The Geneva Bible
In Britain today, we have a tenuous grasp our historic connection to the Reformation in Europe but that link is profound. It affected everything from Scotland, music in churches, religion, literature, society, politics, English and Scottish laws to The Founding Fathers of America. What started in Geneva was like an earthquake - its aftershock affecting our identities and lives today.
The Calvin Auditory was the English and Italian congregations’ place of worship from 1555 under John Knox
CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653033
Before the Reformation, only priests and choirs were allowed to sing in church. Jean Calvin, a theologian from Noyen in France, encouraged congregational singing of the Psalms. So when William Shakespeare attending Holy Trinity Stratford, he sang from the English metrical psalter of Sternhold and Hopkins (1562), a version of the Genevan Psalter. These were psalms in English metre verses set to the appealing French music of Loys Bourgeois and developed in harmonic four-part by Claude Goudimel, who died in the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants in Paris (1572) and later by Jan Sweelinck. Shakespeare owned and read a Geneva Bible (into which the English Psalter was often bound). The rhyming ‘common metre’ of the English Psalter may have irritated a true poet but it remained widely used until 1800. On some Scottish islands today, like Lewis, the Gaelic Psalter is used for unaccompanied congregational psalm singing.
The link to Geneva is the ‘Marian exiles’ the English-speaking Protestant exiles who had fled the persecutions of Catholic Mary 1st in England to Europe. They were escaping the stake on which Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley died during her reign. Some went to Frankfurt, Zurich, Basle and Padua and some went to Geneva, where Jean Calvin had been teaching the Reformation, for twenty years, and sending out missionaries. The Council in Geneva gave the Marian exiles a small chapel for their worship called St Marie La Neuve alongside the main Cathedral Church of Saint Pierre which also still stands: this was where Calvin preached. St Marie La Neuve Chapel later became the first home of Calvin’s Geneva University. Today, it is called ‘The Calvin Auditory’.
The Calvin Auditory had been used for early morning theology lectures by Calvin from 1536; in the 1550s, it was shared by the Marian exiles and the Italian Protestant congregation. John Knox ministered here to the Marian congregation. Subsequently, it was used by The Waldensians, who had joined the Reformation, though they preceded. Their name remains outside it, today.
This small building was a crucible for so much of our national story, including: the story of Scotland, The English Civil War, Cromwell, The English Bill of Rights and Parliamentary democracy. It was the Geneva Bible that those on the Mayflower took to America in 1620.
As Marian exiles came and left, there was a steady congregation of about 200 English speakers. A register of members and ministers was kept known as Livre des Anglois which is kept in The Geneva State Archives. The whole atmosphere around Calvin was scholarly producing a flurry of translations of the Bible including in Italian and Spanish. The first publication by the British Marian Church was in 1556 entitled ‘The forme of prayers and ministration of the Sacraments etc used in the English Congregation at Geneva: and approved, by the famous and godly learned man, John Calvin’. It contained:
the Confession of Faith in English
the Liturgy of the English Congregation in Geneva
an English metrical version of fifty-one psalms, together with accompanying music
Calvin’s catechism in English.
The Marians sang the Genevan Psalms to the English metric versions by Sternhold in this Chapel. These became the basis of the hymn book for all church worship during the reign of Elizabeth 1st, published in 1562.
Their next publication was The Geneva Bible translated by William Whittingham, Anthony Gilby, Lawrence Humphrey, Miles Coverdale (former Bishop of Exeter), Christopher Goodman and Thomas Sampson. It is based on the Great Bible for the Old Testament and on Whittingham’s revision of William Tyndale’s (1534) edition of the New Testament. The scholars who produced the Geneva Bible had access to the best Hebrew and Greek manuscripts including Theodore Beza’s Codex.
The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to be illustrated, annotated and divided into verses. Italics denoted which words were added to clarify the text. There were more than 140 editions of the Geneva Bible between 1560 and 1644. Its printing in Geneva was overseen and financed by wealthy merchant, from Exeter, John Bodley, who was the father of Thomas Bodley who set up the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The printer was Rowland Hall. Bodley named his printing works back in London ‘The Halfe Eagle and Keye’ after the arms of Geneva and borrowed its motto ‘Post tenebras lux’ (“After darkness, I hope for Light” from Job 17.12 and Calvin’s own motto).
The half eagle, key and motto of Geneva
Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11572409
On her accession to the English throne in 1559, Queen Elizabeth 1st appointed many of the Marian exiles to key church posts and went on supported Geneva. Scholars from England and Scotland scholars taught at Calvin’s College (now the secular University of Geneva). Some British nobility sent their sons to Geneva to study theology, law and the humanities to ensure they had a definitely Protestant education.
For further information
History of the Marian Church
The Reformation in Rhyme by Beth Quitslund
(St Andrews Studies in Reformation History)
English Metrical Psalms (Cambridge University Press) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p3H_dwyIyM0C&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=English+metrical+version+of+fifty-one+psalms&source=bl&ots=7DVtxLRObW&sig=mK2l4_8hwlL8yxHohVW0N88wom8&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCi57O-4LPAhWIAcAKHVT4C9AQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=English%20metrical%20version%20of%20fifty-one%20psalms&f=false
The Genevan Book of Order
http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/GBO_ch04.htm
http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n85-355531/
The Confession of the English Congregation at Geneva http://easttexasreformed.org/Resources/HTML_docs/confengl.htm
Genevan Psalter
http://www.frankezinga.com/genevan-psalter-cd
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