Calvinist Miracles and the Concept of the Miraculous in Sixteenth-Century Huguenot Thought

This paper is a study of French Calvinism as a language. It was a language which employed the signifiers and the signs of the traditional Christian culture. There was persistent usages of key Catholic words in the theology of early Huguenot believers, regardless of their level of education or commitment to the cause. In an attempt to follow one such word (“miracle”: miracula or mirabilia), a large number of texts are examined, including Calvin’s own writings, the Histoire ecclesiastique , Simon Goulart’s Memoires de l’estat de France sous Charles Neufiesme , and the personal diary of an anonymous believer in the provincial town of Millau.