Geneva adopts the reformation
In 1536, adopting the Reformed faith, Geneva broke with the Roman Catholic Church. The switch to the new reformed ideas went through three phases. From 1525 to 1532, the first phase saw the spreading of Luther and Zwingli[1]'s ideas via the German traders and pastors hailing from the allied city of Bern. From 1532 to 1534, the second phase was a period of consolidation. There were public confrontations between the new ideas' partisans and contenders. Their censure of the preachers from one or the other party aligned the communal authorities according to pressures from their Verburgrechteten allies: Freiburg, a Catholic town or Bern, a city won over to Reformation since 1526. The total breakdown of the relations with the bishop and the town of Freiburg that ensued the Portier affair from 1534 to 1536 covers the third phase. Under Bern's influence, the population's passage to Reformed practice was effected gradually. The celebration of mass was suspended in 1535. The official adhesion to the Reformation was confirmed by the General Council in May 1536, thereby confirming Bern's political victory over Freiburg. The sovereign republic had become Protestant. Institutional changes attendant on the new confessional option began as early as July 1536. Some of these changes represent innovations whereas others were based on the modification of pre-existing structures.
In 1537, Farel and Calvin set forth their project of Ecclesiastical Ordinances based on a principle of “non-dependence” of the Church towards the state; this principle was not well received in the Councils. The disagreement between the magistrates and the Reformers bore on the extent of the Church's disciplinary power and caused Calvin and Farel's disgrace; they left the town in 1538. Until 1541 those upholding Bern's praxis of submission of the church to the magistrates' civil authority clashed with the promoters of ecclesial independence. In 1541, some political string-pulling saw to the failure of the Bernese model's party, and lead to the adoption of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances by the General Council. Called back to Geneva, Calvin could implement his religious and political reform. The Ordinances, taken from the Strasburg model set up by Martin Bucer[2], lay down the principle of four « ministries » addressing predication, teaching, discipline and charitable action; each was managed respectively by the Company of pastors, the doctors, the members of the Consistory[3] and the deacons. The ordinances also directed the administration of sacraments, the celebration of marriages and burials, prisons and sick visiting, religious education.
The authority of the church was not subjected to the political authority but acted in coordination with it. This was particularly manifest in the activity of the Consistory which controlled by rebuke but delegated the repression of more serious cases to the magistrates. The most severe sanction enforced by the Consistory was the excommunication from the Lord's Supper[4], a drastic measure of exclusion for the society of the time. Excommunicated, a person would find it difficult to get married, to become a Godparent and thus to take part in the acts and rituals founding the social bond between members of a community. Excommunication ostracised people, placed them in a situation that interfered with their everyday life and work. Faced with the social consequences of such a sanction, excommunicated people sought at all costs to be reintegrated in the community. Setting up such an instrument of social control caused tensions between the Genevan population and Calvin. However, and regardless of antagonisms and oppositions, there was no direct challenge to the Reformed doctrine, no patent will to return to Catholicism.
Beyond his religious pursuits, Calvin participated in the devising of the edicts and ordinances to reorganise Geneva's judicial and political order in 1543. To that end, he relied on pre-existing political structures. The 1543 « Political Edicts » or “Ordinances on Offices and Officers” define the organisation of powers, the mode of election, the competences and prerogatives of each magistrate. The setting up of a politically interlocked system between the General Council, the Little Council and the Council of the Two Hundred granted more power to the more restricted councils and limited the role of the General Council. According to W. Monter, at a time when the state was subjected to the “word of God”, the Little Council stuck to the same principles as other European princes: any public office is a mission, a duty of “submission to God” not to be confused with a means of accessing honours or promotion. The acceptance and implementation of these Edicts and Ordinances in 1543 thus rounded off the ecclesiastical, juridico-political and institutional reforms.
In 1526, Geneva had become a sovereign republic. Ten years later, the political emancipation of the city was finalised even as a confessional change was taking place which was adopted by the population[5]as a whole. The break from the Roman Catholic Church consecrated the political autonomy achieved from the prince-bishop. The exercise of regalian rights, namely coining money, raising an army, collecting taxes and above all dispensing justice that sum up the sovereign's prerogatives, was at the heart of the conflicts of authority unfolding in Geneva. At the same time institutional changes arose from the political emancipation and confessional change which they consolidated. Sovereign rights were kept in place while the institutions implementing them changed. But in the end, how far-reaching were those institutional mutations? For all that there were ruptures, many continuities need pointing up. Thus the General Council and the Little Council survived the Middle-Ages whilst the creation in 1526 of the Council of the Two Hundreds enabled the independentists to bypass their opponents ensconced in the Little Council. As for the creation of the lieutenant of justice's court in 1529 and that of the office of attorney general in 1534, it essentially met the need to replace institutions and personnel previously attached to the Bishop. The upcoming political authorities were re-appropriating the institutions, customising them according to their needs while preserving the former power structures.
Joining the Reformation movement in 1536 led to the creation of new institutions such as the Consistory in which Calvin founded his « ecclesial society »
model as defined by the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. The reasons for it were ideological but also practical and economic. In the event, the departure of all the Catholic clergy and of the bishop's entourage resulted in the abandonment of church property and responsibilities. So that such activities as aid to the poor and the sick had to be transferred to institutional structures run by the city. Thus several of these new institutions answered as much to the necessity to replace as to innovate. The history of Geneva bears out the reciprocal influences of the conversion of a city's population and of its political empowerment: a twin process which found its expression in new institutions. In the history of Europe, Geneva stands as a model of affirmation of a new sovereignty and of institutional adjustments to confessional change.
