John Calvin
French reformer and author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536. Kept in Geneva by Farel, he was banished in 1538 and recalled in 1541, when the city adopted the church ordinances he asked for.
Calvin tells his own story in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms. His father first meant him for theology and then set him to study law; God, he says, “by a sudden conversion” brought his mind to a teachable frame; he left France and was living in retirement at Basel when he published the Institutes (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface), with an address to King Francis I in defence of those persecuted in France (Calvin, Institutes Prefatory address to Francis I).
Passing through Geneva, he was kept there by Guillaume Farel (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface). The city’s council banished both men in April 1538 (Geneva registers, Council, 21–23 April 1538) and received Calvin back in September 1541 (Geneva registers, Council, 13 September 1541); see Calvin’s Institutes and the Reform of Geneva. In 1553 the ministers had Michael Servetus imprisoned for heresy, and the council condemned him to be burned (Geneva registers, Company of Pastors, 13 August and 27 October 1553). In the same preface Calvin writes of years of conflict in Geneva with those he calls libertines, and of attacks on his teaching on providence and predestination (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface).
In the timeline
- 1536 to 1541, firm dateCalvin’s Institutes and the Reform of Geneva
John Calvin, a French exile, publishes the Institutes of the Christian Religion at Basel in 1536 and is kept in Geneva by Guillaume Farel. Banished in 1538, he returns in 1541, and the city adopts the church ordinances he asked for.