to 5 per cent, and urged loans without

interest to necessitous individuals or the state. `062143 With his

approval the Consistory punished engrossers, monopolists, and

lenders who charged excessive interest; it fixed prices for food and

clothes and surgical operations; it censured or fined merchants who

defrauded their clients, dealers who skimped their measures, clothiers

who cut their cloth too short. `062144 Sometimes the regime moved

toward state socialism: the Venerable Company established a bank,

and conducted some industries. `062145

If we bear these limiting factors in mind, we may admit a quiet

and growing entente between Calvinism and business. Calvin could not

long have kept his leadership had he obstructed the commercial

development of a city whose commerce was its life. He adjusted himself

to the situation, allowed interest charges of 10 per cent, and

recommended state loans to finance the introduction or expansion of

private industry, as in the manufacture of clothing or the

production of silk. Commercial centers like Antwerp, Amsterdam, and

London took readily to the first modern religion that accepted the

modern economy. Calvinism took the middle classes into its fold, and

grew with their growth.

What were the results of Calvin's rule? The difficulties of

enforcement must have been extreme, for never in history had such

strict virtue been required of a city. A considerable party opposed

the regimen, even to the point of open revolt, but a substantial

number of influential citizens must have supported it, if only on

the general theory of morals- that others need them. The influx of

French Huguenots and other Protestants must have strengthened Calvin's

hand; and the limitation of the experiment to Geneva and its

hinterland raised the chances of success. The recurrent fear of

invasion and absorption by hostile states (Savoy, Italy, France, the

Empire) compelled political stability and civic obedience; external

danger promoted internal discipline. In any case we have an

enthusiastic description of the results from the pen of an eyewitness,

Bernardino Ochino, an Italian Protestant who had found refuge in

Geneva:

-

Cursing and swearing, unchastity, sacrilege, adultery, and impure

living, such as prevail in many places where I have lived, are here

unknown. There are no pimps and harlots. The people do not know what

rouge is, and they are all clad in seemly fashion. Games of chance are

not customary. Benevolence is so great that the poor need not beg. The

people admonish one another in brotherly fashion, as Christ

prescribes. Lawsuits are banished from the city, nor is there any

simony, murder, or party spirit, but only peace and charity. On the

other hand, there are no organs here, no voice of bells, no showy

songs, no burning candles or lamps [in the churches], no relics,

pictures, statues, canopies, or splendid robes, no farces or cold

ceremonies. The churches are quite free from idolatry. `062146

-

The extant records of the Council for this period do not quite agree

with this report: they reveal a high percentage of illegitimate

children, abandoned infants, forced marriages, and sentences of

death; `062147 Calvin's son-in-law and his stepdaughter were among

those condemned for adultery. `062148 But then again, as late as 1610,

we find Valentin Andreae, a Lutheran minister from Wurttemberg,

praising Geneva enviously:

-

When I was in Geneva I observed something great which I shall

remember and desire as long as I live. There is in that city not

only the perfect institute of a perfect republic, but, as a special

ornament, a moral discipline which makes weekly investigations into

the conduct, and even the smallest transgressions, of the citizens....

All cursing and swearing, gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, fraud,

etc., are forbidden, while greater sins are hardly heard of. What a

glorious ornament of the Christian religion is such a purity of

morals! We must lament with tears that it is wanting with us

[Germans], and almost totally neglected. If it were not for the

difference of religion, I would have been chained to Geneva

forever. `062149

V. THE CONFLICTS OF CALVIN

-

Calvin's character harmonized with his theology. The oil painting in

the University Library at Geneva pictures him as a severe and somber

mystic; dark but bloodless complexion, scanty black beard, high

forehead, penetrating, ruthless eyes. He was short and thin and

physically frail, hardly fit to carry a city in his hands. But

behind the weak frame burned a mind sharp, narrow, devoted, and

intense, and a firm, indomitable will, perhaps a will to power. His

intellect was a citadel of order, making him almost the Aquinas of

Protestant theology. His memory was crowded and yet precise. He was

ahead of his time in doubting astrology, abreast of it in rejecting

Copernicus, a bit behind it (like Luther) in ascribing many

terrestrial occurrences to the Devil. His timidity concealed his

courage, his shyness disguised an inner pride, his humility before God

became at times a commanding arrogance before men. He was painfully

sensitive to criticism, and could not bear opposition with the

patience of one who can conceive the possibility that he may be wrong.

Racked with illness, bent with work, he often lost his temper and

broke out into fits of angry eloquence; he confessed to Bucer that

he found it difficult to tame "the wild beast of his wrath." `062150

His virtues did not include humor, which might have softened his

certainties, nor a sense of beauty, which might have spared

ecclesiastical art. Yet he was no unmitigated kill-joy; he bade his

followers be cheerful, play harmless games like bowling or quoits, and

enjoy wine in moderation. He could be a kind and tender friend, and an

unforgiving enemy, capable of hard judgments and stern revenge.

Those who served him feared him, `062151 but those loved him most

who knew him best. Sexually his life showed no fault. He lived simply,

ate sparingly, fasted unostentatiously, slept only six hours a day,

never took a holiday, used himself up without stint in what he thought

was the service of God. He refused increases in salary, but labored to

raise funds for the relief of the poor. "The strength of that

heretic," said Pope Pius IV, "consisted in this, that money never

had the slightest charm for him. If I had such servants my dominion

would extend from sea to sea." `062152

A man of such mettle must raise many enemies. He fought them with

vigor, and in the controversial language of the time. He described his

opponents as riffraff, idiots, dogs, asses, pigs, and stinking

beasts- `062153 epithets less becoming to his elegant Latinity than to

Luther's gladiatorial style. But he had provocations. One day Jerome

Bolsec, an ex-monk from France, interrupted Calvin's sermon at St.

Peter's to denounce the predestinarian doctrine as an insult to God;

Calvin answered him by citing Scripture; the police arrested Bolsec;

the Consistory charged him with heresy; the Council was inclined to

put him to death. But when the opinions of theologians in Zurich,

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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