Last Thursday I took the tram across town to visit the Cathedral Saint-Pierre (the church where Jean Calvin preached). I was also visiting the fantastic International Museum of the Reformation which is right next door. I highly recommend this museum to anyone visiting Geneva - not only are there some fascinating artifacts, but every guest gets the recorded guide - in English or almost any other language as you please - and they do a fantastic job of tying the whole history together. THere are two interactive audiovisual performances. I think I've said this before - the Swiss are DOWN for interactive audiovisuals... it's pretty hilarious. ANYWAY! As I believe I mentioned before I met an elderly lady on the bus on the way there and we chattered away in French for ten fifteen minutes. She gave me her name and number and insisted I call her for a tour of the area at some point. Well I did, of course, and it was unbelievable!
This lady is a kook in the best way. She's from Bretagne but has lived in Geneva for 50 years. She collects all sorts of little "truks" - things - and is pleasantly disorganized. After hanging out with unbelievably regimented Swiss people for a month and a half it was really fun to laugh with her about how we both find them absurd. She made me a magnificent chicken dish, vegetable pure, great red wine and an apple tart. She wanted to hear ALL about my family and studies etcetera. Then she took me to Le Chateau de Madame Staul in Coppet - near her home. Madame Staul was a revolutionary thinker of her time - she was completely opposed to Napoleon's tyrannical philosophy and managed to keep her Barony out of his control. The tour was just us two and another older lady.
So of course I made friends with her too. I'm doing a project on the legacy of John Calvin in Geneva... and I struck up a conversation with her about Protestantism - she's Calvinist. So we shared a coffee and talked Calvinism for an hour! I love older people. They are so rich with life.
The final older person that I have befriended lately was a Pastor... I called him because I found a course online about Protestantism that I thought I could sit in on.... Turns out it's a two year cycle. And spealing a foreign language on the phone is much more difficult than in person so it was quite awkward. After all that I just straight up asked him for an interview and he's like, "Oh! Okay!" Before we hung up he said, "So for you can know to me I am an old, fat man. Actually I am very huge." He was such a sweet person. And he had some fantastic insights - about the origins of Geneva as an international city stemming from it's history of welcoming Protestant refugees from all over Europe - particularly France (Hugenots), Spain, Italy, the Balkans. It was the ONLY place in Latin Europe where people could freely worship and study Protestantism. Even John Knox, founder of Presbyterianism, came to Geneva to study! It was THE center of learning. That's also in part because Calvin insisted on universal primary education. Truly universal - for girls too! THAT was a step ahead of the times. His motivation was that he believed all people should be able to read so they could study the Bible and thus have a direct relationship with God and not rely on others to translate God's message. The result was that Geneva grew and grew as an intellectual powerhouse. Voltaire came here when he was expelled from Paris and of course Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a native Genevois.
Geneva was a nothing town before Calvin - fewer than 10,000 people lived here and it was very, very poor. With the unifying influence of Calvin and Reform Christianity people flocked to the city - it more than doubled in population in ten of Jean Calvin's first years here. Additionally because Geneva is located in the heart of Europe - at the Cross-roads both of north and south and east/central and west - almost all flows of religious refugees naturally stopped through Geneva for a time even if they continued on because there wasn't room for them. Thus the influence of Calvinism spread north through the Swiss cities of Lausanne, Neuchatel, Biel, Berne, Basel and into Germany all the way to Berlin! Geneva obviously remains an international city to this day! Like I know I've said before nearly half of the citizens of Geneva proper are not Swiss. It is still a city of compromise, thought, and multiculturalism...
Of course the migration patterns how changed considerably... but that's something to talk about another time. We also talked quite a bit about how the actual religious doctrine preached by the Reform Church has changed over the centuries. I think I'll hold off on talking about that until I know more. It was particularly intriguing to me because my family is Presbyterian and Lutheran so the Reformation is a part of my history - it's always exciting to feel such a connection to a place, to know that a place shaped your family's history and culture.
A tout a l'heure! Must do some homework now. Love to you all,
~Alice
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