CALVIN, JOHN (1509-1564). One hot July evening in the year 1536 three weary travelers appeared on the streets of Geneva, in what is now Switzerland.
They intended to pass the night in one of the inns of the town and to proceed the next morning on their way to Strasbourg. But when Farel, the reforming minister of Geneva, heard that John Calvin was one of the party, he hurried to the inn and persuaded Calvin to stay in Geneva and assist in forming a state which should be governed according to the Word of God.
Calvin had been obliged to flee from his home in France because he had turned against the Catholic church. Geneva was a good place for him to come to, because it had accepted the teachings of the Reformation. It had won at the same time its independence from its feudal ruler and was a self governing city republic. Therefore Calvin could put in practice in it his ideas of a perfect state—ideas which had been formed during his years of study in some of the best universities of France.
Geneva came to be known as the " City of Calvin" and the " Protestant Rome." The life of the people, as regulated by Calvin's church, reminds us of the lives of the Puritans in Massachusetts. Everyone was required to go to church on Sunday or suffer severe penalties. A man who swore " without neces sity" was required to take off his hat, "kneel down in the place of his offense, clasp his hands, and kiss the earth." Silk dresses or hosiery, jewelry, and other adornments were forbidden. A hairdresser was once imprisoned because he made one of his patrons too beautiful. And a child was beheaded for striking its parents. The greatest blot on Calvin's fame is his part in the burning of Servetus, a religious teacher who denied the doctrine of the Trinity.
Calvin's teachings are the basis of what we know as the Presbyterian church. They spread among the Huguenots of France, the Protestants of the Netherlands and Scotland, and the Puritans of England. By the Puritans they were brought to America, and the practice of allowing the people to elect their own officers was followed in the state as well as in the church. And so it may be said that the United States owes somethirig of the democracy which it enjoys today to this stern old Puritan of French-speaking Geneva, over three centuries ago.