Paul Landowski, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Image: The Reformation Wall in Geneva depicting, left to right: Farel, Calvin, Beza and Knox.
During Mary Tudor’s reign of terror, in which almost 300 reformers were rounded up and burnt at the stake, Knox fled to Dieppe in France. From there he travelled to Geneva in Switzerland seeking the counsel of John Calvin. He had questions and needed answers: can Christians physically resist tyrannical governments? Is it right for a woman to rule over men as queen? When he was shown into Calvin’s study he found a scholarly-looking patriarch surrounded by a sea of books. Calvin was clear that uprisings against tyranny should not be endorsed by Christians, or society would fall into anarchy. His response to Knox’s query about the rule of women over men was that only in exceptional cases, such as with Deborah in the Bible, could this happen.
After a period in France, and then in Frankfurt am Main in Germany, where he tried, and failed, to bring some sort of order to various factions of Protestants who were trying to work through reformed teaching, he returned to Scotland. In 1556 he travelled back to Geneva where he had been called to pastor the English-speaking congregation at the Church of Notre-Dame-la Neuve. Settling here with his wife Marjorie and mother-in-law, Mrs Bowes, Knox embarked on a three-year ministry. For Knox and his family it was a blissful respite in beautiful surroundings. Among his friends there were John Foxe, who wrote the Book of Martyrs, Christopher Goodman, his fellow pastor, Thomas Lever, with whom he had found reconciliation after Frankfurt, and John Calvin and Theodore Beza. He wrote to his friend Anna Locke: ‘I neither fear nor am ashamed to say [that Geneva] is the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in earth since the days of the Apostles. In other places, I confess Christ to be truly preached, but manners and religion so sincerely reformed, I have not yet seen in any other place.’
If the serene situation in Geneva seemed to be idyllic, it was an oasis in a stormy Europe. Protestant refugees fled to this safe haven, especially from France, with tales of Roman Catholic brutality at the hands of Mary de Guise’s family. At one point about a quarter of Geneva’s population was made up of persecuted refugees. Among them were English reformers who tearfully shared with Knox the heart-breaking news of the cruel deaths of some of his friends by Mary Tudor. Knox and his fellow scholars, knowing that biblical education was the key to reforming the church, set about producing the English Geneva Bible. The New Testament was published in 1557, and the complete book came out in 1560 after Knox had returned to Scotland. This great work, which was supervised by William Whittingham and Anthony Gilby, preceded the King James Version by fifty-one years. The first English Bible printed in Scotland was the Geneva Bible. It was because of the involvement of Knox and Calvin with this book, that a law was passed in Scotland when it was printed there in 1579, that every household should buy one, if they had the means. Throughout the nation the church sought to educate the people and procure copies for those who could not afford them. Knox’s return to Scotland in 1559 would officially usher in the Protestant church there, but that part of the story is for next week.
‘The entrance of Your words gives light’ (Psalm 119:130, NKJV)