Reformer and writer. Born a quarter century after Luther, Jean Calvin is most famous among those of the reformers who sought to organize and to structure the new Church théologiquement. Often associated to its predecessor as a founder of Protestantism, it has undoubtedly, more than the monk of Wittenberg, given reformed religion an image of rigor, even of asceticism.

On the literary level, Calvin, while writing or by translating his works into French, is one of the first important writers in this language, which it chooses sometimes to facilitate the propagation of his ideas.  

Jean Calvin was born on on July 10th, 1509; he was the son of the tax prosecutor of the bishop of Boundary-line it name will be copied thereafter on Latin Calvinus. The child, that his father intended for the priesthood, since 1521 was equipped with two ecclesiastical benefit. Jean Calvin accepted initially a formation of humanistic; he carried out studies of letters and philosophy to the colleges of Walk and Montaigu to Paris, then of right to Orleans, where he met Pierre of Estoile; in 1529, it went to Bourges, attracted by the courses of right of Andrea Alciati. It is towards 1530 qu ' it wrote, in Latin, his first work, a comment of clementia, Sénèque (published in 1532).  

To the death of his father, Calvin returned to Paris, and, impassioned by the theological controversies, it adhered towards 1533 to the ideas of the Protestant Reform, initiated by his cousin Olivétan and the scholars Lefèvre d' Etaples, Guillaume Budé and Nicolas COP, then vice-chancellor of the University of Paris. It took part in the defense of the work of Marguerite de Navarre Miroir of the heart pecheress. Condemned by the Parliament after the business of the Wall cupboards, it had to leave Paris; before fleeing in Basle in January 1535, it returned to Noyon to resign its ecclesiastical benefit.  

It spent some time to Ferrare, in the duchess Renee de France, then, in 1536, after a stay in Basle - where it published the first version, in Latin, of his Institution of the Christian religion -, it went to Geneva, old episcopal city from which the Council came to decide adhesion with Protestantism; at the request of Guillaume Farel, it settled there. Appointed professor of theology and Pasteur, Calvin sought to reform manners and the doctrines; he wanted to oblige each Genevese to adhere to a profession of faith, which he itself had written. Its design of the company, in which the Church has preeminence on the civil authorities, leads to the conflict with the Council of the Two hundreds (council of the city), and he was banished, like Farel (April 23rd, 1538).  

It left then for Strasbourg, where it assisted, of 1538 to 1541, the reformer Martin Bucer, and where it worked out the second version of his Institution of the Christian religion. In 1540, he married Idelette de Bure, widow and mother of three children, of which he had a child still-born child, and who died itself in 1549.  
 

Its political designs being specified meanwhile, it could then implement its program: it made adopt the Ordinances which consequently governed the religious statute of Geneva (November 20th, 1541). Then it made institute a consistory, made up organization pastors and the laic ones (or “old hand”), intended, according to Calvin, “to regulate the mœ”; without civil jurisdiction, the consistory however had the possibility of pronouncing excommunication. For the middle-class men of the city, it wrote the Catechism of Geneva (1542) and a confession of faith obligatory in twenty and one articles. He thus managed to impose a discipline which its contemporaries described like rather strict, in a sometimes difficult context: supported by Protestant refugees from France and from Italy, Calvin had to fight the influence of the Genevese big families (Perrin and Berthelier in particular).  

Defending its work by the polemic, but also by the force, it made exile his former friend Castellion, director of the College of Geneva (1541), with other adversaries. This business reinforced the authority of Calvin definitively, and Geneva succeeded then Wittenberg, the town of Luther, like spiritual capital of Protestantism and city refuge.  

The Genevese reformer was preserving on many points: in astronomy, he thought that the Earth was in the center of the universe; about the women, he judged them “a part and an accessory” of the man, since Eve had been created starting from a coast of Adam; its religious designs can themselves be besides analyzed like a return towards an order

When Servet was worried by inquisitive French Mathieu Ory, Calvin provides to this last his correspondence, in order to light the judges. In 1553, Servet being escaped, it passed by Geneva, where Calvin decided in favor of his judgment. Servet was burned alive.  

In January 1554, Calvin considered it necessary to publish Defensio orthodoxae fidei crowned trinitate, translated at once into French (Declaration to maintain the true faith which all Christians of the Trinity of the people as an only one God hold. Against the errors of Michel Servet Spanish), where it justified the judgment of the heretics to the supreme sorrow. Calvin accepted the support of the majority of the reformers, but it undergoes also the attacks of Castellion.  
 
Last years

In the years 1550, the authority of Calvin was disputed, in particular by the Genevese big families. The tension culminated with the incidents of May 16th, 1555, during which Ami Perrin maltreated the syndic of Geneva; Perrin could flee and was condemned to death in absentia, some of his friends, them, being carried out.

Calvin still took party for reformed French of the street Saint-Jacob persecuted by Henri II (1557). In 1559, its effort of religious organization leads to the synod of Paris, which brings together the representatives of various branches of the Reform and which published forty articles summarizing the reformed doctrines; it was made represent with the conference of Poissy per Theodore de Bèze, who adopted an intransigent attitude.  

Calvin was before a whole man of combat because, to make triumph Protestantism and to discipline it, it needed greatest energy, and even intransigence and the rigor most strict. At thirty years, its aspect was that of an old man: the face lost weight, osseous, thin lips, the grey hair; it was in the grip of physical sufferings, and in particular with continuous headaches. It died out on on May 27th, 1564, in Geneva.

Works of Calvin

By putting the literature at the service of theology, Calvin widened the field of it. Its work is characterized by the severity of the composition, the logical sequence of the reasoning, and, at the same time, the ease of the thought. Its sentence still takes for model the Latin period, but it is disengaged from the embarrassments of syntax. The Institution of the Christian religion is thus the work which, before the Discourse on Method, of Descartes, the most contributed to fix French prose. The work of Calvin, is fifty-nine volumes of the Corpus reformatorum, for the nine tenth is written in Latin, for a French tenth.  

Institution of the Christian religion
In Basle, Calvin wrote the first version of his major work, the Institution of the Christian religion, which appeared in 1536 in Latin (Christianae religionis institutio), printed by Thomas Platter and Balthasar Lasius. The French versions of 1541 to 1553 were printed by Jean Girard (or Gerard), in Geneva. It less than twenty-four editions had not published there of living of the author, which attests success of the company; one distinguishes from them three series, which are divided as follows: first Latin edition in 1536 of which there does not exist translation; versions revised in Latin 1539.1543 and 1550 old, translated into French respectively in 1541.1545 and 1551; finally, final version of 1559 in Latin, translated in 1560.  

The talk of the religious doctrines
The work, which contained at the beginning six chapters, counts of them twenty-four in its ultimate version, which is divided into four books.

• The first book has as an aim “to know God in title and the capacity as creator and sovereign governor of the world”;
• The second draft “of the knowledge of God as it showed Rédempteur as a Jesus-Christ, which was expressed to us in the Gospel”;
• The third, “in the manner of taking part in the grace of Jesus-Christ, of the fruits which return to us from there and the effects which are followed from there”;
• The last, “of average outsides or assistances, of which God is used for himself to lead us to Jesus-Christ, his son, and to retain us in him”.  

A political intention
With this work which it did not cease altering, Calvin wished to give a talk of the new faith, and his book made following Catechisms of Luther, and with works of Melanchthon (Loci theologicarum communes, 1521), Farel (Summaire briefve declaration of auscuns places extremely necessary to ung chrestien, 1525) or Zwingli (Commentarius of will vera and falsa religione, 1525). By publishing it for the first time two years after the business of the Wall cupboards, Calvin also had a political intention which it exposed in his Epistle to the king, who opens first the 1536.1539 and 1541 old versions; addressing itself to François I, it expresses there the hope which the king knows “which is the doctrines, against which of such a rage, furiously are emflambez those which by fire and sword disturb Royaume today”; Calvin indeed hoped for that the king would clearly distinguish the Protestants from the “anabaptists and seditious people, who by their resveries and false opinions renversoyent not only the religion, but also any political order” (prefaces with the Comment on the Psalms, 1558). He called François I er with more leniency towards his only co-religionists.  

But the political goal of Calvin was not reached. Its book was prohibited by an edict of the Parliament of Paris on on July 1st, 1542, that is to say after the publication of the French version - for the theologists, the use of French indicated an obvious subversive will since the author addressed thus to the people, and either only with the only scholars. The seized specimens were burned on the square of Notre-Dame de Paris.  

Other works
In 1534, Calvin published Psychopannychia, a treaty on the sleep of the heart. The following year, it took part in the publication of the Bible of Olivétan. Published in 1541, its Small Treaty of holy Cène treats in particular divergences between Luther, Zwingli and him in connection with the significance of the eucharistie and the presence or not of Christ in the celebration of the Holy Communion.  

In 1544, it published its Short instruction to arm all faithful goods against the errors with the sect commune of the anabaptists. In this work as much religious than political, Calvin shows a partisan of the rigor against the anabaptists, of which he considers the matter ideas particularly erroneous religious, and of which he condemns the social designs, in particular their antiquated Communism which would prohibit to a Christian “to have neither house, neither garden nor no heritage”.  

Still let us quote: the Catechism of Geneva (1542); Treaty of the relics (1543); Small Treaty showing that it is that must make a faithful man knowing the truth of the Gospel, when it between the papists (1543), is directed against the Neoplatonists; Against the fanatic and furious sect of the libertines who name themselves spiritual (1545); Warning against the astrology which one calls legal (1549).

Its Excuse with Sirs Nicodémites (1549) aims those which hide their sympathy to the faith reformed - according to the Gospel of Jean, Nicodème came to visit Jesus of night; the work is a criticism of the Neoplatonic humanistic ideals, and indicates the final detachment of Calvin compared to the humanistic ideas. Scandals which prevent today many people from coming to the pure doctrines from the Gospel, and others discharge some (1550) is directed against Rabelais, in which Calvin saw a coarse and contemptible individual.

Moreover, approximately thousand five hundred sermons, among those which Calvin pronounced, were preserved, as well as a bulky correspondence.