John Calvin: Young Life

in this lecture we're looking at the young life of John Calvin and we can begin by just noting some of the contours in some of the context of how it come to understand these years of Calvin's life as we said in our last lecture we're a little have as much of the rich information either from Calvin's own pin or from simple archival evidence or other pieces to really piece together a real complex picture of the young life of Calvin when you compare that to the young life of Luther which has been subject as we pointed out to all kinds of psychoanalysis where we attempt to understand how Luther's relationship with his father and his mother may have had an impact on his Reformation and of course in those lectures we talked about how a significant number of those conclusions about Luther are wildly off-base when it comes to the life of Calvin we actually have only a very little bit about his early years from Calvin himself Calvin of course is quite shy or at least unwilling to talk a great deal about himself now this almost certainly comes from not only a personal conviction but also a theological conviction Calvin has an element in his psyche in his theological outlook where he simply does not want the focus really to be on himself he could really see this in how their remains are handled Calvin for example when he died actually left strict orders that he was to be buried in an unmarked grave and that no excessive or elaborate ceremonies were to be held and that his bones were to be lost forever in an unmarked grave and compare that with Luther who if you go today to the Vidhan burg Church his grave his coffin is buried literally beneath the pulpit it's right there in the middle of the church now that's more what was done on behalf of Luther by his followers and Luther never left really the strict commands that he was to be buried there but this is sort of a town of Calvin's personality as well as part of his theological convictions that he believes that the focus should not be on him or his life or on his legacy per se he's always pointing to the scriptures you might say again not that Luther was not but Luther always had this self-identity as the man who had caused the Reformation and so in some ways to be buried beneath the pulpit of the Vitt burg Church is just kind of fitting for Luther's personality Calvin though never below tells us much about his early life the stories that we have of his early life though come from two main books the first is the life of Calvin written by Calvin's successor his right-hand man for the latter years in Geneva named theodore beza and Baeza is one of these important figures in terms of the evolving nature of the reformed tradition he's one of the principal voices and a lot of his challenges to certain doctrines in certain positions over the years as well as his development of things like the doctrine of predestination really sort of kick off that ongoing legacy of reformed scholastic thinking now is that the only one but is one of the major voices while beza before he died pinned a life of calvin in which he retold and compiled all the evidence and the stories that they knew about Calvin's life in order to write a full biography of the man there was another one from one of Calvin's friends another Swiss Reformed pastor named Nicholas Culloden and in 1565 he actually wrote another biography of Calvin which is enormous ly helpful because again this is a friend and a contemporary of Calvin's writing a great deal about Calvin's life so with these two books along with archival research and other types of research we have a pretty good outline as to where Calvin's life developed Calvin was born on the 10th of July 15:09 he was born in the Picardy region of a city known as New Ulm now note this he's French Calvin is not Swiss and he's not German when Calvin actually flees from France after his conversion he is actually for the remainder of his life in exile now he ends up in a french-speaking City Geneva but it's one of the more curious things about Calvin's life and it really just opposed as well with Luther's Luther's spent essentially the entirety of his life in the city of Wittenberg which is where he got his Reformation going Calvin did not have that same power base he was always in exile he was an outsider and even though the city embraced him to a certain extent there were always enemies in the city of Geneva because Calvin and some of his cronies were those Frenchmen who had come into their midst and were telling them what to do when they didn't like it the Calvin as a Frenchman notice also that he's born a bit later than the vast majority of the first generation of Protestants Calvin really fits somewhere in between first and second generation reformers he's a bit younger than the vast majority of the first generation of reformers like Luther in Boots er and Zwingli but he's not so old that he's not really a contemporary of them either Calvin actually will be something like a younger brother in a sense to men like bullinger and boots er now it's not a pedantic relationship by any means but when Calvin comes sort of rushing onto the scene in Geneva in the 1530s a number of these men had been about the Reformation for well over a decade if not longer and so Calvin is more of the young guy coming in to contribute to the Reformation rather than a man who was sort of leading the charge from the first generation and from the opening bell well Calvin is born in 1509 and his father is gerard in jean now notice I'm going to go ahead and anglicize all these names for the sake of not sounding like a bozo I'm going to not even attempt French pronunciation for your sake but Gerard and Jean where his father and his mother now Calvin's mother died at a very young age I didn't say a whole lot about this we don't know how this affected him personally obviously in this day and age death particularly the death of females was extraordinarily high most of them died in childbirth or through some complication related to childbirth and so the death of a mother while never good was not unheard of in this day and age but he lost his mother at a young age and Gerard was a notary and a registrar for the local chapter of the Cathedral which means he was a nun ordained but vital figure within the ecclesiastical structure of this part of France to be a notary and a registrar means that they were at the heart of the power and the business in the administration of the diocese and of all the churches in the region Gerard in other words is at a powerful place though he himself is not the source of that power and he actually would die in 1531 which is just on the eve of Calvin's conversion so we don't have recorded what his position would have been or the way he might have taken the idea that Calvin has switched to the Protestant faith but notice his father Gerard is not part of the worker man's stock he's not blue-collar he's very much at the heart of the ecclesiastical structure and this actually would have an impact on Calvin both in terms of his formation for education as well as for his experience within the church because at the age of 12 Calvin we can assume already a precocious little guy is admitted to be the clerk to the bishop now again this is a bit like his father's role it's an assistant it's someone who is supporting the role of the bishop it's not ordained and it's unintended to be but yet it is also a vital part of the ecclesiastical structure actually Calvin took the tonsure which is the ritual shaving of the head the top of the crown of the head which gives the person the impression depending on how much hair they have I suppose of having a crown of thorns upon their head and so Calvin at the age of 12 is tonsured and he's admitted as a clerk to the bishop and it's because of these networks of power which in this day and age is just about everything but it's because of these networks of power with the bishop and with the elites of this area of France the Calvin gets the springboard that propels him onto the academic stage because while he is a clerk for the bishop again his natural talents are recognized and he actually falls under the patronage of the mock Moors family now I should describe this just briefly in this day and age often what would happen is landed elites or wealthy families were not required but there was sort of a civic duty of those who are wealthy to support the best and the brightest of those who come from their local region or from their cities so families would pay a time for artists to get their training or to Commission some of their works and another way that this would often happen the patronage system was in the supporting of the education of a precocious young child who needs to go on and get a first-rate education to propel them onto the academic or the intellectual scene and that's exactly what happens here with Calvin the Mont Morris family actually patronizes as we say or offers patronage to Calvin to go off not long after he takes his torture to the college Dilla mark and the college in 'mark is a Latin School in the city of Paris and it's frankly one of the most important Latin schools for children in all France there was a teacher there matheran courtier who is by far one of the most important teachers of Latin grammar and of rhetoric of his generation now I don't want over stress that there were certainly many others who were at about his same level but courtier is well known in particular not simile because he was good at teaching and not simply because he was good at rhetoric but he actually was a man who thought long and hard about how to teach about pedagogy as we say today kody 8 was the chair of rhetoric at the college de la Marck in rhetoric of course in this day and age is not simply empty words or nice flowing written grammar rather rhetoric was the backbone of just about everything when it came to intellectual formation in this day and age is the idea of persuasion in good rhetoric as the backbone to theological education itself being able to communicate effectively in and winsome ly the use of rhetoric was supreme in the task of those who are theologians at churchmen and politicians every subject held rhetoric in the highest of regards because of its role in shaping the communication of their disciplines so in Calvin Ghetts this patronage and he gets sent to the College de Labarre he's actually entering into one of the most important contexts and frameworks for the learning of Latin language and grammar and rhetoric of just about anywhere else in France and this is important because as we've already said so much of Calvin's life he was known for being a very clear writer people get into the latin of Calvin's writing often or impressed with a very crisp clean style of his writing the kind of effortless way that he would bring together his points and even in the English translations you get this somewhat he rarely seems to lose you along the way there's no word at a place he'd like to think now except to said that everyone always finds him as riveting as others but when he actually get into the writing style of Calvin he is extraordinarily good in fact by and large he's one of the most impressive writers of the entirety of the 16th century Erasmus of course gets the high praise for his rhetorical flourishes in his style he obviously was the Prince of the humanists but too often it's ignored that Calvin himself was actually one of the most impressive writers of Latin rhetoric of the entirety of the 16th century particularly in Protestantism and a lot of this is traced to the initial work in the initial teaching of courtier courtier actually will go on to write a book called the colloquia which is a book on how to teach Latin which will be used for centuries in France and in other countries in an effort to train young children in the subject of Latin and rhetoric he's just simply that important now it's interesting about courtier is he actually becomes a Protestant not only that but he becomes a reformed person he follows Calvin and others into Geneva and into other parts of Switzerland where he often sets up shop in the city of other reformers and he teaches Latin they spent a time for example in the city of Geneva teaching Latin to young children while Calvin was at work at the Reformation of the city in Asia Calvin dedicates his commentary on Thessalonians to courtier and he gives him the highest praise is the man who had taught him his Latin and his rhetoric so needless to say Calvin is actually in very good hands when he arrives at the collège de la Marck and after a number of years of learning his Latin he then moves over and he enrolls at the College illa Montagu in he enrolls as a philosophy student now philosophy again in this day and age is not philosophy as we now know it today which is a subject that is really separated from the study of divinity or theology philosophy rather is a precursor to the study of Bible and theology for most of Calvin's life actually Girard wanted him and all of his sons to become priests he at least one of them to become theologians men of the church just like he was and so when Calvin enters the college to Montague and he enters as a philosophy student he is on this path he is headed for the church and a lot of people compare and contrast Luther with this they notice how Luther's father wanted him to be a lawyer and not a priest and that Luther had to kind of cope with the ruse to leave law school and to become a monk and to often it said that Calvin's father was very positive on the church and wanted his sons to just like Luther to become a clergyman well there is something to this but we have to be careful here Girard obviously was a man of the church but he was married he obviously was part of the ecclesiastical structures but he was also in the world you might say what Calvin is being prepared for when he enters as a philosophy student is not a life of monasticism we talked about when Luther entered the monastery that there is a sense in which he was now being cut off from the world he was in a matter of speaking leaving everything behind when Calvin is entering the College de Montague he's not actually entering a monastery per se there was another order of priests another engagement with church life that seems to be his father's intentions here which is he's a man of the world meaning he's part of the ecclesiastical structures that are part of the day in and day out ministry what's in mind for Calvin though is the priesthood perhaps but not monasticism not cutting himself off from the community or from culture or of leaving his family behind and going to the life of self-denial that you see in the life of monasticism for whatever reason though Calvin didn't stay long as a philosophy student in 1525 or 1526 Calvin's father moved him out from the college to Montague and out from the study of philosophy and transfers him instead to the University of oleo where he will be a law student now there's all kinds of arguments as to why this was and there are really two answers that are often given first and foremost if Gerard moves his son to the study of law some say that this was because it had better prospects for a lucrative or a successful career for his son and that's certainly probably the case the other answer that's often given is that at this time it does seem to be the case that Gerard is having some personal squabbles with the church in fact when he died Gerard was actually excommunicated he had gotten on the outs with the bishop and to kind of put him in his place he had been excommunicated and he had died before the reconciliation had happened and people always try to find if there's some sort of crack in the armor here for Calvin if the abuse that his father suffered at the hands of a bishop having been excommunicated and therefore when he died Calvin had to travel back to Noah and negotiate to have him actually buried in consecrated land because excommunicated men were not allowed to be buried in consecrated land and somewhat arguing back from that principle people start to wonder if in 15 25 or 26 Gerard is kind of fed up with the church and he sends his son on to law school too early on as a kind of spiteful way of pulling his sons out from the church the answer is we'll probably never know fully it's a bit cryptic why this happens but it certainly is the case that in 15 25 or 50 26 Calvin is moved to the Faculty of Law at the city of Orlando and that is just as vital for Calvin because if Kody a was a phenomenal Latin professor a teacher of Latin too young Calvin and in fact it's there early on where Calvin becomes a humanist and it's that humanism that Calvin learns that eventually leads him to Protestantism okay that's it next we're gonna look at Calvin the humanist what were his days like and what did he learn at the University of oliel when he was studying to be a lawyer

Channel: Ryan Reeves

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Keywords: John Calvin (Founding Figure), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Calvinism (Religion), Protestant Reformation (Event), Reformed Baptists (Religion), Presbyterianism (Religion), Lutheranism (Religion), Martin Luther (Founding Figure), Protestantism (Religion), University Of Orléans (College/University), College de la Marche, Reformed Churches In The Netherlands (Religion), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves

Id: Eucwyj1dVrI

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2015