MORE FACTS:
(1) in 1527, the year he was 18, Calvin was arrested, tried, and convicted of homosexual activity. Instead of being executed (per French law at the time), he was branded with a fleur-de-lis on one of his shoulders.
(2) In 1551, a Catholic controversialist revealed that the archives of the city of Noyon, Calvin’s birth place, contain the record of a condemnation against Calvin, at age 18, for sodomy. He had by then already received the tonsure. His parents obtained clemency from the bishop, so that instead of being condemned to death as the law demanded, he was branded as a sign of infamy. The Catholic controversialist presented the evidence signed by all the eminent personages of the city. The English scholar Stapleton went there to examine the archives during Calvin’s lifetime, and vouched for the fact. The contemporary German Lutherans spoke of it as an established fact (Schlusselburg,
Theologie calvinienne).
What an example to set up the House of God in