In the first, stage-setting chapter, I consider Calvin's major career options, humanism and law. I show the pervasive hostility to social mobility of Calvin's time among virtually all segments of society, drawing upon secondary studies of popular literature and elite attitudes. I further suggest that, in the face of such hostility, even aspiring commoner families such as that of Calvin preferred the indubitable status conferred by established professions like law (toward which Calvin was directed by his father) over the more distrusted pursuit of personal renown in the uncharted waters of the new humanist milieu. I suggest that humanism required patronage more than law, since the career of humanist author did not fit well into any established social niche. I recount the uncertainties of patronage drawing on studies of satirical literature and the experiences of Erasmus. I then consider what I believe are two pervasive discourses of patronage. The first, building upon the work of Mario Biagioli on Galileo and others, involves the well-known portrayal of the patron as graciously condescending to support an undeserving author of base social origins. However, I also note another discourse that has not been clearly described in scholarly literature, one that took place primarily among aspiring authors, as evidenced in letters of the great Renaissance writer and scholar Desiderius Erasmus, the well known Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and in a dedication and letters by Calvin himself. In this discourse the author is presented as deserving patronage because he is indeed talented despite his often humble origins. I consider neither of these discourses as expressing the client-author's "true" attitudes and feelings, but rather as expressing those attitudes and feelings that are evoked by immediate circumstances, including the author's intended audience, career situation and social status.

 In the second chapter, I consider Calvin's pursuit of success as a humanist, and focus on his relations with his patron and his friends. I show that Calvin was uncomfortable participating in the first discourse in what should have been the career-making dedication of his Commentary on Seneca's 'de clementia' (1532), his first major work, and indeed began his preface with an unusually vehement denunciation of young authors ambitious for fame. I further show, from the dedication and from correspondence with friends, that when Calvin addresses fellow talented commoners, he quite willingly depicts himself in terms of the second discourse of patronage.

In chapter III I consider the theme of order and emotional restraint at several levels. I show that Calvin was sympathetic to the Stoic criticism of strong emotions, by drawing upon remarks from his dedication -- such as his denunciation of the ambition for fame -- which I suggest fit into neither of the above described discourses. I also describe his favorable presentations of Stoic-derived views of the emotions in the body of his Seneca commentary. I then show that he sometimes sought to structure relationships with his friends according to precise rules of emotional exchange, rather than allowing them to unfold more spontaneously (as evidenced in his correspondence), even though at other times he could be quite intimate. I relate these conflicts to his social status and theirs. Then I turn to Calvin's training in law, and show that Calvin's legal education involved a highly scholastic attitude toward textual interpretation, characterized by excessively literal readings, oblivious ness to differences in usage and change over time, and reliance on logical coherence as the major criterion of correct interpretation. This section draws upon and summarizes  published research in interpretation in Roman law. I further show that Calvin's own approach to language in the Seneca Commentary is inconsistent, sometimes partaking of various humanist approaches, sometimes much closer to that of Estoile. Significantly, when Calvin wished to depict Aristotle, Epicurus and Plato as having important affinities with Stoic ideas on the passions, he relied upon traditional, generalizing readings of important passages, readings much like those practiced by his mentor Estoile. Thus, in this chapter I connect Calvin's conflicts over his own life- course -- the exhilarating but uncertain pursuit of literary fame versus the more staid, established entry into the legal profession -- with the different approaches to textual interpretation toward which he was also ambivalent and noncommittal. Thus I connect order as an emotional preference with the more ordered, literalist and generalizing approach to textual interpretation of Estoile, while his sometime acceptance of daring and spontaneity I connect with his attraction to humanist methods. While I am still writing this chapter, it draws together material from several articles and papers, including, in addition to the studies of legal interpretation, "Young Calvin, Textual Interpretation and Roman Law," and "'The ambition for an illustrious name': Humanism, Patronage, and Calvin's Doctrine of the Calling," and "Stoicism and Self in Calvin's Formative Years," read at the Twenty-Seventh International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 7, 1992.

In the rest of the book I consider the life and key major teachings of Calvin's early years as a religious reformer as a response to and resolution of these conflicts. In a chapter on Calvin's conversion, I consider Calvin's situation at the time of his conversion: the failure of his Seneca Commentary, the polarization of the religious situation in France, the limitations of reform under the high patronage of Marguerite de Navarre and Guillaume Briçonnet. I then show the kinship of Calvin's conversion experience as he described it with Stoic moral categorization of the emotions. This chapter will be a re-write of a chapter of my dissertation.

The next chapter will relate Calvin's newly formulated religious doctrines to his previous life and thought. It will show how Calvin's own "calling" to reform advances a Stoic- derived view of certain experiences as sacred, and also involves a definition of his famous concept of the "calling" that sets ordered work in opposition to the unruly, sinful pursuit of patronage and fame. It further relates his views on religious images -- extremely important in his theology -- to his views on the emotions. It will concomitantly consider his attacks on sympathizers of the reform who continued to honor Catholic religious ceremonies and accept church offices, in the light of his own earlier conflicts over the pursuit of worldly honors and patronage. Patronage and religious images are also linked to questions of patronage and the social order, for images were often commissioned by wealthy patrons, both lay and ecclesiastical, as Werner Gundersheimer has noted. The major sources will be two well known tracts by Calvin in the form of letters (1537) on the continued participation in Catholic ritual by convinced reformers (one of which was addressed to his law-school friend Duchemin), and two additional works on these issues. This chapter will also draw on my conference paper, "Calvin's Distrust of Images and Renaissance Philosophy" (read at the Twenty-Sixth International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan May 12, 1991), and upon research presented in my dissertation on Calvin's view of the soul-body relationship, the subject of his first theological work (the Psychopannychia). The study of the soul-body relationship is linked to the question of ceremonies and religious images by the common assumptions manifested in Calvin's teachings on these issues concerning the corporeal sphere of existence and mental images.

The other chapter will be on Calvin's relationships with friends and colleagues after he became a committed religious reformer, for which the major source will be Calvin's correspondence from 1534 to 1541, when he took up permanent residence in Geneva. Again, these relationships will be linked on the one hand to his mature theology, and on the other to his pre-conversion relationships with friends and patron. This section is important for continuing the interpretation of the relationship of his religious ideas with other aspects of his life experience begun in the first part of the book.

Finally, the last chapter of the book, a rewrite of two chapters of my Ph. D. dissertation, will consider his approach to the interpretation of Scripture as it was shaped by legal and humanist interpretive approaches. As in my studies of interpretation in law, it will look closely at examples of Calvin's interpretation of Biblical passages in relation to the doctrines he ascribes to them. Material for this chapter will also be drawn from my paper "Roman Law and Humanism in Calvin's Exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures," read at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, October 19, 1991, Philadelphia, PA.

The conclusion will draw together the various aspects of Calvin's life and work considered in the preceeding chapters. It will suggest how Calvin's mature attitude toward patronage and work (in which the "calling" is central"), toward religious images, toward relationships with friends and colleagues, toward biblical exegesis, all express common themes that place the conflicting elements (described in the first portion of the book) into a more stable relationship. It will show that Calvin incorporates key elements of the two patronage discourses and the third Stoic discourse into the new discourse of his theology, but will relate this new discourse also to the new social and personal relationships Calvin's theology entails.

This study is significant in several respects. It furthers the project, pioneered by William Bouwsma, of recovering Calvin the full human being. It deals in ways not common in the scholarly literature with the interaction of scholastic and humanist elements in the thought and culture of this immensely important individual. It also considers the role of Calvin's teachings and activities in contributing to modern views of the self as autonomous. It views the ways in which Calvin defined himself in relation to others in his formative years (as in the three different kinds of relationships in which he presented himself in the three discourses of patronage noted above, and then considers his mature presentation of his motives in relation to these earlier attempts at defining relationships. It provides an example of what Stephen Greenblatt has called "Renaissance Self-Fashioning," but shows that, while different internalized cultures are the starting points for self-fashioning, nevertheless an innovative individual like Calvin can draw upon elements of cultures in conflict to fashion a new, rather different culture, involving new relationships among individuals, than either of the cultures from which he was drawing. It further considers the problem of textual interpretation in Calvin, a problem central to both modern and Renaissance scholars and of course to Calvin himself as a theologian relying on "Scripture alone." Finally, it challenges the argument of Max Weber that the "modernizing" consequences of Calvin's religious teachings are an unintended, ironic consequence of them, for it shows how Calvin's mature religious-cultural creation was a response to problems in two cultures vibrant in the early modern period: humanism and scholasticism.