Someone once said that all Frenchmen are lovers. John Calvin seemed to be working hard to disprove that notion. As a 31-year-old bachelor, Calvin announced he was not one of "those insane lovers who embrace also the vices of those with whom they are in love, where they are smitten at first sight with a fine figure."

Along with Martin Luther, Calvin stands as a giant in the Protestant Reformation. But where Luther wrote often about his passionate relationship with wife Katie, Calvin kept rather quiet about his love life. But then, this quiet, bookish scholar didn't talk much about any personal matters.

Educated in France and famous for his work in Geneva, Calvin found his wife in German-speaking Strasbourg. It would be more correct to say, "a wife was found for him." The story would make a great premise for a modern TV reality show.

Stopped in His Tracks
Shortly after a spiritual conversion brought him around to the Protestant cause, Calvin left his native France for the somewhat freer climate of Switzerland. Stopping in Geneva, he was pressed into service by a fiery preacher named William Farel. "Stay here," Farel said, "and help me reform the city." Calvin felt he wasn't cut out for church leadership--he was a researcher and a scholar--but Farel wouldn't take no for an answer. "You're using your studies as an excuse," he thundered. "You're being selfish and self-willed."

So Calvin stayed in Geneva. "I felt as if God from heaven had laid his mighty hand upon me to stop me in my tracks," he said later. But Geneva wasn't ready for this dynamic duo. Less than two years later, Calvin and Farel were both given three days to get out of town or else. They got out. Suffering chronic headaches and stomach upsets, Calvin vowed never to get mixed up in church administrative affairs again.

Strasbourg Had its Problems, Too
That's when he met his match, in more ways than one. Martin Bucer, the head of the Protestant movement in Strasbourg, invited Calvin to lead a church of refugees in his city. Maybe it was the fact that he was now a refugee himself, but somehow, despite all his objections, Calvin said yes. Thus began a three-year stint in Strasbourg.

While the church work was going well, Calvin's finances were not. He rented a large house and turned it into a dormitory for students, hoping the rent would cover his expenses. It didn't. Besides the money problems, he had people problems, and that gave him stomach and headache problems as well.

He hired a cook-housekeeper who had a sharp tongue. That didn't work out very well either. She had a tendency to scream at the tenants when Calvin was trying to edit the second edition of his classic Institutes.

Finally Bucer told Calvin, "You ought to have a wife." Bucer didn't usually make suggestions; more often they were commands. After three decades of single life, this would be a major adjustment for Calvin. But maybe if he had a wife, John thought, she could decide what to do with unpleasant housekeepers. So he agreed to have a "search committee" hunt for a suitable mate.

The Search Begins
Calvin gave the committee instructions: "Remember, what I expect from one who is to be my companion for life. . . . The only kind of beauty which can win my soul, is a woman who is gentle, pure, modest, economical, patient, and who is likely to interest herself about my health."

Calvin had good reason that she be concerned about his health. He was said to eat only one meal a day and was often ill with indigestion, headaches, gallstones, hemorrhoids, gout, fever and chronic asthma.