GENEVA FROM THE ARVE.
Zwingli attempted to reconcile the differences between the Lutheran Protestants and his own followers; and there was a famous Conference between the two reformers at Marburg at the invitation of the Landgrave Phillip of Hesse. The attempt was a vain one. But Zwingli went on with a plan he had formed to unite in diplomacy, if not in the exactness of religious belief, all the Protestant States of Europe. In the development of this plan civil war within Switzerland was fomented, and Zwingli was killed in 1531 fighting with the Protestant forces of Zurich against the Roman Catholics of the Forest Cantons. Zurich was badly defeated in the battle, and militant Protestantism received for a while a check. Bullinger, who succeeded Zwingli, did not concern himself with politics to any great extent, but perfected the Zwinglian system of religious thought. Bullinger will be best remembered to English-speaking people as the friend and correspondent of that Lady Jane Grey who was sacrificed on the scaffold by Queen Mary of England. Three letters from Lady Jane Grey to him are still treasured at Zurich. Of Bullinger's treatise on "Christian Marriage" dedicated to her, she translated a portion into Greek, and presented it as a Christmas present to her father. Bullinger's sermons and letters were to her, she wrote once, "as most precious flowers from a garden." She asked his advice as to the best method of learning Hebrew, and regarded him as "particularly favoured by the grace of God." At the block she took off her gloves and desired that they should be sent on to her Swiss friends.
Calvin was not Swiss-born, but reached Basel in 1535 as an exile from France. He had been destined for the Roman Catholic priesthood, changed his plans and became a lawyer, and at Paris was drawn into the orbit of the French Reformation. Persecuted in France, he retired to Switzerland, and in 1535 published his Christianae Religionis Institutio, which set forth his gloomy system of religious faith with, as its most startling belief, the idea that God predestined certain people for eternal salvation and certain others for eternal damnation. In 1536, at the invitation of a local Reformer named Farel, Calvin settled in Geneva. It was at the time the head of "French" Switzerland, as Zurich was the head of "German" Switzerland, and was a gay pleasure-loving city. The attempt to impose upon the Genevan citizens the gloomy austerities of Calvinism led to frequent riots, and at last the civil government banished both the apostles of sadness, Calvin going to Strasburg. In 1541 he was back at Geneva with an understood commission to reframe the religious and social life of the city. He set to work with grim fanaticism, aiming at a "Kingdom of God on Earth" framed on the lines of the old Judaic theocracies, with himself as the prophet and autocrat.
Very terrible was the tyranny of this gloomy presbyter, though the state he set up won the unqualified admiration of John Knox, that kindred soul who carried to Scotland the tenets of Calvinism and set up there a similar theocracy. "They liked a preacher who could weep and howl well in the pulpit," records Buckle, describing the reign of Calvinism in Scotland. In Geneva there was, according to John Knox, "the most perfect School of Christ that was ever in the earth since the days of the Apostles." The whole populace was expected to weep and howl in abasement before a terrible God. No human pleasure was too paltry to escape the ban of these ministers of gloom. Some of the statutes of Geneva at the time are humorous to read nowadays, mournful as was the spirit they showed at the time. A few examples of the prohibitions current in Calvin's time:
That no Citizen, Burger, or Inhabitant of this City dareth be so hardy to go from henceforth to eat or drink in any Tavern.
That none be so hardy to walk by night in the Town after nine of the clock, without candlelight and also a lawful cause.
That no manner of person, of what estate, quality or condition soever they be, shall wear any chains of gold or silver, but those which have been accustomed to wear them shall put them off, and wear them no more upon pain of three score shillings for every time.
That no women, of what quality or condition soever they be, shall wear any verdingales, gold upon her head, quoises of gold, billiments or such like, neither any manner of embroidery upon her sleeves.
That no manner of person, whatsoever they be, making bride-ales, banquets, or feasts shall have above three courses or services to the said feasts, and to every course or service not above four dishes, and yet not excessive, upon pain of three score shillings for every time, fruit excepted.
Theatres, the dressing of the hair, music, games, skating, dancing, were all forbidden; so were pictures and statues. A governing body called the Consistoire, with Calvin at its head, had the right to send its spies into every home to detect ungodliness. When the plague came to the city to match with a physical ill this moral blight, Geneva became a very hell upon earth. Torture was used to extort confessions from the accused. Whilst the plague was at its worst the sword, the gallows, the stake were always busy. The jailor asserted that his prisons were filled to excess, and the executioner complained that his arms were wearied. Within a period of three years there were passed fifty-eight sentences of death, seventy-six of banishment, and eight to nine thousand of imprisonment, on those whose crime was infringement of the Church statutes. Offences against himself personally Calvin treated as blasphemy, and blasphemy was punishable with death.
Upon the death of Calvin the government of Geneva fell into the hands of Beza, a man of more human feeling, and Calvinism modified a little of its savage gloom. Later the influence of the Zwinglians exercised a further moderating influence, and the Swiss Reformed Church began to get a little of the spirit of the New Testament.
After the fame of the Reformers had waned Switzerland drew the attention of all Europe to her cities again by the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire, the chief makers, I should say, of the French Revolution. Rousseau was the son of a watchmaker of Geneva and was born in 1712. He was a turbulent child and ran away from home to France at the age of sixteen. He returned to his native city a quarter of a century later. Rousseau was a revolutionary critic of society, and his Origin of Inequality, Émile, and The Social Contract attacked all the foundations of the then existing society. The last named formed the basis of the Constitution of 1793. In La Nouvelle Héloïse, a romance the scenery of which is laid at Vevey and Montreux, Rousseau argued for a return to more natural methods of living. That romance gave the stimulus to the romantic works of Goethe and Schiller.