The Institutes (1536)
Christianae Religionis Institutio, first edition (Basel, 1536)
John Calvin, aged twenty-six, in hiding under an assumed name
A pocket book by an unknown twenty-six-year-old, addressed to a king who was burning people like him.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 264
- Stat total
- 288
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Six chapters in a book you could carry in a pocket. Everything it is famous for is still ahead of it.
A defence brief, not a system: it was written to tell the king of France that the people he was burning were not anarchists.
Tight and well-made, and its author knew Roman law before he knew theology. It is not easy to find a loose thread.
It sold well enough for a first book by an unknown, which was more than anybody expected.
Cited for this book
Written at twenty-six, on the run, and prefaced by an open letter to Francis I of France asking him to look at what he was actually burning. Calvin revised it for the rest of his life — 1539, 1543, 1550, and finally 1559 — until six chapters had become eighty. He said in the preface to the last edition that he had never been satisfied until it was arranged as it now stood.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Some Sense of Deity | Natural Theology | Argument | 80 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 36 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 38 | Depraved Custom | Ethics | Argument | 88 | 100% | 5 |
| 38 | Doctrine Before Miracles | Rationality | Argument | 88 | 100% | 5 |
| 39 | Imputed Righteousness | Soteriology | Argument | 95 | 100% | 10 |
| 39 | The Returning Citizen | History | Argument | 90 | 100% | 5 |
| 40 | From His Mouth the Truth | Ecclesiology | Argument | 82 | 100% | 10 |
| 41 | To Serve, Not to Lord It | History | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
Read it: A Letter to the King
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. … In short, depraved custom is just a kind of general pestilence in which men perish not the less that they fall in a crowd.”
Calvin, Prefatory Address to Francis I (1536), prefixed to the Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Beveridge, 1845), public domain, elided.
“What was destined only to confirm the truth, shall we misapply to the confirmation of lies? The proper course, therefore, is, in the first instance, to ascertain and examine the doctrine which is said by the Evangelist to precede; then after it has been proved, but not till then, it may receive confirmation from miracles.”
Calvin, Prefatory Address to Francis I (1536), prefixed to the Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Beveridge, 1845), public domain.
“That it long lay buried and unknown is the guilty consequence of man’s impiety; but now when, by the kindness of God, it is restored to us, it ought to resume its antiquity just as the returning citizen resumes his rights.”
Calvin, Prefatory Address to Francis I (1536), prefixed to the Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Beveridge, 1845), public domain.
“He was alone, indeed, and despised, but from his mouth the truth proceeded.”
Calvin, Prefatory Address to Francis I (1536), prefixed to the Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Beveridge, 1845), public domain.
Six chapters, pocket-sized, written by a twenty-six-year-old in hiding under a false name. Everything the book is famous for is still ahead of it.
What is bound in front is an open letter to Francis I of France, asking the king to look at the people he was burning before he decided they were anarchists. This reading is that letter, not the chapters.
“From his mouth the truth proceeded” is Micaiah, alone against four hundred prophets. The whole answer to “where was your church before Luther” is in that one clause.