Who Was Pierre Viret?

Historian and biographer R.A. Sheats wrote:

The visible history of Christ’s church is often hidden in clouds of obscurity. For reasons known only to God, He often chooses to conceal some of His greatest treasures, awaiting their rediscovery by the church in His perfect time.

Thus it has been for Pierre Viret (1511–1571), a nearly forgotten giant of the sixteenth-century Reformation.

Viret was born in Orbe, a village thirty miles north of Geneva. His father was the respected local tailor. His mother was venerated for her saintly devotion and selfless service in the Roman Catholic parish. A gifted student, Viret soon outstripped the capabilities of his parents and tutors and was sent to study in Paris with the Brethren of the Common Life at the Collège de Montaigu—where Desiderius Erasmus, John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, John Knox, and William Farel also attended. During Viret’s years there, he was converted to the Protestant faith.

Returning to his home village at the age of nineteen, Viret seized upon a rare opportunity to hear Farel preach the Reformation doctrines of grace. In short order, Farel pressed Viret into assisting him in evangelizing the area. His success and renown were almost immediate. His gentle persuasions, combined with deep theological maturity, helped win over even the most obstinately recalcitrant “Old Catholics.” Before he was twenty-one, Viret had brought the message of the Reformation to the Swiss towns of Orbe, Grandson, Payerne, and Neuchâtel.

In 1534, Viret and Farel began to evangelize and minister in the city of Geneva. Then Viret led the Genevan Disputation of 1535 before moving on to Yverdon and Lausanne, where he witnessed great gospel fruitfulness.

Viret was back in Geneva in 1536, in time for a fateful meeting with the young Calvin and the fiery Farel. It was then that Farel famously threatened Calvin with divine retribution if he did not remain in the city to labor side by side with them. Calvin had only intended to pass through the city on his way to Strasbourg. What is less known about that incident is that Viret likely softened Farel’s fiery warnings, persuading Calvin to stay. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and partnership as yokefellows in the faith.

The next year, Viret was in Lausanne overseeing a remarkable reforming work in that city. He pastored a thriving church. He helped to evangelize the neighboring districts. He engaged in several public disputations with Catholic hierarchs. He wrote voluminously. He survived two brutal assassination attempts. And he established the first academy for Reformed theological training. Viret set about his work tirelessly, discipling some of the brightest minds in the fledgling Reformation movement.

It was Viret who discipled Theodore Beza, who eventually became the headmaster of the Lausanne Academy, and still later, succeeded Calvin in Geneva. It was Viret who mentored Guido de Bres, author of the Belgic Confession. It was Viret who shaped the thinking of Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. It was Viret who befriended and counseled Heinrich Bullinger, successor to Huldrych Zwingli and author of the First and Second Helvetic Confessions. It was Viret who defended Calvin in two successive heresy trials.

When Calvin was banished from Geneva in 1538, it was Viret who was recalled to the city to do the work of reconciliation and restoration. It was Viret’s persistent intercessions that eventually persuaded the council to invite Calvin to return in 1541, and it was Viret who persuaded his reluctant friend to actually accept the invitation.

Over the next two decades, Viret would serve in the flourishing gospel work of Lausanne. He would continue to train a whole new generation of pastors, evangelists, apologists, theologians, educators, and missionaries. Whenever there was an intractable conflict or an obstinate controversy in any of the churches throughout the Swiss cantons, it was Viret who was called in to restore their purity, their peace, and their lovingkindness. He would write a raft of vital books that would shape the Reformation throughout Europe—from Scotland to Greece, from Italy to Poland, from Navarre to Moravia, from the Netherlands to Sweden. Carrying on a voluminous correspondence with frequent visits back to Geneva, he was Calvin’s best friend and most trusted advisor.

When political pressure from Bern forced Viret to flee from Lausanne in 1559, he was joined in exile by all of his fellow pastors, all of the professors of the academy, every single one of their students, and hundreds of the city’s congregants. Geneva welcomed them all with open arms. Viret was made the pastor of one of the largest churches in the city, where his rhetorically winsome, theologically substantive, covenantally minded, and expositionally rich preaching laid enduring foundations for discipleship. He reconvened the Lausanne Academy, now the Genevan Academy. The city became a hive of vision, prosperity, freedom, and opportunity. Its Reformation legacy was secure at long last.

Some men might be tempted to rest on their laurels. But not Viret. When five of his French students were martyred in Provence, he turned his attentions to the vital Huguenot missionary efforts in the west. In 1568, he brought the Reformation first to Nîmes, and then successively to Montpellier, Lyon, Marseilles, Aix, and Orange. He was instrumental in the conversion of Queen Jeanne d’Albret of Navarre, the mother of King Henry IV. He discipled Prince William of Orange, who helped the Reformation flourish in both his French and Dutch dominions.

As the father of the Huguenot Church, Viret oversaw stupendous growth, from twelve convening churches in 1568 to more than fifteen hundred churches at the time of his death just three and a half years later in 1571.

Over the course of his long career, Viret authored over fifty books, many of them multi-volume works. The practical ethics of his Decalogue Commentary was the guiding light of John Knox’s reforming work in Scotland. His Exposition of the Apostles Creed helped Martin Bucer craft the Thirty-Nine Articles for the English Church. His Simple Exposition of the Christian Faith and the accompanying catechism* was a direct inspiration for the Westminster divines. His Letters of Comfort to the Persecuted Church became a lifeline to Jan Comenius and the harried Husites during the Thirty Years’ War. His book The Christian and the Magistrate helped Nicholas von Amsdorff shape the Magdeburg Confession. And of course, all of them shaped Calvin and the later editions of his magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

No wonder Viret was deeply beloved. To some he was known as the “Smile of the Reformation.” To others, he was the “Angel of the Reformation.”

Ask anyone who has even the scantiest knowledge of the period, “Who was the most significant figure in Geneva’s magisterial Reformation?” and they would of course reply, “John Calvin.” But Calvin himself might very well have humbly demurred replying: “Oh, no, no, no. To be sure, it was Pierre Viret.”