Calvin. History and Reception of a Reformation Week 1. Calvin's Life Sequence 8. Training and Education in Calvin's Reformation Welcome to this sequence, which will focus on "educating the people of God," and in particular on Calvin's College and Academy. In the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541, alongside the order of pastors, the order of deacons and the order of elders, Calvin created the
order of doctors, or teachers. He sometimes referred to it using another, more general name: the order of schools. The 1541 Ordinances read as follows: "The faithful must be educated in sound doctrine to ensure that the purity of the Gospel be not corrupted, either by ignorance or wrong opinion." A little further in the Ordinances, Calvin specified his vision: "But since such lessons [this refers to theology] can be of no benefit unless one has first been educated in languages and human sciences, and also because seeds will have to
be planted for the future, so as not to hand down to our children a barren Church,
a College shall be established to educate them and prepare them for both the ministry
and civil government." By "establish a College," Calvin is referring to the actual construction of a college. The College's construction would not begin until 1559; it was completed three years later, in 1562. Calvin was therefore able to see the completed College before his death (1564). This sequence is being filmed inside the College itself. As you can see, it is currently undergoing renovation. The frame and the roof are both being redone, so I'm speaking to you today from a bustling construction site. College, Academy... the terminology is somewhat fluid. In Latin, it is called "Leges Academiae Genevensis" -- the laws of the academy. But when the 1559 text was translated into French, the school was referred to as "L'ordre du Collège" -- the order of the College. In fact, the institution consisted of two "departments," so to speak. The first was the "Scola Privata," an elementary school for boys and adolescents who, over the course of seven years, were educated in French, Latin, Greek, dialectic, rhetoric, etc. The second department was the "Scola Publica" -- the Academy proper -- it is the ancestor of what is today the University of Geneva. At its beginnings, the "Scola Publica" had a total of five professors: two theology professors, a professor of Greek, a professor of Hebrew,
and a professor of arts. Here, "arts" has nothing to do with anything artistic, but refers to what the Middle Ages called the "liberal arts" -- in particular, philosophy, although perhaps a better modern
translation might be "the humanities". The College was made up of classrooms, of course, but of a library as well. Alexandre Ganoczy has studied between 600 and 700 of the books that belonged to the Academy's library in Calvin's time, using a surviving cataloguefrom 1572
(just a few years after Calvin's death). Among these books were Bibles; texts from Greek and Latin Antiquity (which Calvin considered valuable sources of ethical teachings); numerous patristic texts; texts written by theologians
of Calvin's time -- Calvin himself of course, but also Bullinger, of Zurich,
and German theologians such as Luther, Melanchthon and others
(whose names, today, are known mainly to specialists); and a few texts written by Roman Catholic theologians, such as cardinal Thomas Cajetan, one of Calvin's major opponents. So that's an overview of the institution Calvin created. Throughout his life in Geneva, Calvin fought for the construction of the College, which, in his mind, was to serve two purposes: to define the requirements for the ministry and to
establish an academic curriculum. Here Calvin was going directly against the educational mainstream of his time, which typically separated into distinct institutions university students, on the one hand, and the more
pragmatic training of ministers-to-be, on the other. Calvin inaugurated the College and Academy in 1559. A short four years later, in 1563, the Council of Trent paid tribute -- quite involuntarily, to be sure -- to Calvin and the Reformation in general, by decreeing that Catholic priests would be required, from then on, to be trained in similar colleges, or seminaries. The education received in Calvin's College, it must be said, was very elitist. For two main reasons: First, the school was exclusively male -- no girls were allowed.
Second, the curriculum was extremely heavy. Young boys arrived in the College and started to learn reading and writing. Seven years later, they were writing papers discussing the works of Aristotle in the original Greek. The school day started, in summertime, at 6am. In winter, students could sleep in a little, since the start of classes was pushed back to 7am. There was a half-hour break for lunch shortly before noon. The rest of the day consisted of classes and study sessions, which continued uninterrupted until 9pm, when the school day finally ended. Uninterrupted, meaning that the boys were to eat their dinner -- as stipulated by the College's regulations -- during class, as unobtrusively as possible. Geneva has been called the incubator of Dutch Calvinism. In fact, Geneva served as such an incubator for several large areas of Europe, including France, Germany, and Hungary. Future ministers from virtually all of Reformed Europe
came to Geneva to be trained and educated. We are lucky enough to have in our possession a register called the "Rector's Book" ("Livre du Recteur"), in which each student wrote his name and place of origin. In it are the signatures of each and every student of Calvin's Academy from the 16th century through the 18th century. For example, here you can see the signature of Giordano Bruno, the famous Italian philosopher who died at the stake in the year 1600. The Rector's Book has been edited by Sven and Suzanne Stelling-Michaud, who painstakingly gathered every available piece of information on each of the students who appear in it: date of birth and death, when known; geographic origin of each student, etc. Their work enables us to understand the development and influence of Calvin's Academy and College, from a social point of view, throughout Europe. At first, all of the Academy's professors were French. It took a generation before any Genevans were teaching in the Academy, although in the meantime many studied there. As an institution, however, the College was without a doubt internationally oriented. Why did Calvin work so hard to create this College and Academy? It was a reflection of his deeply humanist temperament. His aim was to train and educate students on the Bible, but also to open their minds to the elegance and beauty of human thought. In his "Institutes of the Christian Religion," Calvin writes (this passage is included in your study materials) that the works of secular thinkers are never to be disdained,
because in practicing science, they are witnesses to truth. And all truth comes from God. Here is a quote from Book II of the "Institutes": "How, then, can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite
researches and skillful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect
to those who drew up rules for discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason?
Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art,
expended their industry in our behalf, were only raving?" "What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration;
an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold." "But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God? Far from us be such ingratitude; an ingratitude not chargeable even on heathen poets,
who acknowledged that philosophy and laws, and all useful arts were the inventions of the gods." This passage shows the high esteem in which Calvin held the sciences of Antiquity, starting with the "ancient lawgivers," the jurists -- and thus Law was taught in the Academy. He expresses his enthusiasm for the philosophers -- thus philosophy, dialectic, and the art of discoursing rationally, were all part of the curriculum. He expresses his admiration for Medicine, and although this discipline was not taught in Geneva until much later, it would have been perfectly consistent with Calvin's vision. For Calvin, then, secular though they may be, the sciences are of value. And it is probably no coincidence that it was on the fertile grounds of Calvin's College and Academy that, in the 18th century, the natural sciences -- botany and physics in particular -- began
to flourish as never before. But that's another story altogether. We've reached the end of today's sequence; thank you for your attention.