§ 79. calvin's institutes of christian religion. 327
Calvin avoided publicity and lived in scholarly seclusion. He spent in Basel a year and a few months, from January, 1535, till about March, 1536.
§ 79. Calvin s Institutes of the Christian Religion.
1. The full title of the first edition is "Cukistia | nae Religionis Insti |
tutio totam fere pietatis summam et quic \ quid est in doctrina salutis cognitu ne- I cessarium, complectens : omnibus pie \ talis studiosis lectu dignissi \ mum opus, ac re- | cens edi- | turn. | Pr.efatio | ad Chri | stianissimum Regem Franc i.E, qua \ hie ei liber pro con/essione Jidei \ offertur. \ Joanne Calving I Nouiodunensi authore. \ Basile.e, | M.D. XXXV^I." The dedicatory Preface is dated '■ X. Calendas Septembres ' (^i.e. August 23), witliout the year; but at the close of the book the month of March, 1530, is given as the date of publication. The first two French editions (154i and 1545) supplement the date of the Preface correctly : "De Basle le vingt-troysiesme d'Aoust mil cinq cent trente cinq." The manuscript, then, was completed in August, 1535, but it took nearly a year to print it.
2. The last improved edition from the pen of the author (the fifth Latin) is
a thorough reconstruction, and bears the title : " Institutio Chri | stian.e Religionis, in libros qua \ tuor nunc priinum digesta, certisque distincta capitibus, ad aptissimam | methodum : aiicta etiam tarn magna accessione ut propemodum opus | novum hnberi possit. \ Joanne Calvino authore. | Oliva RoBERTi Stephani. | Getievce. | M.D. LIX." The subsequent Latin editions are reprints of the ed. of 1559, with an index by Nic. CoUadon, another by Marlorat. The Elzevir ed. Leyden, 1654, fol., was especially esteemed for its beauty and accuracy. A convenient modern ed. by Tholuck (Berlin, 1834, 2d ed. 1846).
3. The first French edition appeared without the name and place of the printer
(probably Michel du Bois at Geneva), under the title: "Institution de la religion chrestienne en laquelle est comprinse une somme de pie't^. . . . compose'e en latin par J. Calvin et translatee par lug niesme, Avec la preface addressee au tres chrestien Hog de France, Francois premier de ce nom : par laquelle ce present livre lug est offert pour confession de Fog. M.D. XLI." 822 pp. 8°, 2d ed. Geneve, Jean Girard, 1545; 3d ed. 1551; 4th ed. 1558; 6th ed. 1554; 6th ed. 1557; 7th ed. 1560, in fol.; 8th ed. 1561, in 8°; 9th ed. 1561, in 4°; 10th ed. 1562, etc. ; 15th ed. Geneva, 1564. Elzevir ed. Leyden, 1654.
4. The Strassburg editors devote the first four volumes to the different editions
of the Institutes in both, languages. Vol. I. contains the editio princeps Latina of Basel, 1536 (pp. 10-247), and the variations of six editions interaccompany Bucer. Beza and Colladon know nothing of such an interview. Bayle doubted it. Merle d'Aubigne, III. 203-204 (Engl, trans. III. 183-185), however, accepts and embellishes it as if he had been present and heard the colloquy of the three scholars.
328 THE EEFOKMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
vening between the first and the last, viz., the Strassburg editions of 1539, 1543, 1545, and the Geneva editions of 1550, 1553, 1554 (pp. 253-1152) ; vol. II., the editio postrema of 1559 (pp. 1-1118) ; vols. III. and IV'., the last edition of the French translation, or free reproduction rather (1560), with the variations of former editions.
5. The question of the priority of the Latin or French text is now settled in
favor of the former. See Jules Bovnet, in the Bulletin de la Socie'te de Vhistoire du protestantisme fran^ais for 1858, vol. VI. p. 137 sqq., Stahelin, vol. I. p. 55, and the Strassburg editors of the Opera, in the ample Prolegomena to vols. I. and III. Calvin himself says expressly (in the Preface to his French ed. 1541), that he first wrote the Institutes in Latin (" premierement I'ay mis en latin "), for readers of all nations, and that he translated or reproduced them afterwards for the special benefit of Frenclimen (" I'ay aussi translate' en notre langage "). In a letter to his friend, Francois Daniel, dated Lausanne, Oct. 1-3, 1536, he writes that he began the French translation soon after the publication of the Latin (Letters, ed. Bonnet, vol. I. p. 21), but it did not appear till 1541, under the title given above. The erroneous assertion of a French original, so often repeated (by Bayle, Maimbourg, Basnage, and more recently by Henry, vol. I. p. 104; III. p. 177 ; Dorner, Gesch. der protest. Theol. p. 375 ; also by Guizot, H. B. Smith, and Dyer), arose from confounding the date of the Preface as given in the French editions (23 Aug., 1535), with the later date of publication (March, 1536). It is quite possible, however, that the dedication to Francis I. was first written in French, and this would most naturally account for the earlier date in the French editions.
6. On the differences of the several editions, comp. J. Thomas: Histoire de
Vinstit. chretienne deJ. Culv. Strasbourg, 1859. Alex. Schweizer: Centraldogmen, 1. 150 sqq. (Zurich, 1854). Kostlin : Calvin'' s Institutio nach Form und Inhalt, in the " Studien und Kritiken " for 1868.
7. On the numerous translations, see above, pp. 225, 265; Henry, vol. III.
Beilagen, 178-189; and La France Prot. III. 553.
In the ancient and venerable city of Basel, on the borders of Switzerland, France, and Germany — the residence of Erasmus and Q^^colampadius, the place where a reformatory council had met in 1430, and where the first Greek Testament was printed in 1516 from manuscripts of the university library — John Calvin, then a mere youth of twenty-six years, and an exile from his native land, finished and published, twenty years after the first print of the Greek Testament, his Institutes of the Ohristimi Religion., by which he astonished the world and took at once the front rank among the literary champions of the evangelical faith.