John Calvin: Pastor. Preacher. Reformer. Tyrant? Part 3

^{The pulpit of St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva where Calvin typically preached}

This is part three in a series considering the claim that John Calvin was a tyrant. If you are just joining in, I encourage you to check out part 1 and part 2.

It is one thing to dismiss an outside opponent critiquing your guy for being an a-hole, and quite another when that criticism comes from an insider (or at least a former insider). In this post we will consider the data of individuals who went from being on the inside of Calvin’s network to being on the outside.

Matt White, whose excellent podcast sparked this series, calls the accusation that Calvin was a tyrant “a silly stereotype” that should be “thrown out for good.” My contention in this series is that most people, on both sides of this debate, don’t give due attention to the original voices that leveled this charge against Calvin.¹ To rectify this, I am not seeking to answer the question for anyone, but rather to help give readers accessible entry into more of the primary source data.

So, I have a list of about 9-10 individuals who, in one way or another, considered themselves allies of Calvin, and then later became enemies. While these weren’t all necessarily friends of Calvin, they were at least colleagues. Thus, I am pushing back against claims like that of Richard Stauffer who writes, “Of all the friendships which Calvin developed, only three did not last: those with Louis Du Tillet, Jacques de Falais, and François Baudoin.”² Stauffer’s explanation for why those friendships ended lays all of the blame at those other three men. In contrast, what follows will show a pattern which, at minimum, suggests Calvin’s person and character (not just his doctrine) was a (if not the) common denominator. This week we’ll cover four, and save the other five for another post.

With each name below, the first date is the rough beginning of a relationship with / connection to Calvin (where known), and the second date is an approximation of when that favorable connection was severed.

Louis du Tillet (1525-1538)

Louis du Tillet became a close friend of Calvin at the University of Paris sometime in the 1520s. After the sermon by Nicholas Cop in late 1533 caught the inquisitorial attention of Paris authorities, Calvin fled to the du Tillet estate in Claix. Here Calvin availed himself of the extensive du Tillet library where he wrote his first treatise, Psychopannychia, and also began his first edition of the Institutes.³ One can easily imagine the bond that would form under such dangerous and exciting circumstances. Du Tillet and Calvin traveled around together until they arrived in Geneva in 1536 where both become involved with Farel and the reform movement there. The bond didn’t last very long in Geneva, but letters recounting the falling out of these friends weren’t published until 1850. Why the fall out? “Calvin had changed.”⁴

Du Tillet left Geneva in late 1537 or early 1538 without explanation other than “a note that he was returning home.”⁵ Calvin wrote to du Tillet wondering what he had done to drive du Tillet away. In a series of letters exchanged in 1538, du Tillet explained his perception of Calvin’s pride and unhealthy self-assurance in knowing God’s will. “He focused on Calvin’s situation, pointing out that he [Calvin] had been called to his life as a Protestant only five years ago, and yet he acted in an imperious manner, condemning people even if they also condemned the things that Calvin himself censured.”⁶

Bruce Gordon explains,

“The accusation struck deeply; from the time of his Seneca commentary, Calvin had wrestled with ambition and remained acutely sensitive to suggestions that his calling might be confused with a desire for worldly gain. He played the same game, never hesitating to blacken the names of his opponents such as Caroli by impugning their motives with ambition. Now he was made to feel the blade of his own sword.”⁷

Whereas du Tillet became uncomfortable with Calvin’s “imperious manner,” scholars such as Stauffer misleadingly claim that Calvin “broke his relations with Du Tillet after he [Du Tillet] had renounced the reformed faith and returned to the Catholic church.”⁸ It is true, while Du Tillet saw the need for reformation, he eventually returned to Catholicism and was unwilling to condemn everything to the point of schism (as he saw it). Still, Stauffer gets much of his account from Calvin’s letters, referencing in particular Calvin’s letter to du Tillet from October 20, 1538. There is evidence in this letter that suggests some measure of humility on Calvin’s part, but it also displays much pride. According to Gordon, the closest Calvin “was ever prepared to sail in admitting his errors” was this statement: “I know well enough that foolish ambition might hoodwink me so as to deflect the straightforwardness of my judgment.”⁹ Calvin admitted the possibility of erring in his judgment, but nevertheless maintained that he in fact did not err. So he wrote, “I beg you will allow me to follow the rule of my conscience, which I know to be surer than yours.”¹⁰

It would seem that du Tillet had detected a growing arrogance in Calvin, and possibly didn’t feel able to confront Calvin directly face to face. He wasn’t wrong.¹¹

François Baudouin (1540-1553)

François Baudouin was covered in detail in Part 2 of this series. He was involved in the evangelical reform movement starting in the early 1540s, became a big fan of Calvin, and moved into to Calvin’s home for some months in 1547 when he served as Calvin’s secretary. As became clear a little less than fifteen years later, Baudouin charged Calvin with similar accusations as du Tillet. (For quotes from Baudouin, see Part 2).

Because Baudouin had been a friend, employee, mentee, and an ally in the reformed movement, I believe it is a mistake to only follow Calvin’s account of their falling out, which is what Stauffer does: “As to François Baudoin, who, according to Bayle, changed his faith “at least seven times” [as if that invalidates everything Baudouin said], Calvin was very indulgent with him for a long time before condemning his perfidy in 1561.”¹² As I’ve learned from personal experience, it’s wise to hear explanation of a fall out directly from a former insider. Unfortunately, it’s all too common for the man behind the pulpit to give the definitive account of why someone left.

André Zébédée (1538-1547)

André Zébédée, who came to Geneva in 1538, was initially an ally of Calvin and “one of the first [in 1540] to entreat Calvin to return to Geneva.”¹³ As mentioned in Part 2, his longtime friendship with Calvin makes him more than a biased opponent. “After he arrived in Switzerland, Zébédée was close to Calvin, Farel, and Viret…[H]is break from Calvin took nearly a decade.”¹⁴ That break is complicated, centered as it was on theological debates in 1547-48 at the Lausanne Academy, where Zébédée taught, with Calvinist patriarch Pierre Viret over eucharistic doctrine. Zébédée argued for a Zwinglian view, Viret for a Calvinistic view; but there was more to it. As Bruening notes, another issue of debate, and indeed the first issue, was “the power of the ministry.”¹⁵ Five of the more controversial theses put forward for debate by another Lausanne professor, Jean Ribit, “reflects a decidedly Calvinian break from the traditional Zwinglian understanding of the ministry.”¹⁶ It is worth including these statements, as they illustrate the ministerial theology/philosophy to which Zébédée objected, objections which contributed to his removal from Calvin’s network when he was dismissed from the Lausanne Academy in 1549.

1. “Ministers are above and below all humans: above, because they are the ambassadors of Almighty God; below, because they are obliged to all.

2. He who does not know that he has the power of binding and loosing, of retaining and forgiving sins, can in no way fulfill the duty of a minister, since he is unaware of the fundamental nature of his position.

3. The minister should not introduce any doctrine of his own but should put forth the truth without any taint of falseness, in such a way that, by the example of the prophets and apostles, he can affirm without any doubt that what he says, the Lord has said.

4. Those who despise this type of minister utterly reject and repudiate their own salvation.

5. Since ministers bestow spiritual gifts and strengthen the faithful, those who reject them, reject not men but gifts of the Spirit that have been offered, and they despise God who gives them.”¹⁷

The identification of what the minister says with what the Lord has said (#3) is a view that one can find throughout Calvin’s writings.¹⁸ As we have seen, this view was also a regular object of anti-Calvinist criticism. These critics perceived a slippery slope from equating the Genevan pulpit’s “Thus saith the Lord” to viewing any disagreement with Calvin’s doctrine as “despising” God’s ordained ministers and “utterly rejecting and repudiating their own salvation.”

Sebastian Castellio (1540-1544)

The subtitle to Jenkins’ chapter on Castellio is telling: “Colaboring Admirer to Belligerent Vilifier,” as is the first sentence : “Cordial friendship marked the first years of Sebastian Castellio’s relations with Calvin; acrimony and mutual recriminations defaced the last.”¹⁹ Castellio moved from Lyon to Strasbourg in 1540 when Calvin was serving as pastor to the French congregation. He lived in Calvin’s household and ministered to people residing there during the plague.²⁰ Farel got Castellio a teaching job at the Cellège de Rive in Geneva in June 1541.²¹ In 1543 the Genevan council desired Castellio to become an ordained minister, but Calvin and the Company of Pastors objected because of Castellio’s disagreement with Calvin on the Song of Songs and on Christ’s decent into hell.²² In 1544 “Castellio was again turned down in his request to be ordained, the company of pastors writing to him that since the Reformation was in constant danger in Geneva, his dissent from Calvin could not be countenanced.”²³

Gordon describes Calvin’s reasons as both rational and irrational. Regarding the “irrational animus” that Calvin had for Castellio:

“Less explicable was Calvin’s distates for a perceived rival. Castellio mattered because he was somebody, unlike many of the semi-literate ministers Calvin had to deal with in Geneva. Castellio had status, and that made him all the more dangerous. From 1542 onwards Calvin and his supporters made life for Castellio in Geneva almost impossible.”²⁴

While Castellio was one of the chief critics of the killing of Servetus for heresy in 1553, “ten years before the publication of Concerning Heretics, Castellio was already [in 1544] attacking the Genevan ministers’ intolerance and persecution of the innocent.”²⁵

As with du Tillet, Baudouin, and Zébédée,

“Castellio had witnessed Calvin’s uncompromising nature firsthand. In the [Genevan] pastor’s testimony on Castellio, they indicated that the church could not tolerate the uncertainty that Castellio would bring to the Company of Pastors: ‘This was our only concern: that great evil might arise from various interpretations. He responded that he did not want to accept anything that he could not support in good conscience.’”²⁶

Castellio’s views and his more tolerant approach to Biblical interpretation appears to have been more intolerable to the Genevan pastors than financial mismanagement. In 1562 Mathieu Issotier, brother-in-law to Castellio, was reported to the Genevan Consistory for “certain misappropriations of money...made when exercising his ministry.” However, he remained in his position. In August 31, 1563 he “appeared again before the Consistory...for having distributed Castellio’s Conseils à la France désolée, at which time he was described as ex-minister.”²⁷ Whether he left freely or by discipline is unclear. In either case, distributing a book by Castellio was incompatible with holding pastoral office in Geneva.

We will have to save another post for the additional figures who contribute to this pattern. I will also offer some concluding thoughts to this exercise in giving voice to Calvin’s original critics. At the risk of stretching the waning interest of my audience, there is also one or two Genevan disciplinary cases that are often overlooked and worth mentioning. For now, here’s a quote from Calvin himself (and if you want more context, click on footnote #10 below).

Quote from John Calvin, writing to friend and co-reformer Farel, October 8, 1539

Do you suppose that I take any comfort to myself from the accusation of your negligence, which has caused me so much annoyance? Had I been able to speak with you face to face, I would have turned upon you the whole of the fury which I have poured forth upon others…To you it is to be imputed if anything is faulty…Because I am aware that you are quite accustomed to my rudeness, I will make no excuse for treating you so uncivilly.²⁸

1 As mentioned in Part 1, it also matters how we define “tyrant,” and I’m using Calvin’s application of that language to Luther in 1545.

2 Richard Stauffer, The Humanness of John Calvin, 48. It’s interesting that Stauffer relegates these three men to a footnote. I wonder if accounts of Calvin’s life are doomed to be one-sided. As Matt White pointed out to me recently on X, he hasn’t seen me say anything positive or appreciative about Calvin. I feel a similarity to Stauffer, who explicitly aimed his biography at correcting what he saw as an imbalance in literature on Calvin’s life. And here I am doing the same, for as much as I’m aware of unfair criticisms against Calvin from other quarters today, that isn’t my context. I’m aiming at “my people,” those who claim the Reformed tradition stemming from Calvin, who I studied under but never really heard anything critical about Calvin. And yet, I’m trying to just present data and resist what Balserak wisely observes about the polemical context of Calvin scholarship: “it is not the personal convictions of a Calvinist or non-Calvinist, Catholic or non-Catholic, Christian or atheist that have created the bias that we see over the past five hundred years, but rather the intensity of the battle. This intensity has resulted in a loss of perspective on the part of individuals on all sides of the argument” (Jon Balserak, Geneva’s Use of Lies, Deceit, and Subterfuge, 1536-1563: Telling the Old, Old Story in Reformation France, 39).

3 Gary Jenkins, Calvin’s Tormentors, 2-3.

4 Jenkins, 8.

5 Jenkins, 7.

6 Jenkins, 11.

7 Bruce Gordon, Calvin, 93.

8 Stauffer, 48.

9 Gordon, 94.

10 Letters of John Calvin, edited by Jules Bonnet, translated by Marcus Robert Gilchrist (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1858), 1:97.

11 See this note re the attempt by Bucer and others to confront Calvin for his unwillingness to reconcile with Caroli:

12 Stauffer, 48.

13 Michael Bruening, Refusing to Kiss the Slipper, 107.

14 Bruening, 103.

15 Bruening, 114. See Bruening, “The Lausanne Theses on the Ministry and the Sacraments,” Zwingliana 44 (2017), 423.

16 Bruening, 116.

17 Bruening, 115.

18 See John Calvin as Sixteenth Century Prophet by Jon Balserak.

19 Jenkins, 63.

20 Jenkins, 64.

21 After Marcourt and Morand—the ministers in charge after Calvin and Farel were expelled—left Geneva, but before Calvin returned from Strasbourg (Bruening 141). However, Jenkins writes that “Calvin valued Castellio and brought him with him when he returned to Geneva in 1541” (65).

22 Bruening, 143.

23 Jenkins, 67.

24 Gordon, 157.

25 Bruening, 144.

26 Bruening, 145.

27 The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans), 356. A straightforward translation of Castellio’s work might be “Council to Desolate France.”

28 Letters, 1:155, 157.