The Geneva Academy and Church Polity

92 THE PLACE OF THE ACADEMY IN JOHN CALVIN'S POLITY by Charles Raynal On June 5. I559, the assembly which inaugurated the Academy of highest representation from the syndics and councils of Geneva, joined by ministers of the word, professors and regents of the Academy, and almost six hundred students. The founding of the College was the mafor achievement of the last years of John Calvin's career. That same summer he would write the preface to the last edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. No gift to the protestant churches other than Calvin's great theological work was of more significance or Iasting value than his Academy.

Presiding at the Assembly, Calvin climbed into the pulpit, an- nounced the institution and led in prayer. The secretary of the Council read "The Laws of the Genevan Academy't and "The Confession of Faith which the Scholars Will Have to Make and Subscribe." Then Theodore Beza, the school's first rector and Calvin's close associate and successor gave the address.

: Beza described the occasion: In the year of the Lord I559, and the fifth of June. his day, there appeared a cause of great joy for all men of Iearning and of faith.

(And whereas) heretofore, the city of Geneva, although God had filled it with his most precious gifts, was obliged to seek, not without disadvantage and difficulty: the instruction of its children in Ietters and disciplines from the cities and nations that she herself instructed from is the knowledge of true religion, God, in his goodness: has accorded this Republic that privilege which very few have enjoyed before her of having one and the same city as mother of its knowledge and its faith.

Williston Walker in his biography calls the Academy "the crown of Calvin's Genevan work" qnd the finai step toward the realization of a Its influence over the -centuries extended far Christian commonwealth.

beyond Geneva both for the students it trained and in the example that it held out. It becane the model for protestant education in the arts L'Academie de Calvin (1559-1798), (Geneva, 1900) p. I. Ibid.

Willfston Walker, John Calvfn, The Organizer of Reformed Protestantism (New York 1906), p. 357.

93 and sciences as well as the mother of reformed seminaries. It ranked first among the protestant schools for a century after Calvin's death. Its high place is continued today in the University of Geneva. To judge the place of the Genevan Academy in the polity of John Calvin it is useful to recall the reforuerts own humanist education and recount especially his knowledge of the general reform in education that tade possible his own contribution through the Academy. Second, we can find in the administration and constitution of the Academy itself a reflection of Calvin's own intentfons for the school, preserved in a remarkable document, nThe Laws of the Genevan Academy." Finally, Iooking at Calvin's legacy. we ought to ask about some implications for seminary and church-related higher education today. Two major influences in Calvin's life stimulated and shaped the reformer's ideas about education. The first was his own training by the very best humanist teaching in France. The second was his knowledge of the school founded by one of these humanist scholars, Jean Sttrm, in Strasbourg, under the leadership of Martin Bucer. John Calvin began his own education as the recipient of,several benefices in and around Noyons, his home in Picardy. France. His number of administrative posts in the city government and in ecclesiastical offices. He was ambitious for his sons and especially for John, whom he sent to Paris in l523, when he was fourteen years old. He entered the College de la. Marche: where he studied Latin under Mathurin Cordier, one of the innovators in humanist education. It was the beginning of a Iifelong friendship, and thirty-five years later: Calvin would rely on his former teacher in the organization of the Academy in Geneva.

In dedicating his Commentary on. the First.Epistle.tothe Thessalonians to Cordfer, Calvin sald: It.is fitting that you also should have a part in my labors, for it was under your guidance that I entered on a course of studies, and made progress at least to the extent of being of some benefit to the Church of God. When my father sent me as a boy to Paris I had done only the rudiments of Latin. For a short time however, you were an instructor sent to me by God to teach me the true method of learning, so that I might afterwards be a Iittle more proficient. You presided over the first class n the most estimable way. You saw, however, that Francois Wendel, Calvin, The Origins and Development of his Religious Thought (New York 1950), pp. 14-45.

94 pupils who had been trained ambitiously by other teachers produced mere show and nothing of worth, which meant that you had to train them all over again. In that year you came down to the fourth class, since you were tired of having this trouble. This, at any rate, was your fntention, but for me it was a singular kindness of God that I happened to have a propitious beginnfng to my studies.

Later when Calvin's own college for the training of young chiidren was established, the organization of the various classes would reflect just this same concern for Iearning and advancement by promotion through classes based on real performance.

Calvin's own early Catholicism was reinforced and in part shaped by his move for unknown reasons to the College de Montaigu. John Standonck had become principal of the College in l483, and'here applied the principles of the pietistic reform, the Devotio moderna. in the development of French humanism. This spirituality, represented in the Brothers af the Common Life, originated in the Netherlands under the leadership of Gerhard Groote (1340-84). Its diverse forms had in common a strong emphasis on Inward plety and a critical attitude toward scholastic theology which had been the vehicle of orthodox catholic theology through the University of Paris since the days of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). The movement had a general and formative impact on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through Francesco Petrarch (1304-74), Jean Gerson (1363-1429), Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) and Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1469-1536).

the church fathers, and heard the facuity struggle with the Lutheran "heresies." He was clearly impressed by the spirituality of the Devotio In the knowledge of God confirming the Word of God in the human heart. During 1528 Ignatius Loyola (ca. I49l-l556) also attended the College de Montaigu, but we have no documentation of an early meeting. between the founders of Reformed Protestantism and the Saciety of Jesus. We do know of Calvin's personal association with a number of the Catholic humanists, Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, Guillaume Cop. and Guillaume Bude.

Calvin received his Master of Arts by l529, when he was twenty years old. His father wished him to abandon theology and study Iaw at Orleans, a distinguished faculty anong whom was Pierre de I'Estoile, the John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, edited by David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, Michigan 1962), P. 33l.

cf. Lucien Joseph Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin (Atlanta 1974): pp. 97-135, et passim.

95 ablest jurist in France. Calvin acceded to his father's wishes. While he was a law student, on his own Calvin studied' Greek under Melchior Wolmar, a Lutheran from Rothweil. He met a number of other Catholic humanists, and then went to Bourges to study under the Italian furist, Andrea Alciati. Marguerite d'Angouleme sponsored these bright young scholars and, by her own sympathy for protestant thought, made the University of Bourges, founded in 1463, into a center of relative intellectual and religlous freedom.

The death of his father called Calvfn back to Noyon. Afterward in 153l, he went to Paris to pursue the "new learning" in a college founded by Francis I. Guillaume Bude asked Erasmus to direct this new institu- tion, but the old scholar declined for reasons of health. However, the center thrived and became the College de France. Calvin studied Greek under Pierre Danes and Hebrew under Francois Vatable. These were two of the notable "king's readers" who led this form of higher learning outside the realm of the old University.

Meanwhile Calvin began work on his Commentary.on Seneca's "De Clementia" which he published In l534 at the age of twenty three. with and used its methods of exegesis and exposition on a very high level. The Christian humanists, including Erasmus and Ulrich Zwingli, found in stoicism an intellectual basis for natural law which they considered to be compatible with Christian ethics. However, the method of Calvin's Commentary was more important than the substance of fts concluslons in the iong term of his work. Following the techniques of humanistic inquiry, he begins with philological explanation, makes appeals to grammar and logic, notices rhetorical devices and parallels with other ancient writers as well as within Seneca himself. It was this way of studying an ancient text that Calvin refined, applied to the Scriptures: and made into the standard way of interpreting the Bible. The main aspects of Calvin's education from 1523 to l532 show that both by his native ability and by the quality of his Instruction he gained a remarkable preparation as a leader of the church. The humanist renewal of education was a real new departure. Humanism is best understood as an educational reform that shaped and was shaped by the cultural revolution that historians have called the Renaissance. As a movement of reform, Renaissance humanism offered an alternative to the method and substance of medieval university education.

In the Middle Ages a university was a corporation of scholars who gathered together in faculties to teach the varfous disciplines: Ford Lewis Battles and Andre Malan Hugo, Calvin's Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia (Leiden l969).

william J. Bouwsma, "The Culture of Renaissance Humanism," American Historical Association Pamphlets (washington, D.C.: l973), pp. 7-8. Cf. Borgeaud, op. cit., pp. 21-28.

96 Very few universities assembled theology, law, medicine, and the arts.

largest because it prepared young boys for the higher professional knowledge into the seven liberal arts.

The first division, called the trivium, was concerned with the use of language and included grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The second division, the guadrivium, included the mathematical arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Of particular significance for John Calvin's own academic preparation, as well as for the Academy he founded in Genevas was the Toward the end of the twelfth changing emphasis within the trivium.

century, the discovery of the writings of Aristotle revolutionized the University of Paris and set the pattern for scholasticism. The Aristotelian emphasis on a highly intellectual conception of truth placed a premium on the study of loglc, de-emphasized grammar and considered rhetoric suspect.

The curricular effect of scholastism was to consider grammar merely a preparatory discipline for children and to reduce the importance of Iiterary studies, viewing rhetoric and the art of communcation "at best as merely decorative at its worst likely to appeal to the passlons So the two main divisions of the trivium, grammar and rhetoric: became trivial. As an educational reform, humanism restored grammar and rhetoric to the mainstream. In northern Europe Erasmus of Rotterdam brought From the standpoint of piety Erasmus humanism to its highest level.

was influenced by the warm, personal Devotio moderna expressed in The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. From the standpoint of scholarship, Erasmus emulated the Italian humanists such as the textual critic,orenzo Valla (1405-l457), who wished to revive classical Erasmus devoted himself to making available the texts of Latin.

classical antiquity, including the Greek New Testament: which he also translated into Latin, and editions of the Greek and Latin church fathers. His emphasis in education was not accepted at the universities in France where scholasticism was in the ascendancy: and therefore new and Hebrew.

Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. Vo1 1 (London, 1936), pp. 4-8.

10.

Ibid.: 1 1 Bouwsma, op. cit., Pp. 36f.

12.

Ibid., p. 25.

13.

" Bulletin de la Societe de 1'Histoire de Calvinisme et les Universités.

Protestantisme fransais, volume 126 (1980), 25-51.

97 Although English universities are often considered the home of colleges, Paris is the provenance of the collegiate system. Colleges were at first hospicia where arts students came to live at about fourteen years of age. The earliest of these dated from the twelfth century. The College de la Marche was founded in l363 by Maitre Jean de la Marche and the College de Montaigu in l3i4 by Giles Aicelin, the archibishop of Rouen.The medieval college was originally a place of lodging for poor scholars whose families could not afford university training in the city. The master lived there with the scholars but the instruction he might give was subordinate to the public schools in the University.

14 Guillaume Some colleges in France became centers of humanism. Bude (1468-1544) obtained from King Francis I the estab1ishment of "king's readers" (lecteurs du roi) who taught fn houses in Paris which received scholars sent from a given diocese. Mathurin Cordier introduced the new emphasis on grammar and rhetoric into the College de la Marche which Calvfn entered in l523. Calvin found friends among the humanist intellectuals and it was natural that he turn to them when he set out to found his own college to prepare young men for the ministry. public service, and later, law and medicine.

Aside from his own early education, the second major influence on Calvin's founding of the Genevan Academy was the example of the one in Strasbourg established by Martin Bucer and Jean Sturm. Calvin was expelled from Geneva in ls38 after the failure of his first efforts to establish a reformed discipline through a church consistory -independent of the civil councils. with the beginning of his second term in Geneva in I54l, the General Council adopted his "Ecclesiastical Ordinances"t which gave the church of Geneva the authority aver its own discipline. independent of the civil goverument. The "ordinances" provided for four offices in church organization: ministers, teachers, elders, and deacons.

Calvin describes the doctors or teachers as 'the order of the and New Testament, are joined with the ministers in the government of the church. This polity of governance grew in part out of his own evolving role in the Genevan church. He was called originally as "Reader in Holy Scripture to the Church in Geneva." He was a professor before he was a preacher. Of course his work soon included preaching and a host of administrative tasks.

14.

Borgeaud, op. cit., Pp. 22f.

98 Of the kind of teaching he envisioned, Calvin says: But because it is only possible to profit from such lectures if first one is instructed in the languages and humanities, and also because it is necessary to raise offspring for.time to come, in order not to leave the church deserted for our children, a college should be instituted for instructing children to prepare them fgr the ministry as well as for civil government.

The directive in the "Ecclesiastical Ordinances't also requires a place where the courses may be held and for accommodating the children. and a "man learned and expert in arranging both the house and the He would direct the lecturers in Ianguages and dialectic. Ecciesiastical discipline would govern the school and there would be a separate school for girls. While Calvin was the pastor of the church of the French refugees in Sturm was founding even when he arrived. Likewise Calvin was also familiar with the Universite des arts et college de Nimes, founded by Therefore just Claude Baduel in I540, also based on the plan of Sturm. as Calvin was consolidating his conceptfon of reformed worship..continuing his work on the Institutes, and writing his commentaries on the Scriptures, he also observed'the organization of reformed schools based on humanistlc ideas of education.

In 1556, fifteen years after he had left strasbourg for Geneva, was in different hands, strictly Lutheran in character, and he was prevented from preaching. However, he was given ovations in the classes of Sturm and of Hotman, a professor of law, and the professors offered their former colleague a banquet. He had been present at the birth of.service in the reformed churches. A school, the Collége de Rive, had earlier been established under the leadership of Sebastion Castellions but he was dismissed because of his heterodox views and his open defiance of Calvin and criticism of the Genevan pastors. The school languished, and all the while Calvin nurtured the hope of establishing his own academy. For two years after Calvin's visit to Strasbourg, the Council of Geneva was preoccupied with renewing former agreements with Bern which were strained, but at Iast on January 17, 1558, there appears notice in the Register of the Council "that the Counsellors charged with the fortresses and others [would] yisit the place which appears to the hest on which to build a college.

Considerations of beauty and of health were given to the selection of an open site on a hill In the quarter of the Rive and the Lake.

15 John Calvin, Theological Treatises (Philadelphia i954), p. 63. 16.

Borgeaud, op. clt.+ P. 34.

99 The first building was completed in l559 and the entire complex by 1562. The college consisted of classrooms. a great hall, a courtyard planted with elms and linden trees. The buildings have been restored and are today the place of a distinguished Iycée. It was built with some public funds but the lion's.share came through donations, large and small, given on the conviction that the destiny of the church and of Geneva were linked to that of the school. During the first sixty years of fts existence, the college received more than five hundred legaciles and gifts.

A turn of events, happy for the Genevan academy, gave the established by Pierre Viret in 1537 and formed into a college by Mathurin Cordier in l545. Berne, which controlled Lausanne: refused to give the church the Independence of government that Calvin's polity required, and the faculty of the college resigned. Theodore Beza, Calvin's friend and colleague, came first. He assisted Calvin in his and Aristotle, in addition to the New Testament. Temporarily he held the chair in Greek.

at one time along with a good number of students. 'Jean Haller, first pastor at Berne, accused Calvin of planning the event in advance, but lt was not so. On the assumption that he would have to build his own faculty before the arrival of Beza, Calvin had corresponded with several well known scholars in France to ask them to serve. The administration of the school was carried out in accordance with "The Laws of the Genevan Academy't which were probably written by Calvin himself.

The authority of the church in the governance of the school and in the substance of its teaching was affirmed in several important ways consistent with Calvin's ideas in polity which held that church discipline was not to be surrendered to civil councils. First, students at the higher level were required to subscribe to a 'Confession of Faith that the Scholars will have to make and subscribe in the hands of the Rector." Second, the classes themselves at all levels in the Academy were conducted in an atmosphere of worship and education in the fundamentals of the faith. Third, faculty and administrative then presented the names to the Council, who' gave the office their authority under civil law. The Confession began with this paragraph: I protest an intention to follow and to hold the doctrine of faith as it is contained in the Catechism of this church, and to submit myself to the discipline which fs established theren, and to belong or consent to no sects which trouble the peace and unmlon,that God has put here according to his Word.

Dora Scheuner (Munich l952), p. 374. My translation.

100.

The word 'protest' is used in the sense of 'make a solemn declaration."

The students were protestants. in that fundamental sense of the word. Therefore the first ones to enroll vowed to be no part of Catholicism. In addition the protestation meant taking a stand agalnst the anabaptists and the other sectarian groups with which Calvin had struggled. Then in the twenty articles that followed in the Confession, the students in higher studies committed themselves to the orthodox church traditions as defined at Nicea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, along with the reformed understanding of justification: the sufficiency of Scripture, the necessity of the ministry, the sacraments, and the divine authorization for the orders of civil soclety.

Gradually students were accepted in the Pubiic School who did not sign the Confession, and in l576, it was required only of professors and regents. It was set aside so "Lutherans and papists" could "come and consciences of students before they understood what. they were signing. Finally the Confession for students was removed because the Acadeny Confession of Augsburg on reforuned students.

The Academy or College, as it was alternatively called, was 18 modeled on the academic reform already described. It separated and institution. The first major division was called the Private School (Schola privata); the second, the Public School (Schola publica). The seventh class the child of eight or nine learned to read and write in French and Latin. In the fourth he began Greek. In the third he read Cicero, virgil, and Caesar; in the second, Homer, Xenophon, and Polybius. In the first class the student perfected style and expression, studying the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes with a view toward mastering the art of communication. within the classes the scholars were divided into groups of ten "without regard to age or house"t (social standing) but only "according as each one couid profit." The first student of the group acted as a monitor. The regents the teachers in the Private School, reported to a principal, who was in turn. subordinate to the rector of the whole school.

Each April the classes were given a topic in French upon which they were to write an essay. Then they were to translate ft into Latin. The work was done without reference to a book. The examlnations were given by other than their own regents and graded by professors in the Public in each class on the first of May. Then the academic year began again for the full twelve months, except for three weeks vacation at the time of the grape harvest. In summer the classes began at six a.m. and in taken after an hour and a half of early morning instruction, for half an 18.

Ibid.: Pp. 364-374. An English translatlon of the Laws of the Genevan Academy is given by W. Stanford Reid, "Calvin and the Founding of the Academy of Geneva," Westminster Theological Journal, l955, pp. 22-33.

101 hour, "without noise and with prayers."

Dinner was taken at home before eleven. Immediately after they returned and practiced singing psalms until noon, then having lessons untii one. On Wednesdays there was a sermon in the morning, but free time In the afternoon. On Sundays there were two sermons and catechism. Moral discipline was administered by a reproof and admonishing; it is stressed that the regents and the principal should set good personal examples, be of "kindly spfrit and not at all rude." There is no explicit provision for corporal punishment or expulsion.

In contrast to the carefully structured Private School, the Public School had no graded classes. Higher studies began for students of about sixteen years: based on preparatfon in the college. Students were required to subscribe with the rector and sign the schoiars' "Confession of Faith." Then they attended lectures fn arts and theology. There were twenty-seven hours of lectures each week: three in theology, three in Interpreting the Old Testament; five in Hebrew grammar; three fn moral philosophy (Aristotle, Plato, or Plutarch, or some Christian philosopher); five in Greek poetry, history or orations; three hours in physics or mathematics, five hours in dialectics and rhetoric. Each day Saturday afternoons practice sermons were given and critiqued by the minister in charge; monthly theological themes were written and defended. Sundays were spent hearing sermons. Aside from these From the very beginning the Academy was full of students. The first year there were 280 in the seventh class alone, and the Public School enrolled l62 students the first three years. Most of them came protestant communities applied to Geneva for pastors and teachers. Calvin wanted to meet the need and spread the influence of his reform far and wide. In addition Calvin wanted to add faculties of law and medicine, but this task was left to be achieved by Beza after Calvin died in 1564.

Of the many important protestant leaders, who came through Geneva and attended the Academy were Olevianus de Treves, author of the Heidelburg Catechism and professor at Heidelburg. Florent Chrestian, preceptor of Henry IV; and Thomas Bodley, the founder of the famous Iibrary at the University of Oxford. When Calvin died, five years after the Academy was founded, there were 1200 pupils in the Private School and 300 studeuts in the Public School.: In that time the total population of Geneva was about 12,0o0.

Beza said of the sltuation on May 4, i564: to me that God,' as he has done so far, wlshes to Increase the assembly of his own, before the eyes of Satan and in.spite of the rest of the world plotting against us.

19.

Borgeaud, op. cit.. P. 63.

102 Conclusion By any standards of human excellence the Academy of Calvin was a remarkable achievement. It brought into the protestant consciousness the best innovations of humanistic scholarship. It trained: generations of reformed leadership. It was the model for all the Huguenot seminaries and for protestant education at Heidelberg. St. protestant education at the college and 'seminary Ievel. For many obvious and fundamental reasons the precise forms of academic training and communal discipline in Calvin's academy would not be possible or appropriate today. The Renaissance which was beginning at the time in northern Europe has come. The counter-Reformation. Rationalism, and the Enlightenment have left their marks. The scientific, industrial, and technological revolutions have transformed the way we live and think. Because we live in a seculars pluralistic, highly mobile culture, to suggest that there are or'ought to be complete correlations between modern pedagogy and that of the reformation would be unwise. The same could be said of the administration of Calvin's academy, both in its ties to the civii government and in its sixteenth century conception of personal discipline, piety, and morality. The attempt to duplicate today what Calvin accomplished in education in mid-sixteenth century Switzerland might be considered tantamount: to the sectarianism Calvin himself proscribed.

However the establishment and pedagogy of Calvin's academy have Geneva has left us.

One obvious gift Calvin's Academy offers is for the seminary. devoted to the training of ministers of the church. Alexander Ganoczy ascertaining directly the kind of instruction given. The catalogue of books confirms the practice of the intentions of "The Laws of the.the discipline of theology with the practice of the pastoral ministry. Before the Council of Trent there was a nearly complete divorce between university theological teaching and the preparation of the priests for the parishes. On one hand the faculties of theology, which were powerfully deveioped during the Middle Ages, produced an elite of i"doctors and "masters" as well as rival"scholars." On the other hand there were the numbers of clerics of poor learning and culture who served the good people of the churches thelr weekly ration of sacramental and other rites. This decadent situation was satfred by Erasmus. Rabelais, Sebastian Brant and Heinrich Bebel, among others. In the light of today's secularization of universfty religious studies and the pressures toward professional technique in the ministry. the task of seminary education in the reformed tradition is 20 Alexandre Ganoczy: La Bibliothegue de l'Academie de Calvin (Geneva 1969),Pp. 134-136.

10.3 to bring together the best achievements of theological learning with the personal intention to serve in building up the worship and work of local congregations. Calvin gave the teaching of Bible and theology the ascendancy over the disciplines of the monastic life and the sacramentally and liturgically orlented clergy. and the authoritarian bureaucracy of the established church. Reformed pastors reflected in the conduct of their ministry the major concerns of the education in Calvin's academy, namely the explication of the Bible and the theology of the church and the care for the life of faith and obedience. The academy had a rigorous academic discipline. The young people who came there, whether destined for the pastoral ministry or the lay service of the community, received a broad hunanist education: emphasizing the use of language and effective communication in writing to the ill-informed and it was the center of the curriculum at the higher Ievel. But this emphasis was balanced with the broad witness of theologians. The academy was throughout open to the Greco-Roman philosophers and moralists.

If it is not possible today in undergraduate education to rely so heavily on classical languages and literature, nonetheless we can say that both the church and society need men and women who study the liberal arts and can think about human issues with learning and communicate effectively. Even computers cannot communicate unless those who use them have considerable gifts of Ianguage and culture. The well-being of the church is at stake in the intellectual formation of young people in preparation both for church vocatlons and service as lay people In the public realm. The church-related college where the consciousness of the church, its best intellectual heritage, its worship: and its ethics are cultivated and loved is indispensable for the future well-being of the church and for keeping the possfbility of Christian vocation strong in a secular society. The development of the Academy in Geneva tells an important part of.the story of the reformed churches. In its establishment as an institution and through the kind of education it inculcated we have received a great gift. Now we have the task of renewing our church and our personal vocation as Christdan people by a comparable commitment to faith and learning.