John Calvin

John Calvin (1509-1564) was born in Noyon, Picardie. By his early twenties he had grown unsettled in his religious experiences and turned from studying law to the priesthood. Calvin turned from Catholicism and underwent a personal religious experience adopting a simpler form of Christianity after hearing a discourse on the sovereignty of the scriptures by the Rector of the Sorbonne, Nicholas Cop.  By 1533 he had become prominent in Paris as an evangelical preacher following his adoption of Luther's ideas. The following year, fearing repression if his beliefs were made public, Calvin fled to Basle where he where he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.
That same year he accepted an invitation by William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of Calvin and Farel's ideas, and he was expelled in 1538 because of public resentment against the numerous and too drastic changes he introduced. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and was eventually invited back in 1531 to lead its church, where in the face of strong opposition, he established a rigorous theocracy.  Following an influx of supportive refugees, Calvin's opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe.

Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for a theological system known as Calvinism, which was subsequently adopted by the Reformed and Presbyterian branches of Protestantism.