From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

Chapter 13
First Protestant
Administration of the Lord's
Supper in France
CALVIN had been half-a-year at Angouleme,
and now, the storm having blown over, he quitted it
and returned northward to Poictiers. The latter was
then a town of great importance. It was the seat of
a flourishing university, and its citizens numbered
amongst them men eminent for their rank, their
learning, or their professional ability. Two leagues
distant from the town is the battlefield where, in
1356, the Black Prince met the armies of France
under John of Valois, and won his famous victory.
Here, in the spring of 1534, we behold a humble
soldier arriving to begin a battle which should
change the face of the world. In this district, too, in
former times lived Abelard, and the traces he had
left behind him, though essentially skeptical,
helped to prepare the way for Calvin. Thin, pale,
and singularly unobtrusive, yet the beauty of his
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