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Eighteenth-century Geneva and a changing Calvinism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Calvin’s reformed Geneva had as its motto post tenebras lux; the city set on a hill found an identity not only in maintaining the precarious miracle of political independence but in the God-given task of preserving truth and shedding light. In the sixteenth century the republic bore witness to its salvation through a corporate life of ordered righteousness, by printed propaganda and through a stream of missionaries and martyrs. Sympathisers also poured into Geneva but while many sixteenth-century exiles from France and French-speaking territories had quickly assumed important office in the Genevan church and the economic and political life of the republic, those who arrived after 1685 found themselves for the most part trapped in second-class employment enjoying second-class civil rights. Briefly, the central change was that Calvin’s city had depended for its survival on the commitment and capital of newcomers—like Calvin himself—while eighteenth-century Geneva had bred and trained its own clergy and men of affairs. In 1769 Jacob Vernet wrote of the hereditary right of the Genevan citizen to his rôle in the city’s life.
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References
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The author wishes to thank Anthony Fletcher for reading and commenting upon a draft of this paper.