Young Calvin

Calvin is a coquettish student, who loves to parade his reading and his memory.

Continuing Calvin Driven From Paris to Geneva.
Today we begin the second part of the series with our selection from History of John Calvin by Jean M. V. Audin published in 1851. The selection is presented in 5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Calvin Driven From Paris to Geneva.

Time: 1533
Place: Paris

When the sword of the law fell upon one of his followers, the voice of Luther was magnificent; it exclaimed, in the ears of emperors, kings, and dukes, “You have shed the blood of the just,” and then the Saxon, in honor of the martyr, extemporized a hymn which was chanted in the very face of the civil power:

In the Low Countries, at Brussels,
The Lord his greatness hath displayed,
In the death of two of his loved children
On whom grand gifts he had bestowed.”

Calvin had not the courage to imitate Luther. He has told us that he wanted courage; he again repeats it: he says that he, a plebeian, trifling as a man, and having but little learning, has nothing in him which could deserve celebrity. And yet he essayed a timid protest in favor of certain Huguenots who had been burned on the public square. “The work,” says Prince Masson, “of a double-faced writer, a Catholic in his writings and a Lutheran in his bedchamber.”

This is his first book. It is entitled de Clementia (or Treatise on Clemency), and is a paraphrase of some Latin writer of the decline. Moreover, this is the first time that a commentator is ignorant of the life of him whose work he publishes. Calvin has confounded the two Senecas, the father and the son; the rhetorician and the philosopher, of both of whom he makes but one literary personage, living the very patriarchal life of more than one hundred fifteen years.

We must pardon Varillas for having, with sufficient acrimony, brought into relief this mistake of the biographer of Seneca the philosopher, and not, like the historians of the Reformation, become vexed at the proud tone of the French historian. Had the fault been committed by a Catholic, where is the Protestant who would not have done the same thing as Varillas?

The literary work which Calvin, in the shape of a commentary, has interwoven with the treatise of Seneca is a production not unworthy a literator of the revival; it is an amplification, which one would have supposed to have been written in the cell of a Benedictine monk, so numerous are the citations, so great is the display of erudition, so replete is it with the names, Greek and Latin, of poets, historians, moralists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and philologists.

Calvin is a coquettish student, who loves to parade his reading and his memory. His work is a gallery, open to all the modern and ancient glories of literature, whom the commentator calls to his aid, often for the elucidation of a doubtful passage. The young rhetorician glorifies his country, and when upon his march he encounters some historic name, by which his idea can be illustrated, he hastens to proclaim it, with all its titles to admiration. He there salutes Budé in magnificent terms: “Budé, the glory and pillar of human learning, thanks to whom, at this day, France can claim the palm of erudition.” The portrait which he draws of Seneca is the production of a practised pen: “Seneca, whose pure and polished phrase savors, in some sort, of his age; his diction florid and elegant; his style, without labor or restraint, moves on, free and unembarrassed.” It may be seen that the student had the honor to study under Mathurin Cordier and to attend the lectures of Alciati; but, after all, his book is but a defective allegory; for what reader could have divined that the writer designed to represent Francis I, under the name of Nero, as addressed by the Cordovan? The treatise could produce no sensation, and, like the work of Seneca, must be shipwrecked in that sea of the passions which, at the two epochs, raged around both writers.

Calvin experienced much trouble in having his Latin commentary printed; he was in need of funds, and the revenues of his benefice of Pont l’Evêque were insufficient to defray the expense of printing. How could he apply to the Mommor family? Moreover, he was in dread that his book should prove a failure and thereby injure his budding reputation. All these alarms of a maiden author are set forth in various letters which he addressed on this subject to the dear friends of his bosom.

“Behold my books of Seneca concerning clemency, printed at my own expense and labor! They must now be sold, in order that I may again obtain the money which I have expended. I must also watch that my reputation does not suffer. You will oblige me, then, by informing me how the work has been received, whether with favor or indifference.” The whole anxiety of the poor author is to lose nothing by the enterprise; his purse is empty; it needs replenishing; and he urges the professors to give circulation to the treatise; he solicits one of his friends at Bourges, a member of the university, to bring it forward in his lectures; and appeals to the aid of Daniel, to whom he sent a hundred copies. Papire Masson was mistaken: the commentary on clemency did not first appear, as he supposes, under the title of Lucius Calvinus, civis Romanus, but under that of Calvinus, a name ever after retained by the reformer.

This treatise introduced Calvin to the notice of the learned world: Bucer, Capito, Padius, sent congratulations to the writer; Calvin, in September, 1532, had sent a copy of his work to Bucer, who was then at Strasburg. The person commissioned to present it was a poor young man, suspected of Anabaptism, and a refugee from France. Calvin’s letter of recommendation is replete with tender compassion for the miseries of the sinner. “My dear Bucer,” he writes, “you will not be deaf to my entreaties, you will not disregard my tears; I implore you, to come to the aid of the proscribed, be a father to the orphan.”

This was sending the sick man to a sad physician. Bucer, by turns Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Zwinglian! Besides, why this proselytism of a moral curé? The exile was Anabaptist by the same title as Calvin was predestinarian, in virtue of a text of Scripture: “Go; whoever shall believe and be baptized will be saved.” The Anabaptist believed in the inefficacy of baptism without faith manifested by an external act; but is not Calvin, at this very hour, as much to be pitied as the Anabaptist? He also doubted, searched, and interrogated his Bible, and imagined that he had caught the meaning of a letter which no intelligence before him had been able to seize. And what was this truth, the conquest of which infused such fear into his soul that, before he could announce it to the world, he sold his charge of Pont l’Evêque and even his paternal inheritance?

A. M. Fairbairn begins here.

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