John Calvin

1509 CE–1564 CE · Noyon

John Calvin (1509–1564) was born in Noyon, Picardy, and educated in Paris and Orléans before his conversion to Reformed Christianity led him to flee France. After publishing the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in Basel (1536), he was recruited by Guillaume Farel to reform Geneva, exiled to Strasbourg (1538–1541) where he ministered to French refugees under Martin Bucer, then returned to Geneva where he spent the rest of his life building the most systematic expression of Reformed theology.

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Stop 1 of 61509–1523Birthplace, Early Childhood

NoyonFrance

What they did here

Calvin was born on 10 July 1509 in Noyon, Picardy, where his father Gérard Cauvin was notary to the bishop; he received his first ecclesiastical benefice here at age 12.

Noyon in this era

Under Valois rule in the Kingdom of France, Noyon became the birthplace of John Calvin (1509), who received his first clerical prebend here before renouncing his Noyon benefices on 4 May 1534 as a public act of rupture with Rome — an intimate prologue to the Reformed tradition he would go on to shape.

About Noyon

A cathedral city in Picardy, northern France, ancient seat of a bishop's see stretching back to the sixth century, where Charlemagne was crowned co-king of the Franks in 768 and John Calvin was born in 1509.

See other sages who lived in Noyon→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with John Calvin’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

In the same tradition

Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Bucer, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, John Knox, Theodore Beza

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with John Calvin’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.