Note 184 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
The Venetian Ambassador at the Court of France, writing in 1561 to the Doge, says, “Your Serenity will hardly believe the influence and the great power which the principal minister of Geneva, by name Calvin, a Frenchman and a native of Picardy, possesses in this kingdom. He is a man of extraordinary authority, who by his mode of life, his doctrines and his writings, rises superior to all the rest” (Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1558-80, p. 323).