John Calvin

John Calvin, to give the familiar Anglicised form of his name, was the second of the sons of Gerard Cauvin and Jeanne Le Franc to grow to maturity. Born on July 10, 1509, he was taken for baptism, doubtless speedily thereafter, to the little church of Sainte-Godeberte, to the parish of which his parents belonged and which then stood in the Place au Ble opposite the Cauvins home. Here he had as godfather Jean de Vatines, one of the canons of the Noyon cathedral; and it is possible that he received his Christian name out of compliment to this sponsor whose place in the little episcopal city was undoubtedly one of dignity. Of the events of his boyhood only scanty memorials have been preserved. Gerard Cauvin was ambitious for his sons. He was determined that they should have the best education that was in his power to obtain for them; and, therefore, Charles, the eldest of the boys, was sent by his father to the endowed school known as that of the Capettes, of which mention has already been made. Thither John and Antoine followed him in due course; and, though his later fame may have coloured the tradition, one can readily believe that the impression which existed two or three generations later was correct, that even here John Calvin manifested so eager a spirit and so retentive a memory as to give him an easy superiority over his youthful schoolfellows.

Quite as influential in the development of the boy's life as this instruction in the schoolroom of the Capettes were the friendships which he formed with his contemporaries among the sons of the noble family of Hangest, notably with those of Louis de Hangest, lord of Montmor, and of his brother, Adrien, lord of Genlis. To Claude, son of the nobleman last named, John Calvin was, years later, to dedicate his first book, when Claude had become abbot of Saint-Eloi at Noyon. With Joachim and Ives, and a brother of theirs whose name is now lost, sons of the seigneur of Montmor, Calvin stood in intimate school fellowship; and his relations to these households of Montmor and Genlis seem, indeed, to have been much closer than merely those of the schoolroom. To Claude he could later gratefully describe himself as "a child brought up in your house, initiated with you into the same studies." Such an association was doubtless in large part a result of the high estimate in which John Calvin's father was held by the family of Hangest; but not wholly so, for neither of John's brothers seems to have enjoyed this friendship in a similar degree, so that some share in its growth must be ascribed to the attractive qualities of the boy himself. Yet it was as no dependent on the bounty of those higher in station that Gerard Cauvin encouraged or the boy fostered a relationship which the early death of his mother may have rendered even more homelike and attractive.

The nineteenth of May, 1521, saw the same office which Charles Cauvin had received two years before bestowed on his brother, John, who still lacked nearly two months of having reached twelve years of age when thus given an ecclesiastical charge. He doubtless received the tonsure,- the only sign of membership in a clerical order which John Calvin ever attained in the Roman Church,-but there could be no question of ordination of the youthful incumbent, whose connection with the office was purely financial. Chief of the revenues which it brought its schoolboy holder were taxes in grain, payable by the neighbouring territories of Voienne and of Eppeville (Espeville). To this benefice in the Noyon cathedral, John Calvin added, on September 27, 1527, the pastorate of Saint-Martin de Martheville,- a curacy which he exchanged, on June 5, 1529, probably for family and pecuniary reasons, for that of Pont-l'Eveque, the ancestral home of the Cauvins. His claim on the altar of La Gesine John relinquished, on April 30th of the year last mentioned, in favour of his younger brother, Antoine; but resumed it again not quite two years later, on February 26, 1531. With the income thus provided John Calvin and his brothers were enabled to carry on their studies and make their start in life.