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Who Was John Calvin?
by
Michael F. Russell, M.Div., & Amy Wall
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- John Calvin was from a wealthy French family
- Calvin questioned Catholic Church practices
- Calvin wrote a famous Protestant document
John Calvin (Jean Cauvin) was a Frenchman, born in the town of Noyon outside of Paris in 1509 to a relatively prestigious family. John’s father, Gérard, was a notary in the city of Noyon and his mother, Jeanne le Franc, was the daughter of a wealthy local innkeeper. When John was fourteen years old, his parents sent him to the Collège de la Marche, where it was expected that he enter into the priesthood.
Later, Calvin continued his studies at the Collège de Montaigu, the same university at which Desiderius Erasmus studied. Calvin’s father then changed his mind and thought an education in law might be the way to go for his son. Many historians believe that Gérard’s motivation for this change of heart was his own legal troubles at home. John did change his course of studies to law but went back to theology after his father’s death.
Even though he did not choose law as his profession in the end, Calvin’s time in law school at the universities of Orléans and Bourges was not lost. He studied the humanities, learned Greek, and devoured the New Testament. After his father’s death, Calvin returned to Paris, where he studied the ancient classics and Hebrew.
In the end, Calvin received what many refer to as a “Renaissance education.” He learned a lot about almost everything, but especially about the value of the human condition. Unlike Luther, whose spiritual reform came from deep inner self-examination, Calvin’s spiritual reform came from his education.
Through his studies, he came to the conclusion that the common human being should have a say in religious and political policies that govern his or her life. This should not be up to the church and state without the consent of the populace.
Like many students of his time, Calvin’s studies led him to question the current practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Sometime after his father’s death in 1531, John Calvin experienced his own “enlightenment” (or what he called his “unexpected conversion”) that changed his life forever.
After Calvin’s friend and the rector of the university, Nicholas Cap, made a Protestant address, which caused quite a stir, Calvin was forced to leave Paris. He fled to Basel, Switzerland, where hordes of other Protestants had been going for some time. In 1536, while living in Basel, Calvin wrote one of the most famous and influential Protestant documents of all time: Institutes of the Christian Religion.
…from The Everything Christianity Book.
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