Calvin, John, 1509-64, French Protestant theologian of the Reformation, b. Noyon, Picardy.

Early Life

Calvin early prepared for an ecclesiastical career; from 1523 to 1528 he studied in Paris. His opinions gradually turned to disagreement with the Roman position, and a demonstrated ability at disputation led him in 1528, at his father's instance, to study law at Orléans and Bourges. After his father's death in 1531 he returned to Paris, where he pursued his own predilection, the study of the classics and Hebrew. He came under the humanist influence and became interested in the growing rebellion against conservative theology. He experienced c.1533 what he later described as a "sudden conversion," and he turned all his attention to the cause of the Reformation.

Protestant Reformer

Institutes of the Christian Religion

As a persecuted Protestant, Calvin found it necessary to travel from place to place, and at Angoulěme in 1534 he began the work of systematizing Protestant thought in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, considered one of the most influential theological works of all time. Completed at Basel in 1536 and later frequently revised and supplemented, the original work contained the basic Calvinist theology. In the Institutes Calvin diverged from Catholic doctrine in the rejection of papal authority and in acceptance of justification by faith alone, but many of his other positions, including the fundamental doctrine of predestination, had been foreshadowed by Catholic reformers and by the Protestant thought of Martin Luther and Martin Bucer.

Work in Geneva

In 1536, Calvin was persuaded by Guillaume Farel to devote himself to the work of the Reformation at Geneva, and there Calvin instituted the most thoroughgoing development of his doctrine. At first the Genevans were unable to accept the austere reforms and departures from established church customs, and in 1538 the opposition succeeded in banishing Farel and Calvin from the city. Calvin went to Basel and then to Strasbourg, where he spent three fruitful years preaching and writing.

By 1541 the Genevans welcomed Calvin, and he immediately set himself to the task of constructing a government based on the subordination of the state to the church. Once the Bible is accepted as the sole source of God's law, the duty of humans is to interpret it and preserve the orderly world that God has ordained. This goal Calvin set out to achieve through the establishment of ecclesiastical discipline, in which the magistrates had the task of enforcing the religious teachings of the church as set forth by the synod. The Genevan laws and constitution were recodified; regulation of conduct was extended to all areas of life. Ecclesiastical discipline was supplemented by a systematized theology, with the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper given to unite believers in the fellowship of Jesus.

Involvement in Controversies

Calvin wrote extensively on all theological and practical matters. He was involved in many controversies. Among them were his violent opposition to the Anabaptists; his disagreement with the Lutherans over the Lord's Supper, which resulted in the separation of the Evangelical Church into Lutheran and Reformed; and his condemnation of the anti-Trinitarian views of Michael Servetus, which ended in the notorious trial and burning of Servetus in 1553.

Importance of Calvinism

The extension of Calvinism to all spheres of human activity was extremely important to a world emerging from an agrarian, medieval economy into a commercial, industrial era. Unlike Luther, who desired a return to primitive simplicity, Calvin accepted the newborn capitalism and encouraged trade and production, at the same time opposing the abuses of exploitation and self-indulgence. Industrialization was stimulated by the concepts of thrift, industry, sobriety, and responsibility that Calvin preached as essential to the achievement of the reign of God on earth. The influence of Calvinism spread throughout the entire Western world, realizing its purest forms through the work of John Knox in Scotland and through the clergymen and laymen of the civil war period in England and the Puritan moralists in New England.

French Jean Cauvin

(born July 10, 1509, Noyon, Picardy, France—died May 27, 1564, Geneva, Switz.) French Protestant theologian and major figure of the Reformation. He studied religion at the University of Paris and law in Orléans and Bourges. When he returned to Paris in 1531 he studied the Bible and became part of a movement that emphasized salvation by grace rather than by works. Government intolerance prompted him to move to Basel, Switz., where he wrote the first edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Gaining a reputation among Protestant leaders, he went to Geneva to help establish Protestantism in that city. He was expelled by city fathers in 1538 but returned in 1541, when the town council instituted the church order outlined in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances, including enforcement of sexual morality and abolition of Catholic “superstition.” He approved the arrest and conviction for heresy of Michael Servetus. By 1555 Calvin had succeeded in establishing a theocracy in Geneva, where he served as pastor and head of the Genevan Academy and wrote the sermons, biblical commentaries, and letters that form the basis of Calvinism.

Learn more about Calvin, John with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born July 4, 1872, Plymouth, Vt., U.S.—died Jan. 5, 1933, Northampton, Mass.) 30th president of the U.S. (1923–29). He practiced law in Massachusetts from 1897 and served as lieutenant governor before being elected governor in 1918. He gained national attention by calling out the state guard during the Boston Police Strike in 1919. At the 1920 Republican convention, “Silent Cal” was nominated for vice president and elected on a ticket with Warren G. Harding. When Harding died in office in 1923, Coolidge became president. He restored confidence in an administration discredited by scandals and won the presidential election in 1924, easily defeating Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Robert La Follette. He vetoed measures to provide farm relief and bonuses to World War I veterans. His presidency was marked by apparent prosperity. Congress maintained a high protective tariff and instituted tax reductions that favoured capital. Coolidge declined to run for a second term. His conservative policies of domestic and international inaction have come to symbolize the era between World War I and the Great Depression.

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John Calvin (or Jean Calvin) (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology. In Geneva, his ministry both attracted other Protestant refugees and over time made that city a major force in the spread of Reformed theology. He is famous for his teachings and writings, in particular for his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Biography

Early years

Calvin was born Jean Cauvin in Noyon, Picardie, France, the second son to Gérard Cauvin and Jeanne le Franc. Calvin's father had a prosperous career as the cathedral notary and the registrar to the ecclesiastical court. His mother was the daughter of an inn-keeper from Cambrai. She died a few years after his birth.

In 1523 Gerard sent his fourteen-year-old son to the University of Paris to pursue a Latin, theological education and to flee the plague in Noyon. But when Gerard fell out of favor with the cathedral chapter, he urged Calvin to change his studies to law, and he did. By 1532, he had attained a Doctor of Laws degree at Orléans. A diligent student who excelled at his studies, Calvin was "remarkably religious" even as a young man. It is not clear when Calvin converted to Protestantism, though in the preface to his commentary on Psalms, Calvin said:

"God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame.... Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not altogether leave off [legal] studies, I yet pursued them with less ardor.

His Protestant friends included Nicholas Cop, Rector at the University of Paris. In 1533 Cop gave an address "replete with Protestant ideas," and "Calvin was probably involved as the writer of that address." Cop soon found it necessary to flee Paris, as did Calvin himself a few days after. In Angoulême he sheltered with a friend, Louis du Tillet. Calvin settled for a time in Basel, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his Institutes.

Reformed Geneva

After a brief and covert return to France in 1536, Calvin was forced to choose an alternate return route in the face of imperial and French forces, and in doing so he passed by Geneva. During his stay, William Farel asked Calvin to help him with the cause of the Church. Calvin wrote of Farel's request, "I felt as if God from heaven had laid his mighty hand upon me to stop me in my course." Together with Farel, Calvin attempted to institute a number of changes to the city's governance and religious life. They drew up a catechism and a confession of faith, which they insisted all citizens must affirm. The city council refused to adopt Calvin and Farel's creed, and in January 1538 denied them the power to excommunicate, a power they saw as critical to their work. The pair responded with a blanket denial of the Lord's Supper to all Genevans at Easter services. For this the city council expelled them from the city. Farel travelled to Neuchâtel, Calvin to Strasbourg.

For three years Calvin served as a lecturer and pastor to a church of French Huguenots in Strasbourg. It was during his exile that Calvin married Idelette de Bure. He also came under the influence of Martin Bucer, who advocated a system of political and ecclesiastical structure along New Testament lines. He continued to follow developments in Geneva, and when Jacopo Sadoleto, a Catholic cardinal, penned an open letter to the city council inviting Geneva to return to the mother church, Calvin's response on behalf of embattled Genevan Protestants helped him to regain the respect he had lost. After a number of Calvin's supporters won election to the Geneva city council, he was invited back to the city in 1540, and having negotiated concessions such as the formation of the Consistory, he returned in 1541.

Upon his return, armed with the authority to craft the institutional form of the church, Calvin began his program of reform. He established four categories of offices based on biblical injunctions:

• Ministers of the Word were to preach, to administer the sacraments, and to exercise pastoral discipline, teaching and admonishing the people.
• Doctors held an office of theological scholarship and teaching for the edification of the people and the training of other ministers.
• Elders were 12 laymen whose task was to serve as a kind of moral police force, mostly issuing warnings, but referring offenders to the Consistory when necessary.
• Deacons oversaw institutional charity, including hospitals and anti-poverty programs.

In 1546, a faction headed by Ami Perrin, who had been behind Calvin's return to Geneva, were worried by the influx of refugees and ministers into the city, fretted that Emperor Charles V might attempt to take Geneva by force, and disliked the Consistory's strictures. Perrin was tried and acquitted of treason for allegedly planning to bring a French garrison into Geneva, and being then restored to his post as head of the Genevan militia, he played a part in the so-called Libertine opposition to Calvin a few years later.

Critics often look to the Consistory as the emblem of Calvin's theocratic rule. The Consistory was an ecclesiastical court consisting of the elders and pastors, charged with maintaining strict order among the church's officers and members. Offenses ranged from propounding false doctrine to moral infractions, such as wild dancing and bawdy singing. Typical punishments were being required to attend public sermons or catechism classes. Whereas the city council had the power to wield the sword, the church courts held the authority of the keys of heaven. Therefore, the maximum punishment that the consistory could decree was excommunication, which was reversible upon the repentance of the offender. However, the officers of the church were considered to be the state's spiritual advisors in moral or doctrinal matters. Protestants in the 16th century were often subjected to the Catholic charge that they were innovators in doctrine, and that such innovation did lead inevitably to moral decay and, ultimately, the dissolution of society itself.

Calvin claimed his wish was to establish the moral legitimacy of the church reformed according to his program, but also to promote the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Recently discovered documentation of Consistory proceedings shows at least some concern for domestic life, and women in particular. For the first time men's infidelity was punished as harshly as that of women, and the Consistory showed absolutely no tolerance for spousal abuse. The Consistory helped to transform Geneva into the city described by Scottish reformer John Knox as "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles." In 1559 Calvin founded the Collège de Genève as well as a hospital for the indigent.

Civil punishments

Some allege that Calvin was not above using the Consistory to further his own political aims and maintain his sway over civil and religious life in Geneva, and, it is argued, he responded harshly to any challenge to his actions. Calvin was reluctant to ordain Genevans, preferring to choose more qualified pastors from the stream of French immigrants pouring into the city for the express purpose of supporting his own program of reform. When Pierre Ameaux complained about this practice, some contend that Calvin took it as an attack on divinely ordained authority and persuaded the city council to require Ameaux to walk through the town dressed in a hair shirt and beg for mercy in the public squares.

Jacques Gruet sided with some of the old Genevan families, who resented the power and methods of the Consistory. He was implicated in an incident in which someone had placed a placard in one of the city's churches, reading:

Gross hypocrite, thou and thy companions will gain little by your pains. If you do not save yourselves by flight, nobody shall prevent your overthrow, and you will curse the hour when you left your monkery. Warning has been already given that the devil and his renegade priests were come hither to ruin every thing. But after people have suffered long they avenge themselves. Take care that you are not served like Mons. Verle of Fribourg [who was killed in a fight with the Protestants, while endeavoring to save himself by flight]. We will not have so many masters. Mark well what I say.

Gruet's views on religion were well known in Geneva, and he wrote verses about Calvin and the French immigrants that were "more malignant than poetic" (Audin). As Gruet had been heard threatening Calvin a few days earlier, he was arrested in connection with the anonymous placard and was tortured. He confessed to the placard and to writing various other heretical documents that were found in his house, and he was beheaded.

Calvin's acceptance of torture was in accord with the prevailing attitude of that age, and few persons of any position or religious denomination were critical of the practice, though there were exceptions such as Anton Praetorius and Calvin's former friend Sebastian Castellio. Such practices, however, have been rejected by followers of Calvin since at least the 1800s.

Calvin and the other reformers (as well as Catholics in middle Europe) also believed that they should not permit the practice of witchcraft, in accord with their understanding of passages such as Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 20:27, and in 1545 twenty-three people were burned to death in Geneva under charges of practicing witchcraft and attempting to spread the plague over a three–year period.

Servetus controversy

The most lasting controversy of Calvin's life involves his role in the execution of Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician and theologian.

Servetus first published his views in 1531 to a wide yet unreceptive audience. He denounced the Trinity, one of the cardinal doctrines that Catholics and Protestants agreed upon. Calvin knew of these views in 1534, when he accepted Servetus' invitation to a small gathering in Paris to discuss their differences in person. For unknown reasons Servetus failed to appear.

Around 1546, Servetus initiated a correspondence with Calvin that lasted until 1548, when the exchange grew so rancorous that Calvin ended it. Each man wrote under a pen name and each tried to win the other to his own theology. Servetus even offered to come to Geneva if invited and given a guarantee of safe passage. Calvin declined to offer either. In 1546 Calvin told Farel, "[Servetus] takes it upon him to come hither, if it be agreeable to me. But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his safety, for if he shall come, I shall never permit him to depart alive, provided my authority be of any avail."

Calvin's zeal was very much the rule among civil and church authorities in 16th century Europe, above all toward Servetus' effort to spread what they deemed heresy. As early as 1533 the Spanish Inquisition had sentenced Servetus to death in absentia. Years later, in 1553, he was charged with heresy while living under an assumed name in Vienne, France. After Servetus escaped from the French prison in April 1553, the authorities there convicted and burned him in effigy.

Servetus came to Geneva in August 1553 and attended a Sunday church service with Calvin in the pulpit. He was recognized and arrested on Calvin's initiative. While Calvin also wrote the heresy charges, Geneva's city council did far more to steer Servetus' trial, sentence, and burning at the stake. Calvin asked the council for a more humane execution — beheading for civil disobedience rather than the stake for heresy — but his appeal was denied. The sentence was carried out on 27 October 1553. Servetus was burned along with every available copy of his final work, Christianismi Restitutio, only three known copies of which survived — two in Calvin's own possession.

Servetus was the only person "put to death for his religious opinions in Geneva during Calvin's lifetime, at a time when executions of this nature were a commonplace elsewhere," but an angry debate over this incident has continued to the present day. Historians have judged Calvin to be in the wrong on this issue, and later Calvinists have criticised his actions against Servetus. Although many of Calvin's detractors portray him as a man who craved power, could not abide any dissent, and is unworthy of the respect that is commonly given to him, his admirers see him as a man who sinned and failed to transcend the ethics of his time, but who is still deserving of honor because of his contributions elsewhere.

Final years

Calvin's health began to fail when he suffered migraines, lung hemorrhages, gout and kidney stones, and at times he had to be carried to the pulpit to preach and sometimes gave lectures from his bed. According to his successor, influential Calvinist theologian Theodore Beza, Calvin took only one meal a day for a decade, but on the advice of his physician, he ate an egg and drank a glass of wine at noon. His recreation and exercise consisted mainly of a walk after meals. Towards the end, Calvin said to those friends who were worried about his daily regimen of work amidst all his ailments, "What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when He comes?"

John Calvin died in Geneva on May 27, 1564. He was buried in an unmarked grave that to this day is not yet credibly identified. The traditional location is the Cimetière des Rois under a tombstone marked simply with the initials "J.C.". Beza, Calvin's successor laments the lack of recognition for Calvin's grave.. He is commemorated in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's liturgical calendar of saints as a Renewer of the Church on May 27.

Thought

Calvin was trained to be a lawyer. He studied under some of the best legal minds of the Renaissance in France. Part of that training involved the newer humanistic methods of exegesis, which dealt with a text in the original language directly via historical and grammatical analysis, as opposed to indirectly via layers of commentators. His legal and exegetical training was important for Calvin because, once convinced of the growing Protestant faith, he applied these exegetical methods to the Scripture. He self-consciously tried to mold his thinking along biblical lines, and he labored to preach and teach what he believed the Bible taught.

While Reformers such as Jan Hus and Martin Luther may be seen as somewhat original thinkers that began a movement, Calvin was a great logician and systematizer of that movement, but not an innovator in doctrine. Unlike Luther and Melanchthon, who underwent many doctrinal changes and sometimes contradicted their previous views, Calvin held essentially the same theology from his youth to his death. He was very familiar with the writings of the early Church Fathers and the great Medieval schoolmen, and he was also in debt to earlier Reformers. Calvin did not reject the Scholastics of the Middle Ages outright but rather made use of them and reformed their thoughts in accordance with his understanding of the Bible. For example, using Anselm of Canterbury's satisfaction view of the atonement, Calvin developed and formalized the doctrine of penal substitution where Christ receives the punishment earned by the elect in their stead.

Calvin had a great commitment to the absolute sovereignty and holiness of God. Because of this, he is often associated with the doctrines of predestination and election, but it should be noted that he differed very little with the other magisterial Reformers regarding these difficult doctrines. Additionally, while the five points of Calvinism bear his name and can be seen as a reflection of his thinking, they were not articulated by him, and were actually derived from ideas debated at the Synod of Dort, which issued its judgments in response to five specific objections that arose after Calvin's time.

While Calvin's theological contributions have had a wide influence, his legacy can also be seen in other areas. For example, he placed a high premium on education of the youth of Geneva, and in 1559 he founded the Academy of Geneva, which was a model for other academies around the world and which would eventually become the University of Geneva. Calvin's thought in the area of church polity was seminal as well, giving rise to various Reformed and Presbyterian systems of church government. The Consistory of Geneva, with Calvin at its helm, was influential in sending out scores of missionaries, not only to France, but also to countries as far off as Brazil. Finally, Calvin, knowing the benefits of business, was instrumental in founding and developing the silk industry in Geneva, by which many Genevans reaped monetary benefits.

Writings

Although nearly all of Calvin's adult life was spent in Geneva (1536-38 and 1541-64), his publications spread his ideas of a properly reformed church to many parts of Europe and from there to the rest of the world. It is especially on account of his voluminous publications that he exerts such a lasting influence over Christianity and Western history.

Calvin's first published work was an edition of the Roman philosopher Seneca's De Clementia, accompanied by a commentary demonstrating a thorough knowledge of antiquity. His first theological work, the Psychopannychia, attempted to refute the doctrine of soul sleep as promulgated by Christians whom Calvin called "Anabaptists." He finished it in 1534 but, on the advice of friends, didn't publish it until 1542. The work demonstrates that since his conversion, Calvin had undertaken serious study and now showed a mastery of the Bible, and he had become, using Barth's words, a "theological Humanist" and a "biblicist" — that is, "no matter how true a teaching might be, he was not ready to lend an ear to it apart from the Word of God.

At the age of 26, Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Latin title Institutio Christianae Religionis), a seminal work in Christian theology that is still read by theological students today . It was published in Latin in 1536 and in his native French in 1541, with the definitive editions appearing in 1559 (Latin) and in 1560 (French). The book was written as an introductory textbook on the Protestant faith for those with some learning already and covered a broad range of theological topics from the doctrines of church and sacraments to justification by faith alone and Christian liberty, and it vigorously attacked the teachings of those Calvin considered unorthodox, particularly Roman Catholicism to which Calvin says he had been "strongly devoted" before his conversion to Protestantism. The over-arching theme of the book – and Calvin's greatest theological legacy – is the idea of God's total sovereignty, particularly in salvation and election.

Calvin also produced many volumes of commentary on most of the books of the Bible. For the Old Testament, he published commentaries for all books except the histories after Joshua (though he did publish his sermons on First Samuel) and the Wisdom literature other than the Book of Psalms. For the New Testament, he omitted only the brief second and third epistles of John and the Book of Revelation. These commentaries, too, have proved to be of lasting value to students of the Bible, and they are still in print after over 400 years.

In the controversial matter of interpreting prophecy such as that in the Book of Daniel, Calvin was a preterist, which is to say that he believed most prophecies had already been fulfilled in history. In this view he was essentially in line with the early church and the Reformers who came before him, but he is in distinction to many of his immediate successors who took a historicist view and to many today who look a future fulfillment.

Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, after whom the anti-Calvinistic movement Arminianism was named, says with regard to the value of Calvin's writings:

Next to the study of the Scriptures which I earnestly inculcate, I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin’s Commentaries, which I extol in loftier terms than Helmich himself (a Dutch divine, 1551–1608); for I affirm that he excels beyond comparison in the interpretation of Scripture, and that his commentaries ought to be more highly valued than all that is handed down to us by the library of the fathers; so that I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others, or rather above all other men, what may be called an eminent spirit of prophecy. His Institutes ought to be studied after the (Heidelberg) Catechism, as containing a fuller explanation, but with discrimination, like the writings of all men.

Letters

Calvin's body of letters has not received the wide readership of the Institutes and bible commentaries since his correspondence obviously addressed the particular needs and occasions of his day. Even so, the scale of his letter writing was just as prodigious as his better-known works: his letters number some 4,000, and fill eleven of Calvin's fifty-nine volumes in the Corpus Reformatorum. B. B. Warfield even calls Calvin "the great letter-writer of the Reformation age.

His letters, often written under the pseudonym Charles Despeville, concern issues ranging from disputes about local theater to raising support for fledgling churches to choosing sides in a political alliance. They also reveal personal qualities that are not evident in his exegetical prose. One example came after the massacre of the Waldensians of Provence in 1545 where 3,600 were slaughtered. Calvin was so dismayed that in a space of twenty-one days he visited Berne, Aurich, Schaffhausen, Basle, and Strasbourg, before addressing the deputies of the Cantons at the Diet of Arau, pleading everywhere for an intercession on behalf of those who survived. He wrote of his grief to William Farel:

Such was the savage cruelty of the persecutors, that neither young girls, nor pregnant women, nor infants were spared. So great is the atrocious cruelty of this proceeding, that I grow bewildered when I reflect upon it. How, then, shall I express it in words?  ... I write, worn out with sadness, and not without tears, which so burst forth, that every now and then they interrupt my words.

One of Calvin's better known letters was his reply to Jacopo Sadoleto's "Letter to the Genevans, and this "Reformation Debate" remains in print today.

Works

General collections

• Works by John Calvin at Project Gutenberg
• Writings of Calvin at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL)
• Sermons by Calvin

Theological works

• Institutes of the Christian Religion at CCEL
• Calvin's Commentaries on the Bible at CCEL
• Psychopannychia
• Jean Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, Tracts relating to the Reformation Containing Treatises on the Sacraments; Antidote to the Council of Trent, vol. 1, by J. Calvin, with his life by Theodore Beza, tr. by H. Beveridge, Edingurgh, The Calvin Translation Society, 1844. – Google Books
• Tracts relating to the Reformation Containing Treatises on the Sacraments; Catechism of the Church of Geneva; Forms of Prayer and Confessions of Faith, Vol. 2, tr. by Henry Beveridge, Edingurgh, The Calvin Translation Society, 1849
• Calvin on Secret Providence tr. by James Lillie, New York, Robert Carter, 1840

Letters

• Jules Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin, Carlisle, Penn: Banner of Truth Trust, 1980. ISBN 0-85151-323-9
• Jules Bonnet, Lettres de Jean Calvin, (Lettres Francaises - French Letters), 2 vols., vol. 2 (Tome Second) , Paris, Librairie De. Ch. Meyrueis et Compagnie, 1854
• Jules Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin, 2 vols., 1855, 1857, Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co.: Little, Brown, and Co., Boston – The Internet Archive
• Calvin's letter to the Protector Somerset, [[October 22], 1548]. Two Kinds of Rebels that "Deserve to be Repressed by the Sword."

Notes

References

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• Roland Bainton (1974). Women of the Reformation in England and France. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-5649-9.
• John Farrell, "The Terrors of Reform," chapter five of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau. Cornell University Press, 2006.
• John Foxe. An Account of the Life of John Calvin
• Nancy and Lawrence Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World. Broadway Books: New York, 2002. ISBN 0-7679-0837-6
• David W. Hall. A Heart Promptly Offered: The Revolutionary Leadership of John Calvin. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2006. ISBN 1-58182-505-6
• John Calvin. In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved on 2007-09-18..
• Robert M. Kingdon, Registers of the Consistory of Geneva in the Time of Calvin: Volume 1, 1542-1544, Grand Rapids, Mich., Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000. ISBN 0-8028-4618-1 Reviewed by the PROTESTANT REFORMED THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
• Robert M. Kingdon, Calvinism in Europe 1540-1620, Andrew Pettegree et al., eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-521-43269-3 (Chap.2, "The Geneva Consistory in the Time of Calvin,")
• John Piper, "John Calvin: The Man and His Preaching", lecture from the 1997 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors.
• Hugh Young Reyburn, John Calvin: His Life, Letters, and Work, London, New York, Hodder and Stoughton, 1914.
• Philip Schaff History of the Christian Church: Modern Christianity. The Swiss Reformation.
• Emanuel Stickelberger, trans. by David Georg Gelzer, Calvin: A Life, John Knox Press, Atlanta: 1954.
*
• Stefan Zweig The Right to Heresy: Castellio against Calvin translated by Eden and Cedar Pal. The Viking Press, 1936

See also

• John Calvin's views on Mary

External links

• St Peter's Cathedral in Geneva
• Bibliography of writings about Calvin updated annually at the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies