The language of liberty in Calvinist political thought

Geneva’s Reformation Wall, five metres high and one hundred metres long, stands in the Bastions Park against the ancient defensive walls of the old city. Begun in 1909, the 400th anniversary of Calvin’s birth, the monument inscribes in stone an emphatically Whiggish interpretation of Calvinist history. At its centre are four towering statues of great Reformers - Farel, Calvin, Beza and Knox. On their flanks, and smaller in scale, stand six Calvinist statesmen – Frederick William I of Prussia, William the Silent, Admiral Coligny, Roger Williams, Oliver Cromwell and the Transylvanian István Bocskai. Eight bas reliefs depict key moments in the history of international Calvinism – the Prussians welcoming Huguenot refugees in 1685; the Estates General of the United Provinces adopting their Act of Abjuration in 1581; Henri IV signing the Edict of Nantes in 1598; the Reformers preaching to the people of Geneva in 1534; Knox thundering before the Scottish nobility in St Giles Cathedral in 1559 with George Buchanan by his side; the Pilgrim Fathers taking the Mayflower Covenant in 1620; the Lords and Commons presenting William of Orange with the Declaration of Rights in 1689; and the victorious Bocskai securing ‘la liberté religieuse’ in Royal Hungary at the Peace of Vienna in 1606. Above each relief, an excerpt from the relevant document is carved in the original language, and across the monument runs the Genevan motto: Post Tenebras Lux [Opening paragraph]