Calvin and the Jews

Down through the ages Calvin has at times received a brutal press, especially in the last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Adolf von Harnack is supposed to have begun his lecture on Calvin with the words, 'We now come to a man who never smiled.' More severely, Stefan Zweig in 1936 portrayed him as a dictator, a kind of Hitler before his time, who inspired his followers to be 'hostile to beauty, happiness, life itself '. However, Zweig said nothing about Calvin and the Jewish question - which must be of some significance.