The Ecclesiastical Ordinances of Geneva
The church constitution that Geneva adopted on Calvin’s return in 1541. It sets up four offices, pastors, teachers, elders and deacons, and a weekly consistory of ministers and elders to oversee the conduct of the people.
The council register records that John Calvin, on the day he came back to Geneva, asked that the church be set in order and the order put in writing, and that six councillors were named to work with the ministers. The draft they produced was amended by the Little Council and the Two Hundred and passed by the General Council on Sunday 20 November 1541.
The text printed by Kidd is the draft, with the councils’ changes in the notes. Those changes matter: the magistrates added that the elders are their own delegates, that the ministers have no civil jurisdiction, and that the consistory takes nothing from the authority of the city’s courts. The ordinances show what Geneva enacted in 1541; a revised text was issued in 1561, and Kidd’s later documents show the consistory’s right to excommunicate contested in 1543 and conceded by the councils only in 1555.
Cited in
- 1536 to 1541, firm date