John Calvin’s Network, 1536-1544

 

When Calvin arrived in Geneva in 1536, he essentially took over leadership of Farel’s network, although as future network maps will show, he alienated a number of the people associated with Farel.  Many of them would forge their own networks.  There are two images on this page.  The first analyzes Calvin’s correspondents by year, based on “degree centrality.”  Again, this means that those closest to the center of the diagram are the ones Calvin corresponded with most consistently throughout this period.

 

 

 

Calvin’s closest associates and correspondents were Farel and Pierre Viret; sometimes the three are referred to as a “triumvirate.”  The following image analyzes the correspondence of all three reformers. Here the thickness of the line also reflects the number of letters exchanged between them.  Note that the lines have arrows, and sometimes the thickness changes. For example, it you look at the line between Calvin and Viret, you see that the line is thicker on the Viret end; this means that more letters survive from Calvin to Viret than from Viret to Calvin.  The data is based on the correspondence published in Herminjard’s Correspondance des Réformateurs.