Lifting Hearts to the Lord

Worship with John Calvin in Sixteenth-Century Geneva

Karin Maag, Karin Maag

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781467444002
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

The Church at Worship is a series of documentary case studies of specific worshiping communities from around the world and throughout Christian history — case studies that can inform and enrich worship practices today. In Lifting Hearts to the Lord Karin Maag brings together a wealth of primary sources to examine worship as it was taught and practiced in John Calvin's Geneva. Enhanced with Maag's introductions and numerous marginal notes, this volume covers the period from 1541 to 1564, capturing both Calvin's signal contribution to Reformation worship and the voices of ordinary Genevans as they navigated — and fought about — changes in their worship. Some of the primary materials included here:
· Selections from John Calvin's Scripture commentaries and sermons dealing with worship
· Pages from the Genevan Psalter and service book
· Historical maps and illustrations of Geneva and its churches
· Genevan city council edicts and ordinances on worship
· Excerpts from letters, eyewitness accounts of Reformation worship in Geneva, and consistory records

Part One

Locating the Worshiping Community

The Context of the Worshiping Community: Sixteenth-Century Geneva

Twenty-first-century Geneva is a flourishing Swiss city, primarily known for its cutting-edge scientific research, its high-end jewelry and watch-making, and its many international headquarters, including the World Health Organization, the International Red Cross, and the World Council of Churches. Yet the tourists who visit the city often come as much to experience Geneva’s past as its present. Among the biggest attractions for many visitors is Geneva’s Protestant heritage that dates back to the 1500s, and its key impact on the Reformed faith, popularly known as Calvinism.

A duchy is a territory headed by a duke, one of several different kinds of nobles whose power was a blend of high social status, land ownership, and military might.

Yet even before the sixteenth century, Geneva played an important role in European history. First settled by an Indo-European people known as the Allobroges, Geneva was incorporated into the ancient Roman empire around 120 B.C., and flourished as a Roman town through the fifth century after Christ. Its prestige and standing grew in the Middle Ages, when the city became known for its quarterly fairs, attracting merchants and traders from Italy to the Netherlands.

The people of Savoy were known as Savoyards. Savoyard was also the name of the dialect spoken in the region, a blend of Italian and French. Most Genevans understood both Savoyard and French.

Due to the political void that emerged after the fall of the ancient Roman empire, the bishop of Geneva grew in power both spiritually and politically, and the government of Geneva remained in the hands of its bishop until the first decades of the sixteenth century. Geneva’s political situation was also shaped by the increasing influence of the neighboring Duchy of Savoy, which wanted to incorporate Geneva into its territory. By the fifteenth century, the Duke of Savoy had received papal permission to appoint the bishop of Geneva, thus drawing the city more firmly into the Savoyard orbit. At the same time, however, the city’s leading merchants pushed successfully to gain greater control of local government. By the mid-1300s, for instance, the Genevan city leaders, known as syndics, had the right to administer and oversee justice in the city. Geneva’s complex internal and external political realities decisively shaped the course of the Reformation in the first decades of the sixteenth century.1

The pre-Reformation political situation in Geneva was complex. Basically, the Genevan population headed by its most powerful inhabitants (the merchants) wanted more local power in their hands, and less power to their bishop, but the Genevans disagreed over which external political power (the Swiss, the French, or even the Duke of Savoy) was the best potential ally in helping the Genevans achieve greater independence from the bishop’s control.

Prior to the Reformation, Geneva, with a population of about 10,000 people, had been a Catholic city within the larger Catholic duchy of Savoy. After its earlier period of prosperity, the economy of Geneva was on a downward slope by the later fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The pattern of trade routes and major fairs had shifted west toward Lyon in France, and Geneva had become something of a backwater. The town had a merchant class but very few resident nobles, and much of the commercial activity went to supplying local markets.2

Geneva’s formal adoption of the Reformation in 1536 was not particularly early, considering that Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses (usually understood as the starting point of the Reformation) were produced in 1517. Other neighboring cities, especially the Swiss towns of Zurich, Bern, and Basel, had all adopted the Reformation already in the 1520s, and crucially, all had chosen to follow the Reformed version of Protestantism under the leadership of Swiss Reformers, rather than the Lutheran path. This volume will examine how the Reformed Church in Geneva worshiped after the city officially accepted the Reformation in May 1536, in a public gathering of the conseil général or general council, bringing together all the men of the city who were entitled to vote. They raised their hands and swore “that all of us, unanimously, and with the help of God, want to live in this holy evangelical law and Word of God, as it is declared to us, wanting to leave aside all masses and other papal ceremonies and abuses, all images and idols, and live in unity and obedience to the law.”3

Key points of difference between Lutheran and Swiss Reformed churches included the Lord’s Supper (the Lutherans held to consubstantiation and the Real Presence of Christ in the elements, while the Swiss Reformed saw the sacrament as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice); baptism (Lutherans retained many more elements of traditional Catholic baptisms, such as anointing with oil and exorcising the power of Satan over the child); and worship (Lutherans sang hymns and retained more elements of the traditional Catholic liturgy. The Reformed of Zurich, in contrast, had no singing or music of any kind during their services, and adopted a very simple liturgy).

To make sense of Reformation worship as practiced in Geneva from 1541 to 1564, one has to understand the pattern of Catholic worship that preceded the Genevan Reformation. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges facing the city’s pastors in the first years following the Reformation was trying to get the Genevan population (who had grown up Catholic) to make the transition to Reformed worship without retaining or blending in any of their previously Catholic practices. The church leaders could not take support for the Reformation for granted, for although the male citizens of Geneva had voted publicly to adopt the Reformation, their decision may well have been based more on political factors than on any burning desire for (or even genuine understanding of) Protestant theology and practice.4 Hence the implementation of Reformed worship in Geneva was as much an instructional process as a liturgical one, and the rich array of documents provides evidence of the give and take that occurred as the Genevans, visitors to the city, government leaders, and pastors all sought to come to terms with the dramatic changes that were taking place.

Geneva offers an exceptional case study for investigations of the theology and practice of worship in the Reformation era for two key reasons. First, Geneva has an extensive and well-preserved set of manuscripts and other archival materials from the sixteenth century, thanks to careful archivists and the small number of wars fought on Genevan territory since the sixteenth century. These factors have ensured the survival of primary source documents that are simply unavailable for many other places where the Reformation took hold. Second, because the French Reformer John Calvin spent the major part of his adult life in Geneva and made the city one of the focal points for Reformed churches across Europe, later scholars interested in the history and theology of Calvin and Calvinism have produced extensive secondary sources that deal with worship and other aspects of religious life in Reformation Geneva.5

The time span of this volume extends from 1541, when Calvin returned to Gene...