John Calvin

John Calvin was born at Noyon in northern France and studied law and the classics in Paris, Orléans and Bourges. Around 1533 he experienced what he called a sudden conversion and joined the movement for reform. Persecution of Protestants in France forced him to flee, and in Basel in 1536 he published the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a clear summary of Protestant teaching that he kept expanding for the rest of his life. Passing through Geneva that year, he was persuaded by the reformer William Farel to stay and help lead the church there. Expelled in 1538, he spent three happy years in Strasbourg, where he married Idelette de Bure, before Geneva called him back in 1541. He preached several times a week, wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, set up a system of church discipline and an academy that trained ministers for France, Scotland and the Netherlands. He supported the execution of Michael Servetus for heresy in 1553. He died in Geneva in 1564.

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Faith: French Protestant reformer whose Institutes became the standard of belief in the Reformed churches. Source: Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)