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John Calvin
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John Calvin Engraved portrait of John Calvin by Konrad Meyer, showing Calvin in profile with a long beard, wearing a cap and robe, holding a book with a quill and inkwell on the table. Open page from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1576 edition, showing Latin text with handwritten marginal notes and annotations. The Death of John Calvin John Calvin
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John Calvin
John Calvin John Calvin.

John Calvin

French theologian
Also known as: Jean Calvin, Jean Cauvin
Written by
William J. Bouwsma
Sather Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Berkeley. Author of John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait and others.
William J. Bouwsma
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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John Calvin (born July 10, 1509, Noyon, Picardy, Franceā€”died May 27, 1564, Geneva, Switzerland) was a theologian and ecclesiastical statesman. He was the leading French Protestant reformer and the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. His interpretation of Christianity, advanced above all in his Institutio Christianae religionis (1536 but elaborated in later editions; Institutes of the Christian Religion), and the institutional and social patterns he worked out for Geneva deeply...

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