6. Doumergue. Jean Calvin. Les hommes et les choses de son temps
Par E. Doumergue. Tome Premier: La Jeunesse de Calvin.
Lausanne: Georges Bridel et Cie, Éditeurs. 1899. 1
C alvin has had to wait long for an adequate biography. But this first volume of the work projected by M. Emile Doumergue, of Montauban, gives us hope that he will have it ere the fourth century since his birth runs wholly out.
We are not forgetful or unappreciative of those who have already labored in this field. How many they are any good bibliography will exhibit
—say, for example, the select list given by Dr. Schaff at the head of his treatment of "The Reformation in French Switzerland" in the seventh volume of his "History of the Christian Church." How good they are everyone who has sought to know this greatest man—nay, as Renan was compelled to recognize, this greatest Christian—God has given the modern
Church, has had ample opportunity to appreciate. There has been left us little excuse for not knowing John Calvin. The description of the wealth of
our means of information with which M. Ant. J. Baumgartner opens his admirable lectures on "Calvin Hébraïsant et Interprète de l'Ancien
Testament" is no more than just. A considerable number of really good biographies of Calvin already exist—biographies which seem to leave almost nothing to be desired—Henry's (1835–1844), Bungener's (1862),
E. Stähelin's (1863), Kampschulte's (1869–1899), Lefranc's (1888). These have been supplemented by the publication of his correspondence by Jules
Bonnet (1854), Herminjard, and the Strasburg Editors; by the great Strasburg edition of his works with its illuminating prefaces; and by an incredible number of special essays and articles. "Thanks to his biographies," remarks M. Baumgartner, "we have seen cleared up many an obscure point, many a detail of his life as youth, student, mature man; thanks to his commentaries we are better prepared than ever to appreciate the astonishing, multifarious, almost superhuman activity of this supernaturally courageous man, this vere theologus, this incomparable theologian, as Melancthon fitly called him.… His latest biographies enable us to penetrate deeply into his inner life; and make it possible for us to witness his early studies, to see in action the factors which produced his first works, and the unrolling of the diverse phases through which his spiritual or intellectual development passed." He concludes: "We should not be wrong, therefore, to be satisfied with what we know." Yet he at once adds a "nevertheless." And we must echo this "nevertheless."
It is possible, to be sure, to exaggerate this "nevertheless." Dr. A.
Pierson certainly exaggerates it when, in the Preface to the first part of his "Studien over Johannes Kalvijn," he represents mere "studies" about him and not a complete biography of him as alone possible as yet; and speaks of the present duty of the historian as the renunciation of the legends set forth by Henry, Merle d'Aubigné, Stähelin, and not wholly eliminated from even the, in many ways, admirable work of Kampschulte; and the careful and
patient eduction of the truth from the authentic records—or at least the demonstration that the riddles of this life are incapable of resolution. As if no one had trodden this hard pathway of detailed investigation before himself; and as if such painstaking investigation could result only in revolutionary conceptions of the course of this life! Before Pierson and after Pierson such studies have been vigorously prosecuted, and our knowledge of Calvin's life has been correspondingly enriched. The older biographies had already made use of the results of many of them. Much has, however, been acquired since, and thus an adequate biography has remained a desideratum up to to-day and grown daily ever more a desideratum.
It is one of the reasons we have for hoping that M. Doumergue is about to give us this adequate biography that he has neglected none of the "studies over John Calvin" that have hitherto been made. Everything seems to be in his control. And controlling all that has been hitherto brought to light he has added investigations of his own: and better than that, he has brought to his task a clear intelligence and a trained literary habit; a detailed knowledge not only of the whole compass of the literature concerning
Calvin—earlier and later—but of the times in which he lived and the currents of thought in which he was formed and amidst which he labored; and as well an acute as well as calm faculty of judgment. Above all he has brought apparently a keen and instinctive sympathy with the personality he is depicting. We do not know how fully this sympathy extends to the doctrinal and ethical teachings of Calvin—subsequent volumes of the work will determine this; but this first volume enables us to say that if M.
Doumergue is able to write as sympathetic an account of Calvin's labors in Geneva and of his theological teaching as he has written of his youthful development and his preparation for his work, he will give us at length an adequate biography of Calvin. There will no doubt remain details which will require further investigation: there will no doubt be expressed
historical judgments which will need correcting: the really definitive treatise on no subject will ever be written. But if the promise of this first volume is fulfilled in the remaining four we shall have a portrait of the greatest of the Reformers which will adequately present his grand figure before the eyes of every sympathetic reader.
It will doubtless have been already noted that the book has been planned on a scale which, so far as bulk in concerned, ought to be adequate.
Here are nearly six hundred and fifty quarto pages devoted to "the youth of Calvin." For the depicting of his entire life five such great volumes are to be subsidized. It is a veritable monument which M. Doumergue is raising to the memory of the greatest of theologians. And everything has been done to make this monument, even in its externalities, worthy of the memory it is to enshrine. The publishers have spared no expense and no pains to turn out a perfect piece of work—the best of paper, the best of type, the best of presswork vie here with the best of editing to produce a volume that it is a pleasure to the eye to look upon and to the hand to handle. Archæological knowledge and artistic skill have combined to illustrate it richly and illuminatingly. The illustrations alone almost suffice to carry us back into the sixteenth century and to place us among the scenes, in the midst of the companions, in the presence of the literary products, in contact with which Calvin's youth was passed. Already in this we see revealed one side of M.
Doumergue's furnishing for the task he has undertaken. M. Doumergue is evidently an enthusiastic archæologist. No archæological detail escapes his keen sight or fails to set him throbbing with enthusiasm. Perhaps his antiquarian zeal is even a little excessive. Perhaps when he reaches, for example, his chapter on "Protestant Paris in the Sixteenth Century," his ardor runs a little away with him and he almost forgets his Calvin for a season in his engrossment with the old streets and old houses and their multifarious associations. All this, to be sure, is in accordance with his
theory of how a biography should be written: he would fain present to us not a dead abstraction called "Calvin" but a concrete living man in the midst of the rich life in which he was immersed. And certainly his archæological enthusiasm has borne good fruit in adorning the volume and throwing a local atmosphere around the portrait that is painted. The life of the sixteenth century stares us in the face here on every page, and even he who runs cannot fail to read it off from the beautiful cuts which are lavished everywhere. And let no one imagine that because M. Doumergue is an archæologist he is therefore dull. He appears incapable of writing a tiresome line, whatever may be his subject. Indeed, if the book errs in the matter of its style, it errs in precisely the opposite direction. It is the temperament of the dramatist, of the orator, of the journalist, rather than that of the antiquary which is revealed to us in these sparkling, lively, ever moving pages, full of literary art and Gallic vivacity. The touch is light with French gayety, the disposition of the material lucid with French clarity, the story is told with the verve and liveliness of which only a French pen is capable. There is not a dull line from the beginning of the volume to the end of it, and he is a poor reader who, having begun it, will not be content to stay until he reads through to the last page.
This volume treats, as we have said, of the youth of John Calvin; and it treats of it in the full light of all that has been brought to knowledge upon this obscurest period of his life. Of course the investigations of Lefranc and the studies of Lecoultre and of Herminjard are largely used: but the whole mass of recent discussion also has been thoroughly winnowed and a keen intelligence is brought to bear upon its criticism and utilization. The period covered by the volume extends from the birth of the Reformer in 1509 to the publication of the first edition of the "Institutes" in 1536. Along with his personal development, of which we get a picture even more vivid and even more winning than that offered by Lefranc himself, we have all the
currents of thought of his time and all the influences that played upon him —Humanism, Faber Stapulensis and the religious movement of which his teaching was the source, and all the reformatory impulses that were aroused in the France of the day—fully depicted for us. We are shown the Noyon of his boyhood, the Paris of his youth, the Orleans and Bourges of his opening manhood, the France of his years of persecution, the Bâle of his refuge, and all the streams of intellectual and religious life that were flowing through them: and then we are shown the young Calvin moving through them all and thrown out into relief against them all, until we almost feel as if we had lived his life with him and might well claim him as our boyhood's friend.
And let us note the phrase which we have thus unpremeditatedly used to describe the impression the picture of the youthful Calvin, as limned by M. Doumergue, makes on us. We feel as we read this flowing but precise narrative which so vividly brings his figure before us, we say, as if we might well claim him as our own boyhood's friend. For it is distinctly a friendly, attractive, lovable youth who is here presented to us, one whom we look upon distinctively as a friend—whom to look upon is to love. We have been taught to think of another kind of Calvin—even in his youth: somber, sour, forbidding, inaccessible, almost a hater of the human race (as other
Christians before him have been slanderously designated). We have been told that the iteration and severity of the denunciation he visited upon his young companions earned everywhere their disgust, and won for him at their hands the unenviable nickname of "The accusative case." It is only a part of the Romish legend—fully exploded by Lefranc and now again by Doumergue. A serious-minded youth he was, of course, and one filled with a gracious piety and schooled in a strict morality: he was certainly no Rabelais rioting among his companions—but as certainly he was neither an anchorite nor an accuser of his associates. Born to a competency, reared in the company of the great and the cultured, living on terms of frank and free
intercourse with the choicest spirits of his time, the young Calvin reveals himself to us as an open-minded, affectionate young man of irreproachable morals, decent habits, and frank manners—somewhat sensitive perhaps but easy to be entreated, and attracting not merely the admiration but also the lasting affection of all into contact with whom he came. He finds his
Biblical prototype not in Elijah or in John the Baptist but distinctly in that other John who was at once a "son of thunder" and the "apostle of love."
This is how M. Doumergue sums up the chief results attained by his minute study of Calvin's life among his fellows during these years of preparation:
"Thus he journeys from place to place, from north to south and from south to north, through France and through the churches, seeing, hearing, observing, noting, enriching his heart and his conscience not less than his understanding with all that he encounters among men as well as in libraries; a prodigy of work, of rigorous self-denial (ascétisme), and yet full of youthfulness, highly esteemed, always welcomed. All circles dispute for him, and on all he exercises that mysterious influence, that irresistible power of seduction and attraction which is one of the most characteristic signs of the sovereignty of genius. All who know him love him; and those who love him cannot resist the wish, or let us say the necessity, of seeing him again. They leave, one after another—Noyon: his brother, his sister, his successor in the chaplaincy of the Gésine, his successor in the curacy of Pont l'Evêque, and the King's lieutenant, Laurent of Normandy;
—Paris: his master Mathurin Cordier, his fellow pupils of the house of Montmor, his friends the Cops, his friends the
Budés;—Orleans: the sons of his friend Daniēl;—Bourges: the Colladons;—Angoulême: his host himself who cannot be separated from him;—Poitiers: Véron, the procureur
Babinot, the lecturer in the Institute, Saint-Vertumien: a strange enough procession, but one which attests the fascination exercised upon hearts by one whom men have dared to reproach with not being able to feel or inspire affection" (p. 515)!
In a word the legend of Calvin's hard and unlovable disposition, on any real acquaintance with his life, goes up in the same smoke with those other legends—the product with it of the malignant imagination of hate—which have pictured him as of low extraction and of criminal habits—branded for nameless vice at Noyon, convicted of theft at Orleans, and a victim of all sorts of evil passions.
One of the chief preoccupations of M. Doumergue in studying the early years of Calvin is naturally the preparation it formed for his subsequent labors. The hand of Providence is indeed so clearly revealed in the training of the future Reformer that it has ever been the subject of admiring remark: Dr. M'Crie, for example, has written a very striking page or two on it in his posthumous work on the "Early Years of John Calvin"
(pp. 2, 22, 77, 78). The more careful study of his early years only increases the impression of the singular preparation which they formed for his subsequent career: and M. Doumergue does not permit this side of his task to escape him. The words we have just quoted from him, indeed, are a portion of an eloquent passage in which he sums up the elements of this preparation. It was certainly long, he remarks, but assuredly also most marvelous.
"Driven from Noyon by the plague while still little more than a child, he falls in with the best teacher of Latin of the age, Mathurin Cordier, who waits before leaving Paris to teach him. Then at Orleans he falls in with the best master of Greek of the age, Melchior Wolmar, who seems to have come from Germany, whither he is about to return, in order to inculcate his method upon him: two incomparable masters who prove incomparable instructors. Not content with teaching him the languages they speak to him also of the Gospel of Christ.
"It was for him, it seems, that the Middle Ages had preserved its somber college of Montaigu, so that before it disappeared it might initiate him into all the secrets of an irresistible dialectic. For him too it was that modern times had hastened to establish the College of France, that he might attend its first lectures and later rank among the masters of Humanism.
"And on the benches of these schools, while his cousin, Robert Olivétan, is pressing him to read the Bible, he almost had opportunity to elbow Loyola, who pronounced the vow of Montmartre, and Rabelais, who wrote Gargantua: the Jesuitical spirit and the Gallic spirit, the two inspirations of the anti-Calvinistic opposition.
"And even this is not enough: here is our young man encountering the most illustrious professors of law,— l'Estoile, who is still at Orleans, and Alciat, who is just arrived at Bourges. They mold his mind to that kind of precise, exact, realistic thinking which permits him to be not merely the theologian but the legislator of the Reformation.
"Nevertheless Providence had not yet accomplished more than half its task. What is intellect without life? And these wonderful years of study are at the same time wonderful years of experience. The Church takes care to reveal to him all its failings, all its most secret vices. It gives him personal experience of its weaknesses and its hardnesses. It endows him abusively with its benefices; it casts him unjustly into prison; it obliges him to rescue the dead body of his father from its anathemas. While yet a babe he commences to visit the bizarre relics of Ourscamp; later he looks upon the episcopal disorders at Angoulême; he listens to the legends of Poitiers; and just as he is leaving France, the Franciscans are still playing before his eyes the farce of Orleans, that he may sound the lowest depths of a superstition which ends in vulgar trickery.
"But by the side of the shadow destined to repel him shines the light destined to attract him. If Calvin was the pupil of Béda, chief of the Sorbonnic band, he is also the protégé of the friends of Le Fèvre d'Etaple, the Cops and the Budés, and he passes through all the stages of the Fabrician
movement. He allies himself intimately with Gérard Roussel, and the venerable Le Fèvre prolongs his life to more than a century that he may be able to give him his blessing at Nérac. Similarly before enduring his martyrdom, Estienne de la Forge receives him into his house and permits him to learn the piety and heroism of the nascent Church, while
Quintin, chief of Libertines, and Servetus, chief of Antitrinitarians, present themselves in Paris to horrify the young doctor with their dangerous heresies."
Then follows the description of the enchanting personality which the young man bore through all these experiences, which we have already quoted. This was the youthful David—intellectually and morally fair of eyes and goodly to look upon—whom God had chosen to overthrow those new Goliaths, the King, the Pope, the Emperor, and to conduct Protestant
Christianity to its destined victory: and this was the way God chose to prepare him for his great work.
We have quoted M. Doumergue as saying that the young Calvin "passed through all the phases of the Fabrician movement," and the remark bids us pause to call brief attention to the most interesting controverted question which is treated in the whole volume. This concerns of course the conversion of Calvin. It has become customary to date the conversion of Calvin in 1532 or later. M. Doumergue enters the lists with great spirit for an earlier date, and would carry it back, say, to 1528. We cannot go here into the reasons pro and con. It may well be that too much stress is laid by M. Doumergue on the necessity of a development of Calvin's religious life through stages, if not slow, at least not unprepared: Calvin himself speaks of his conversion as "sudden." It may well be that a little of that Gallic spirit which is such an ornament to Frenchmen attaches itself to his
argumentation and that he is a shade overzealous for the purely French origination of French Protestantism. But certainly he marshals the facts and inferences with amazing skill, and the result of his construction is to leave an impression on the mind of the reader which is very strong that Calvin was no stranger to the new doctrines through his years of study at Orleans and Bourges, and that if we are still to speak of a "conversion" as late as 1532 it must be in the purely spiritual sense. Long before this he assuredly had known and yielded intellectual assent to the central elements of the new teaching.
We know it is a very inadequate introduction to our readers that we are giving M. Doumergue's notable book. Our consolation is that we shall have subsequent occasion, on the appearance of the remaining volumes, to call attention to it anew. The first volume exhibits it as a piece of solid historical work, fortified by ample citations of the sources, and presented in a charmingly direct and readable narrative style. No one can pretend hereafter, to know John Calvin who does not take account of M.
Doumergue's full, rich, and thoughtful study of his life and work. We look forward with the greatest eagerness to the appearance of the subsequent volumes, and we can wish nothing better for them than that they may prove as thorough and illuminating for their own periods as this first one is for the years of Calvin's youth.
1. 1 The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, xi. 1900, pp. 713–718. For review of vol. ii. cf. The Princeton Theological Review, ii. 1904, pp. 344 ff.; vol. iii., ibid., v. 1907, pp. 333 ff.; vol. iv., ibid., x. 1912, pp. 501 ff.