Antoine Fumée, a
contemporary and friend of Calvin, refers to him as a prophet in an undated
letter to the reformer. Jean Morley calls Calvin a prophet in his Traicté de
la discipline & police chrestienne ([Olivier] Millet cites an undated
letter from Fumée to Calvin in which he calls Calvin a prophet, “plus grand
propète de notre époque.”). Moreover, Theodore Beza writes the following about
Calvin in August 1564 after his passing.
The following night,
and the day after as well, there was much weeping in the city. For the body of
the city mourned the prophet of the Lord, the poor flock of the Church wept the
departure of its faithful shepherd, the school lamented the loss of its true doctor
and master, and all in general wept for their true father and consoler, after
God. (CO [Corpus Reformatorum: Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia],
21:45-6)
. . . Calvin self-identifies with the Old Testament prophets, who were (he believed) scriptural reformers. He could—it is, of course within the realm of possibility—have believed himself to be a prophet who received revelation and was able to predict the future, like, for example, his countryman Michel de Nostredame or the German prognosticator, Johann Lichtenberger, who famously predicted the 1525 Peasants’ War. And interestingly, Beza, in his reflections on Calvin’s life, points to an occasion when (he believes) Calvin engaged in just such prophesying. In Calvin’s lectures on Daniel, says Beza, he interpreted the prophet, “but, in the dedication, he also became a prophet, predicting impending storms at the very time when the meeting of the bishops was held at Poissy” (CO 21:91). (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 5, 92-93)
