Cal·vin  (kāl'vĭn)  French-born Swiss Protestant theologian who broke with the Roman Catholic Church (1533) and set forth the tenets of his theology, known today as Presbyterianism, in Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). |
A sixteenth-century French Protestant theologian and religious reformer (see Reformation); the founder of Calvinism. He directed the formation of a religiously based government in Geneva, Switzerland.