Calvin, a reverend father, and worthy ornament of the Church of God.

--- Bishop Jewel

Five hundred years ago to the day, Jean Cauvin was born in the north of France in a town called Noyon. He did not lead the sort of life that would later capture Mendelssohn's imagination as Luther's did, which I think is a bit of a shame. I'd like to have another symphony as moving has his 5^th.

Philip Schaff said of him:

Calvin's character is less attractive, and his life less dramatic than Luther's or Zwingli's, but he left his church in a much better condition. He lacked the genial element of humor and pleasantry; he was a Christian stoic: stern, severe, unbending, yet with fires of passion and affection glowing beneath the marble surface. His name will never rouse popular enthusiasm, as Luther's and Zwingli's did at the celebration of the fourth centennial of their birth; no statues of marble or bronze have been erected to his memory; even the spot of his grave in the cemetery at Geneva is unknown. But he surpassed them in consistency and self-discipline, and by his exegetical, doctrinal, and polemical writings, he has exerted and still exerts more influence than any other Reformer upon the Protestant Churches in the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races. He made little Geneva for a hundred years the Protestant Rome and the best-disciplined Church in Christendom. History furnishes no more striking example of a man of so little personal popularity, and yet such great influence upon the people; of such natural timidity and bashfulness combined with such strength of intellect and character, and such control over his and future generations.

Of all the Reformers, Calvin was unmatched as a theologian. He braced the church against the assault of the Roman Church and held it together through the corrosive effects of sectarianism.

I have been a witness of Calvin's life for sixteen years, and I think I am fully entitled to say that in this man there was exhibited to all a most beautiful example of the life and death of the Christian, which it will be as easy to calumniate as it will be difficult to emulate.

--- Theodore Beza

And, boy, didn't Beza's last phrase hit the nail on the head?