André Zébédée as the “Worthless Fellow” of John Calvin’s <i>Calumniae nebulonis</i>: Three Lost Texts of the 1554–1555 Predestination Disputes

This article identifies for the first time André Zébédée as the “worthless fellow (nebulo)” whose articles on predestination John Calvin wrote against in Calumnia nebulonis cuiusdam (1558). Calvin and Theodore Beza believed that the author was Sebastian Castellio, and most modern scholarship has agreed. A manuscript from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris that contains the conclusion of Charles Du Moulin’s Against the Calumnies of the Calvinists identifies Zébédée as the author of the articles. The Du Moulin manuscript also contains two other unknown texts from the 1554–55 conflicts over predestination between Calvin and Zébédée: first, a previously unknown letter from the Geneva pastors to the Bern city council, probably written by Calvin himself, and second, a complaint from Zébédée and his ally Jean Lange about Calvin and the Geneva pastors. These documents are printed as appendices to the article and reveal that Calvin’s leadership of the Francophone Reformed churches was far from complete at the time.