Calvin was a Picard, and the characteristics of the province were seen in its greatest son. The Picards were always independent, frequently strongly anti-clerical, combining in a singular way fervent enthusiasm and a cold tenacity of purpose. No province in France had produced so many sympathisers with Wiclif and Hus, and “Picards” was a term met with as frequently on the books of Inquisitors as “Wiclifites,” “Hussites,” or “Waldenses”—all the names denoting dissenters from the mediæval Church who accepted all the articles of the Apostles’ Creed but were strongly anti-clerical. These “brethren” lingered in all the countries of Western Europe until the sixteenth century, and their influence made itself felt in the beginnings of the stirrings for reform.
Gerard Cauvin had early seen that his second son, Jean, was de bon esprit, d’une prompte naturelle à concevoir, et inventif en l’estude des lettres humaines,[99] and this induced him to give the boy as good an education as he could, and to destine him for the study of theology. His legal connection with the higher clergy of Noyon enabled him, in the fashion of the day, to procure for his son more than one benefice. The boy was tonsured, a portion of the revenue was used to pay for a curate who did the work, and the rest went to provide for the lad’s education.
Young Calvin went with the three sons of the de Montmor family to the College de la Marche in Paris. It was not a famous one, but when Calvin studied there in the lowest class he had as his professor Mathurin Cordier, the ablest teacher of his generation.[100] His aim was to give his pupils a thorough knowledge of the French and Latin languages—a foundation on which they might afterwards build for themselves. He had a singularly sweet disposition, and a very open mind. He was brought to know the Gospel by Robert Estienne, and in 1536 his name was inscribed, along with those of Courat and Clement Marot, on the list of the principal heretics in Paris. Calvin was not permitted to remain long under this esteemed teacher. The atmosphere was probably judged to be too liberal for one who was destined to study theology. He was transferred to the more celebrated College de Montaigu. Calvin was again fortunate in his principal teachers. He became the pupil of Noël Béda and of Pierre Tempête, who taught him the art of formal disputation.
Calvin had come to Paris in his fourteenth year, and left it when he was nineteen—the years when a lad becomes a man, and his character is definitely formed. If we are to judge by his own future references, no one had more formative influence over him than Mathurin Cordier—short as had been the period of their familiar intercourse. Calvin had shown a singularly acute mind, and proved himself to be a scholar who invariably surpassed his fellow students. He was always surrounded by attached friends—the three brothers de Montmor, the younger members of the famous family of Cop, and many others. These student friends were devoted to him all his life. Many of them settled with him at Geneva.
Calvin left the College de Montaigu in 1528. Sometime during the same year another celebrated pupil entered it. This was Ignatius Loyola. Whether the two great leaders attended College together, whether they ever met, it is impossible to say—the dates are not precise enough.
“Perhaps they crossed each other in some street of Mount Sainte-Geneviève: the young Frenchman of eighteen on horseback as usual, and the Spaniard of six and thirty on foot, his purse furnished with some pieces of gold he owed to charity, shoving before him an ass burdened with his books, and carrying in his pocket a manuscript, entitled Exercitia Spiritualia.”[101]
Calvin left Paris because his father had now resolved that his son should be a lawyer and not a theologian. Gerard Cauvin had quarrelled with the ecclesiastics of Noyon, and had even been excommunicated. He refused to render his accounts in two executry cases, and had remained obstinate. Why he was so, it is impossible to say. His children had no difficulty in arranging matters after his death. The quarrel ended the hopes of the father to provide well for his son in the Church, and he ordered him to quit Paris for the great law school at Orleans. It is by no means improbable that the father’s decision was very welcome to the son. Bèze tells us that Calvin had already got some idea of the true religion, had begun to study the Holy Scriptures, and to separate himself from the ceremonies of the Church;[102]—perhaps his friendship with Pierre Robert Olivétan, a relation, a native of Noyon, and the translator of the Bible into French, had brought this about. The young man went to Orleans in the early part of 1528 and remained there for a year, then went on to Bourges, in order to attend the lectures of the famous publicist, André Alciat, who was destined to be as great a reformer of the study of law as Calvin was of the study of theology. In Orleans with its Humanism, and in Bourges with its incipient Protestantism, Calvin was placed in a position favourable for the growth of ideas which had already taken root in his mind. At Bourges he studied Greek under Wolmar, a Lutheran in all but the name, and dedicated to him long afterwards his Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. He seems to have lived in the house of Wolmar; another inmate was Théodore de Bèze, the future leader of the Protestants of France, then a boy of twelve.
The death of his father (May 26th, 1531) left Calvin his own master. He had obeyed the paternal wishes when he studied for the Church in Paris; he had obediently transferred himself to the study of law; he now resolved to follow the bent of his own mind, and, dedicating himself to study, to become a man of letters. He returned to Paris and entered the College Fortet, meaning to attend the lectures of the Humanist professors whom Francis I., under the guidance of Budé and Cop, was attracting to his capital. These “royal lecturers” and their courses of instruction were looked on with great suspicion by the Sorbonne, and Calvin’s conduct in placing himself under their instruction showed that he had already emancipated himself from that strict devotion to the “superstitions of the Papacy” to which he tells us that he was obstinately attached in his boyhood. He soon became more than the pupil of Budé, Cop, and other Humanists. He was a friend, admitted within the family circle. He studied Greek with Pierre Danès and Hebrew under Vatable. In due time (April 1532), when barely twenty-three years of age, he published at his own expense his first book, a learned commentary on the two books of Seneca’s De Clementia.
The book is usually referred to as an example of precocious erudition. The author shows that he knew as minutely as extensively the whole round of classical literature accessible to his times. He quotes, and that aptly, from fifty-five separate Latin authors—from thirty-three separate works of Cicero, from all the works of Horace and Ovid, from five comedies of Terence, and from all the works of Virgil. He quotes from twenty-two separate Greek authors—from five or six of the principal writings of Aristotle, and from four of the writings of Plato and of Plutarch. Calvin does not quote Plautus, but his use of the phrase remoram facere makes it likely that he was well acquainted with that writer also.[103] The future theologian was also acquainted with many of the Fathers—with Augustine, Lactantius, Jerome, Synesius, and Cyprian. Erasmus had published an edition of Seneca, and had advised scholars to write commentaries, and young Calvin followed the advice of the Prince of Humanists. Did he imitate him in more? Did Calvin also disdain to use the New Learning merely to display scholarship, did he mean to put it to modern uses? Francis I. was busy with one of his sporadic persecutions of the Huguenots when the book was published, and learned conjectures have been made whether the two facts had any designed connection—An exhortation addressed to an emperor to exercise clemency, and a king engaging in persecuting his subjects. Two things seem to show that Calvin meant his book to be a protest against the persecution of the French Protestants. His preface is a daring attack on the abuses which were connected with the administration of justice in the public courts, and he says distinctly that he hopes the Commentary will be of service to the public.[104]
It seems evident from Calvin’s correspondence that he had joined the small band of Protestants in Paris, and that he was intimate with Gerard Roussel, the Evangelical preacher,[105] the friend of Marguerite of Navarre, of Lefèvre, of Farel, and a member of the “group of Meaux.” The question occurs, When did his conversion take place? This has been keenly debated;[106] but the arguments concern words more than facts, and arise from the various meanings attached to the word “conversion” rather than from the difficulty of determining the time. Calvin, who very rarely reveals the secrets of his own soul, tells in his preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, that God drew him from his obstinate attachment to the superstitions of the Papacy by a “sudden conversion,” and that this took place after he had devoted himself to the study of law in obedience to the wishes of his father. It does not appear to have been such a sudden and complete vision of divine graciousness as Luther received in the convent at Erfurt. But it was a beginning. He received then some taste of true piety (aliquo veræ pietatis gusto). He was abashed to find, he goes on to relate, that barely a year afterwards, those who had a desire to learn what pure doctrine was gradually ranged themselves around him to learn from him who knew so little (me novitium adhuc et tironem). This was perhaps at Orleans, but it may have been at Bourges. When he returned to Paris to betake himself to Humanist studies, he was a Protestant, convinced intellectually as well as drawn by the pleadings of the heart. He joined the little band who had gathered round Estienne de la Forge, who met secretly in the house of that pious merchant, and listened to the addresses of Gerard Roussel. He was frequently called upon to expound the Scriptures in the little society; and a tradition, which there is no reason to doubt, declares that he invariably concluded his discourse with the words, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”