Geneva History for Visitors to Geneva, Switzerland

In the mid-16th-century Calvinism gave shape to the Protestant Reformation by basing it on more radical logic.

The French theologian John Calvin  (1509 - 1564) seconded Luther's ideas.  He had to leave France and for several years he travelled in Europe.  His itinerary took him to Strasbourg, Basle and Fribourg, where he met Erasmus shortly before his death.  In 1536 he settled in Geneva, at the invitation of Guillaume Farel, a promoter of religious reform.  It was there that he published in Latin his Institution of the Christian Religion, his most crucial work.

Calvin's ideas were the product of a logical and rational mind, very different from Luther's.  He believed:
1)  that the Bible, the source of faith, must be strictly observed
2)  that baptism and the Last Supper were the only valid sacraments, and Christ's presence in the Eucharist was only spiritual
3)  that worship should be limited to preaching, prayer and the singing of psalms
4)  in the doctrine of predestination, sketched by Luther but rigorously defined by Calvin.  Faith justified any man on whom God had decided to confer it.  Salvation depended on a timeless decision by God, who  'destined some to eternal life and others to eternal punishment'
5)  that, although human actions could not alter the divine decision, charity should be practised, allied to blind confidence in God

The Calvinist Church was ruled on democratic lines:  its pastors were chosen by the faithful and hierarchy was abolished.  The Church had very close relations with the state:  both acted as vicars of God and interpreters of His will.

These decrees made Geneva  'the Rome of Calvinism'.  The city became a theocratic society ruled by a church consistory by means of which Calvin imposed implacable intolerance.  Worldly pleasures, regarded as the devil's work, were prohibited and strict morality was imposed.  Calvin persecuted all those who opposed his orthodoxy, whether Catholic or Protestant:  in 1553 the Spanish doctor Michael Servetus was sent to the stake.

Calvinism spread rapidly, through the efforts of pastors who received a thorough grounding at the academy in Geneva.  The new doctrine was taken up in Switzerland and England, and important Calvinist centres emerged in Italy and Spain.  In France and the Low Countries, Calvinism further inflamed the Wars of Religion.  In Scotland, the Presbyterian Church, founded by John Knox, developed under Mary Queen of Scots in 1561, then reached northern Ireland at the beginning of the 17th-century.  Meanwhile, Calvinism spread to Hungary, Bohemia and Poland.

Calvin's doctrine enjoyed the support of the bourgeoisie and the nobility, who were jealous of the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church.  Calvinism in fact gave its blessing to trade and profit, and thereby played a certain role in the development of capitalism.

JOHN CALVIN:
Predestination;  John Calvin stressed above all  'the honour of God'  and defined predestination with a lawyer's rigour.

We declare....that God has decreed in His eternal and immutable wisdom those whom He would save and those whom he would send to perdition.  We say that this decision, as to the chosen, is based on His mercy without any regard to human worth; and on the contrary that entry into life eternal is closed to all those whom He would send to damnation; and that this is done by His occult and incomprehensible judgment, although it be just and equitable....I shall ignore here many dreams that people have formed to overthrow predestination....For  (many  people)  believe that God chose among people this one or that, according to what He foresaw would be the merits of each:  that He adopts those whom He foresees will not be unworthy of His grace; and as for those whom He knows must be inclined to malice and impiety, them He leaves to their damnation.

Calvin, Institution of the Christian Religion and Geneva becomes its Rome.