The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature From Student to Pastor-Educator: John Calvin’s Educational Career

In 1509, John Calvin was born to Girard Cauvin and Jeanne Le Franc in Noyon, France. 3 Girard understood the ability that schooling gave an individual to increase their social standing, and thus encouraged his son to have a thorough education. As a young boy, Calvin received a meaningful early education in Latin at the Collége de Cappettes due to the patronage of the aristocratic de Hangest family.4 Likely in 1523, Calvin then moved to Paris to study at the Collége de la Marche where he came under the tutelage of the influential humanist, Marthurin Cordier. After his time at the Collége de la Marche, Calvin studied at the College de Montaigu of the University of Paris due to his father’s expectation that Calvin would eventually enter the ecclesiastical profession. 5 There, it is highly likely that Calvin was immersed in the liberal arts— the trivium and the quadrivium. From the time he was a young child and throughout his adolescence, it was the study of the liberal arts that characterized Calvin’s education. After the University of Paris, John Calvin was sent to the University of Orleans by his father, who had instead determined that Calvin was to become a lawyer. 6 There, Calvin earned a degree in law. In addition, he studied at and was licensed by the University of Bourges to practice in the legal profession. Once Calvin’s father died in 1531, Calvin chose to return to his studies in the humanities at the University of Paris.7 In the following year, Calvin published a commentary of the Roman philosopher Seneca’s De Clementia . At the same time, during the early 1530’s, Calvin was becoming disillusioned with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. 8 By 1534, Calvin had left the Roman church altogether, moved to Switzerland, and began writing the Institutes of the Christian Religion in which Calvin sought to provide a clear exposition of the Protestant faith.

3 Jacob Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet: A Symposium , (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1959), 197.

4 Bruce Gordon, Calvin , (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 5.

5 Ibid., 6.

6 Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 198–199.

In 1536, Calvin began to reside in the city of Geneva where he preached and became an influential voice in the ecclesiastical and political institutions there.9 Two years later, the city council of Geneva forced Calvin to leave. John Calvin then moved to Strasbourg for three years due to an invitation from Martin Bucer, a prominent Protestant reformer.10 It was in Strasbourg that Calvin came into contact with the educational leader, John Sturm. In his article, Calvin and the Founding of the Academy of Geneva , W. Stanford Reid identifies that Sturm’s educational system was built off of the motto “Wise and Eloquent Piety.”11 Sturm was a Christian humanist, and his vision for education heavily focused on ancient writings as well as the liberal arts. A model which would prove to be influential to Calvin’s thought, Sturm’s institution was to be

7 Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 198–199.

8 Ibid.

9 Gordon, Calvin , 70–77.

10 Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 202

11 The Latin motto was “sapiens atque eloquens pietas.” W. Stanford Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,” Westminster Theological Journal 18, no. 1 (November 1995): 5.