ABSTRACT
The opposition that Calvin faced in Geneva was at its most intense in a period of about ten years between the mid-1540s and the establishment of his authority on a firmer basis from around the mid-1550s. There were varied strands of opposition, though they tended to coalesce. The principal strands were: first, resistance to Calvin’s vision of a disciplined, godly society whose moral constraints would apply to everyone, including Geneva’s leading families; second, nativist hatred of foreigners aimed against Calvin, his fellow Frenchmen and other outsiders attracted to this increasingly magnetic city for European Protestants; third, hostility to Calvin’s aim of converting Geneva into an unanimous society with a single religious belief; and, fourth, the whole protracted question of the secular government’s jurisdiction.
