Idelette Calvin
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Idelette Storder de Bure Calvin (died 1549) was the only wife of the French reformer John Calvin (Jean Chauvin). He was so caught up in his labors that he did not seem to consider marriage until age 30 or so. He asked friends to help him find a woman who was "gentle, pure, modest, economical, patient, and to whom the care of her husband would be the chief matter." Bucer had known Idelette, who was a widowed mother of two young children, and recommended her to Calvin in confidence that she fit the bill. On August 1, 1540, they were married.
Idelette bore Calvin three children, all of whom died in infancy. In response to the slander of Catholics who took this for a judgment upon them for being heretics, Calvin said he was content with his many sons in the faith. After the first child's death he comforted Idelette thus: "In that He hath taken away our son, He hath stricken us sorely, but He is our Father. He knoweth what is meet for His children" (Good 27). Nevertheless Idelette faithfully visited the sick and afflicted and made her home a refuge for those who fled for their lives and their faith.
Though she survived the plague when it ravaged Geneva, Idelette died after a lengthy illness in 1549. Calvin wrote that "she was a faithful helper in my ministry....During her illness she never spoke about herself and never troubled me about her children" (Bainton 88). Upon her deathbed she was patient, and her words, edifying, e.g., " O God of Abraham and of all our fathers, the fatihful in all generations have trusted in Thee, and none have ever been confounded. I, too, trust in Thee from time to time" (Good 29).
Calvin wrote to Farel and Viret after her death, "I have lost her who would never have quitted me either in exile, or misery, or death. She was a precious help to me, and never occupied with self. The best of partners has been taken from me" (30).
The three children which she had with her first husband had to be banished from Geneva due to their immorality.
[edit] References
- Bainton, Roland (1974). Women of the Reformation in England and France. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-5649-9.
- Good, James I. (1901, 2007). Famous Women of the Reformed Church. Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books. ISBN 1-59925-123-X≈
