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From: "Tony Fuller" <>
Subject: [HWE] French Protestant Church?
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 08:51:52 +0100


Hi Guys

Think I have an answer for Peter, well, it may answer the why, not the who.

Between 1536 and 1538 Calvin, accompanied by another reformer Guillaume Farel, were working their
way through some of the Rheinish states. Farel, who lacked Calvin's subtelty, had alread worked his
way through Meaux, Basle, Paris and Starbourg preaching the reformation of the church, so the
protestant influence was in the city by 1537. Following their failure to convert Geneva, Calvin was
summoned to Stasbourg by Martin Bocer, where he lived from 1538 until 1541. The city had ALREADY
become a refuge for the many French protestants fleeing from the persecution of Francis I and it was
therefore inevitable that the French (who seem to have been in the city as a religious community for
several years by the time that Calvin arrived) would have established their own church, seperate
from the local communities reformed services.

Interestingly, it was in the period that he spent in Stasbourg that Calvin wrote many of his French
translations of the liturgies, psalms etc, which he later used to good effect in Geneva to convert
that city.

Regards

Tony Fuller



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