John Calvin

John Calvin (1509–1564), born Jean Cauvin at Noyon in Picardy, was the French theologian and reformer of Geneva whose doctrine came to be called Calvinism. He broke with the Roman Catholic Church around 1530 and fled to Basel, where he published the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.

In Geneva that year he meant to stay one night, but William Farel implored him to help reform the church there. A quarrel over Easter communion led the council to expel both men in 1538. Calvin spent three years in Strasbourg, and came back to Geneva in 1541; the Ecclesiastical Ordinances created the Consistory.

In 1553 he denounced Michael Servetus, burned at the stake. In 1559 he opened the Collège and sent over a hundred ministers to France. He died in 1564 and was buried in an unmarked grave. His followers took the doctrine to Scotland, the Netherlands and Hungary.