John Calvin
Jean Cauvin
- Lived
- 1509–1564
- Era
- Reformation
- Where
- Geneva
- Tradition
- Reformed / Presbyterian
The Institutes, and the Geneva experiment
A French humanist lawyer who fled to Basel, published the first edition of the Institutes at twenty-six, and was pressed into staying at Geneva to organise its reformation — a city he was expelled from once and returned to for the rest of his life.
Why it matters
The Institutes, revised over twenty-five years, is the most orderly statement of Reformation theology, and Geneva under his ordinances became a working model that Scots, Dutch, French and English exiles took home. His account of election is what his name is used for, though it occupies far less of him than is assumed. Geneva also burned Michael Servetus for denying the Trinity in 1553 with Calvin's support, which the Reformed churches have not tried to explain away.
In the record
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1517 AD Reform
The Reformation begins
Organised Geneva into the model the Reformed churches copied
All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.