The original Utopia was of course the fictitious creation of Thomas More, who wrote the eponymous book. “Utopia” comes from the Greek “no place,” and indeed, Moore’s work is a satire of early 16th-century England and not a blueprint for society. It was only later that various idealists actually tried to establish their versions of perfected societies. Of course, what is one person’s heaven is another’s hell. Which brings me to John Calvin.
Here you see a painting of Calvin leading a Church Council in 1549. If he looks determined and angry, that’s because he often was. John Calvin, famous for his views of Predestination and role in the Puritanism of the Protestant Reformation, managed to get enough of a following in Geneva to establish a government there, known as “the Consistory”. Started in 1542, it was run by pastors and elders who regulated the religious and moral lives of everyone in the city — from the marketplace into the bedrooms.
For Calvin et al., the new Geneva was a “Hieropolis,” a Holy City, where the Kingdom of God’s rules would triumph over the Kingdom of Man. Seen from another view, it was a totalitarian theocracy, one where art, musical instruments, dancing, promiscuity (any sex outside of marriage), and non-religious songs were banned. The Consistory regulated the number of courses people could have at mealtime, and what colors of clothing could be worn. Quarrelling, drunkenness, and laziness could be prosecuted, but women were to obey even violently abusive husbands.
Within five years, fifty-eight people were executed and seventy-six outlawed. Later in 1553 came the infamous and grizzly death by slow burning of the scientist-deemed-heretic Michael Servetus, who had been the first person to correctly articulate the function of the heart as it relates to the circulatory system — before running afoul of the Consistory.
Calvin’s Geneva reminds us that dystopias can grow out of the purest of intentions. (P.S. Blue Laws regulating Sunday activities stem from this tradition)
Source(s): _Thw Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva_ Jeffrey Watt, Routledge 2020. _The Sixteenth-Century Journal_, vol 28, no 1, Spring, 1997, “Religion, Discipline, and the Economy in Calvin’s Geneva,” Mark Valeri, pp 123-142. _Hektoen International: a Journal of Medical Humanities_, “John Calvin: his rule in Geneva and his many illnesses,” George Dunea, Spring 2019. @stephenhicks.org, “John Calvin’s Geneva” 2010
