John Calvin

(1509 - 1564)

Born in a small French town in 1509, John Calvin at the age of fourteen was sent to study at the University of Paris, where he became inspired by the humanism of Desiderius Erasmus; his first publication, in 1532, was an annotated version of Seneca’s essay “On Clemency.” His institutes helped establish his role in the Reformation, which grew in influence in the 1540s as he worked to reorient Geneva around Protestant principles.