Was John Calvin Jewish?
John Calvin - the noted Reformation theologian and founder of the main internal schism inside Protestantism that is named after him - has been the subject of a long-running accusation that he was actually jewish and that his real surname was Cohen.
The evidential substance of the charge is given by the 'Enjoying the Journey' blog as follows:
'Once the revolution had been decided upon, the Jewish plotters introduced Calvinism into England to split Church and State, and divide the people. Contrary to general belief, Calvinism is of Jewish origin. It was deliberately conceived to split the adherents of the Christian religions and divide the people. Calvin's real name was Cohen! When he went from Geneva to France to start preaching his doctrine he became known as Cauin. Then in England it became Calvin. History proves that there is hardly a revolutionary plot that wasn't hatched in Switzerland; there is hardly a Jewish revolutionary leader who hasn’t changed his name.
At B'nai B'rith celebrations held in Paris, France, in 1936 Cohen, Cauvin, or Calvin, whatever his name may have been, was enthusiastically acclaimed to have been of Jewish descent (The Catholic Gazette, February, 1936)... ' (1)
The blogger then goes on to cite a similar quote reproduced by Eustace Mullins:
'We are the Fathers of all Revolutions, even of those which sometimes happen to turn against us. We are the supreme Masters of Peace and War. We can boast of being the Creators of the Reformation! Calvin was one of our children; he was of Jewish descent, and was entrusted by Jewish authority and encouraged with Jewish finance to draft his scheme in the reformation (which was to convince Christians it was alright to charge usury and other damnable heresies which are in violation of God’s Laws).' (2)
Mullins also argued elsewhere that Calvin was a jew as follows:
'Cauin later moved to Paris, where he continued his studies with the Humanists from 1531-32. During his stay in Paris he was known as Cauin. He then moved to Geneva where he formulated his philosophy known as Calvinism. At first known in Geneva as Cohen (the usual pronunciation of Cauin), he Anglicized his name to John Calvin.' (3)
In the above we can see that the substance of the argument is two fold. Firstly that Calvin's real surname was Cohen and secondly that because the B'nai Brith allegedly stated in 1920s or 1930s that John Calvin was of jewish then he must have been so.
Beginning with the weakest of the two arguments - the second - the fact that a jew claims someone is jewish does not ipso facto make them jewish for the simple reason that a individual or organization can claim anything is true, but whether the evidence supports this is a completely different story.
I would also point out that those who use these statements - allegedly from the Catholic Gazette - are assuming that the B'nai Brith are always truthful about who they claim is - or more properly was - a jew. They necessarily assume that the B'nai Brith - or jews and philo-Semites more broadly - would not lie about someone being jewish, but they yet they would likely be among the first to dismiss the B'nai Brith stating someone wasn't jewish as being inherently untrustworthy.
In essence: the B'nai Brith must either be wholly trustworthy or untrustworthy in relation to their statements. It is not logically possible to have the B'nai Brith as being trustworthy in relation to claims that someone is jewish, while having them untrustworthy in relation to claims that someone isn't jewish.
The point is very simply that we must regard anything the B'nai Brith say as untrustworthy in order to maintain intellectual rigor in dealing with their pronouncements about who is - as well as who is not - jewish. This is because the B'nai Brith have just as much - if not more - reason for pronouncing a major historical actor who is viewed positively - even idolized (pun not intended) - by millions of Protestant Christians as they have for asserting that Karl Marx wasn't jewish because he didn't worship regularly in - or pay dues to - a synagogue.
Now unless we have substantive evidence that Calvin was jewish then we cannot admit the claim of the B'nai Brith as evidence in and of itself. Even as supporting evidence it shows nothing other than jews have on at least one occasion claimed that Calvin was 'one of them'. They did not know and nor do they have special knowledge of Calvin, but rather are making a specific historical claim about Calvin, which may or may not have merit but is based purely on their own beliefs and historical speculations about him.
The first argument - that Calvin changed his surname from Cohen to Cauvin - at least has some superficial logic behind it, but once again we note that the time-line made in these claims is completely incorrect. In so far as Mullins claims that Calvin first gave his surname in Geneva as 'Cohen' and then changed it to 'Cauvin' when he entered France.
This inverts Calvin's historical movements almost one hundred and eighty degrees however as Calvin was born in the Cathedral town of Noyon (4) in France in 1509. (5) Calvin didn't go to Geneva until 1536 (6) and then only as a accident as he wished to go to Basel and was diverted through Geneva during his journey. (7) Calvin had to leave Noyon and Paris due to the prosecutions of Protestants in 1533 (8) and then left for Italy in 1536. (9) Calvin did return to France from Italy briefly in 1536 due to the tolerance for Protestant proclaimed in the Edict of Coucy: however he had already converted to Protestantism by 1533 and was connected with the material in the 'Affair of the Placards' in 1534. (10)
Calvin was born not with the surname 'Cohen', but rather with surname 'Cauvin' as his contemporary and friend Theodore Beza attests. (11) Cauvin only Latinized (not Anglicized) his name later in Basle as 'Calvinus', which was then shortened to 'Calvin' by his contemporaries in much the same as Luther's close friend and fellow Wittenberg reformer Philip Schwarzerd is better known today by his self-styled Latinized name: 'Melanchthon'. (12)
Thus we can see that Mullins' history is already flawed as he has Calvin using 'Cohen' in Geneva before using 'Cauvin' in France, but he doesn't appear to realise that Calvin was born 'Cauvin' in France and there is no documentary evidence that he used 'Cohen' in Geneva. He was simply known as either Jean Cauvin - his birth name - or by his self-styled Latinized name 'Johannes Calvinus' aka 'John Calvin'.
The confusion may have started due to the fiery denunciations of reformers by orthodox Catholics - such as Luther's famous antagonist Johannes Eck - who pejoratively referred to Calvin and his fellows as 'Rabbis' because of their obsessive use of the Old Testament as theological justification. (13) Interestingly this did not carry over to major anti-Semitic historians and publicists who were also ardent Catholic traditionalists such as Eduard Drumont who discusses Calvin, but asserts (correctly) by omission that Calvin was not jewish. (14)
Further 'Cauvin' pronounced in the French of the time sounds substantially the same as 'Cohen' does to an English speaker now, (15) but because two names sound similar when pronounced in English then it does not mean they are derived from each other. One has to prove a linguistic derivation as similar sounding words can easily be created independently of each other in different languages. As this - to the best of my knowledge - has not been seriously proposed let alone substantially agreed among scholars with then we cannot admit the linguistic derivation of 'Cauvin' from 'Cohen'.
Interestingly one thing that those who argue for Calvin's jewishness leave out - and it isn't widely known - is that Calvin was himself often ferociously anti-jewish and used 'jew' and 'Judaizer' as terms of utmost contempt, which stands in direct contrast to the philo-Semitism of later Calvinism. (16) He even wrote an anti-jewish tract titled 'Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam Responsio'. (17)
Aside from Calvin's general contempt for jews; seeing their sole purpose being more less to give birth to the anti-Christ and act as witness to what he believed was the truth of Christianity, which I will write an article on at a later date. There has been one recent semi-serious attempt to turn Calvin into a jew by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschmann and Donald Neal Yates.
Hirschmann and Yates argue that because Calvin's father Gerard Cauvin was a lawyer who served the Lord of Noyon, had a significant - although not substantial in terms of population demographics - colony of Marrano jews from the Iberian Peninsula and that said jews often served as lawyers, bankers and general 'fixers' for the French nobility: then it means that Gerard Cauvin was a 'crypto-jew'. (18)
This 'argument' such as it is comes down to the following logic: there were jews in the province Calvin was born in and his father had an occupation that was a common one among jews so thus Calvin's father was a jew. However this completely ignores the fact that there is no actual evidence that Gerard Cauvin had any jewish ancestry at all and indeed if he was a Marrano jew: then why did he marry a gentile innkeeper's daughter Jeannie le Franc (19) as opposed to into another Marrano family as was normally the case in Marrano culture?
Also the Cauvin surname is very common to the Picardy region at the time as we know from records, (20) and while Gerard Cauvin may have been ambitious for his sons (he wanted all of them to enter the priesthood) as well as in his own life: that hardly makes him a jew!
So thus we have seen then that there is simply no evidence that John Calvin was of jewish origin whether as a member of the Kohanim or as a Marrano. Indeed - as I have stated - all our sources point to Calvin being a gentile and not only a gentile, but one embodied with a fierce anti-Judaism. That is the real John Calvin not a jew, but rather a veritable jew-hater.
References
(1) https://enjoyingthejourney.blogspot.com/2006/06/john-calvin-orginally-cohen-then-cauin.html
(2) Ibid.
(3) Eustace Mullins, 1987, 'The Curse of Canaan: Demonology of History', 1st Edition, Revelation Books: Staunton, p. 84
(4) Bruce Gordon, 2009, 'Calvin', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, p. 1
(5) Theodore Beza, 1869, 'Vie de J. Calvin', 1st Edition, Cherbuliez Libraire: Paris, p. 6
(6) Gordon, Op. Cit., p. 66-67
(7) Ibid., pp. 64-65
(8) Ibid., p. 35
(9) Ibid., p. 63
(10) Ibid., p. 40
(11) Beza, Op. Cit., pp. 8-9
(12) Gordon, Op. Cit., p. 4
(13) Ibid., p. 51
(14) Edouard Drumont, 1900, 'La France Juive: Essai d'Histoire Contemporaine', Vol. II, 43rd Edition, C. Marpon and E. Flammarion: Paris, p. 355
(15) See http://id3417.securedata.net/solarsabbath/calvin.htm for a credible linguistic breakdown of this suggestion.
(16) Leon Poliakov, Miriam Kochan (Trans.), 2003, 'The History of Anti-Semitism', Vol. III, 1st Edition, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, pp. 71-72
(17) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03871.html
(18) Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschmann, Donald Neal Yates, 2007, 'When Scotland was Jewish: DNA Evidence, Archaeology, Analysis of Migrations, and Public and Family Records show Twelfth Century Semitic Roots', 1st Edition, McFarland: Jefferson, pp. 200-201
(19) Gordon, Op. Cit., p. 4
(20) Ibid, pp. 4-5