Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec, also known as Hieronymus Bolsec was a FrenchCarmelite theologian and physician, who became a Protestant and controversialist.
Life
A sermon which he preached at Paris aroused misgivings in Catholic circles regarding the soundness of his ideas, and Bolsec left Paris. Having separated from the Catholic Church about 1545, he took refuge at the Court of Renée, duchess of Ferrara, who was favourably disposed towards persons holding Protestant views. Here he married, and began the study of medicine, about 1550 settling as a physician at Veigy, near Geneva. A theological controversy with John Calvin, whose doctrine of predestination he deemed an absurdity, soon ensued. In 1551, at one of the religious conferences or public discussions, then held at Geneva every Friday, he interrupted the orator of the day, Jean de Saint André, who was speaking on predestination, and argued against him. Thinking that Calvin was not present at the oration, Bolsec was surprised to find that as soon as he had finished his argument Calvin himself stood up and refuted him point by point. Unable to respond to Calvin, Bolsec was arrested, and through the influence of the reformer banished from Geneva. In 1555 he was also driven from Thonon, in the Bernese territory, whither he had retired. He went to Paris and sought admission into the ministry of the Reformed Church. But his opinions were not found sufficiently orthodox, from a reformed point of view, for one wishing to hold such a position. He was asked for a declaration of faith, but refused. He went to Lausanne, but as the signing of the Confession of Bern was made a condition of his residence there, he preferred to return to France. Shortly after this, he recanted his errors, and was reconciled with the Catholic Church.
Works
He published biographies of the two Genevan reformers, Calvin and Theodore Beza. These works are violent in tone, and their historical statements cannot always be relied on. They are "Histoire de la vie, des moeurs... de Jean Calvin" ; "Histoire de la vie et des mœurs de Th. de Bèze". The life of Calvin was edited by L. F. Chastel in 1875 with extracts from the life of Beza. In Alister McGrath's biography of Calvin, he states, Thomas Henry Dyer's biography of Calvin offers the following context,
