Jean Calvin

John Calvin (1509–1564), born Jean Cauvin at Noyon in Picardy, was trained as a lawyer and humanist in Paris, Orléans and Bourges before his conversion to the Reformation around 1533 drove him into exile. The first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion appeared in Basel in 1536; he revised and enlarged it for the rest of his life. Called to Geneva in 1536, expelled in 1538 and recalled in 1541, he made the city the center of Reformed Protestantism, drafting its church order, and writing commentaries on nearly every book of the Bible. His theology shaped the churches of Scotland, the Netherlands and New England.