Calvin in Geneva, July 5, 2009

We enjoyed an unforgettably wonderful Sunday in Calvin’s Geneva, and can only imagine what great blessings abounded from this place and pulpit in those 25 years wherein Calvin preached some 4,000 sermons. Several of our number dispersed to stroll about the old town before worship, visiting the Reformation Wall erected on the old fortified wall of the city in 1909, Calvin’s 400th birthday celebration. It is perhaps useful to reflect that not a single adult who participated in that commemoration and the unveiling of that wall is here at the 500th. Ryan Gross commented about the four figures depicted on the wall, “Farel, Calvin, Knox and Beza appear to be well but are considerably taller than I imagined.” Ryan knows of what he speaks; he’s 6’ 7”! Pictured next to Calvin's statue is 14-year-old Johnny Scharer, whom we have used to remind all of us how old Calvin was when he began his studies at the University of Paris in 1523.

Au Revoir, Paris: Calvin tour on to Geneva!

Au revoir, Paris: Bert our Dutch, English speaking coach driver was 17 ½ minutes early! I knew right then I was going to like this fellow, and parked and ready in front of the Hotel Minerve. Paid the bill, loaded the coach and we were off for Geneva.

Stopped in the Medieval village of Beaune in the heart of Burgundy wine country, a charming old-world village. Pastor DeMass summarized the differences between Catholics, other protestants, and Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper. A wine tour actualy makes heaps of sense; Calvin was the first to serve the Supper in both elements to the congregation, wine included, likely in the caves of St. Benoit, in Poitier. We hiked across the village market , light rain falling, to the Patriache Pere et Fils wine caves, hundreds of years of wine making and a vast network of subterranean cellars. Fascinating, though I didn’t think any of the wines were that stunning (one pinot noir was fine); the per bottle prices, however, were stunning! Grateful for cell phones (what did they do in Calvin’s day without them?). We misplaced one of our travelers for a stretch, but no harm done and everyone happy again.

Arrived in Geneva about 4:30, the coach driver taking us right to the old town and the Saint-Pierre where Calvin preached over 4,000 sermons, the bell tower chiming continuously as we took it all in. We talked about Farel’s anathema called down on Calvin if he would not stay, and about the humility of a man twice Calvin’s age eager to put the best man in this most strategic city. This is Calvin territory everywhere one turns, and Geneva is not unaware of his 500th. Walked past the Hotel de Ville where the City Council voted to accept Reformation Christianity in May of 1536, and where the various decisions were made that would so shape the progress of reformation in the city and throughout the world. Here the council voted to condemn and burn Michael Servetus (Calvin was not even a citizen of Geneva until 1559).

Then to Edelweiss Restaurant for Swiss everything: fondue, pickled onions, cured meats, Swiss wines, alpen horn (Susan Gross and Andrea Mehmel taking a turn, much to everyone’s delight), yodeling, accordion music, cowbells, all in a very Swiss chalet decorated setting. Taxis for the senior members of the tour, back to the hotel, and a good night sleep before what must prove to be one of the most memorable Lord’s Days for all of us.

Calvin in Paris, day two

Brittany took the Desotos ahead at their pace down to the Seine The rest of us followed the few blocks until we stood below the grand 12th century magnificence of Notre Dame Cathedral. We found a quiet corner near the monument to Charlemagne and considered the juxtaposition of incomparable gothic architecture, art in stone to boggle the mind, and the myriad of medieval abuses that are Roman Catholicism: transubstantiation, indulgences, pilgrimage to the crown of thorns, the stones on which were written the Decalogue, and the furious intolerance of the Inquisition. Calvin would no doubt have witnessed burnings at the square in front of Notre Dame, as well as at Place Maubert and others. I read some of the last words of martyrs, the curses of the executioners. Determined to stamp out the Reformation, here in July of 1542 and again in 1544 piles of Calvin’s Institutes were burned. It was fascinating to hear of 22-year-old Harry Desoto (now 87, at right) in 1945 driving a tank down the square where we stood in front of Notre Dame (I looked at Heath Salzman, now 22-years-old).

Then we embarked down the Seine on the Batobus, steaming along with monuments of antiquity passing by on all sides. We disembarked before the palatial splendor of the Louvre and walked down to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, the royal chapel near where 14-year-old Calvin (Johnny Scharer is 14) lived with his uncle Richard while he studied at College de la Marche for the first months of his time in Paris. We watched listened to a mass in progress (watch on my youtube site) and we appreciated more of the need for Calvin to take on the entire Medieval world as he did. As we talked in front of the royal chapel, the bell tower suddenly began ringing out 12:00, just so did in chime the morning of August 23, 1572, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 3,000 Christians lost their lives in Paris that morning and many more throughout the country. Estimates are that Catherine d’Midici was responsible for 20,000 deaths. The first of which was the saintly Admiral Coligny, to whom there is a well-crafted monument across the Rue Rivoli at the Reformed Church. Another block away up Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau is the Rue de Pelican and a corner hose called the wing of the Pelican, which may be all that remains of Etienne de la Forge’s House of the Pelican, a wealthy converted draper who took in enthusiastic young men agitating for Reform. Calvin frequented Etienne’s home and may have begun his Institutes here (I don’t think, however, that Calvin ate at the sushi bar across the street).

Lunch at a Parisian café with Darbys and Prices. Yum, yum. Later we had another Seine picnic with Brittany and Heath, then evening Batobus voyage down to the Champs Elysees. Cool river barges which made my wife recollect her years growing up on a boat. RER back to Notre Dame just in time for some evening light photography of the grand edifice and more filming of the kids who play with fire. A wonderful last night in Paris.

Calvin Tour: first day in Paris

We left Hotel Minerve on the Rue des Ecoles in the heart of the Latin Quarter for a short walk to the Paridis Latin, today a sizzling Paris nightclub, but in the 1140s it was an abbey founded by Bernard of Clairvaux. In the 15th century it was the College Cardinal Lemoine where Lefevre taught free grace, sovereign electing love, and predestination. It was the place where young William Farel came and first heard the glorious gospel that he could be saved, not by his sacremental attempts at faithfulness, but alone by the blood and imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Next we walked up the Rue Cardinal Lemoine to St. Etienne du Mont where Pascal is buried and where Calvin as a student at College de Montaigu only two doors away would no doubt have gone to mass; he very likely would have taken mass many many times in this very church. While a student at College de Montaigu, from 1523-1528, Calvin would have in all likelihood often attended mass at this 13th century church. It is notable that at the Pantheon just across the street are buried two of the most ardent advocates of rationalist philosophy contradictory to Calvin and Reformation Christianity, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau. I read from the papal indulgence for the 2000 anniversary of the birth of St. Paul—2009, current indulgences in the RC church. Not much has changed. Consider the monstrous irony of selling an indulgence in commemoration of the Apostle of free grace and imputed righteousness! “…having a righteousness, not our own…”

Of particular interest is the College de Fortet one block away on the Rue Valette. Here Calvin lived and studied Greek and Hebrew from 1531-1533, and from here he escaped out the upper window of the tower on the inner courtyard. After Cop’s All Saint’s Address at Couvent de Cordelier, and word got out that Calvin had either crafted the entire biblical exposition, decrying abuses and false doctrine in the Roman church, or contributed significantly to it, Calvin was a hunted man. It is a private courtyard with locked entry, so we were particularly grateful to the Lord for his kind providence in getting our entire tour group of 49 people into the significant Calvin site.

We paused in front of College de Montaigu at the plaque that commemorates Erasmus’s time of study at that college of the University of Paris. It is today the library of St. Genevieve, a vast library with first edition holdings of many great works by the who’s who of Western Civilization. These names are carved in stone on the upper panel of the exterior of the college, including Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, Margerite de Valois, Clement Marot, even Las Casas. Brittany and I succeeded in getting in Montaigu for all of 2 minutes before we were summarily escorted to the door (not before I managed to make a photograph). Now way for the entire group.

Passing by the vast buildings that make up the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, we made our way to 27, Rue de Conde, the House of the Bronze Horse, gifted by Francis I to his court poet, Cement Marot. Marot became a true Reformation Christian and began versifying Psalms, perhaps right within these walls in the shadow of the Odeon Theatre (Brittany Bond and Gina Biber in front of the House of the Bronze Horse). When word got out, he too was a hunted man and fled first to the court of Renee of Farrar, Christian Duchess, one time betrothed to Henry VIII of England (get in line). Eventually he made his way to Geneva and assisted Calvin and others in versifications of the Psalms for singing in worship, the first edition of which appeared as the Geneva Psalter in 1551.

Making our way over to the Rue des Ecoles Medicine, we entered the gateway into the Couvent de Cordilier, where Nicholas Cop delivered his address; this 1533 address was the Rubicon for Calvin and the other Reformers in Paris. The building is today part of the School of Medicine of the university and frankly in disrepair. There is no plaque commemorating most of these sites, especially none here. Several of us climbed the circular stairway on the southwest tower (see video of this and many other cites on my youtube site), clearly Calvin vintage.

Our morning tour concluded here, and Brittany hailed a taxi to get Harry (87) and Eunice (86) Desoto, our most senior travelers, back to Hotel Minerve, air conditioning, and rest. From there we went on to La Procope Café, which claims to be the oldest coffee shop in the world, established 1685 (the year Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, and resumed persecution of Huguenots… not sure if this makes coffee shops all bad or not; not being a coffee drinker, I’m a bad one to make that call). We went on to the Musee d’Orsay, where ma belle Cheryl dutifully picked out ten paintings or statues she liked best and briefly explained why. After picking up a cake for Paul Darby’s 50th and He and Dawn’s 15th anniversary, we headed back for another fine dinner in the dungeon (see photos) at the Bistrot de la Montaigna.

After dinner the hearty headed off to the Eiffel Tower, a monument to Modernism, lit up, vast crowds picnicking and drinking wine on the lawn, North African immigrants aggressively hawking mini Eiffel Towers to everyone. Back to hotel late, tired and full of Paris. I do wonder how many people have been so charmed by Paris that they’ve happily sold their souls for the lights, the cafes, the wine, the women, the monuments to man’s achievements—it is all so charming and happiness inducing--until one is awakened with cosmic rudeness in hell.

Calvin is 500 and Paul Darby is only 50!

And Paul and Dawn have be blissfully weded for 15 happy years! Here they are at La Bistrot de la Montaigna restaurant in the Paris Latin Quarter enjoying their gataux Francais for the celebration of the joyous event.

Picnic at sunset on the Seine

Brittany and I had a delightful dinner picnic on the banks of the Seine hosted by her friend Gina, a wonderfully committed Christian who is studying in Paris. We watched the sun set and had a rigorously stimulating conversation (I love these) about the things of God with a Colombian man named Eduardo who now lives and works in Paris. He is a Christian who believes in gifts of healing and of wealth. "I believe in the prosperty gospel," he told me. We discussed these things as Seine boats chugged by loaded with tourists from all over the world. He explained all the miracles he had seen and experienced, everyone of them not a miracle in the biblical sense of the word; a leg straightened, a skin problem instantly cured, a government check that covered three months rent (this is France so far from a miracle for the governement to be throwing away other people's money!). I asked him if he's someone raised from the dead, or blind from birth and everyone, believer and unbeliever alike, knew the man was blind from birth, had he seen these kinds of real miracles? It comes down to two things at least: How do you define what a real miracle is? [God acting supernaturally above natural order he has established in the world], and Are we to insist that sign gifts, miracles, are to be the ordinary, the normative, experience of Christians throughout every period in redemptive history. I don't think he had thought of these things and examples from Scripture that help us answer these and other related questions. About an hour and a half discussion, the Louvre glowing in the fading evening light across the river... charming setting, Paris is.

Calvin Escapes from Paris

St St. Etienne du Mont is the church where Blaise Pascal is buried, and the relic of St. Genevieve, patron saint of the city of lights rests in an elaborate sarcophogus, shown in the video clip on the title link above. Calvin studied at College de Montaigu diagonally across from this 13-century church, and from 1531-33 lived on Rue Valette in an upper tower room at the College de Fortet. It was from here that he was forced to flee for his life out an upper window down a rope, escaping the city disguised as a vinter. I find it impossible to believe that devout teenage Calvin did not cross the street many times and attend mass in this church. He wrote little about his own life, so there is no written record of this, but one only needs to visit this incomparable church to believe that Calvin, committed papist that he admits he was in his youth, did not often enter these walls.



Readers of my book The Betrayal, a novel on John Calvin, will notice the striking similarity of the back courtyard arch near the College de Fortet, University of Paris where, in 1533, Calvin escaped out the window of his tower rooms .



Notre Dame, Paris, one of the best known cathedrals in the world, was a pilgrimage sight throughout the middle ages, pilgrims coming to venerate the alleged crown of thorns, the stone on which the finger of God wrote the Decalogue, and other relics. Calvin believed the idea of pilgrimage was unbiblical, one of the false sacraments "contravening reformation." Calvin was consumed with zeal for the glory of God, and pilgrimage shifted glory away from God to saints and their moldering remains. He would disapprove, incidentally, of Calvinists going on pilgrimage to Paris, Geneva, Strasbourg, and Noyon as we are doing as I write. However, I think he might have approved if we did this with the single goal of learning more of the majesty of God, and being consumed, as Calvin was, with worship, adoration, proclamation, and service to our Sovereign Lord and loving heavenly Father. The plaza stretching in front of the cathedral was one of the favorite martyr sites in Paris, and twice, in 1542 and 1544, piles of Calvin's now famous (infamous to Roman Catholics) Institutes were put to the torch. Calvin had prefaced the Institutes to Francis I, monstrous persecutor of Christians, as an appeal to stop the torturing and killing of Christians in his realm.


August 23, 1572, the chiming of the bell "Marie" on the 12th century square tower of the royal chapel, St. Germain l'Auxerrois, next to the Louvre (once the royal residence in Paris) was the agreed upon signal to begin the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. 3,000 Huguenots were killed in this neighborhood in Paris, with estimates of 20,000 throughout the country. In 1523, fourteen-year-old Calvin lived with his uncle Richard Calvin on the Rue de Vallette, a nearby street that no longer bears that name.

Click on the title linked above to my youtube account for video clips of all these places and much more.