First Register of the Company of Pastors

Among the priceless jewels of the MIR is this collection of manuscript documents. This is the very first register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva, the body whose duty was to ensure the good orthodoxy of its members and morality.

Copied by the secretary at the time, the text of Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541), which establishes the organization of the Church and gives birth, in particular, to the Company of Pastors, constitutes the preamble to the work.

Minutes, regulations and exchanges of letters dating from the years 1546 to 1553 are then brought together, which constitute a very precious testimony to life in Geneva at the time of the Calvinist Reformation.

The register contains various resolutions, for example on the visitation of parishes or on divorces. We can also read there a notice sent on June 3, 1547 by the Company of Shepherds to the Bernese authorities, concerning abuses to be punished in the Pays de Gex which then depended on Berne.

The missive is signed by all the pastors of Geneva with Calvin at the head. There is also the trial, in 1551, of Jerome Bolsec, who had publicly attacked Calvin’s doctrine on predestination. Bolsec was banished from Geneva in December 1551.

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