THE PROVENANCE OF JOHN CALVIN'S EMPHASIS ON THE ...

parish, Calvin consciously followed on the organization of the Strasbourg church and its
practices. In Wendel's words:
Without restricting himself to any literal translation of the liturgies in use, it was
nevertheless from them that he borrowed the general order of worship and the
most characteristic formularies. The confession of sins, the prayers of
thanksgiving recited at Holy Communion, and the marriage service, were thus
transposed into French, moreover, these were still preserved by Calvin later on
in the Genevan Church, which in its turn transmitted them to all the Reformed
Churches using the French language. 1102
Calvin himself attests, "As for the Sunday prayers, I took the form of Strassburg and
borrowed the greater part of it." 1103 Given his appropriation of Strasbourg's practice and
its prayers, it will be worth looking closely at the Strasbourg form for celebrating the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper; for now, however, Calvin's is given close
consideration. 1104
Calvin first prepared his liturgy in the late 1530s and published it around
1540. 1105 This edition is no longer extant, though a second edition, published by
Calvin's successor, Pierre Brully, in 1542, is; as is a third edition, edited by Calvin
1102 Wendel, Calvin: Origins and Development, 59-60.
1103 Thompson, Liturgies, 189, quoted without reference to a source.
1104 For Calvin's liturgy, see Bruno Bürki, Kapitel 18: "La Sainte Cène selon l'Ordre de Jean
Calvin 1542," in Coena Domini I: Die Abendmahlsliturgie der Reformationskirche im 16./17.
Jahrhundert, ed. Irmgard Pahl. Spicilegium Friburgense: Texte zur Geschichte des kirchenlichen Lebens
29 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, 1983), 347-368; Bard Thompson, "John Calvin," in Liturgies
of the Western Church, 197-208; and Tracts and Treatises 2:119-22.
1105 Bürki, "La Sainte Cène . . . Calvin," Coena Domini I, 348. For more about the context of the
development of Calvin's liturgy, in both Strasbourg and especially Geneva, see Christian Grosse, Chapitre
II: "La Forme des Prières Ecclésiastiques: L'Émergence d'une nouvelle culture liturgique," in Les Rituels
de la Cène: Le culte eucharistique réformé à Genève (XVIe-XVIIe siècles) (Genève: Librairie Droz,
2008), 115ff. For a social history of Genevan reform, see Thomas A. Lambert, "Preaching, Praying and
Policing the Reform in Sixteenth-Century Geneva" (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
1998).
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