Religion

John Calvin (1509 - 1564)

orn in 1509, John Calvin was to become one of the most prolific theological and social reformers. He took Ulrich Zwingli's concept of literal understanding of Biblical readings and extended it into a recipe for sound social organization. Calvin believed that an ideal government was one controlled by religious leaders. This form of government was termed "Theorcracy".

In the 1520's, before Calvin came of age, Geneva, Switzerland, revolted against it's present rulers - The House of Savoy and the local bishop-prince of Geneva. Being French-speaking and not German-speaking like the other Protestant city-states of the time (Zurich, Bern, Basel, etc), Geneva had very view cultural ties with the other reformed churches in Germany and Switzerland. Bern, one of the Protestant cantons, was determined that Protestantism should spread throughout Switzerland; and therefore in 1935, Bern sent Protestant reformers to Geneva to convert it into a Protestant city. After much conflict, this was achieved, and in 1535 Geneva was officially Protestant.

Originally, John Calvin had been a lawyer. Invited to Geneva to reform the church, he set about changing the face of Protestantism by addressing issues that the early Reformers had failed to answer. Calvin did much work in the organization of church governance and social ordnance of the church as well as the city. Calvin is seen as the first political thinker to model the organization of society on the literal understanding of Biblical principles. Initially, Calvin's reforms weren't well received by the people of Geneva. He created leaders within the church, and developed an instruction (by question and answer) system designed to enforce Christian principles on all the members of the church. Calvin and Guillaume Farel (1489 - 1565) designed a moral code through the literal reading of Christian scripture, and instituted it in Geneva. The citizens of Geneva, in turn, felt they had not been freed from an imposing religion, but that Catholicism had merely been replaced by a clone religion simply under a different name. Therefore, in 1538, Calvin and other protestant Reformers were exiled from Geneva. Calvin fled to Strasbourg, where he completed his "The Institutes of the Christian Church", which is a mammoth account of Protestant doctrine and beliefs. Along with this he wrote a collection of commentaries on the Bible.

When, in 1540, new city governors took over Geneva, they invited Calvin back into the city. As soon as he returned, Calvin began his work insurrecting Genevan society. One of Calvin's most influential alterations was assimilating the church into Geneva's city government, helped reconstruct municipal government so that churchman could be included in municipal roles, especially disciplining the populace. Calvin instituted a ranking organization in Geneva's church, and passed numerous decrees so as to incorporate a rigid and severe moral code to city life. Calvin ran Geneva according to strict rules; all citizens were to attend religious instruction; no bright clothes were worn, nor were card games or gambling accepted. Authorities imprisoned, punished, excommunicated or banished citizens that were found to be disobeying the laws. Anyone who followed differing ideas to those of the Calvinists could be burnt at the stake. Geneva, however, became what was viewed as a model city of high morals.

By the Mid 1550's, Geneva was fully Calvinistic, in structure as well as thought. Calvin had succeeded in making Geneva the most eminent Protestant center in Europe in the 16th Century. Protestants in exile from religiously unsupportive native countries (e.g. England, France, Scotland and the Netherlands) found sanctuary in Geneva, and by the 1550's, these foreigners constituted more than a third of the city's population. These foreign protestants adopted the militant Calvinistic doctrines, so whereas they had arrived as mediocre Reformers, they left as thorough, almost extremist Calvinists. This is possibly the reason why Calvin's developments in the Reformation became the chief ramifications of Protestantism from the 17th Century, and onwards.