From Ferrara to Geneva
While the Institutes were in the press (March 1536), Calvin, in the version most accept, hurried across the Alps to Ferrara. His aim was apparently to persuade Duchess Renée, wife of Duke Ercole II and daughter of the late Louis XII, to help the persecuted Protestants of France. The Protestant duchess was so struck by his fervent faith that she took him as her guide, in respectful letters, until his death. Back in Basel (May 1536), Calvin went to Noyon to sell some of his property, and from there set out with his brother and sister for Strasbourg. War had closed the road, and they were forced to stop for a time in Geneva (July 1536).
The French-speaking Swiss city goes back to prehistoric times; traces of the pile dwellings built over Lake Geneva are still seen there. In Caesar's day busy trade routes met at the place where a bridge crossed the Rhône. In the Middle Ages the bishop held both religious and civil rule, usually chosen by the cathedral chapter, which in practice governed the city. The religious and political order that Calvin later set up in Geneva was a Protestant version of this medieval government. In the fifteenth century the dukes of Savoy, beyond the Alps, subjected the chapter and installed bishops loyal to them, men who, fearing there might be no other world beyond this one, took their pleasure in it. Church government and clergy under its influence grew corrupt. Revelry and licentiousness spread so far among the city's clergy that when a priest was ordered to give up his mistress, he replied that he would do so if the other clergy gave up theirs.
Within this feudal church order, Geneva's leading families formed a council of sixty to run the city, and the council appointed four syndics to carry out its decisions. It usually met in the cathedral of St. Pierre, and spiritual and civil powers were so mixed that while the bishop coined money and led the army, the council made moral laws, issued excommunications and licensed prostitutes. In Geneva, as in Trier, Mainz and Cologne, the bishop was also a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, with duties that bishops of our day do not have.
A group of the city's notables, led by François de Bonivard, resolved to free the city from bishops and dukes. These "patriots" allied themselves with Catholic Fribourg and Protestant Bern; the Germans called members of such a pact "oath-fellows" (Eidgenossen). In 1520 the city's leaders were mostly merchants, for unlike Wittenberg, Geneva was a trading city through which Swiss commerce in the north, Italy in the south and France in the west passed. In 1526 the citizens formed a "Great Council of Two Hundred," which elected a "Little Council of Twenty-Five" that took over the government and rejected the authority of bishop and duke. The bishop accused the townspeople of rebellion, and with the duke's soldiers had Bonivard arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Chillon. A Bernese army marched to relieve the besieged city, the duke's forces were routed and scattered in the fighting, the bishop fled to Annecy, and the hero of Byron's tale was freed from his dungeon. The Great Council, angered at the dukes of Savoy's support for the city's clergy, made Protestantism official and, two months before Calvin entered Geneva, took over all the city's religious and civil powers (1536).
William Farel
The ideological leader and hero of this revolution was William Farel, who in youth, like Luther, had been a model of piety. In Paris, Jacques Lefèvre of Étaples' translation of the Bible and his commentaries shook Farel's belief in Roman Catholic principles, for after reading the translation he found in it no basis for the papacy, the power of bishops, the sale of indulgences, purgatory, the seven sacraments, the Mass as practiced in the Catholic Church, clerical celibacy, or the worship of the Virgin and saints. He then gave up all office and went as an independent preacher through the cities of Switzerland and France. Small and frail, with a piercing voice, a strong spirit, fiery eyes and a red beard that lit up his pale, wasted face, he freely preached his beliefs, called the pope Antichrist and the Catholic Mass an insult to sacred things, and urged the people to destroy religious images and statues in the churches.
He came to Geneva in 1532 to preach. The bishop's men arrested him, and the bishop proposed throwing "this Lutheran dog" into the Rhône. But through the intercession of the city's syndics, Farel, with a scratched head and clothes marked with spittle, was freed from prison. After his release he won the Council of Twenty-Five and, with the help of Pierre Viret and Antoine Froment, so reached the people's hearts that nearly all the Catholic clergy fled the city in fear. On May 21, 1536, the Little Council banned the Catholic Mass in the city and ordered images and statues removed from churches. Church property was given to Protestants for charitable, religious and cultural purposes. Education was made compulsory and free, and strict moral regulations were enforced. Citizens were asked to swear loyalty on the Gospel, and those who refused to attend the reformed churches were banished. Such was Geneva when Calvin entered it.
The First Regime
Farel was then forty-seven, and though he was to die a year after Calvin, he found in the twenty-seven-year-old Calvin the firmness and eloquence needed to strengthen and spread the Reformation. Calvin was unwilling to take up leadership of Geneva's Protestants, since he meant to spend his life in study and writing, and he loved the company of God more than of men. But Farel, in the tone of the biblical prophets, threatened to curse him if he preferred private study to preaching God's word. Calvin finally yielded. The city council and the church assembly accepted him as religious leader, and without any ceremony of rank he began his service in Geneva with lectures on "the mission of the apostle Paul" in St. Pierre (September 5, 1536). In all Protestant circles, except the radical social sects, Paul's influence prevailed over Peter's, the supposed founder of the see of Rome.
In October Calvin went with Farel and Viret to Lausanne and took part in the discussions that brought that city into the Protestant camp. After his return the pastors of St. Pierre resolved to dedicate the city to God. Believing that Scripture is God's word to the letter, they thought it their duty to enforce its moral standards in the city to the last detail. They were alarmed that many townspeople were given to singing, dancing, gambling, drinking, adultery and similar pleasures. One quarter of the city was home to prostitutes who obeyed their own head, a "queen of the prostitutes." To Farel in his fire and Calvin in his sensitive conscience, ignoring this was a betrayal of God.
To give the people's conduct a religious basis, Farel and Calvin issued the famous "Confession of Faith and Discipline" and Calvin's catechism, approved by the Great Council (November 1536). Those who disobeyed the moral laws were excommunicated and expelled. In July 1537 the council ordered all residents to go to St. Pierre and swear loyalty to Farel's confession. Any Catholic practice, such as carrying rosaries, honoring relics, or keeping saints' days, became a crime. Women who wore unseemly hats were punished. Bonivard, just out of prison, was told to give up his licentious ways. Gamblers were bound to tree trunks and adulterers shamed and driven from the city.
Expulsion
The people of Geneva, used to church government within the Catholic faith, which the southern climate had made mild, resisted the new strict religious and political order fiercely. The patriots, who had freed Geneva from bishop and duke, again took their stand to free the city from stubborn, bigoted priests. Another group of citizens, who wanted freedom of belief and worship for their fellow townsmen and so were called Libertines, joined the patriots and secret Catholics to overthrow the new rule. In the election of February 3, 1538, the allies won most seats in the Great Council. The new council warned the clergy to keep out of politics. Farel and Calvin defied it and declared that until the unruly residents renewed their loyalty to the confession they had sworn, they would refuse to administer Communion. The council deposed them from the ministry (April 23) and ordered them to leave Geneva within three days. The people celebrated the council's decision with feasts. Farel accepted a call to Neuchâtel and preached in that church until the last days of his life (1565); a building erected there in his honor keeps his memory alive.
Strasbourg
Calvin went to Strasbourg, a free city subject only to the emperor, and served in the "church of strangers," whose members were mostly French Protestants. The church paid him 52 gulden a year (about $1,300, the book's figures). To make up the shortfall he had to sell his library and take several students into his house. Judging celibacy unsuitable in this condition, he asked Farel and Bucer to find him a wife and described the qualities he wanted: he was not one of those foolish men who, enchanted by a woman's beauty, overlook her faults; the only beauty that would lure him was chastity, dutifulness, thrift, patience and concern for his health. In 1540 he married Idelette de Bure, a poor widow with several children. The marriage produced a child who died in infancy. After his wife's death (1549) he spoke of her with a tenderness at odds with his apparent harshness. Calvin spent the remaining fifteen years of his life alone.
Sadoleto's Letter and Calvin's Answer
While Calvin was in Strasbourg, Geneva saw new events. The former bishop of Geneva, encouraged by the banishment of Farel and Calvin, resolved to return in triumph to his church, and to prepare the ground he prompted Jacopo Sadoleto to write a letter to the Genevans urging them to return to the Catholic faith (1539). Sadoleto was a cardinal and an ambitious humanist of rare moral virtue. He had earlier advised the pope to treat the Protestants kindly, and at the time of the massacre of the Waldensians he had taken under his protection a group of them who sought refuge with him at Carpentras (the book gives 1545; the date does not fit the sequence and is flagged). In the fluent Latin he had learned from Bembo, he wrote a twenty-page letter to "the beloved brothers, magistrates, senate and citizens of Geneva," giving political and religious advice. He pointed to the rapid split of the Protestant movement into hostile parties led by craftsmen, whom he took to be hungry for power, and, comparing Protestantism with the old unity of Rome, asked whether it was not wiser, in seeking the truth, to turn to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the product of centuries of experience and councils of thoughtful men, instead of to a sect itself torn by contradiction and dissension. He also promised the Genevans every help.
Geneva's council thanked the cardinal for his compliments and postponed an answer. But no one in Geneva was able to match the cardinal or reply to his fluent Latin letter. At this moment some Genevans raised the need to repeal the regulations of the confession of faith and discipline they had sworn to obey, and it seemed that Geneva was ready to return to Catholicism. Calvin, aware of the city's confusion, answered the cardinal's statement and defended the Reformation with all his power of mind and pen. He answered courtesy with courtesy and eloquence with eloquence, but did not retreat a step from his beliefs. To the cardinal's claim that revolt against the Roman Catholic Church sprang from personal ambition, he replied that if he had stayed loyal to that church he would have enjoyed more comfort and safety. He affirmed that the Roman Catholic Church was founded by the Creator, but added that the wickedness of the Renaissance popes had made it the servant of Antichrist. Contrary to Sadoleto, he held that the teaching of Scripture is higher and more authentic than the decrees of church councils. He regretted that the corruption of the Roman Church had broken the Church into pieces, but said there had been no other remedy for its ills, and ended by saying that if Catholics and Protestants would cooperate to purify the beliefs, rites and officers of the Christian churches, Christ would reward them by receiving them to himself in heaven. Though it overlooks some virtues of the Renaissance popes, this eloquent and forceful letter is rare among the pamphlet quarrels of the time for its courtesy and dignity. Luther, reading it in Wittenberg, praised it as a crushing blow on the cardinal's head and cried that he could hardly contain his joy at seeing God raise up men to finish the fight he had begun against Antichrist. The letter so impressed Geneva's council that it ordered it printed at the city's cost with the cardinal's letter (1540). The council now feared that, by exiling Calvin, it might have driven away the ablest leader of the Reformation in Switzerland.
The Recall
Other things also troubled the council. The pastors installed in place of Farel and Calvin were not worthy of their office in discipline or eloquence. Having no credit with the people, the Genevans returned to the loose life they had led before the Reformation. Gambling, drinking, street fights and adultery spread again in the city; people sang lewd and suggestive songs in public and appeared in the streets naked. Of the four syndics who had a hand in the plot to banish Farel and Calvin, one was sentenced to death for murder, two others were prosecuted, one for forgery and the other for treason, and the fourth was killed when he tried to escape the officers. The disorder, which naturally hurt the city's trade, frightened the merchants who dominated the council. And council members, fearing loss of office or possible excommunication, did not wish to give the city's government back to a bishop. So the idea gradually gained strength among most council members of bringing Calvin back to Geneva.
On May 1, 1541, the council annulled the sentence of banishment against Farel and Calvin and spoke well of them. Deputations were sent to Strasbourg one after another to persuade Calvin to return and take up the city's religious leadership. Farel bore Geneva no grudge for not getting a similar invitation, and generously worked with the city's envoys to urge Calvin. But Calvin, who had found many friends in Strasbourg and taken on many responsibilities there, regarded going back to Geneva as the start of a life of suffering and said, "In the whole world I fear no place as much as Geneva." At last he agreed to visit. But when he arrived (September 13, 1541), the townspeople welcomed him so warmly, begged his pardon so earnestly, and promised so firmly to cooperate in keeping order and following the teaching of the Gospel, that Calvin could not ignore their plea. On September 16 he wrote to Farel: "At last your wish has been granted and I have been made to stay here. I hope the Lord will not withhold his blessing from me."