416 THE REFOEJVIATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
head and heart. Calvin visited her frequently as pastor, and was attracted by her quiet, modest, gentle character. He found in her what he desired — firm faith, devoted love, and domestic helpfulness. He calls her " the excellent companion of my life," " the ever-faithful assistant of my ministry," and a " rare woman." ^ Beza speaks of her as " a grave and honorable lady." ^
Calvin lived in happy wedlock, but only for nine years. His wife was taken from him at Geneva, after a protracted illness, early in April, 1549. He felt the loss very deeply, and found comfort only in his work. He turned from the coffin to his study table, and resumed the duties of his office with quiet resignation and conscientious fidelity as if nothing had happened. He remained a widower the remaining fifteen vears of his life. " My wife, a woman of rare qualities," he wrote, " died a year and a half ago, and I have now willingly chosen to lead a solitary life."
We know much less of Calvin's domestic life than of Luther's. He was always reticent concerning himself and his private affairs, while Luther was very frank and demonstrative. In selecting their wives neither of the Reformers had any regard to the charms of beauty and wealth which attract most lovers, nor even to intellectual endowment ; they looked only to moral worth and domestic virtue. Luther married at the age of forty-one, Calvin at the age of thirty-one. Luther married a Catholic ex-nun, after having vainly recommended her to his friend Amsdorf, whom she proudly refused, looking to higher distinction. He married her under a sudden impulse, to the consternation of liis friends, in the midst of the disturbances of the Peasants' War, that he might please his father, tease the pope, and vex the
1 " Optima socia vitce": "fida ministerii me iadjutrix" (letter to Viret, April 7, 1549) ; " singularis exempli femina," etc.
2 Vita Cali\ (Opera, XXI. 130): "Viduam Idelletam nomine, gravem honestamque feminam , Caivinus ex Buceri consilio uxorem duxit."
§ 92. Calvin's marriage and home life. 417
devil. Calvin married, like Zwingli, a Protestant widow with several children; he married from esteem rather than affection, after due reflection and the solicitation of friends.
Katherine Luther cut a prominent figure in her husband's personal history and correspondence, and survived him several years, which she spent in poverty and affliction. Idelette de Bure lived in modest retirement, and died in peace fifteen years before Calvin. Luther submitted as " a willing servant " to the rule of his " Lord Kathe," but he loved her dearly, played with his children in childlike simplicity, addressed to her his last letters, and expressed his estimate of domestic happiness in the beautiful sentence : " The greatest gift of God to man is a pious, kindly, God-fearing, domestic wife." 1
Luther's home life was enlivened and cheered by humor, poetry, and song ; Calvin's was sober, quiet, controlled by the fear of God, and regulated by a sense of duty, but none the less happy. Nothing can be more unjust than the charge that Calvin was cold and unsympathetic.^
His whole correspondence proves the reverse. His letters on the death of his wife to his dearest friends reveal a deep fountain of tenderness and affection. To Farel he wrote, April2, 1549: — 3
^ "Die Welt hat nach Gottes Woi-t keinen Uehlicheren Schatz auf Erden, denn den heiligen Ehestand. Gottes hochste Gabe ist ein fromni, freundlich, yottesfiirchtig und kduslich Gemahl habeyi, mit der du friedlich lebest, der du darfst alle dein Gut, ja dein Leib und Leben vertrauen, mit der du Kinderlein zeugest." See Kcistlin, Luthe7-'s Leben, p. 578, and Schaff, History of the Chr. Church, VI. §§ 77 and 78, pp. 454 sqq.
2 " Calvin," says J. Bonnet, in his sketch of Idelette de Bure (I.e., p. 637) "Jilt grand sans cesser d'etre bon ; il unit les qualite's du cceur aux dons du ge'nie ; il ressentit et il inspira les plus pures amities,- il connut, enjin, les f^licites domestiques dans une union trap courte, dont le mystere, a demi revile par sa correspondance, r€pand un jour me'lancolique et doux sur sa vie." — " There was in Calvin," says Merle d'Aubigne (VI. 602), "a lofty intellect, a sublime genius, but also that love of kindred, those affections of the heart, which complete the great man."
3 Opera, Ep. 1171 (fol. 228). The letter is wrongly dated April 11 by Henry and Bonnet (II. 20;l), who mistook 11 for Roman figures.