General History Viii Calvinism Notes

General History VIII - Calvinism Revision

Menna Prestwich, International Calvinism 1541-1715 (Oxford, 1985).

Introduction

• 1541

  • Calvin starts disseminating his copious writings.

• A European religion

  • Calvin himself would have rejected the term ‘Calvinism’.

• What does he believe?

  • Not principally about predestination

  • Christ died for all men

  • Eucharist was more than a commemorative service, though less than a Lutheran service.

  • Strict hierarchy of the Consistory.

  • Doctrine

    • Salvation through Christ

    • Absolute authority of the Bible

      • Sola scripture giving equal weight to Old and New Testaments.

  • Emphasises the importance of family

    • Father must set the moral tone with Bible-readings and instruction through the catechism, adjuncts of the sermons.

  • Consistories

    • Calvin

      • Believes in parity between churches

      • Believes in destruction of priestly hierarchy.

• 1559

  • First synod of the French Reformed church

    • Issued the Discipline and a Confession of Faith

• 1571

  • Confessions of La Rochelle and Emden.

    • Reinforce solidarity.

• International solidarity

• 1572

  • La Rochelle besieged, magistrates get a loan from the city of London

• 1589, 1590, 1602

  • When Geneva was threatened by the Dukes of Savoy, Swiss Protestant cantons, the Count Palatinate, states of Holland and Frisia, all responded with loans.

• Dutch Revolt

  • Huguenot nobles know the Netherlands nobility.

• Don’t overstate

  • Frederick III

    • Palatinate sends troops but at heavy cost

• Aim

  • Not to adapt to society, but to cast society in a new mould.

• Consistories

  • How do these work?

    • Elders get re-elected and co-opted transforming the consistory into an oligarchy.

• Vindicaiae contra Tyrannos (1579)

  • Impossible to shake off the legacy of this.

• Social background

  • Le Roy Ladurie

    • Shows in Languedoc, Calvinists ranged from peasants of the Cevennes to the rich merchants of Nimes.

  • Commercial enterprise?

    • Olivier de Serres

      • Celebrates in his Le Theatre d’Agriculture (1600) the dominance of Protestants in the silk industry.

• Enemy of art?

• Calvin condemned iconoclasm

  • He condemned the veneration of images as idol worship, but he resented mob action, insisting nothing should be done except under the direction of the magistrates.

• Patrognage

  • United Provinces

    • Provided Calvinist painters with a court and affluent burghers who like to buy pictures.

  • Henri IV

    • Crown bestow lavish commissions

• What was Calvinism then?

• Synod of Dort (1618)

  • A harsh, austere and intolerant creed.

  • Double predestination

    • Quite a forbidding and divisive dogma

  • Requires absolute conformity

    • But equally, led to bigotry and hypocrisy.

• Awkward consequences

  • Calvin not really Calvinist

    • Beza

      • Is the one who really pushes double predestination, and Calvin’s humanism, his flexibility and opportunism on issue of church government is ignored.

Chapter 1: Calvin by Richard Stauffer

• Calvin was born in 1509, in Noyon, Picardy.

• He studied for a Master of Arts in 1528, before turning to law because its study brought ‘wealth to those who pursue it’.

• His first major research project was Commentary on Seneca’s ‘De Clementia’ (1532): a work largely of philosophical discussion.

• Life changes in 1533:

  • Nicholas Cop attacked those who challenged the Reformists, but most think Calvin wrote this address.

Calvin’s Thought

• He owed much to Martin Luther, derived much ecclesiology from Bucer and was on the best of terms with Melanchthon. He had been won over to the Reformation, but remained a humanist.

  • Indebted equally to St Bernard of Clairvaux, St Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

  • Assiduously studied Augustine, with whom he felt a deep affinity.

• Themes in Institutes of the Christian Religion:

(IV) Alastair Duke, ‘The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism in the Netherlands, 1561-1618’

• March 1581

  • The State of Holland outlawed the Mass, after the Abjuration of Philip II over the United Netherlands.

    • But how many Calvinists actually reside within the United Netherlands?

      • 1/10 Hollanders are Reformed

      • 1600

        • Majority in Netherlands are Roman Catholics.

  • Census 1622

    • Den Briel

      • Small fishing town

        • Around 1/5^th of the population were Reformed

    • Alkmaar

      • Just 5% of the 1,200 people are Calvinists.

    • Around 6% of the population were Calvinists.

• Further slow growth outside Holland and Zealand

  • People aren’t convinced by the Heidelberg Confession.

    • 1588

      • One Ds. Johannes Hartmann left Heusden because of the godless conduct of its inhabitants.

  • Lack of enthusiasm to the Sea Beggars in Holland, 1572?

    • Much resilience from the Old Church

• How do we explain the success of the Calvinists therefore?

  • Local Catholic churches

    • Put into disrepute

• Reformation in Low Countries

  • No longer a three-stage rocket (Lutheran, Anabaptists, Calvinist phases).

    • More directed by a politique arm.

  • Calvinists were not endorsed wholeheartedly by the States.

    • A coherent religious policy?

      • More the fear of Spain and the concern not to drive Dutch Catholics into enemy arms.

    • States

      • Blunted repressive anti-Catholic measures

    • In short

      • Not interested in forwarding Calvinist interest in Dutch society than to render Dutch Catholicism politically docile.

• Slow growth of Calvinism in the Netherlands.

• Self-imposed?

  • Calvinists insisted Communion was only for those who were Calvinists.

    • Distinguished between ‘children of the world’ and ‘those of the Church’

  • Gaspar van der Heyden

    • 1573

      • Said it was more important to spread the Gospel than Reform the Netherlands.

• Other influences.

  • Lutheranism

    • Many flocked to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak.

  • After Peasant’s War

Philip S. Gorski, Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 2008).

• A disciplinary revolution that comes about through the close links between confessionalisation, social-discipline and state power.

Weber

• The Protestant Ethic

  • Saw state as a product of Western rationalism, but also Calvinist...

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