Par E. Doumergue. Tome Premier: La Jeunesse de Calvin. Lausanne: Georges Bridel et Cie, Éditeurs. 1899.1
Calvin has had to wait long for an adequate biography. But this first volume of the work projected by M. Emile Doumergue, of Montauban, gives us hope that he will have it ere the fourth century since his birth runs wholly out.
We are not forgetful or unappreciative of those who have already labored in this field. How many they are any good bibliography will exhibit—say, for example, the select list given by Dr. Schaff at the head of his treatment of “The Reformation in French Switzerland” in the seventh volume of his “History of the Christian Church.” How good they are everyone who has sought to know this greatest man—nay, as Renan was compelled to recognize, this greatest Christian—God has given the modern Church, has had ample opportunity to appreciate. There has been left us little excuse for not knowing John Calvin. The description of the wealth of our means of information with which M. Ant. J. Baumgartner opens his admirable lectures on “Calvin Hébraïsant et Interprète de l’Ancien Testament” is no more than just. A considerable number of really good biographies of Calvin already exist—biographies which seem to leave almost nothing to be desired—Henry’s (1835–1844), Bungener’s (1862), E. Stähelin’s (1863), Kampschulte’s (1869–1899), Lefranc’s (1888). These have been supplemented by the publication of his correspondence by Jules Bonnet (1854), Herminjard, and the Strasburg Editors; by the great Strasburg edition of his works with its illuminating prefaces; and by an incredible number of special essays and articles. “Thanks to his biographies,” remarks M. Baumgartner, “we have seen cleared up many an obscure point, many a detail of his life as youth, student, mature man; thanks to his commentaries we are better prepared than ever to appreciate the astonishing, multifarious, almost superhuman activity of this supernaturally courageous man, this vere theologus, this incomparable theologian, as Melancthon fitly called him.… His latest biographies enable us to penetrate deeply into his inner life; and make it possible for us to witness his early studies, to see in action the factors which produced his first works, and the unrolling of the diverse phases through which his spiritual or intellectual development passed.” He concludes: “We should not be wrong, therefore, to be satisfied with what we know.” Yet he at once adds a “nevertheless.” And we must echo this “nevertheless.”
It is possible, to be sure, to exaggerate this “nevertheless.” Dr. A. Pierson certainly exaggerates it when, in the Preface to the first part of his “Studien over Johannes Kalvijn,” he represents mere “studies” about him and not a complete biography of him as alone possible as yet; and speaks of the present duty of the historian as the renunciation of the legends set forth by Henry, Merle d’Aubigné, Stähelin, and not wholly eliminated from even the, in many ways, admirable work of Kampschulte; and the careful and patient eduction of the truth from the authentic records—or at least the demonstration that the riddles of this life are incapable of resolution. As if no one had trodden this hard pathway of detailed investigation before himself; and as if such painstaking investigation could result only in revolutionary conceptions of the course of this life! Before Pierson and after Pierson such studies have been vigorously prosecuted, and our knowledge of Calvin’s life has been correspondingly enriched. The older biographies had already made use of the results of many of them. Much has, however, been acquired since, and thus an adequate biography has remained a desideratum up to to-day and grown daily ever more a desideratum.
It is one of the reasons we have for hoping that M. Doumergue is about to give us this adequate biography that he has neglected none of the “studies over John Calvin” that have hitherto been made. Everything seems to be in his control. And controlling all that has been hitherto brought to light he has added investigations of his own: and better than that, he has brought to his task a clear intelligence and a trained literary habit; a detailed knowledge not only of the whole compass of the literature concerning Calvin—earlier and later—but of the times in which he lived and the currents of thought in which he was formed and amidst which he labored; and as well an acute as well as calm faculty of judgment. Above all he has brought apparently a keen and instinctive sympathy with the personality he is depicting. We do not know how fully this sympathy extends to the doctrinal and ethical teachings of Calvin—subsequent volumes of the work will determine this; but this first volume enables us to say that if M. Doumergue is able to write as sympathetic an account of Calvin’s labors in Geneva and of his theological teaching as he has written of his youthful development and his preparation for his work, he will give us at length an adequate biography of Calvin. There will no doubt remain details which will require further investigation: there will no doubt be expressed historical judgments which will need correcting: the really definitive treatise on no subject will ever be written. But if the promise of this first volume is fulfilled in the remaining four we shall have a portrait of the greatest of the Reformers which will adequately present his grand figure before the eyes of every sympathetic reader.