Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ReformersHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers
Hubbard, Elbert
Reformers
But lo! Luther was talking to the world, not to sleepy Wittenberg!
Luther was requested to appear at the Vatican--more properly, the
Castle Angelo. He ignored the invitation. Another summons followed.
Luther went into hiding. He was arrested, tried and condemned, and
sentence suspended. He was again tried, this time by the Emperor and
the Electors, and again condemned. The formal sentence of death only
awaited, and then for him the fagots would flare and the flames
crackle.
His friends captured him, they of the printing-presses, helped by
others, and bore him away to a prison where his enemies could not
follow. Many a man has been thrown into prison by his enemies, but who
besides Luther was so treated by his friends! Public sentiment was
with him--Germany stood by him--but best of all the printers pulled
the proofs, and four-page folders edited by Martin Luther went
fluttering all over the world, protesting man's right to think.
So he lived out his days, did Martin Luther, on parole, under sentence
of death, working, thinking, writing, printing. And over in France a
serious, sober young man, keen, mentally hungry, translated one of
Luther's pamphlets into French, and printed it for his school-fellows.
Having printed it, he had to explain it, and next to defend it--and
also his action in having printed it. The young man's name was Jean
Chauvain. He spelled it "Caulvain" or "Calvain." The world knows him
as John Calvin.
* * * * *
John Calvin was a Frenchman, but it is well to remember that the
typical Frenchman, like the typical Irishman and his brother the Jew,
exists only in the comic papers, and on the vaudeville stage. The
frivolous and the mercurial were not in Calvin's make-up.
The parents of Calvin were of that same sturdy, seafaring type which
produced Millet, Auguste Rodin, Jules Breton, and other simple,
earnest and great souls who have done great deeds. Calvin was the true
Huguenot type.
Peasant ancestry and a nearness to the soil are necessary conditions
in the formation of characters who are to re-map continents, artistic
or theological. The Puritan is a necessary product of his time.
However, Calvin had the advantage of one remove from actual hardship,
and this evidently refined his intellect, and relieved him of world
stage-fright. His father was a notary or steward in the employ of the
De Mommor family. Very naturally, the boy mixed with the scions of
royalty on an equal footing, for pom-pom-pull-away knows no caste, and
a boy's a boy for a' that. At twelve years of age, he felt himself
quite as noble as those of noble blood, and so expressed himself to
his playmates. Probably they found it convenient to agree with him.
Their nickname for him was, "The Accusative."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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