5 Sites in Calvin’s Geneva

What sites should you visit if you were to take a trip to Geneva, Switzerland? Today, Stephen Nichols points out five landmarks from this city filled with a treasury of history from John Calvin’s life.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. Back in 58 B.C., Julius Caesar arrived in Geneva. Now, if you are to arrive in Geneva today, I would suggest five sites for you to visit to get a sense of Calvin’s Geneva. The first is the site of Calvin’s house. It is on Calvin Street, and just outside of where his house would’ve stood, there is Calvin’s well, and it is actually the well from which Calvin would have drawn water. And right near the well is a streetlight. It is the last remaining streetlight of the 16th century streetlights. It really wasn’t so much a streetlight as it was holding a fire pot to illumine the street as Calvin made his way back home after a long day at the Cathedral. Well, he lived in that house from 1554 to 1564, the time of his death. And after he died, Theodore Beza moved in, and he lived there from 1564 to 1605. The house was demolished in 1706, and a big building was built on the side of it. And today it houses the offices of the secondary schools of Geneva, but there is a plaque, and the street upon which it sits is named Calvin Street. That’s the first site.

The second site is where Calvin worked. The Cathedral of St. Peter’s. Christianity came to Geneva in 313, and from the four hundreds on, there was a church on this site. It was in the 1100s that construction began on the cathedral. And in 1536 in the square right in front of the cathedral, the town of Geneva gathered and voted to become a Reformed city. And there Calvin preached, and of course, he was followed by Beza, again. Next to the cathedral is the auditoire. This was very busy. In the 1540s and 1550s, Calvin and Geneva gave the auditoire over to the Italians and the English refugees so they could have services there. And from 1556 to 1559, John Knox preached there. And of course, this is the place where all those who were involved in the Geneva Bible would have attended. Once Knox left, Calvin started lecturing in the auditoire to all the students of the Geneva Academy and college. And then of course, once again, Beza follows, and he used it to lecture as well.

Well, our fourth site is the famous Reformation Wall. This was undertaken in 1909 to commemorate what would’ve been the 400th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. It is a massive monument at the center of which, of course, are the big four Reformers, Farel, Calvin, Beza, and Knox. On the base of that monument is a date: 1559. That was the one year when all four of those Reformers were in Geneva at the same time. On either side to the left and to the right are the various nations which were impacted by the Reformation there at Geneva. And so we start with Germany and then Holland, and then France, and then the rest of Switzerland. And then on the other side we have Scotland, America, Britain, and Hungary. And of course, stretching on the wall behind the Reformers and these various countries are the words “Post tenebras lux.”

Well, that brings us to our fifth and final site. It is the Cannons Arcade and the building right next to the Cannons Arcade. In Calvin’s day, this was the armory or the arsenal for the city of Geneva. And today in the arcade, outside of the building sits five robust cannons. They were not there originally. They were perched on the city walls to protect Geneva, and they’ve been moved to this place. Today this building houses the archives of the city of Geneva. And this is very important because in there are the records of all of the underground churches, hundreds of underground churches that were established in France. Pastors would sneak out of France, come to Geneva, get trained, sent back into France with funding from the city. And all of that resulted in a network of underground churches. That’s just one of the treasures in the archives. Well, there you have it, five sites in Calvin’s Geneva. And I’m Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.