The French Confession of Faith (1559) or Confession de La Rochelle or Gallic Confession of Faith or La Rochelle Confession of Faith is a
Reformed confession of faith
Calvinist confessions of faith are the confessions of faith of various Calvinist churches. These documents express consensus on doctrine for the church adopting the confession. A few confessions are shared as subordinate standards (i.e. authorit ...
.
Under the sponsorship of Geneva a Calvinist church was organised in Paris
[N.V. Hope, 1985, Galic Confession, '' Evangelical Dictionary of Theology'', Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Bath, Marshall Morgan & Scott Publications Ltd., p.438.] in 1555 with a formal organisation and regular services. Later other Calvinist churches were organized elsewhere in France. The Gallic Confession began as a statement of faith sent by these "Reformed" churches of France to
John Calvin
John Calvin (; frm, Jehan Cauvin; french: link=no, Jean Calvin ; 10 July 150927 May 1564) was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system ...
in 1557 during a period of persecution. Working from this, and probably with the help of
Theodore Beza and
Pierre Viret, Calvin and his pupil De Chandieu wrote a confession for them in the form of thirty-five articles. When persecution subsided, twenty delegates representing seventy-two churches met secretly in Paris from 23 to 27 May 1559. With François de Morel as moderator, the delegates produced a Constitution of Ecclesiastical Discipline and a Confession of Faith: Calvin's thirty-five articles were all used in the confession, apart from the first two which were expanded into six. Thus the Gallic Confession had forty articles.
In 1560 the confession was presented to
Francis II with a preface requesting that persecution should cease. The confession was confirmed at the seventh national synod of the French churches at
La Rochelle in 1571, and recognized by German synods at
Wesel in 1568 and
Emden
Emden () is an independent city and seaport in Lower Saxony in the northwest of Germany, on the river Ems. It is the main city of the region of East Frisia and, in 2011, had a total population of 51,528.
History
The exact founding date of E ...
in 1571.
Notes
*The original draft of Calvin's articles is in the Genevan Archives.
*P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom (4th ed., 1905), vol. I.
*A. Cochrane Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century (1966).
External links
Text of the French Confession of Faithin the original French with English translation, from
Philip Schaff's ''Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches'' at the
CCELThe text of the Gallic Confession in the original and in English
Calvinist texts
Huguenot history in France
Protestant Reformation
Reformed confessions of faith
1559 works
16th-century Calvinism
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