A period in European history marked by efforts to reform the Christian Church
Durant on Calvin's youth in Noyon, Paris and Orléans, his turn from humanism to the Reformation, his flight to Basel, and his Institutes of the Christian Religion: its dedication to Francis I, its doctrine of Scripture, predestination, the Church and the state, and why this severe creed gave its followers strength.
Durant on Geneva's revolt against its bishop and the dukes of Savoy, William Farel's call to Calvin, the first moral regime and its overthrow, Calvin's exile and marriage in Strasbourg, his reply to Cardinal Sadoleto, and the council's recall of him in 1541.
Durant on Calvin's church-state in Geneva: the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1542, the Consistory and the clergy's power, intolerance of dissent, the moral code and its punishments, schools and missions, Calvinism's economic ideas and its link with capitalism, and contrasting witnesses to the city's character.
Durant on Calvin's character and temperament, his quarrels with Jérôme Bolsec, Joachim Westphal and Italian dissenters, and the political struggle in Geneva with the Patriots and Libertines, including the Gruet affair and Calvin's confrontation with a mob in the council hall.
Durant on the Spanish thinker Michael Servetus: his early reading of Jewish and Muslim books, his attack on the Trinity, his years as a physician in France and his hint of the pulmonary circulation, his clash with Calvin, and his arrest, trial and burning in Geneva in October 1553.
Durant on the reaction to the burning of Servetus: Catholic and Protestant approval, Calvin's 1554 treatise justifying the punishment of heretics, Sebastian Castellio's anonymous plea for religious tolerance, Beza's answer, and Castellio's later writings and death in poverty.
Durant on Calvin's final decade: his fear of Unitarianism and the fate of Gribaldi, Blandrata and Gentile, his illness and death in 1564, the spread of Calvinism beyond Geneva, its influence on democracy, and how its harsher doctrines faded.
Durant on Francis I of France: his birth, upbringing and marriage, his character as a chivalrous patron of the Renaissance, and the France he inherited in 1515, with its prosperous peasantry, its classes, councils, parlements and venal offices, and its extravagant, woman-ruled court.
Durant on Marguerite of Navarre, sister of Francis I: her devotion to her brother, her two marriages and her daughter Jeanne d'Albret, her charity and patronage of writers and reformers, the Heptameron and its world of courtly love, and her vague, tolerant faith that briefly joined Renaissance and Reformation.
Durant on the French Church before the Reformation, the Concordat of 1516 that nationalized it, Lefèvre d'Étaples and the Meaux circle, the first martyrs, the Affair of the Placards, Francis's shifting policy, and the massacre of the Waldensians that stained the end of his reign.
Durant on Francis I's victory at Marignano, his defeat in the imperial election of 1519, the treason of the Constable of Bourbon, the disaster at Pavia, the king's captivity in Madrid, Louise of Savoy's diplomacy, and the treaty Francis signed without meaning to keep.
Durant on the League of Cognac, the sack of Rome, the "Ladies' Peace" of Cambrai, Clement VII's pact with Charles V, Francis's alliance with the Turks, the truce of Nice and the Peace of Crépy, the king's last illness and death, and the death of Marguerite of Navarre.
