Calvin’s Illnesses⤒🔗

Professor Emile Doumergue says that the extraordinary labours of Calvin resulted in an extraordinary series of maladies. ‘It would be easier’, he says, ‘to recount the diseases Calvin did not have than those of which he became the prey. He passed a life of simplicity and labour in the Rue des Chanoines: but he passed there especially a life of suf­fering – suffering the continuity and intensity of which is absolutely exceptional, startling, prodigious.’

Theodore Beza, Calvin’s colleague and successor, tells us:

His diseases, the effects of incredible exertions of body and mind, were various and complicated. Besides being naturally of a feeble and spare body, inclining to consumption, he slept almost waking, and spent a great part of the year in preaching, lecturing, and dictating. For at least ten years he ... took no food at all till supper; so that it is wonderful he could have so long escaped consumption. Being subject to hemicrania, for which starvation was the only cure, he in consequence sometimes abstained from food for thirty-six hours in succession ... He became afflicted with ulcerated haemorrhoids, and occasionally for about five years before his death discharged considerable quantities of blood. When the quar­tan fever left him, his right limb was seized with gout; every now and then he had attacks of colic, and last of all he was afflicted with the stone ... The physicians used what remedies they could and there was no man who attended more carefully to the prescrip­tions of his physicians, except that in regard to mental exertions he was most careless of his health, not even his headaches preventing him from taking his turn in preaching. While oppressed with so many diseases, no man ever heard him utter a word unbecoming a man of firmness, far less unbecoming a Christian.

Felix Bungener sums up the illnesses which beset Calvin thus:

Pains in his head, pains in his legs, pains in his stomach, spitting of blood, difficulty in breathing, the gout, the stone – in fine, nothing was wanting to his long torture, which was scarcely interrupted by a few days less intolerable.

A Genevan physician of note, Dr Gautier, sums up in the pages of Doumergue’s Calvin the history of Calvin’s sicknesses as follows:

Calvin was a good type of the sufferer from arthritis. The series of manifestations of this morbid predisposition was in his case almost complete: migraine, dyspepsia, haemorrhoids, gravel, gout ... It almost seems as if we were reading through Bouchard’s treatise on the diseases of malnutrition ... Two super-added episodes cast spots on this picture of otherwise uniform tint; the intermittent fever and the pulmonary symptoms. Intermittent fever is now very rare in Geneva. It was probably much more frequent when the town was surrounded by muddy ditches. It is also possible that Calvin contracted it on one of his journeys. Up to the 16th century all the countries of Europe were in this respect nearly as unhealthy as the tropical countries are now.

...As to the pulmonary symptoms, I think we may unhesit­atingly share Blaurer’s view that Calvin was a complete consump­tive. But Calvin was arthritic; he was even gouty ... And the arthritic, especially if he be actually gouty, presents a bad soil for tuberculosis. The consumption therefore developed slowly with the Reformer. It was shut up to producing from time to time some blood-spitting or an attack of suffocating bronchitis. I do not believe that Calvin succumbed to an advancing consumption. It is more likely that he was carried away by infection of the urinary tract, following upon gravel. Arthritis therefore lies at the root of nearly all Calvin’s sicknesses; but on the other hand he fully fed this tendency. His sedentary habits, his devouring mental activity, his daily cares for the work and for the churches were the elements of a deplorable hygiene. If he could have consulted a present-day physician, he would have prescribed rest, freedom from anxiety, life in the open air in the country, and a diet almost exclusively of milk and vegetables. He followed the opposite course, happily for his work, but unhappily for the length and comfort of his life. But if this temperament filled the Reformer’s life with almost continual sufferings, there is also another side of the matter which should not be passed over. If arthritis has its drawbacks, it has also its advantages. It is the nervous arthritics who have left behind them the traces of their sojourn on earth. Their faculties are more developed, their will stronger, their energy more intense, than in the case of men of a different constitution and of less highly tempered fibre. If the son of the cooper of Noyon had been born lymphatic and scrofulous, there would probably have been no occasion for writing the life of John Calvin.

When we think of the vast amount of work done by this sufferer whose body was like a walking hospital, we may well be astounded. He has been charged, as we have already hinted, with irritability. Beza admits that he was naturally of a keen temper and that this was height­ened by the laborious life he led. The wonder is that this sick, over­wrought man was not more irritable by far, especially under the strong provocations to which he was often subject. But Beza tells us that ‘the Spirit of the Lord had so taught him to command his anger that no word was heard to proceed from him unbecoming a good man.’

Calvin’s Charm←⤒🔗

What lay behind the mighty influence Calvin wielded? His genius, his activity, his teaching, his eloquence, and his sympathy explain much, but they do not explain all with regard to the power he exercised over thousands of hearts. Doumergue says: ‘We do not capture men or nations (or even flies) with vinegar and gall: we must have honey.’ Yes, there was ‘honey’. True, there was an austerity about Calvin – a gravity. There was even at times an irritability – a natural irritability sharpened by debilitating sicknesses. But it cannot be gainsaid that he had a won­derful charm – a wonderful attractiveness of character. Beza testifies that though he seemed grave, yet among friends in familiar surroundings none could be more pleasant than he. In his youth in France this was abundantly evident. It was also shown in the few weeks of his stay in Italy. But it was in the Rue des Chanoines at Geneva that his charm was particularly powerful over the hearts of men.

He had a capacity for friendship; and even though he was much engaged in great affairs, he had the faculty of neglecting no detail in the lives of his friends and correspondents. A friend wrote to him about the laziness of one of his boys. Another wrote to tell him that he had donned the matrimonial ‘muzzle’. His correspondents felt sure that the man of Geneva was interested in all their news.

The son of Justus Jonas (Luther’s friend) enjoyed Calvin’s friendship and spoke of him as ‘our Calvin’ – a man dearer to him than his own soul. Another wrote with gratitude of the marks of kindness shown him by the Reformer during a visit to Geneva, and said, ‘I am convinced that you seek the interest of those from whom you can hope for no return and that your kindness to them surpasses all they could have wished for, even in their dreams.’ Such was his reputation that men came from every land to meet him, to see his church, and to receive some comfort from him.

Calvin was indeed a man of a very tender heart. ‘You know’, he wrote to Pierre Viret, ‘how very tender my heart is, or, I should better say soft.’ And Viret replied, ‘Yes, I know how tender a heart you have.’ He wrote to Martin Bucer, ‘If on any point, I do not make response as you hoped, you know I am in your power; reprove, rebuke, do all that a father can to a son.’ And Bucer, a year later, responded by addressing him as ‘My heart! my soul!’

There are letters in abundance to show that Calvin exercised this tremendous charm even to the very close of his life, when he was des­perately weak and ill. Even one who was by no means an enthusiastic Calvinist bore this testimony: ‘It is certain that Calvin exercised on those who visited him an irresistible ascendancy.’