Station: [2] John Calvin and the Reformation in France

Take a look at the rectangular oil painting inside the display case. It shows a sombre-looking man who is visibly haggard and exhausted. This is the church reformer John Calvin. The painting is in keeping with the descriptions we have from contemporary witnesses.
Calvin, it's said, was a man of high moral standards, ascetic in his entire appearance. With a rigid sense of duty and the highest work ethic, he strove to know God and hence to know himself.
So who was this influential church reformer?
John Calvin was born in France in 1509, grew up as a devout Roman Catholic and went on to study law. He was still in his early 20s when he first devoted himself to the teachings of the German reformer Martin Luther. 
Like Luther, Calvin wanted to see the Roman Catholic Church reformed and reorganised. He was repelled by the veneration of saints, the cult of relics, the papacy and the licentious lifestyle of many church officials. At the age of 25, Calvin turned his back on the Roman Catholic Church and adopted a faith based solely on the Bible. 
This is what he wrote:
At first I had succumbed so intractably to the superstition of the papacy that it was no simple matter to extract myself from that deep swamp. That was why God turned my heart, which was rather stubborn despite my youth, to scholarship by means of an unexpected conversion. Reverence for the Church had long prevented me from leaving it and admitting that I had spent my whole life so far in error and ignorance.
In France, that kind of thinking was regarded as heresy and mercilessly persecuted by the crown. Followers of the Reformation were at risk of being punished, imprisoned and executed as heretics. Nevertheless, by the mid-16th century, the number of Reformed congregations had already exceeded 2,000. 
In order to avoid dying a martyr's death, John Calvin fled, first to the Protestant city of Basel and later to Geneva. In exile, barely in his mid-20s, he wrote his main work, the "Institutes of the Christian Religion".
In this work, he calls for the Church to return to its biblical origins. People were to live by a strict moral code, as laid down in the Bible's Ten Commandments.
He also called for the offices of the church to be reorganised, to strengthen the congregation and put an end to the abuse of power. In Geneva, Calvin was able to put his ideas into practice, in part due to the support of Huguenots living there in exile.
Today, the Protestant Reformed Churches form one of the world's major Christian denominations, one which is based on the Reformed tradition that originated in Central Europe. Most can be traced back to the work carried out during the Reformation by Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich and John Calvin in Geneva.

Foto: © DHG