Alternate Names

Guilelmus Farellus; Wilhelm Farel; Wilhelmus Farellus; William Farel

Biography

Born in 1489 in the southeast of France, in Gap, Farel came late to theological studies. He earned his Master of Arts in Paris in 1517. This degree opened the way for Farel’s sometime teacher, the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455–1536), to obtain for him a teaching position at the Collège du Cardinal Lemoine, attached to the University of Paris. According to Farel’s own account, he began to see the need for reform in the church late in this period of his life (Farel 1530, 175; Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 72–74).

In 1521, Farel joined Lefèvre at Meaux to assist the reforming bishop Guillaume Briçonnet by lay preaching within the parish. This circle of reformers enjoyed the patronage of Marguerite of Navarre (Reid 2009, 1:185, 243–47). After a royal decree prohibited this work in Meaux, Farel preached around France, but after little success joined Oecolampadius and other reformers in Basel in 1524. Here, he instigated a formal disputation; he argued in 13 theses about Christ’s words forming the only rule for doctrine and practice in the church (Comité Farel 1930, 122–123). Banished later that year, he was welcomed to Montbéliard by its duke, preaching there until October 1525. Then he worked in Strasbourg with Bucer, Lefèvre, and others, until November 1526.

Farel wrote his first evangelical French language treatise in 1524 – a prayer book on the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, partly dependent on Luther’s (Farel 1524; Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 103–116). Soon after, the beginnings of liturgical forms in French appeared from his hand (Comité Farel 1930, 141; Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 191–223; Farel 1533). Possibly as early as 1529, Farel also produced the first evangelical confession in French, his Summaire, and in 1532 a treatise on the Lord’s Supper (Farel 1532; Desrosiers-Bonin and Kemp 2007, 1:9; Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 117–190). After the Bern Disputation of 1528, Farel became an emissary of Bern, preaching throughout the Pays de Vaud with that city’s protection (Bruening 2005, 35–37). Between 1526 and 1533, Farel preached in many Swiss cities, such as Aigle, Bienne, Erguel, Neuchâtel, Orbe, Grandson, and Morat, witnessing the adoption of reform in many (Comité Farel 1930, 173–284). For example, on 4 November 1530, due in large part to Farel’s persistence, the Neuchâtel bourgeoisie voted to abolish the mass and follow the way of reform. Here, from 1533 to 1535, the printer Pierre de Vingle joined Farel, printing early Reformed works in French (Desrosiers-Bonin and Kemp 2007).

Farel was also key to Geneva’s reformation. The Genevans rudely kicked him out in 1529, and sent him away again in 1532 in spite of Bern’s letter of protection. However, he preached openly at the end of 1533, publicly debated Guy Furbity in 1534 and Pierre Caroli in 1535, and, with the help of Antoine Froment and Pierre Viret, helped convince Geneva’s citoyens to swear to follow reform on 21 May 1536 (Desrosiers-Bonin and Kemp 2007, 1:205–215; Comité Farel 1930, 298–337). The military campaign of Bern through the Pays de Vaud also played a large part in Geneva’s decision (Bruening 2005, 39–41).

In 1532, Farel attended a Waldensian synod, helped unite them to the Reformed churches, and received 500 gold écus from them to support a new French translation of the Bible from the original languages, which was completed by Olivétan (Comité Farel 1930, 291–97).

On 10 November 1536, Farel recruited yet another young man to serve as pastor in one of the cities that Farel had led in reform – the famous Jean Calvin, in Geneva. Shortly after, Farel wrote Geneva’s first Reformed confession of faith and church order articles (Farel 1536; Stam 2000). In 1538, Calvin, Farel, and Courauld were banished from Geneva, but Calvin agreed to return in 1541 (Speelman 2014, 89–142). Farel became the leading pastor of the Reformed Church of Neuchâtel from 1538 until his death in 1565 (Comité Farel 1930, 421–728). He became deeply involved in promoting reform in the key city of Metz from 1542 to 1545 (Farel 2009) and travelled as needed to preach in other places such as his hometown of Gap in France (Comité Farel 1930, 701–708), but otherwise primarily cared for the church of Neuchâtel.

Farel was known for his persistence, relentless energy, impetuosity, verboseness, and earnest spirituality (Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 4–5, 31ff.). In Neuchâtel, Farel preached four sermons each Sunday and three on other weekdays, a total of seven sermons per week, about 350 per year, and perhaps well over 12,000 in his lifetime. Recognizing some of his own weaknesses, he urged Calvin to write treatises against the Anabaptist Libertines. Both of them countered the attacks of Pierre Caroli in the 1540s. As friends who belonged to what has been called the renaissance “republic of letters,” these two men on average exchanged a letter per month for decades.

In 1558, the itinerant Farel appeared perhaps ready to settle down: to the embarrassment of his colleagues, he married the daughter of his deceased housekeeper, a 17-year-old girl. They received one child who died young, 3 years after Farel (Comité Farel 1930, 673–80). His body was interred in the Saint-Guilluame chapel in Neuchâtel. Farel has been commemorated by public statues in both Geneva and Neuchâtel.

Heritage and Rupture with the Tradition

Farel taught in broad agreement with the Reformed confessions such as the Theses of Berne (1528), his own Summaire (1528, 1534, 1542), his own Confession de foi (1536), Calvin’s Geneva Catechism (1537), and the French churches’ Confession de foi (1559). In 1542, when reissuing his Summaire, he highly recommended Calvin’s Institutes as a biblical and clear exposition of doctrine (Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 187). His view of the Lord’s Supper may have evolved from an earlier Zwinglian position to a later Calvinist position, but he did not simply parrot the arguments of others (Jacobs 1979).

Innovative and Original Aspects

Farel’s emphasis on the use of prayer as a means to teach doctrine is somewhat unique among the reformers and in sharp contrast to prevailing church practices prior to the Reformation (Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 56–62). Like the European reformers generally, he emphasized the use of the vernacular in religious discourse and published all his works but two in French. A high view of the glory of God, ample admittance of human sin, and stark contrasts between good and evil mark all his writings. Farel also highlights God’s self-love as ground for his grace (Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 95). Farel appears to have introduced to French Protestantism the Reformed liturgical element of the sursum corda, i.e., “let us lift up our hearts to the Lord” (Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 5–6). Frequent communion and congregational singing also appear to have been Farellian ideas prior to Calvin (Zuidema and Van Raalte 2011, 6–7, 85).

Cross-References