BOOK REVIEW:
Registers of the Consistory of Geneva in the Time of Calvin, vol. 1, 1542-1544. Edited by Robert M. Kingdon, Thomas A. Lambert, and Isabella M. Watt, translated by M. Wallace McDonald. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2000. 470 pgs. ISBN 0802846181. 

Investigation of the sustained effort to reform behavior, a process which accompanied and completed the reform of doctrine and prayer during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has proven among the greatest challenges for the current generation of Reformation scholars. How, to use slightly different language, did ecclesiastical leaders go about translating new understandings of correct Christian belief and the related liturgical innovations into a system of everyday religious habits and appropriate moral conduct? The crucial sources for an appreciation of the principal questions, at least in the Reformed tradition, have long been known. Chief among them are the consistory registers from local churches in Geneva, France, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Germany. These materials, however, exist largely in manuscript form and few among us have the linguistic and paleographic training, not to mention the energy and the resources to explore these documents in systematic fashion. 

Recently, Robert M. Kingdon assembled a team of experts who mean to resolve the major difficulties for Geneva. They have undertaken to transcribe, edit, annotate, and publish the Genevan consistory registers for John Calvin’s lifetime. Calvin, after all, established this morals tribunal or compulsory counseling service (depending upon interpretative predilection), and close examination of its earliest endeavors ought to provide invaluable insight into his understanding of the consistory along with its objectives, procedures and accomplishments. The first several volumes of the French originals have or will soon appear. Meanwhile, Kingdon and his collaborators have overseen an English translation, which will make the documentation, albeit in modified form, available to a far wider and more popular audience. 

The consistory was a familiar institution for sixteenth century Genevans. Some five to seven percent of the adult population appeared before the ministers and elders each year. Many others had friends and relatives who had undergone this uncomfortable experience. Certainly, everyone knew of the consistory’s existence and function. It sought to mediate their all too frequent quarrels, resolve innumerable marital difficulties, and regulate their sexuality. During the initial years of Calvin’s Genevan Reformation, the very period covered by the present volume, the consistory also devoted considerable time and effort to rooting out “superstitious” medieval religious practices and inculcating Reformed notions of proper Christian piety. Altogether, the minutes of the weekly meetings reveal much about the nature of pre-Reformation church and community as well as the  enormous ensuing struggle to establish a “godly” society. 

The men and women—young and old, rich and poor, influential and unremarkable—who came before the consistory offer an engaging portrait of a dynamic that we all too frequently view only from a circumscribed intellectual and political vantage. The Reformation and its requisite changes could be a tense and wrenching experience for many ordinary believers, even as they accepted the theological shifts and the promise of salvation implicit therein. The tales that unfold on the pages of the current volume are elegant testimony to this reality. 

Each week individual transgressors came before the pastors and elders to explain their perceived faults. Some “sinners” were confused, others defiant. Most accepted penitential correction and went about their lives, presumably with a new grasp, however rudimentary, of suitable comportment. Even a cursory glance at their stories evokes a strong sense of the consistory’s self appointed task, and the vibrant, often moving experiences that punctuated people’s everyday lives. Take, for example, Bernardaz, a woman whom the consistory questioned in late July 1542 regarding the successive deaths of her three infant children. On the face of it, she was extremely distraught and blamed a neighbor for the calamity. The consistory thought otherwise and clearly suspected Bernardaz of infanticide. In the end, the pastors and elders dropped the accusation, which would have led to a criminal trial in the municipal court. Nonetheless, they regarded her as a dreadfully negligent mother. 

Finally, it ought to be noted that the volume very much retains the flavor of a “primary” source. The English translation replicates the raw and uneven character of the French. The original text is by no means a flowing narrative and the language of this translation effectively conveys its hurried and cryptic nature. In short, while the reader might quibble with the occasional word choice, M. Wallace McDonald offers a translation that is at once accurate and realistic. Altogether, the editors and translator deserve considerable praise for what we expect will be but the first installment in an exciting ongoing project. 

Raymond A. Mentzer
Daniel J. Krumm Family Professor in Reformation Studies
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SUMMER 2002, VOL. 2, #4.