French Reformer (1509-1564) and principal architect of the Reformed branch of the Reformation. Born at Noyon in Picardy; trained in classical letters at Paris (Collège de la Marche, Collège de Montaigu), then in law at Orléans and Bourges. Converted to Reformation views around 1533; fled France in 1534 after the affair of the placards; published the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion at Basel in 1536; recruited by William Farel to remain in Geneva that same year. Calvin served two pastorates at Geneva (1536-1538; 1541-1564), with an exile in Strasbourg between (1538-1541) during which he pastored a French refugee congregation, married Idelette de Bure (1540), and produced his most important Pauline commentaries. Returning to Geneva at the council's invitation in 1541, Calvin labored for the rest of his life to establish a thoroughly reformed church-and-civil order: the Geneva Academy (founded 1559, ancestor of the University of Geneva); the Genevan Psalter (the great Reformed-confessional metrical Psalter); the Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) establishing the four-office structure (pastors, teachers, elders, deacons); and the steady refinement of the Institutes through five editions. Calvin's commentaries cover most of the Bible; his sermons (preserved in stenographic transcription) run to thousands; his pastoral correspondence shows the scope of his international labor. The patriarchal-Reformed reader receives Calvin as the great theological architect of the Reformed-confessional tradition whose work undergirds every subsequent Reformed development.