Calvin’s biographer, Dr Emile Doumergue, calls 1559 ‘the great year’. True, it was the year of the first auto-da-fé in Valladolid, in which Philip of Spain showed his mad rage against the Protestants. But it was the year of the publication of Calvin’s final and definitive edition of the Institutes, the year of the founding of the Academy of Geneva, the year of the first National Synod of France, which met under Calvin’s inspiration. At this very time Geneva was menaced from all sides, and magistrates, ministers, nobles, and people toiled at the ramparts. For the Reformer himself it was a year of great bodily sickness, yet of ceaseless toil.

The Reformed cause in France⤒🔗

From Calvin’s return to Geneva in 1541 he sought with all his heart to organise the Reformed believers not only in that city but also in France. The years immediately preceding the Synod of Paris in 1559 were years of marvellous growth. Beza, referring to the French king in 1556, could say, ‘the tyrant will be obliged to destroy entire towns or else yield some place to the truth.’ A year later Beza expressed to Calvin his great delight at the marvellous extension of Christ’s kingdom in France, though he mourned the scarcity of pastors.

In 1557 an infuriated mob set upon a peaceful assembly of Prot­estants in Paris and seized all they could lay hands on. Beza says that brigands and robbers were taken out of the most noisome dungeons to make way for these prisoners – among them some noble ladies who were to suffer at the stake. Calvin wrote to them in their prison: ‘True it is that the trial is great and hard to bear ... but it is not said without reason that God will try our faith as gold is tried in the furnace, and if he sometimes permits the blood of his servants to be shed, nevertheless he accounts their tears precious.’

The lot of a pastor in France in those days was no easy one. Yet there were many who were willing to venture into the lion’s mouth. ‘It is incredible’, writes Calvin, ‘with what ardour our friends devote themselves to the spread of the gospel. As greedily as men before the Pope solicit for benefices, do they ask for employment in the churches beneath the cross. They besiege my door to obtain a portion of the field to cultivate. Never had monarch courtiers more eager than mine ... Sometimes I seek to restrain them. I show to them the atrocious edict which orders the destruction of every house in which divine-service shall have been celebrated. I remind them that in more than twenty towns the faithful have been massacred by the populace. But nothing can stop them.’

Jean Macard, one of the pastors of Geneva, offered to go to Paris. He was much loved by Calvin, but without any hesitation his offer to go into ‘that bloody whirlpool’ was accepted. Macard boldly visited the prisoners and fearlessly faced their judges. These disciples of Calvin were cast in an heroic mould.

The year 1559 opened with the signing of the Treaty of Cateau-Cam­bresis, in which France and Spain made peace that they might make war on what they called ‘heresy’. The pastor of Paris, Morel, wrote to Calvin: ‘The fury of our adversaries grows from day to day ... Some cavalry brigades have been sent against the believers in Normandy who are falsely accused of the crime of treason. The Protestants of Saint-LÔ are threatened with fire and sword. I know not if you have learned of the flight of the believers of Meaux; the city has been emptied by the terror and is no more than a desert.’

Eight days after this letter – on 26 May 1559 – the first National Synod sat in Paris, ‘the heroic Synod’. A preliminary Assembly had been held at Poitiers towards the close of 1558, at which it had been decided that all the churches of France should draw up a Confession of Faith and a code of ecclesiastical discipline. They decided also to meet in the most dangerous of all places, in order to be, by the very boldness of the act, in the greater safety. This notable assembly met for four days under the very shadow of the gallows and the stake. Their secret was kept, and their Confession was drawn up and signed before the people. Then each went to his business – and perhaps to prison and martyrdom. Calvin, on their request, had sent thirty-five Articles of Faith and these they adopted, with some slight alterations. So it was that they finished their work so soon. It has been said – mistakenly – that Calvin did not approve of this Synod. What he advised against was the publication of the Confession. He felt that this would he needlessly provocative. This Confession was reprinted in 1952 in La Revue Réformée.

The Judgments of God←⤒🔗

Henry II breathed out threatening and slaughter. He vowed to ex­tirpate ‘heresy’ in his realm and send the Protestants to prison, to tor­ture and to death. Some of high rank did suffer; but in the midst of his threats he received a wound in the eye at a joust from the lance of Montgomery and in a few days the king was dead. When Calvin heard of the wound he said: ‘The judgments of God are a great deep: but sometimes they appear clearer than the sun.’

His son, Francis II, was only sixteen when he began to reign. He was incapable of governing, and Francis, Duke of Guise, and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, took the reins of power. They renewed the edicts against the Protestants and sought to enforce them with rigour. The Protestants had a religious leader without peer in Calvin, but on the political side they looked to the two royal Princes, the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, to take their rightful place in the government and resist the Guises who were strangers and usurpers. But the Guises were able and unscrupulous, while the King of Navarre was a weakling of loose morals. Calvin sought to lead the King of Navarre in a right course; his letters to him are models of tact and faithfulness.

Then came the Conspiracy of Amboise, a plot to seize the young king and imprison the Guises. It was badly conceived and deplorably executed. Calvin disapproved of it entirely from the first, but his remon­strances were in vain. The result was to place the Guises more securely in the saddle. Many prisoners were taken by the Duke of Guise, and they went through long tortures with the young king and his brother at times looking on. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde were invited to Orleans to meet the king. It was venturing into the lion’s mouth. The Guises seized both of them and Conde was condemned to die. He was to be executed on 10 December 1560, but on 16 November Francis II fell ill, and on 5 December he died. ‘He who pierced the eye of the father, had struck the ear of the son’, said Calvin. He was refer­ring to the fact that it was with an ear-infection that the fatal illness of Francis II set in.

Charles IX, another son of Henry II, now came to the throne at the age of ten. His mother, Catherine de Medici, now took the reins of power. The King of Navarre might have done so but for his coward­ice and folly. Admiral Coligny asked Catherine to give liberty for the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, but thanks to the intrigues of the Cardinal of Lorraine the Edict of July 1561 was issued, forbidding all Protestant assemblies and public gatherings. Shortly after this, a letter from Charles IX to the magistrates of Geneva complained of the ministers sent from that city into his king­dom, whom he accused of inciting his people to sedition. The reply, composed by Calvin, admitted the sending of the ministers – was it not the command of Christ that the Word be preached? – but denied that they were responsible for the troubles in France.

Beza and the Conference at Poissy←⤒🔗

Catherine sought to establish an agreement between the two parties in the kingdom. So a Conference was arranged at Poissy. Calvin was willing to go, but his enemies declared beforehand that they could not endure his eye or his voice. The King of Navarre wrote to Beza assuring him that he (Beza) would be acceptable to the king and Catherine and the Council. So Beza came to Paris on 22 August 1561. Almost daily he wrote to Calvin. He preached before the King of Navarre, Conde, and Coligny. On 9 September 1561, the great day of the Conference of Poissy came. The Chancellor, L’Hôpital, opened the session with a speech. The Protestant representatives had been left behind a barrier, almost like an accused party. Beza was their spokesman. In letters to Calvin he had spoken of himself as crushed beneath a load of responsi­bility, and appealed to him that though absent he might govern him like an infant by his counsels. Now however, he advances, equipped with the Spirit’s might for the hour. First, he and his colleagues fell on their knees – to the surprise of those present – and recited the confession of sins. Beza went on to pray further, and finished with the Lord’s Prayer. He addressed the audience with such noble eloquence and skill that he came off indisputably the victor. His implacable foe, the Cardinal of Lorraine, said, ‘Would he had been dumb or we had been deaf!’ The Conference came to nothing, but it did make the cause of the French Protestants known and clear.

Massacre at Vassy and More Persecution←⤒🔗

The Edict of January 1562 permitted the Protestants to meet outside the towns and without arms. The number of Protestants was growing rapidly, but their enemies, led by the Guises, were determined to crush them. In spite of the terms of the Edict, the Duke of Guise and his men – on 1 March 1562 – perpetrated the dreadful massacre of Vassy. They butchered a company of Protestants met for public worship, kill­ing 60 and wounding 200. The Duke sought to use guile and hypocrisy to clear himself; but unfortunately for him a letter, written by him a day before the massacre, was discovered by a singular providence. In it he ordered his lieutenant in Dauphiny to hang the Reformed preach­ers. The next day he himself did what he ordered. There is no doubt who was responsible for the strife which followed – it was the Duke of Guise.

Beza and one of the Protestant noblemen went to the French court to protest to the queen. At this interview the King of Navarre took his stand definitely against the Protestants – on whose side he had at a time professed to be – and espoused the cause of the Guises. It was on this occasion that Beza told him: ‘It is the part of the Church of Christ, for which I speak, to receive blows and not to give them; but please remem­ber that it has been the anvil which has worn out many hammers.’

Persecution of the Protestants broke out in many quarters, and they flew to arms in their defence. Calvin had always urged restraint, but they could no longer be restrained. So came the first of the Wars of Religion in France. In the battle of Dreux the Protestants suffered a defeat and Conde was taken prisoner. Then at the siege of Orleans Guise was killed by the hand of an assassin. Thereafter Catherine persuaded Conde to sign the Peace of Amboise. By it the Protestants were permitted to live at liberty in their own homes, but not to meet for public worship. Calvin and Coligny and other leaders bitterly regretted the enormous concessions made by Conde. The truth is that though Conde was not so worthless or so base as the King of Navarre, he was far from being of the calibre of Coligny. He had taken an oath to make no commitments without consulting his associates; but he broke his pledged word. Calvin wrote courteously but not hiding from him that the terms he had made did not satisfy the Protestants and that they would retard the progress of the Reformed cause in France. Calvin was perfectly right. It was the first major blow to the rapidly growing movement. Before the next stage in the struggle Calvin had passed from the scene.

Doumergue has a chapter of forty pages on the rise of the Protes­tant churches in France from 1559 to 1564. The growth was marvel­lous. One has only to glance cursorily through the pages to see that the organising hand was that of Calvin. No one did anything without consulting him. No pastor was placed, displaced, or replaced without his advice. All paid to him the extraordinary deference of devoted disci­ples to a revered leader. At this time Protestantism in France reached its zenith. There were over 2,000 churches with perhaps over two million adherents. It was reckoned by some authorities that at least one-third of the land was under the influence of the gospel.