"Modesty, softness, and mildness"-such was John Calvin, in his own words. This brief self-portrait will surprise posterity, quick as it is to detect in Calvin a deeply passionate man of zealous action. Calvin adds elsewhere: "I acknowledge myself to be timid, soft, and cowardly by nature." He repeated the same idea feelingly on the eve of his death, calling himself "timid" and "fearful" before an astounded group of pastors who knew by experience that the old fellow could raise up storms. These various descriptions of Calvin strongly underline the vigor of a character that owed all its energy to God alone. At the same time, the apparent contradictions within Calvin's personality make it hard to capture his true nature. The large number of biographies attempted to date attest to this fact, many of which simply picture Calvin as a rigid fundamentalist or as a totalitarian who ruled Geneva with an iron hand. Such interpretations, however, are much too one-dimensional. This sterling new biography by Bernard Cottret opts for a Calvin "in movement," thus distinguishing itself from works that present Calvin as a man of relatively static character. The aim of this book is simply to recover the truth, or rather to reclaim the intelligibility of a man in his time. This is a historian's Calvin, the work of a university professor who is neither a theologian nor an ordained minister. Cottret's welcome approach sheds new light on the great Reformer's personality by concentrating on the milieu in which Calvin did his life's work. In the largest part of the book, Cottret explores Calvin's life chronologically. We are introduced to the world into which Calvin was born, a Europe in the throes of upheaval owing to the development of the printing press and divergent religious views. We follow Calvin from his birth and childhood in Noyon to his school years in Paris. We accompany Calvin on his humanistic and literary pursuits in Basel, his early ministry in Geneva, and his halcyon Strasbourg years. Finally, we move again to Geneva, where the brunt of Calvin's serious-and better known-life was lived. Along the way we encounter the major issues of Calvin's day-the sacrifice of the Mass, iconoclasm, predestination, the Arianism of Michael Servetus-issues to which he reacted with all his religious emotion. We tarry with him in Geneva and get an up-close look at the governance of Calvinism's "holy city." And we share in Calvin's joys and sorrows through a reading of his prolific correspondence. In the final chapters, Cottret explores thematic aspects of Calvin's persona-Calvin the polemicist, the preacher, and the writer-and looks in greater depth at his foremost work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Widely acclaimed in its French edition, this balanced and beautifully written biography will take its place among the best-and most enjoyable-portraits of Calvin's life, work, and lasting influence.
Calvin
A BiographyBy Bernard CottretWm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2000 Bernard Cottret
All right reserved.ISBN: 9780802831590
Chapter One
The Heavens at a Birth: July 10, 1509
Although the stars do not speak, even in being silent they cry out.
JOHN CALVIN
July 10, 1509: "The disposition of the stars in this figure shows that this person should be endowed with good qualities, but that they should be accompanied by several evil characteristics."
F. DE RAEMOND, 1605
Calvin's life was more secular than it seems. The Reformer never aroused theslightest personality cult among his entourage. Theodore Beza, who succeededhim in Geneva, described him with admiration certainly, but without excessiveadulation, never sacrificing to the golden legend. As a friend of the dead man,he did not hesitate to celebrate his eminent role as the "champion" of God or toblacken his adversaries. For Beza Calvin was indeed the scourge of all heresies:"There will be found no heresy ancient or revived, or newly founded in ourtime, which he did not destroy down to its foundations." But his zeal was temperedby the recognition of the faults of the departed. "I do not want to make aman into an angel," he confides in his Life of Calvin, which appeared somemonths after the Reformer's passing. Yes, Calvin was hot tempered and obstinate,"gloomy and difficult." Beza describes the great man's birth with a carefulsobriety: "He was born in Noyon, an ancient and famous town of Picardy, in1509, on July 10, of a respectable family of middle rank. His father was namedGirard Calvin, a man of good understanding and judgment, and therefore ingreat demand in the houses of the neighboring nobility."
This is an "emblematic" sentence, "similar to those which open all biographies."In the second version of Calvin's life, completed by Nicolas Colladon, thesubject is treated laconically: "Let us be satisfied that, God wanting to be servedby him at a certain time, He brought him into the world on the stated day." Heclearly wanted to avoid interpreting Calvin's admittedly unique destiny in termsof the stars: "I will therefore commence with his birth, which was on the tenth dayof July of the year 1509 ? which I note, not in order to search out in his horoscopethe causes of the events of his life, much less the excellent virtues found inhim, but simply from regard for history. And indeed, considering that he himselfhad such a horror of the abuses of judicial astrology ... it would be doing himwrong to give rein to such speculations regarding his character."
Thus is "judicial astrology" rejected, which in our day is called simply astrology,those predictions which claim to use the position of the stars to forecastthe future. The future, according to Calvin, depended only on man himself, or atleast on man listening to God. His first admiring biographers likewise foundthemselves confronted with a particularly arduous task: while maintaining theexceptional, indeed providential character of Calvin's life, they had to reject thetechniques used in the cult of saints or the legends of secular heroes. The biographyof Calvin revived an ancient genre, the lives of illustrious men. It was locatedat the necessarily difficult intersection between the biography of a saint and thecelebration of a great man. A great man, moreover, is not a lay saint; his privatevirtues are less significant than his collective importance. From this perspectiveCalvin's precise influence is difficult to disentangle with accuracy; apart from theimpact of his theological work, which is absolutely undeniable, his effect on thesociety of his time, and in particular on Geneva, is the subject of constant reevaluation.Did these biographers manage in the end to avoid the snare of hagiography?Already in 1567, in a new edition, some accompanying words stated thatCalvin's life was that of "a great servant of God," and added that it concerned "aholy man whom Our Lord has received into his glory." The description alreadysmells of the incense of canonization ? all the more because of pious mention ofthe "falsity of all that the Devil has vomited through his henchmen against thememory" of Calvin. Neither Calvin nor Beza was responsible for these excesses;the refusal of a tomb that can be visited sufficiently marks the Calvinist determinationto nip in the bud any temptation to create a cult of saints. No, Calvin fortunatelysmelled the sulfur too plainly to lend himself to the use of the reliquary.
From the side of his adversaries, Jérôme Bolsec insisted on Calvin's Picardorigins, calling him "John Calvin of Noyon, a man among all others who wereever in the world ambitious, presumptuous, arrogant, cruel, malicious, vengeful,and above all ignorant." But regarding the birth itself, he remained reticent:"Of his birth in the town of Noyon, in Picardy, in the year 1509, I will saynothing more." Bolsec preferred to enlarge on two subjects: John's father, GirardCauvin, who had been "a most execrable blasphemer of God," and his son,the well-known Reformer, who had been "surprised in or convicted of the sinof sodomy" and branded with a hot iron, in lieu of being burned at the stake ashe seemingly deserved. The highly polemical, indeed frankly hateful text ofBolsec contents itself with inverting the traditional saints' lives: "Bolsec saysnothing about Calvin's horoscope, but there are found in him the three pivotalthemes of the entire controversy: Calvin's debauched youth and judicial branding,the botched resurrection, and the death `while invoking the devils'; thesethree facts constitute in essentials ... the reversed pattern of a saint's life."
Astrology, on the other hand, later provided a magistrate of Bordeaux,Florimond de Raemond, with weighty arguments when he attempted at the beginningof the seventeenth century to explain the "birth of heresy": "This man,who was the author of so many evils, was born at Noyon in Picardy on July 10,1509, an unfortunate day, being the birthday of our prolonged miseries."
Raemond thus described the ill-omened Calvin's map of the sky: "First,Saturn in the house of the Virgin shows that he would be a man of eminentlearning, but learning badly based.... Mercury, in the house of the sun, promisedhim a strong memory, and the ability to put things down well in writing ...since although Mercury was combust, this would not prevent him from havingthis good quality, which was also promised him by the heart of the Lion, locateddue south, the heart being the seat of understanding and prudence...."
These excellent qualities were unfortunately squandered. If in fact his co-religionariessaw in him, according to Raemond, a "second Saint Paul" the "Scorpionin the ascendant" decided that he could not "hold rank and station in thetrue church." It was a pity. The saint and the heretic maintain a state of kinshipin Raemond's work; the defender of Satan and the friend of God, good and evilapproach and recede from each other in a complementary relationship within thesecret network of convergences traced by the stars. It is written in the heavens.
Raemond clearly feared that evil thoughts would be imputed to him inturn. Astrology cannot substitute for Providence: "I am...
