Possible Theodore Beza paper on Calvin?

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earl40

Puritan Board Professor
Any thoughts on the below which was a partial post on another Christian forum I visit.

Calvin Speaks In An Unknown Tongue?

by jdarlack ~ September 16th, 2009

A friend* recently mentioned that Ben Witherington posted to the Christianity Today Blog about John Calvin as “A Man of the Bible“. In that post Witherington refers to his experience reading Calvin’s Institutes and being particularly impressed by Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit:

I have fond memories of working carefully through Calvin’s Institutes for the first time, and being especially surprised by and taken with his profound theology of the Holy Spirit. I remember reading in Gordon-Conwell’s newspaper a rather interesting historical curio from a letter of Calvin about how one morning he woke up and found himself speaking in lingua barbaria. The article went on to speculate that Calvin may have spoken in tongues!

Well, given the curiosity of my friend about this quote, and the fact that I’m a librarian at Gordon-Conwell and have access to the institution’s archives, I thought it would be worth tracking down this “historical curio.” Below is the text as I scanned it from The Paper. (Here is an image file of the actual printed article.)

Quent Warford, “Calvin Speaks Unknown Tongue,” The Paper: Student Paper of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary 1.6 (March 24, 1975): 6.

Forasmuch as there has been much inquiry concerning the discovery at the Episcopal Divinity School, I feel obligated to shed what light that I can on the matter. After, all, molehills do have a way of being made into mountains, given enough discussion.

Quite frankly, I personally find any notion preposterous, to the effect that Calvin experienced glossolalia. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to take the advice of my dear Church History professor, and go to the primary source.

The volume which allegedly contains the account of Calvin’s ecstatic utterances is in the library at the Episcopal Divinity School. It is his biography by his friend and confidant, Theodore Beza, entitled De Vitam Iohannes Cauvin. It is contained in

The Vault, the Rare Book Room at E.D.S. Entering The Vault involves a great deal of red tape, and the invocation of the higher powers of the B.T.I. Prof. Hiles’ dining-hall pass also came in handy.

De Vitam Ihohannes Cauvin was published posthumously by Beza. All it

contains concerning glossolalia is a small entry, confided to Beza by Calvin, shortly before the latter’s death. On several oc*casions, Calvin, in his devotions, found himself uttering a lingua non nota et cognota mini. That is, the language was not known or understood by him.

Himself a skilled linguist, Calvin set about to discover the orthography of the utterance. Unable to trace it, he confided to Beza that although the language was Hebraic in character, he yet feared that he had spoken a lingua barbarorum. That is, he feared having spoken in an accursed tongue, such as what was spoken by the Canaanites.

The matter was only a minor one to Beza, who allots it only a few sentences in De Vitam Iohannes Cauvin. Calvin’s concern was only a matter of linguistics. Therefore, there is not enough primary source material to build a case one way or the other.

My roommate, Ken Macari, was most helpful to me in interpreting this passage from Beza, since Latin is more native to him than to me. Yet I must say, however, that I found Calvin’s Latin to be very smooth, elegant, and Vergilian.

So, that’s it. A colleague of mine (who happened to be teaching Hebrew at the seminary at the time of publication) does not remember this article, and he wonders if it was a prank in the first place. I’ve searched Beza’s and Calvin’s works on the Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts, but found nothing. If anyone knows anything about this work by Beza, please comment about it. I’m not sure if I’m motivated enough to try to get into “the Vault”.
 
There is an English translation of Beza's biography of Calvin in the old Eerdmans set, Tracts and Treatises. I scanned through it for a reference to this, but didn't find anything. It doesn't sound genuine, especially since Beza's biography has been available in English for decades. Why would someone have to refer to the Latin? The only reason would be that the translator left it out, but I doubt that.

---------- Post added at 03:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:32 PM ----------

Additional red flag: the title in Latin is wrong. It says, De Vitam Iohannes Cauvin. "Cauvin" is French. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, Beza's biography was originally written in French.
 
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