§ 69. calvin's youth and training. 299
infidel, was excommunicated in 1531, and died Oct. 1, 1537, having refused the sacrament on his death-bed. He was buried by night between the four piUars of a gibbet.^
His younger brother, Antoine, was chaphiin at Tournerolle, near Traversy, but embraced the evangelical faith, and, with his sister, Marie, followed the Reformer to Geneva in 1536. Antoine kept there a bookstore, received the citizenship gratuitously, on account of the merits of his brother (1546), was elected a member of the Council of Two Hundred (1558), and of the Council of the Sixty (1570), also one of the directors of the hospital, and died in 1573. He was married three times, and divorced from his second wife, the daughter of a refugee, on account of her proved adultery (1557). Calvin had innocently to suffer for this scandal, but made him and his five children chief heirs of his little property .^
The other sister of Calvin was married at Noyon, and seems to have remained in the Roman Catholic Church.
A relative and townsman of Calvin, Pierre Robert, called Olivetan, embraced Protestantism some years before him, and studied Greek and Hebrew with Bucer at Strassburg in 1528.^ He joined Farel in Neuchatel, and published there his French translation of the Bible in 1535.
More than a hundred years after Calvin's death, another member of the family, Eloi Cauvin, a Benedictine monk, removed from Noyon to Geneva, and embraced the Reformed religion (June 13, 1667).*
These and other facts show the extent of the anti-papal
1 " Carolus ejus frater et presbyter Nociodiini mortuus noctu et clam sepultiis est inter quatuor columnas furcce publiccc quia Eucharistiam sumere noluerat." Papire Masson, Vita Calv.; Lefranc, pp. 18-21 and 210.
2 Beza, at the close of his Latin Vita Calv. (in Calvin's Opera, XXI. 171), and Lefranc, I.e., p. 184.
3 Letter of Bucer to Farel, May 1, 1528, in Herminjard, II. no. 232, and Opera, X. Pt. I. p. 1. The "Juvenis Noviodune/isis" there mentioned was not Calvin, as Kampschulte (I. 231) conjectures, but probably Olivetan. There is no trace of such an early visit of Calvin to Strassburg.
* La France Prot. III. 639.
300 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
sentiment in the family of Cauvin. In 1561 a large number of prominent persons of Noyon were suspected of heresy, and in 1562 the Chapter of Noyon issued a profession of faith against the doctrines of Calvin.^
After the death of Calvin, Protestantism was completely crushed out in his native town.
Calvin received his first education with the children of the noble family de Mommor (not Montmor), to which he remained gratefully attached. He made rapid progress in learning, and acquired a refinement of manners and a certain aristocratic air, which distinguished him from Luther and Zwingli. A son of de Mommor accompanied him to Paris, and followed him afterwards to Geneva.
His ambitious father destined him first for the clerical profession. He secured for him even in his twelfth year (1521) a part of the revenue of a chaplaincy in the cathedral of Noyon .2 In his eighteenth year Calvin received, in addition, the charge of S. Martin de Marteville (Sept. 27, 1527), although he had not yet the canonical age, and had only received the tonsure.
Such shocking irregularities were not uncommon in those days. Pluralism and absenteeism, though often prohibited
1 See the list and the profession in Lefranc, 216 sqq. He goes, however, too far when he says (p. x. sq.) : " Ge qui ressort d'une etude attentive des fails, c'est que Calvin est sorti deja protestant de sa ville natale. C'est dans ce centre qu'il puisa ses ide'es. II y trouva tout d'abord I'appui le plus ferine, ses amis les plus chauds et ses lieutenants les plus de'voue's. A un moment donne', la moitie de la population se de'clara pour lui. Chose remarquable, un nombre conside'rable des ses compatriots, et parmi eux les personnages les plus en vue, le suivirent jusqua Genere. Durant toute sa vie, Calvin conserva d'actifs rapports avec sa ville natale et ceux de ses fideles qui y etaient reste's." Calvin was not converted before 1532. See § 72.
'■^ Desmay (quoting from the Registres of Noyon, see Op. XXI. 189) : " Jean Calvin obtient une portion du revenue de la chapelle de la Ge'sine de la Vierge fonde'e dans la cathe'drale de Noyon." There were four chaplains at Noyon. The first two had to say mass alternately every morning. John Calvin, not being ordained, had to pay a priest to take his place. Lefranc, p. 10. Zwingli received a papal pension even after he had begun his work of reform. See above, § 8, p. 31 sq. This is all wrong, but was not so considered at that time.