I had an excellent two volume edition of Calvin's Institutes in the mid 80s and recall reading in the introduction that Calvin wrote the Institutes in both Latin and old medieval French. You mentioned translations into the aforementioned languages but as I said, I believe Calvin was responsible for both the Latin and old French versions.
Tried to leave a Thank You on the "Strange Bible of Henry VIII" but could not. A circle kept going around during the entire message from You. If You get this message, and if You have not done so, research the origin & first usage of the 3 letter word, God. I was amazed, dumbfounded at what I discovered about that 3 letter word, its origin & first usage. First, translated in English, there was, Baal-Gad, then Gad, then, Gud, then, God.
I have read parts of Calvin’s Institutes as well as various works by St. John Chrysostom and St. Irenaeus. To me, the title “Institutes” is misleading. The first thing a person of my Tradition thinks about in an Institute of the Church is a Church Councils like Nicea 325 and Chalcedon 451, from whence came The Nicene Creed. Yet Calvin does not seem willing to ascribe any authority to a Church Council. True, he does state which Books of the Bible he considers to be valid, but he never states why he accepts a given book. What is problematic for me is that Calvin implicitly rejects Carthage 397, which sets the New Testament Canon in stone. By ignoring Church Councils in general and The Council of Carthage 397 in particular, it is theoretically possible to reject the Gospels of Peter, James, and John, while accepting the Gospels of Phillip, Thomas, and Judas Iscariot. This is just one of the many problems I have had in the studying Calvin in the context of studying The History of The Bible (not to be confused with Biblical History).
Please, if you could find the time to answer me I would appreciate it more than anything! My exam is in 2 weeks. I'm sorry but I don't understand how the institutes helped his first and second ministry in Geneva? Is it that his Institutes contained his theology, and it is that theology that shaped the structure of the Genevan Church (which was supposedly a mirror of early christianity) as was the Institutes, they had a traditional early christian structure.
Hope the exams go well! You are right on the first point: Calvin and his Institutes shaped Geneva and the church. The Institutes are a summary of Calvin's theology and it was used to train pastors--so the pastors who would likely be in the city had to learn from it. The church before Calvin arrived had been medieval Catholic, so the changes would have been dramatic. In this day, a city like Geneva would run its own business (or it would at most connect to other cities in the region), so it's not like Calvin would shape the entire area of the Swiss cities, per se. But since he was the leader in Geneva, his works shaped it. Hope that helps!
