Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER II THE ECONOMY OF EUROPE 1559–1609
- CHAPTER III THE PAPACY, CATHOLIC REFORM, AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
- CHAPTER IV PROTESTANTISM AND CONFESSIONAL STRIFE
- 1 LUTHERANISM AFTER LUTHER
- 2 THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF CALVINISM
- CHAPTER V SOCIAL STRUCTURE, OFFICE-HOLDING AND POLITICS, CHIEFLY IN WESTERN EUROPE
- CHAPTER VI INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
- CHAPTER VII ARMIES, NAVIES AND THE ART OF WAR
- CHAPTER VIII THE BRITISH QUESTION 1559–69
- CHAPTER IX WESTERN EUROPE AND THE POWER OF SPAIN
- CHAPTER X THE AUSTRIAN HABSBURGS AND THE EMPIRE
- CHAPTER XI THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 1566–1617
- CHAPTER XII POLAND AND LITHUANIA
- CHAPTER XIII SWEDEN AND THE BALTIC
- CHAPTER XIV EDUCATION AND LEARNING
- CHAPTER XV SCIENCE
- CHAPTER XVI POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TOLERATION
- CHAPTER XVII COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RIVALRIES OUTSIDE EUROPE
- References
2 - THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF CALVINISM
from CHAPTER IV - PROTESTANTISM AND CONFESSIONAL STRIFE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER II THE ECONOMY OF EUROPE 1559–1609
- CHAPTER III THE PAPACY, CATHOLIC REFORM, AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
- CHAPTER IV PROTESTANTISM AND CONFESSIONAL STRIFE
- 1 LUTHERANISM AFTER LUTHER
- 2 THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF CALVINISM
- CHAPTER V SOCIAL STRUCTURE, OFFICE-HOLDING AND POLITICS, CHIEFLY IN WESTERN EUROPE
- CHAPTER VI INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
- CHAPTER VII ARMIES, NAVIES AND THE ART OF WAR
- CHAPTER VIII THE BRITISH QUESTION 1559–69
- CHAPTER IX WESTERN EUROPE AND THE POWER OF SPAIN
- CHAPTER X THE AUSTRIAN HABSBURGS AND THE EMPIRE
- CHAPTER XI THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 1566–1617
- CHAPTER XII POLAND AND LITHUANIA
- CHAPTER XIII SWEDEN AND THE BALTIC
- CHAPTER XIV EDUCATION AND LEARNING
- CHAPTER XV SCIENCE
- CHAPTER XVI POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TOLERATION
- CHAPTER XVII COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RIVALRIES OUTSIDE EUROPE
- References
Summary
A recent historian, Alain Dufour, has written of ‘The Myth of Geneva’, by which he means the idea held by Calvinists of Geneva as the Holy City: the mirror and model of true religion and true piety, as the Englishman, William Whittingham, described it; ‘the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles’, in the famous phrase of John Knox, the Scot. Certainly it was in this sense a myth which inspired Calvinists everywhere. To them Geneva was the Protestant Rome, and indeed it meant more to them in one sense than Rome did to Catholics, since, however firmly he might believe in the aura of the see of Peter, the candid Catholic had to admit the scandals of Rome as a city even after the Catholic Reformation had taken effect, whereas Geneva claimed, with some justification, that it presented a model of morality and piety as well as of pure doctrine. Nevertheless, as Dufour points out, there was also a counter-myth of Geneva as the throne of error and narrow heartless discipline which influenced Catholics and also those Protestants who were disgusted by the burning of Servetus in 1553, resented the restriction of evangelical freedom by the Genevan discipline, or thought of the lakeside city as the home of sedition where doctrines dangerous to civil obedience were taught.
There was a core of solid fact behind the myth. For Geneva was a religious centre to a degree which Luther's Wittenberg and Zwingli's and Bullinger's Zurich never became, influential as they were. Not only was Geneva the home of a systematic Protestant theology embodied in Calvin's Institutes, and of a church organisation and discipline increasingly thought of as what Calvin claimed them to be, the pattern set out in the New Testament and the primitive church.
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- The New Cambridge Modern History , pp. 89 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1968