“Calvin and the Huguenots,” Francis Foucachon – New Saint Andrews College

Francis Foucachon speaking at NSA’s Disputatio – Calvin@500 Series. “John Calvin and the Huguenots”

From an NSA news release:

     Rev. Francis Foucachon, a native of France with a Huguenot family heritage that extends to the 16th century Protestant Reformation, will present "Calvin and the Huguenots" at the Nuart Theater this Friday, October 30, at 3 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.
     The lecture, the fifth in the College's yearlong Calvin Lecture Series marking the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth, is on the eve of day that Protestants celebrate the Reformation worldwide.
     Foucachon is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and has served as a church planter in France with Missions to the World. With its speaker series, New Saint Andrews joins an international and interdenominational commemoration of John Calvin's life and work. New Saint Andrews, which is firmly rooted in the Calvinist tradition, is a limited-enrollment classical Christian liberal arts college located on Friendship Square in Moscow, Idaho.

A Huguenot Tradition - Advent Breakfast

The French are not big on breakfast. Often very light like a Croissant with coffee. However there are four breakfasts in the year which are exceptionally special. There is a Huguenot tradition in France of having a special advent breakfast that my father grew up with and then did with us, and that I am now continuing. It is often not a huge breakfast, mostly because we would otherwise be late for church, but it is always very special and unique. There are a few things that always accompany it, such as a tangerine with a candle stuck in it, as well as Papilottes (which we didn't have this time since you can't get them in the states. Papilottes are a Christmas-only chocolate that is wrapped in a foil with a joke inside and sometimes a little firecracker.)

Other than those, it varies from time to time. This morning we had eggs, toast, and breakfast sausage; a donut (with coconut on top), fruit cake, a slice of pound cake, a chocolate cigar, peanut butter cups, and hot cider (and of course the orange).

Here are a couple photos of our first advent breakfast:

Milton on the Vaudois

This poem was written by John Milton concerning the persecution of the Vaudois (Waldenses). Milton, along with Sir Morland, used his gift of prose to try to stop the Duke of Savoy from massacring these French Huguenots.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

E'en them, who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their groans,

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from these may grow

An hundred-fold, who, having learnt thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe!

John Milton, in The Waldenses: Sketches of the Evangelical Christians of the Valleys of the Piedmont, Alexis Muston

On Baptism

This is a very rough translation from the original manuscript written in old French on the History of the Vaudois Churches in the Piemont mountains. I read this section on Baptism (which I found is a lot easier to just read than to actually translate!) and I found that some of the things sounded strangely like the "new" Federal Vision stuff...

We are pretty certain that the Vaudoises are our ancestors, specifically Henri Arnaud, a Vaudois Huguenot pastor who led an army of Huguenots back into the Piemont Valley in 1690 (?). This book was given to my father by his father, and tells of the persecutions of the Huguenots during this time period.

On Baptism

The first [sacrament] is called baptism, that is to say in our language, washing by water or from a river, or from a fountain. It must be administered in the Name of the Father, Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to those who, first of all, by the grace of God the Father, looking to his Son, and by participation of [in?] Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us, and by the renewing of the Holy Spirit, who imprints living Faith in our hearts, the sins of those baptized are forgiven, and they are received in grace : and after having persevered [in grace], they are saved in Jesus Christ.

The Baptism with which we are baptized, and that with which our Lord himself wanted to be baptized, in order to accomplish all justice, just as he wanted to be circumcised, is [the baptism] which he commanded his Apostles to baptize with.

Moreover, this baptism is visible and material; [the baptism] does not make a person either good or bad, as we learn in the Scripture of Simon Magus, and of St. Paul. And the reason that the baptism is administered in the midst of the congregation of the faithful is so that he who is received is reputed and held by all for a Brother and Christian, and so that all might pray for him, that he be Christian of the heart, just as he is externally considered to be a Christian. And it is for this reason that we present the Children to Baptism. Those who the children touch the closest ought to do this, just as their parents do, and those to whom God has given this charity.


Jean Leger, L'Histoire Generale Des Eglises Evangeliques Des Vallees De Piemont ou Vaudoises, (France, Leyde: Jean le Carpentier, 1669), 67.