ABSTRACT
In the years following 1555, the image of the outsider fell away from Calvin and he was finally made a citizen of Geneva in 1559. He had become a spokesman for civic republican values and also for policies that put Geneva’s interests first. The Perrinists’ projection of themselves as enfants de Genève was muddied by the fact that they were oriented towards the Swiss city of Bern: they were great admirers of the Bernese way of doing things, and especially the way Bern managed to keep its clerics in a subordinate role. Significantly, when Perrin and his allies fled, they made for Bern. Now, an alliance of some kind with Protestant Bern was certainly necessary to mid-sixteenth-century Geneva, but Bern was a relatively large and ambitious Swiss city-state, and for Geneva the Bernese alliance, especially the Combourgeoisie or civic twinning, was potentially suffocating. Calvin endorsed an alliance with Bern on the best terms for Geneva, but tried to maintain the right degree of diffidence towards the Swiss city and was vigilant over any threat from Bern to Geneva’s independence. Meanwhile, the reputation of the Perrinists as Genevan patriots was exploded once and for all in 1563 when Perrinist exiles conspired with Savoy against Genevan independence.
