John Calvin was born at Noyon in Picardy, on the 10th of July, 1509. He belonged to a family which had originally consisted of simple mechanics, and had only just entered the rank of burgesses. His grandfather was a cooper at Pont-l'Evêque in Normandy; his father, Gerard Chauvin or Cauvin, settled, at some time and from some motives now unknown, at Noyon, where he was a notary in the ecclesiastical court and secretary to the bishop, Charles de Hangest, who treated him with kindness. No ambition is more disinterested than that of a father, but it is none the less keen, and the desire of Gerard Cauvin's heart was that his children should continue to climb the social ladder, of which he was already standing on the first step. At that time the Church offered an opening to all, and a means by which the very lowest might possibly rise very high. The pious wishes of Jeanne Lefranc, wife of Gerard Cauvin, were in harmony with the more worldly desires of her husband: they devoted their two eldest sons, Charles and John Calvin, to the Church. {153} The great difference in the life and character of these two young men, who followed the same path from the very first, is a sign of the times and of the opposing currents which influenced society. The elder of the two brothers, Charles Calvin, became a priest, and died in 1536, one of the chaplains of St. Mary's church at Noyon; 'but,' an almost contemporary chronicler says, 'he was easily led astray by the errors which abounded in those-days, for he loved the path of liberty, and despised the Church. He uttered blasphemous opinions concerning the sacraments. In spite of many remonstrances he remained shameless, like a man plunged into the depths of iniquity, and persisted in his faults. In 1534 the chapter found it necessary to lament for him as a hopeless and lost soul. He showed himself reprobate in everything, and took care to manifest his indifference to the remedies offered to him for the salvation of his soul. He lifted himself up against God himself, and blasphemed the holy sacrament of the altar. At length, in 1536, he was very ill, and as he had forsaken God, so also at his deathbed did God abandon him as a lost soul. He refused to receive the holy sacraments; on which occasion his body was placed between the four pillars of a gibbet in the place of execution at Noyon.' One of the modern biographers of John Calvin has concluded from these facts that Charles died a Protestant; but this is a great mistake. Evidently Charles Calvin lived and died a dissolute man and an unbeliever, and at the same time remained chaplain of the Catholic Church in his native town. The sixteenth century abounds in similar instances. {154}