History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 23

[Sidenote: also at Orleans and Bourges.]

John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon, a small but ancient city of Picardy. His family was of limited means, but of honorable extraction. Gerard Cauvin, his father, had successively held important offices in connection with the episcopal see. As a man of clear and sound judgment, he was sought for his counsel by the gentry and n.o.bility of the province--a circ.u.mstance that rendered it easy for him to give to his son a more liberal course of instruction than generally fell to the lot of commoners. It is not denied by Calvin's most bitter enemies that he early manifested striking ability. In selecting for him one of the learned professions, his father naturally preferred the church, as that in which he could most readily secure for his son speedy promotion. It may serve to ill.u.s.trate the degree of respect at this time paid to the prescriptions of canon law, to note that Charles de Hangest, Bishop of Noyon, conferred on John Calvin the _Chapelle de la Gesine_, with revenues sufficient for his maintenance, when the boy was but just twelve years of age! Such abuses as the gift of ecclesiastical benefices to beardless youths, however, were of too frequent occurrence to attract special notice or call forth unfriendly criticism. With the same easy disregard of churchly order the chapter of the cathedral of Noyon permitted Calvin, two years later, to go to Paris, for the purpose of continuing his studies, without loss of income; although, to save appearances, a pretext was found in the prevalence of some contagious disease in Picardy. Not long after, his father perceiving the singular proficiency he manifested, determined to alter his plans, and devoted his son to the more promising department of the law, a decision in which Calvin himself, already conscious of secret aversion for the superst.i.tions of the papal system, seems dutifully to have acquiesced. To a friend and near relation, Pierre Robert Oliveta.n.u.s, the future translator of the Bible, he probably owed both the first impulse toward legal studies and the enkindling of his interest in the Sacred Scriptures. Proceeding next to Orleans, in the university of which the celebrated Pierre de l'etoile, afterward President of the Parliament of Paris, was lecturing on law with great applause, Calvin in a short time achieved distinction. Marvellous stories were told of his rapid mastery of his subject. Not only did he occasionally fill the chair of an absent professor, and himself lecture, to the great admiration of the cla.s.ses, but he was offered the formal rank of the doctorate without payment of the customary fees. Declining an honorable distinction which would have interfered with his plan of perfecting himself elsewhere, he subsequently visited the University of Bourges, in order to enjoy the rare advantage of listening to Andrea Alciati, of Milan, reputed the most learned and eloquent legal instructor of the age.

[Sidenote: His studies under Wolmar.]

Meanwhile, however, Calvin's interest in biblical study had been steadily growing, and at Bourges that great intellectual and religious change appears to have been effected which was essential to his future success as a reformer. He attached himself to Melchior Wolmar, a distinguished professor of Greek, who had brought with him from Germany a fervent zeal for the Protestant doctrines. Wolmar, reading in the young law student the brilliant abilities that were one day to make his name ill.u.s.trious, prevailed upon him to devote himself to the study of the New Testament in the original. Day and night were spent in the engrossing pursuit, and here were laid the foundations of that profound biblical erudition which, at a later date, amazed the world, as well, unfortunately, as of that feeble bodily health that embittered all Calvin's subsequent life with the most severe and painful maladies, and abridged in years an existence crowded with great deeds.

[Sidenote: Translates Seneca "De Clementia."]

The illness and death of his father called Calvin back to Noyon,[390]

but in 1529 we find him again in Paris, where three years later he published his first literary effort. This was a commentary on the two books of Seneca, "De Clementia," originally addressed to the Emperor Nero. The opinion has long prevailed that it was no casual selection of a theme, but that Calvin had conceived the hope of mitigating hereby the severity of the persecution then raging. The author's own correspondence, however, betrays less anxiety for the attainment of that lofty aim, than nervous uneasiness respecting the literary success of his first venture. Indeed, this is not the only indication that, while Calvin was already, in 1532, an accomplished scholar, he was scarcely as yet a _reformer_, and that the stories of his activity before this time as a leader and religious teacher, at Paris and even at Bourges, deserve only to be cla.s.sed with the questionable myths obscuring much of his history up to the time of his appearance at Geneva.[391]

[Sidenote: Calvin's escape from Paris to Angouleme.]

The incident that occasioned Calvin's flight from Paris was narrated in a previous chapter. Escaping from the officers sent to apprehend him as the real author of the inaugural address of the rector, Nicholas Cop, Calvin found safety and scholastic leisure in the house of his friend Louis du Tillet, at Angouleme. If we could believe the accounts of later writers, we should imagine the young scholar dividing his time in this retreat between the preparation of his "Inst.i.tutes" and systematic labors for the conversion of the inhabitants of the south-west of France. Tradition still points out the grottos in the vicinity of Poitiers, where, during a residence in that city, Calvin is said to have exclaimed, pointing to the Bible lying open before him: "Here is my ma.s.s;" and then, with uncovered head and eyes turned toward heaven, "Lord, if at the judgment-day thou shalt reprove me because I have abandoned the ma.s.s, I shall reply with justice, 'Lord, thou hast not commanded it. Here is thy law. Here are the Scriptures, the rule thou hast given me, wherein I have been unable to find any other sacrifice than that which was offered upon the altar of the cross!'"[392]

[Sidenote: He resigns his benefices.]

[Sidenote: He reaches Basle.]

The caverns bearing Calvin's name may never have witnessed his preaching, and the address ascribed to him rests on insufficient authority;[393] but it is certain that the future reformer about this time took his first decided step in renouncing connection with the Roman Church, by resigning his benefices, the revenues of which he had enjoyed, although precluded by his youth from receiving ordination.[394]

Not many months later, finding himself solicited on all sides to take an active part as a teacher of the little companies of Protestants arising in different cities of France, he resolved to leave France and court elsewhere obscurity and leisure to prosecute undisturbed his favorite studies.[395] Accordingly, we find him, after a brief visit to Paris and Orleans, reaching the city of Basle, apparently toward the close of the year 1534.[396]

[Sidenote: Apologetic character given to his great work.]

It was here that Calvin appears to have conceived for the first time the purpose of giving a practical aim to the great work upon the composition of which he had been some time busy. In spite of his professions of unsullied honor, Francis the First had not hesitated to disseminate, by means of his agents beyond the Rhine, the most unfounded and injurious reports respecting his Protestant subjects. It was time that these aspersions should be cleared away, and an attempt be made to touch the heart of the persecuting monarch with compa.s.sion for the unoffending objects of his blind fury. Such was the object Calvin set before himself in a preface to the first edition of the "Inst.i.tutes," addressed "To the Very Christian King of France."[397] It was a doc.u.ment of rare importance.

[Sidenote: The preface to the "Christian Inst.i.tutes."]

[Sidenote: Eloquent peroration.]

He briefly explained the original design of his work to be the instruction of his countrymen, whom he knew to be hungering and thirsting for the truth. But the persecutions that had arisen and that left no place for sound doctrine in France induced him to make the attempt at the same time to acquaint the king with the real character of the Protestants and their belief. He a.s.sured Francis that the book contained nothing more nor less than the creed for the profession of which so many Frenchmen were being visited with imprisonment, banishment, outlawry, and even fire, and which it was sought to exterminate from the earth. He drew a fearful picture of the calumnies laid to the charge of this devoted people, and of the wretched church of France, already half destroyed, yet still a b.u.t.t for the rage of its enemies. It was the part of a true king, as the vicegerent of G.o.d, to administer justice in a cause so worthy of his consideration. Nor ought the humble condition of the oppressed to indispose him to grant them a hearing; for the doctrine they professed was not their own, but that of the Almighty himself. He boldly contrasted the evangelical with the papal church, and refuted the objections urged against the former. He defended its doctrine from the charge of novelty, denied that miracles--especially such lying wonders as those of Rome--were necessary in confirmation of its truth, and showed that the ancient Fathers, far from countenancing, on the contrary, condemned the superst.i.tions of the day. He refuted the charge that Protestants forsook old customs when good, or abandoned the only visible church; and in a masterly manner vindicated the Reformation from the oft-repeated charge of being the cause of sedition, conflict, and confusion. He begged for a fair and impartial hearing. "But," he exclaimed in concluding, "if the suggestions of the malevolent so fill your ears as to leave no room for the reply of the accused, and those importunate furies continue, with your consent, to rage with bonds and stripes, with torture, confiscation, and fire, then shall we yield ourselves up as sheep appointed for slaughter, yet so as to possess our souls in patience, and await the mighty hand of G.o.d, which will a.s.suredly be revealed in good time, and be stretched forth armed for the deliverance of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of the blasphemers now exulting in confidence of safety. May the Lord of Hosts, ill.u.s.trious king, establish your seat in righteousness and your throne with equity."[398]

[Sidenote: Has no effect in allaying persecution.]

[Sidenote: Calvin achieves distinction.]

The learned theologian's eloquent appeal failed to accomplish its end.

If Francis ever received, he probably disdained to read even the dedication, cla.s.sed by competent critics among the best specimens of writing in the French language,[399] and must have regarded the volume to which it was prefixed as a bold vindication of heresy, and scarcely less insulting to his majesty than the placards themselves. Others, better capable of forming a competent judgment, or more willing to give it a dispa.s.sionate examination, applauded the success of a hazardous undertaking that might have appalled even a more experienced writer than the French exile of Noyon. The Inst.i.tutes gave to a young man, who had scarcely attained the age at which men of mark usually begin to occupy themselves with important enterprises, the reputation of being the foremost theologian of the age.

[Sidenote: He revises the Bible of Oliveta.n.u.s.]

Other studies invited Calvin's attention. Not content with perfecting himself in the original languages of the Holy Scriptures, he revised with care the French Protestant Bible, translated by his relation Oliveta.n.u.s, of which we shall have occasion to speak in another chapter.

Meanwhile, in an age of intense mental and moral awakening, no scholastic repose, such as he had pictured to himself, awaited one who had made good his right to a foremost rank among the athletes in the intellectual arena.

[Sidenote: Visits Italy.]

Before his unexpected call to a life of unremitting conflict, Calvin visited Italy. In the entire absence of any trustworthy statement of the occasion of this journey, it is almost idle to speculate on the objects he had in view.[400] Certain, however, it is that the court of the d.u.c.h.ess Renee, at Ferrara, offered to a patriotic Frenchman attractions hard to be resisted.

[Sidenote: The court of Renee de France.]

[Sidenote: Brantome's eulogy of Renee.]

The younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth resembled her father not less in character than in appearance and speech.[401] Cut off by the pretended Salic law from the prospect of ascending the throne, she had in her childhood been thrown as a straw upon the variable tide of fortune. After having been promised in marriage to Charles of Spain, heir to the most extensive and opulent dominions the sun shone upon, and future Emperor of Germany, she had (1528) been given in marriage to the ruler of a petty Italian duchy, himself as inferior to her in mind as in moral character.[402] As for Renee, if her face was homely and unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good account the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by her high rank. Admiring courtiers made her cla.s.sical and philosophical attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis of fact than in the case of many other princes of the time; while with the French, her countrymen, the generous hospitality she dispensed won for her unfading laurels. "Never was there a Frenchman," writes the Abbe de Brantome, "who pa.s.sing through Ferrara applied to her in his distress and was suffered to depart without receiving ample a.s.sistance to reach his native land and home. If he were unable to travel through illness, she had him cared for and treated with the utmost solicitude, and then gave him money to continue his journey."[403] Ten thousand poor Frenchmen are said to have been saved by her munificent charity, on the occasion of the recall of the Duke of Guise, after Constable Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her patriotism and to a virile spirit which no Salic law could extinguish.[404]

The brief stay of Calvin at Ferrara is involved in the same obscurity that attends his motives in visiting Italy. But it is known that he exerted at this time a marked influence not only on others,[405] but on Renee de France herself, who, from this period forward, appears in the character of an avowed friend of the reformatory movement. Calvin had from prudence a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of _Charles d'Espeville_, and this name was retained as a signature in his subsequent correspondence with the d.u.c.h.ess.

[Sidenote: Calvin leaves Ferrara.]

A point so close to the centre of the Roman Catholic world as Ferrara could scarcely afford safety to an ardent reformer, even if the fame of his "Inst.i.tutes" had not yet reached Rome; and Ercole the Second was too dependent upon the Holy See to shrink from sacrificing the guest his wife had invited to the palace. Returning, therefore, from Ferrara, without apparently pursuing his journey to Rome or even to Florence, Calvin retraced his steps and took refuge beyond the Alps. Possibly he may have stopped on the way in the valley of Aosta, and displayed a missionary activity, which has been denied by several modern critics, but is attested by local monuments and tradition, and has some support in contemporary doc.u.ments.[406]

[Sidenote: Revisits France.]

[Sidenote: Is recognized while pa.s.sing through Geneva.]

[Sidenote: Farel compels him to remain.]

Once more in Basle, Calvin resolved, after a final visit to the home of his childhood, to seek out some quiet spot in Germany, there to give himself up to those scholarly labors which he fancied would be more profitable to France than the most active enterprises he might engage in as a preacher of the Gospel. He had accomplished the first part of his design, had disposed of his property in Noyon, and was returning with his brother and sister, when the prevalence of war in the Duchy of Lorraine led him to diverge from his most direct route, so as to traverse the dominions of the Duke of Savoy and the territories of the confederate cantons of Switzerland. Under these circ.u.mstances, for the first time, he entered the city of Geneva, then but recently delivered from the yoke of its bishop and of the Roman Church. He had intended to spend there only a single night.[407] He was accidentally recognized by an old friend, a Frenchman, who at the time professed the reformed faith, but subsequently returned to the communion of the Church of Rome.[408] Du Tillet was the only person in Geneva that detected in the traveller, Charles d'Espeville, the John Calvin who had written the "Inst.i.tutes." He confided the secret to Farel, and the intrepid reformer whose office it had hitherto been to demolish, by unsparing and persistent blows, the popular structure of superst.i.tion, at once concluded that, in answer to his prayers, a man had been sent him by G.o.d capable of laying, amid the ruins, the foundations of a new and more perfect fabric. Farel sought Calvin out, and laid before him the urgent necessities of a church founded in a city where, under priestly rule, disorder and corruption had long been rampant. At first his words made no impression. Calvin had traced out for himself a very different course, and was little inclined to exchange a life of study for the perpetual struggles to which he was so unexpectedly summoned. But when he met Farel's request with a positive refusal, pleading inexperience, fondness for literary pursuits, and aversion to scenes of tumult and confusion, the Genevese reformer a.s.sumed a more decided tone. Acting under an impulse for which he could scarcely account himself, Farel solemnly prayed that the curse of G.o.d might descend on Calvin's leisure and studies, if purchased at the price of neglecting the duty to which the voice of the Almighty Himself, by His providence, distinctly called him.[409]

The amazed and terrified student felt--to use his own expression--that G.o.d had stretched forth His arm from heaven and laid violent hold upon him, rendering all further resistance impossible. He yielded to the unwelcome call, and became the first theological professor of Geneva.

Somewhat later he was prevailed upon to add to his functions the duties of one of the pastors of the city.

[Sidenote: Farel's own recollections.]

If the scene impressed itself ineffaceably on the memory or one of the princ.i.p.al actors, its effect, we may be sure, was no less lasting in the case of the other. More than a quarter of a century after, Farel, on receiving the announcement that his worst apprehensions had been realized, in the death of his "so dear and necessary brother Calvin,"

wrote to a friend a touching letter, in which he referred in a few sentences to the same striking interview. "Oh, why am not I taken away in his stead, and why is not he, so useful, so serviceable, here in health, to minister long to the churches of our Lord! To Whom be blessing and praise, that, of His grace, He made me fall in with him where I had never expected to meet him, and, contrary to his own plans, compelled him to stop at Geneva, and made use of him there and elsewhere! For he was urged on one side and another more than could be told, and _specially by me_, who, in G.o.d's name, urged him to undertake matters that were harder than death. And albeit _he begged me several times, in the name of G.o.d, to have mercy on him and suffer him to serve G.o.d in other ways_, as he has always thus occupied himself, nevertheless, seeing that what I asked was in accordance with G.o.d's will, in doing himself violence he has done more and more promptly than any one else has done, surpa.s.sing not only others, but himself. Oh, how happily has he run an excellent race!"[410]

[Sidenote: Calvin becomes the head of the commonwealth.]

[Sidenote: His view respecting church and state,]

[Sidenote: and the punishment of heresy.]

For twenty-eight years the name of Calvin was inseparably a.s.sociated with that of the city which owes its chief renown to his connection with it. Excepting the three years of exile, from 1538 to 1541, occasioned by a powerful reaction against his rigid system of public morality, he was, during the whole of this period, the recognized head of the Genevese commonwealth. A complete mastery of the principles of law, acquired by indefatigable study at Orleans and Bourges, before the loftier teachings of theology engrossed his time and faculties, qualified him to draw up a code to regulate the affairs of his adopted country. If its detailed prohibitions and almost Draconian severity are repugnant to the spirit of the present age, the general wisdom of the legislator is vindicated by the circ.u.mstance that he transformed a city noted for the prevalence of every form of turbulence and immorality into the most orderly republic of Christendom. Few, it is true, will be found to defend the theory respecting the duty of the state toward the church in which Calvin acquiesced. But the cruel deaths of Gruet and Servetus were only the legitimate fruits of the doctrine that the civil authority is both empowered and bound to exercise vigilant supervision over the purity of the church. In this doctrine the reformers of the sixteenth century were firm believers. They held, as John Huss had held a hundred years before, that _Truth_ could appropriately appeal for support to physical force, under circ.u.mstances that would by no means have justified a similar resort on the part of _Error_. The consistent language of their lives was, "If we speak not the truth, we refuse not to die." "If the Pope condemns the pious for heresy, and furious judges unjustly execute on the innocent the penalty due to heretics, what madness is it thence to infer that heretics ought not to be destroyed for the purpose of aiding the pious! As for myself, since I read that Paul said that he did not refuse death if he had done anything to deserve it, I openly offered myself frequently prepared to undergo sentence of death, if I had taught anything contrary to the doctrine of piety. And I added, that I was most worthy of any punishment imaginable, if I seduced any one from the faith and doctrine of Christ. _a.s.suredly I cannot have a different view with regard to others from that which I entertain respecting myself._"[411]

So wrote Farel, and almost all his contemporaries agreed with him. And thus it happened that the conscientious Calvin and the polished Beza were at the pains of writing long treatises, to prove that "heretics are justly to be constrained by the sword,"[412] almost at the very moment when they were begging the Bernese to intercede with their ally, King Henry the Second, of France, in behalf of the poor Protestants languis.h.i.+ng in the dungeons of Lyons, or writing consolatory letters to Peloquin and De Marsac, destined to suffer death in the flames not many days before the execution of the Spanish physician at Geneva.[413]

[Sidenote: His fault the fault of the age.]

In truth, however, it was less Calvin than the age in which he lived that must be held responsible for the crime against humanity with which his name has come to be popularly a.s.sociated. He did, indeed, desire and urge that Servetus should be punished capitally, although he made an earnest but unsuccessful effort to induce the magistrates to mitigate the severity of the sentence, by the subst.i.tution of some more merciful mode of execution.[414] But the other princ.i.p.al reformers of Germany and Switzerland--Melanchthon, Haller, Peter Martyr, and Bullinger gave their hearty endors.e.m.e.nt to the cruel act;[415] while if any further proof were needed to attest the sincerity and universality of approval accorded to it, it is afforded by the last letters of the brave men who were themselves awaiting at Chambery, a few mouths later, death by the same excruciating fate as that which befell Servetus at Geneva.[416]

[Sidenote: Calvin shuns notoriety.]

The prominence obtained by Calvin as chief theologian and pastor of the church of Geneva, however, was foreign to his tastes. He was by preference a scholar, averse to notoriety, fond of retirement, and, if we are to believe his own judgment, timid and even pusillanimous by nature.[417] He had in vain sought seclusion in France. From Basle and Strasbourg he made a hasty retreat in order to preserve his incognito, and avoid the fame the Inst.i.tutes were likely to earn for him.[418] Only Farel's adjuration detained him in Geneva, and he subsequently confessed that his fort.i.tude was not so great but that he rejoiced even more than was meet when the turbulent Genevese expelled him from their city.[419]

But not even then was he able to secure the coveted quiet, for Martin Bucer was not slow in imitating the urgency of Farel, and employed the warning example of the prophet Jonah seeking to flee from the will of the Almighty, to induce him to employ himself in the organization and administration of the French church at Strasbourg.[420] Not less decided was Calvin's reluctance to accede to the repeated invitations of the council and people of Geneva, that he should return and resume his former position.

[Sidenote: His character and natural endowments.]

[Sidenote: He is consulted by Protestants in every quarter of Europe.]