Friday, July 10, 2009

John Calvin

Happy big 5-0-0 to Jean Cauvan, born in Noyon in Picardy on 10 July 1509. better known to the English-speaking world as John Calvin, sometimes held responsible for everything that is wrong with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. That's a lot of influence--I was going to say "for somebody who never seems to be read"--but the Amazon Calvin community lists 115 "products." That's mostly books, although there is a listing for the DVD Boris and Natasha, which claims "John Calvin" as an auteur. Calvin gets a (perhaps unexpected) show of support from Marilynne Robinson, the author of Gilead and Home and Housekeeping in a number of essays where she declares her loyalty to a person she perceives as a misunderstood (or perhaps better, "not understood at all") writer.

Correction: The original version of this post listed Calvin's age as 400, not 500. Underbelly regrets the error.

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