The Times and Manners⤒🔗

In those days men journeyed on horseback. Wheeled carriages were only beginning to be used in the middle of the 16th century. Calvin, writing to Beza on 19 November 1561, speaks of mounting his horse to go to dinner. The inns and hostelries of Geneva were heated by stoves. Calvin could not bear the fumes of these – they gave him severe head­aches. Fortunately, to the fumes of the stoves there was not added the smoke of tobacco. Tobacco was not introduced (into France) till 1556 or 1559. Pope Urban VIII excommunicated smokers in 1624. James I of England wrote against them too. The Jesuits declared themselves in favour of tobacco. Prof. Doumergue, Calvin’s biographer, says that the Reformer doubtless never even heard of tobacco.

The beds in the inns were arranged as in a dormitory. Montaigne, a much younger contemporary of Calvin, speaks of an inn at Baden with 170 beds, 17 stoves, and 11 kitchens catering for 300 persons. This hotel had some single rooms, which was unusual for those times.

Imagine yourself sitting down at a meal in an inn in Geneva. First, you must remove your hat for the prayer. The hotel-keeper must be careful as to this prayer, for it was laid down that grace must be said be­fore and after each meal. The prayer over, you replace your hat for the meal. (In fact, the pastors wore their hats while preaching in the pulpit.) The table is square, and you are seated on a bench or a wooden chair. On the table there is a cloth. We hope it is clean. Erasmus, writing some fifty years earlier, speaks of cloths in hostelries which went unwashed for six months! There are no serviettes; they had not yet come into use; they began to be used in France in the 18th century, but not till later in Germany or Italy. The fringe of the table-cloth must suffice for wiping oneself!

On the table before you there is a wooden trencher on which you are to carve your meat. There are plates of wood and tin in use also.

The rules of etiquette in the 16th century differed vastly from those of our day. Even in the 17th century we find a Duke of Austria, when his nobility were dining with him, laying down the following rules: ‘Not to put the hand in the dish; not to throw bones behind you or under the table; not to lick one’s fingers nor spit on the plate, nor to wipe one’s nose on the table-cloth.’

On the table there would be an abundance of spices, for the men of the 16th century were fond of cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves and the like. They had strange tastes. For example, they put the juice of sour grapes in their soup.

Forks were not in use in those days. A book of etiquette dating back to 1483 prescribed that food was to be taken with three fingers. Years later – after Calvin’s time – Montaigne was still eating with his fin­gers, and he rather fancied himself to be a gentleman! ‘Calvin had no fork; he ate with his fingers’, Doumergue tells us. And Doumergue a lit­tle later in his record adds: ‘The Reformers – Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bullinger, Myconius – and Calvin and Farel and Viret – ate with their fingers, without forks, and even on occasion invoking the aid of their knives!’

The City and its Houses←⤒🔗

At the beginning of the Reformation Geneva was a beautiful city, for it was then a city of open spaces. There were gardens and orchards and barns, and the houses were usually no more than three stories high. The transformation began about 1534 when Geneva became a place of refuge. An exodus of men, women and children from France and other lands where they were in peril on account of their faith, began arriving in the city. They came through rocky defiles, avoiding known paths. They came in the snow and bitter cold – famishing, destitute and utterly weary. When they saw the Lake of Geneva and the towers of St Peter’s where Calvin preached, they broke into tears and sobs of joy; men and women pressed their children to their breasts with gladness of heart. They had reached the city of peace, where they might enjoy the liberty of the gospel.

To house the homeless refugees two courses were pursued. More houses were built in the suburbs, in the gardens and orchards, and along the lanes linking one street to another. So there also arose great blocks of houses.

When no more room on the ground was available, they expanded upwards. They raised their houses higher and higher still. So old quar­ters of the city, which had been most beautiful, gave place to narrow and dark streets, with dwellings where twelve or fifteen families were crowded together in the one abode. This led to a sad disfigurement of the city, but that disfigurement was its glory. It was love for the perse­cuted that brought it about. A city of 13,000 people received, housed, and fed about 12,000 refugees in the relatively short period of Calvin’s ministry. It took great effort and involved much expense, for the refu­gees came starving and with only the clothes they were wearing.

The families of Geneva previous to this time had maintained their privacy, with a certain aloofness to strangers. Now all this was changed. The city’s gates were opened wide. Beds were put everywhere, some­times five or six in a room, and with as many as forty-five people living in a house.

The houses in Calvin’s time in Geneva were simply furnished – for the same reason as their streets were dark and their houses high. It was a religious and political camp, a city of refuge. There was no place for luxury and ease; all was austerity and sacrifice. Its men were soldiers ready to bear arms at a moment’s notice in defence of their wives, their children and their firesides. They must continually be on the alert, for were not Savoy and France and Spain threatening them on every side, looking for an opportunity to seize their city? No wonder the chief adornment of their homes was the pike, the cuirass,¹ the hauberk² hanging on the walls. The chief adornment? No, not quite. The chief place must be reserved for the Bible, the sword of the Spirit, the believer’s shield and buckler. At one stage there was a feverish activity on the part of the men of Geneva to make and repair their fortifications; and it is reported that Calvin himself took shovel in hand to raise the mound of defence against the foe.

In spite of all the threats, Geneva stood fast by the grace of God. It stood fast, for it was founded on a rock. It not only stood fast; it was a strength and a source of blessing to the Protestant world, sending a Knox to Scotland, a Peter Martyr to England, and a Marnix to the Low Countries.

In the matter of morals, there was a wonderful change wrought in Geneva in the course of the years of Calvin’s ministry. Before the advent of the Reformation, the Roman Church had put no great restraint upon vice, and so immorality reigned. The Reformation replaced licence with discipline. The moral laws of the Christian life were proclaimed. Riot­ous feasting was strictly regulated; measures were taken to reform the abounding evils of the taverns of the time. Bonivard tells us that in 1517 – before the advent of the Reformation – the city was given over to worldly pleasure, to card-games, to dances and feasts and wantonness and noise and strife. Under the ministry of the Word, Geneva became a city of God. The Word was preached five times on a Sunday and on week-days there were also sermons and lectures. And the citizens were vigorously encouraged to attend on the ministry of the pulpit.

On the walls of the city of Geneva was the motto IHS – the first three letters of the name Jesus (in the Greek). It was not a mere motto, as so often happens with inscriptions of this kind. Calvin sought to make it a meaningful motto – full of meaning for every citizen. Geneva, he said, must be the holy Jerusalem.