John Calvin

Jean Calvin was born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, Picardy, France. His father, a notary for the cathedral chapter, secured church benefices to fund his son's education. Calvin studied arts at the University of Paris and law at Orléans and Bourges, receiving an excellent humanist education that included Greek, Hebrew, and classical literature.

Calvin experienced a sudden conversion around 1533-1534, the details of which he described only briefly. By 1534 he had broken with the Roman Catholic Church and fled France after Francis I began persecuting Protestants. He spent time in Strasbourg and Basel, where in 1536, at the age of twenty-six, he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, initially a brief handbook of Protestant theology.

In 1536, William Farel persuaded Calvin to stay in Geneva to help organize the Reformation there. Calvin and Farel were expelled in 1538 after conflicts with the city council. Calvin spent three productive years in Strasbourg, where he pastored a French refugee congregation and expanded the Institutes. He married Idelette de Bure, a widow, in 1540.

Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541 at the city's invitation and remained there for the rest of his life. He established a church order (the Ecclesiastical Ordinances) that became the model for Reformed churches throughout Europe. He preached nearly every day, lectured on Scripture, wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, and carried on an enormous correspondence with reformers, churches, and political leaders across Europe.

The Institutes went through multiple expansions, reaching their final form in 1559 as a comprehensive work in four books. Calvin's health was poor for much of his life, and he suffered from migraines, lung hemorrhages, and kidney stones. He died on May 27, 1564, in Geneva.