Growing Up as the World Changes: 1509–1527

The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy

Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

—Martin Luther, “Ninety-Five Theses”

JOHN CALVIN

ohn Calvin was born in the town of Noyon, France (north-

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east of Paris), on July 10, 1509. At the time of Calvin’s birth, the Catholic Church still held the allegiance, if not always the heart, of Christian Europe. Calvin’s family, baptized at birth and carried through life by the sacraments, the sacred rituals of the church, not only professed the Catholic faith but were also financially supported by the church. John’s father had worked his way into a position of responsibility at the local cathedral chapter in Noyon (a cathedral housed the seat of a bishop, and a cathedral chapter was the group of clergy that ran the cathedral, usually because the bishop was absent). Through his connections, John’s father procured for him a church benefice. Benefices were church offices with duties attached, but by this time it was common for the holder to pay a small portion of the benefice to someone else to perform the duties, while keeping the larger portion for their own financial support. The money from John’s benefice would be used for his education.

Very little is known of Calvin’s childhood. He left few records that would enable one to reconstruct that time of his life. In this sense, he was like many people of the sixteenth century, or almost any century: The concerns of his adult life—things that he wrote about—were not the sort of things that evoked from him reflections on his childhood. It is known that Calvin’s mother died when he was young, perhaps when he was about six years old. He had several brothers, some of whom died very young, and later, a stepmother and stepsisters. In other words, he lived the life of all people in the sixteenth century—a life dogged by constant threats of disease and death.

John’s father, however, had worked himself into a position that brought with it benefits not available to all, and he was able to provide for John’s education both with his own resources and with those to which he had access through the church. Although little is known of the child John’s education, one moves onto more reliable historical ground when Calvin’s college years become the subject of inquiry. First, however, it is important to

Growing Up as the World Changes

examine two events—one political, that would have religious consequences, the other religious, that would have political consequences—that occurred during Calvin’s childhood before he attended college. Both would end up having a profound effect upon Calvin’s life.

THE CONCORDAT OF BOLOGNA The Great Schism that had begun in 1378, wherein two popes (one in Avignon and one in Rome) contested each other’s authority, ended in 1417 with the restoration of a single pope, seated in Rome. Whereas it is debated now how much control the French king had over the papacy while it resided in Avignon, apparently the French king thought of a wholly independent papacy as a threat. In 1438, the French clergy issued the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, an act that severely curtailed the papacy’s power in France. Among other things, it limited the amount of money that went to Rome in church taxes, questioned the pope’s right to interfere in the internal affairs of the French church, and declared that a church council stood superior to the authority of the pope. This sanction caused an increase in tensions between the papacy and France.

Nearly 80 years later, in 1516, Francis I, King of France, entered into the agreement known as the Concordat of Bologna with Pope Leo X. Francis had just conquered the Duchy of Milan, and he hoped the agreement with Leo would eventually lead to the pope’s support for his political designs on the Italian peninsula. Whereas the Concordat did not help further Francis’s cause in Italy, it did increase the power he exerted over the French church.

With the signing of the agreement, Francis revoked the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. In return, Leo gave to Francis the right to make appointments in the French church, those appointments then being placed in office by the pope. This gave Francis a level of control over the French church that not all monarchs had in their own countries. Thus, when a religious revolution took place in Europe, Francis had less political reason JOHN CALVIN

to support the Protestant cause than did some other rulers, who thought that the papacy exercised far too much control in their respective territories.

In other words, the Concordat of Bologna presented Francis I with a strong political incentive to support the institution of the Catholic Church while discouraging the growth of Protestantism within his kingdom. As the years passed, discouragement took the more extreme forms of persecution and execution. The political Concordat gave Francis good reason to keep his country Catholic.

THE BIRTH OF PROTESTANTISM If the Concordat of Bologna provided an important political milestone that would affect young Calvin as he moved from childhood into his college years and beyond, the upheaval known as the Protestant Reformation would claim Calvin’s religious loyalty. Exile from his homeland would be the eventual result.

There had long been calls for religious reform throughout Catholic Europe. Although some saw the conciliar movement as a way to accomplish reform, others looked beyond the council to something else: the Bible. For more than 100 years before the birth of Calvin, individuals appeared who called on Christians to look to the Bible as the ultimate source of religious authority, above and beyond the institutional church, whether that institution was represented by the pope or by a church council.

None of those individuals, however, had created movements that effectively challenged the position of the Catholic Church. That changed when a monk named Martin Luther began to question the authority of the church.

Martin Luther lived in the Holy Roman Empire, in an area then called Electoral Saxony. Today, that territory is in the northeastern part of Germany. Martin Luther was German by birth, spoke German, and his initial appeal was to those Germanspeaking people within the Holy Roman Empire.

What became a decisive break with the Catholic Church started simply enough. Luther created a document known as

Growing Up as the World Changes

the “Ninety-Five Theses.” Written in Latin, the language of the learned, Luther intended an academic debate on issues related to salvation, the role of the church in salvation, and the notion of God’s grace. In October 1517, Luther posted these theses in Wittenberg, the town in which he lived. Someone stole the document, had it translated into German, and then distributed it.

A MONK’S SQUABBLE

Monks are those who set their lives apart from the ordinary world to pursue a life of prayer. There developed in Western Christianity many such groups of monks, who lived in places called monasteries. Individual monasteries were usually part of a larger network, with monasteries within this larger group following the same guidelines. Monasteries were thus distinguished by the religious rule they followed. There were many different religious orders. Oftentimes, they competed with one another; sometimes, they fell into open conflict.

Martin Luther belonged to an Augustinian monastery; that is, they followed the Rule of St. Augustine. It was in this place that Luther had his conversion experience, and he came to believe that a Christian is saved solely by faith apart from good works. He sought to incorporate this insight into his religious life, then he began to share it with others.

In 1517, a monk from another religious order, the Dominicans, came near to where Luther lived, selling indulgences. An indulgence forgave the earthly penalty associated with the forgiveness of sin (the way the system of penance worked, one confessed sin, was forgiven, then was assigned a penalty to perform to show true repentance). By the time of Luther, however, the selling of indulgences was sometimes used to raise money. The common people thought of it as “buying” forgiveness. This, of course, struck at the heart of Luther’s newfound belief that salvation was received by grace alone apart from any good works performed by the believer.

Luther hotly contested the work of the Dominican indulgence seller, a man named John Tetzel. In response, Luther posted the “Ninety-Five Theses,” traditionally seen as the starting point of the Reformation. At first, the hierarchy of the church ignored the conflict, and Luther’s growing popularity and sense of outrage, simply seeing the conflict, not as a matter of the very salvation of souls, but as a monks’ squabble—the usual fighting between two different religious orders.

JOHN CALVIN

As Luther debated on topics related to salvation and grace, his central concerns, his fame grew. His primary point concerned the role of faith in salvation. He believed that a Christian attained salvation through God’s grace alone and that grace was received by the Christian through faith in God. Luther taught that it was such faith that was saving, not the good works a person did. He believed truly good works only followed the outpouring of God’s grace; good works could not be the cause of God giving grace to the Christian.

Luther’s opinions came under close scrutiny by the authorities of the Catholic Church. Finally, the hierarchy of the church, the pope and his advisors, decided to excommunicate Martin Luther. In the sixteenth century, excommunication meant both that one was excluded from the ministrations of the church and that one was an outlaw in the eyes of the civil society. There was no separation of church and state at that time.

Having heard that the document that would either call for him to recant what he had taught or be excommunicated from the church was on its way to him, Luther spent a very busy summer writing several treatises that would become known as the “Reformation Treatises.” One was pastoral in tone and explained a Christian’s religious duty. One was theological, and it attacked the sacramental system of the church. The sacraments were the rituals the church used to signify important events in a Christian’s life; indeed, the church taught that these sacraments were vessels of God’s saving grace. The church held that there were seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, penitence, communion, and extreme unction); Luther disagreed, saying there were only three that had the authority of Jesus behind them, and then he eventually scaled even that number down to two (baptism and communion). Finally, he penned “An Address to the German Nobility,” calling on the individual rulers of the Holy Roman Empire to reform the church, especially since the administration of the church (the papacy) was not able to reform itself.

Growing Up as the World Changes

Though the story of Martin Luther is an interesting one, it is enough to say that, after a confrontation with representatives of the church and an appearance before the Holy Roman Emperor himself, the church excommunicated Luther with the support of the emperor. The movement he had started was what became known as Protestantism, and it could not be stopped. Many of the nobles of the Empire, including Luther’s own local ruler, Prince Frederick, sided with Luther. The Holy Roman Empire is thus the first area in Europe to be torn apart by religious differences. Part of the empire became Protestant; part remained Catholic. There would be intermittent warfare throughout the sixteenth century because of these religious disagreements.

Thus, a religious event—the development of a new religious consciousness in the person of Martin Luther—eventually led to political outcomes: war and the splitting of Europe into Protestant and Catholic kingdoms.

YOUNG CALVIN ATTENDS UNIVERSITY The enactment of Concordat of Bologna and the posting of Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses” occurred in 1516 and 1517, respectively, when Calvin was seven, then eight, years old. He would finish growing up in what would become an increasingly religiously divided Europe. By the time he made a choice for religious reform as a Protestant, which, as a French citizen, carried for him political consequences, he was in his twenties and the Reformation movement was an established cause. In other words, although he was an early Protestant, he was not what is known now as a first-generation reformer. He was what has come to be called a second-generation reformer because he was born about a generation after such first reformers as Martin Luther. Whereas the first-generation reformers paved the way for Protestantism initially, people such as Calvin helped to consolidate the work of those who had come before them.

Before that could happen, however, young John would have to grow up. In 1523, when he was about fourteen years of age, Calvin moved to Paris.⁵ At that time, the University of Paris JOHN CALVIN

comprised numerous colleges, and there is some uncertainty about where Calvin may have initially enrolled. Regardless, he soon transferred to the Collège de Montaigu and embarked upon the study of the liberal arts, which in most sixteenthcentury universities meant the study of philosophy. This could only come after a student had prepared himself well enough in Latin, because that was the language of learned society and the language in which the school books were written.

The curriculum required several years of work, during which students studied logic and especially the work of Aristotle, together with commentaries on the subjects. This first degree in the arts (philosophy) stood as a prerequisite to the study of the “higher” disciplines: theology, law, and medicine.

Calvin’s father sent him to school with the intention that he would study theology. This seemed a natural course of advancement for John, given his father’s position with the church.

At about the time Calvin had completed his work in liberal arts—1527 or 1528—his father decided he should study law instead of theology. Calvin suggests that the reason for the shift was financial: More money could be made in civil law (as opposed to canon law, which is church law) than in theology. It may also be, however, that the financial irregularities of which his father would be accused had already begun to be a problem, and Calvin’s father realized that the advancement of his son in the church might be jeopardized because of the brewing controversy.

In the late 1520s, Calvin moved to Orléans to study with the law faculty. Calvin then came into contact with a new way of learning and thinking. If at Paris he had studied philosophy, especially as it had been filtered through late medieval thought, he now began to learn about a new approach to knowledge based less on what Calvin came increasingly to think of as the “vain speculations” of philosophy and more on ancient writings and authorities. During law school, Calvin encountered humanism.

Growing Up as the World Changes

HUMANISM Although the word humanism can have many meanings, in the sixteenth-century context it refers to a way of thinking that valued ancient authorities over more modern ones, and it emphasized learning the languages of antiquity in order to reach the sources of authoritative knowledge. Humanists believed that there had once been a more “pure” source of knowledge and a better language for expressing that knowledge and that the intervening centuries had added unhelpful layers of opinion written in an increasingly barbaric style of Latin.

Thus, many humanists looked back to what they considered the “font” of their civilization—ancient Greece and Rome. Humanists exhibited a “golden age” mentality, and they looked to ancient philosophy, letters, art, and architecture to help them retrieve something they thought had been lost with the passage of time. For example, one of the great books of Renaissance art (one must remember that the great artist Michelangelo and the great reformer Martin Luther were contemporaries), Alberti’s On Drawing, which served in many ways as the Renaissance textbook on painting, drew heavily on ancient writers and their theories of mathematics and art. With regard to language, many humanists looked back to the great Roman orator Cicero, who had lived over 1,500 years earlier, as the best guide to mastering the Latin language.

Finally, there emerged a phenomenon referred to now as “Christian humanism.” It had many of the same concerns and impulses as humanism, but its focus was on the Christian faith. Thus, the Bible, especially the New Testament, became very important as the “source” or “font” of Christian life; much effort went into finding the oldest available manuscripts and creating the best possible Greek New Testament from those manuscripts. Mastery of Greek became a cornerstone of Christian humanism. Along with the New Testament itself, the early Christian writers were seen to have lived in the “Golden Age” of the church, so the earliest commentators on the Bible gained a position as authoritative interpreters. Some of these early Christian writers wrote JOHN CALVIN

in Greek, and a little later in time, Latin. As in the humanist movement, the Christian humanists schooled themselves in Greek and Latin so that they could read the sources of the earliest Christian tradition, which they considered the most authoritative.

This ideal would be absorbed by Calvin and used by him to great effect once he committed himself to the cause of reform.