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Because Roman Catholicism dominated the French religious landscape in the sixteenth century, it is easy to forget that some of the most prominent theologians of the Reformed movement were French. Persecuted at home, many of these theologians fled to Switzerland, Germany, or the Netherlands, but they wrote with their beseiged French brethren in mind.

French Reformed thinking can be traced back to Jacques Lefèvre d'étaples (d. 1536), who, in his 1512 commentary on the Pauline epistles, argued for justification by faith. Lefèvre distinguished between a man-centered form of righteousness based on works and a God-centered form based on God's grace through Christ. He also anticipated the foundational doctrine of sola Scriptura, arguing that the Bible is sufficient in matters related to salvation.

Lefèvre emphasized the literal sense of Scripture over the medieval fourfold approach, which emphasized the allegorical interpretation. Also, like Martin Luther, he made great use of the Psalms as prophecies of the ministry and work of Christ. Lefèvre wrote in the preface to his Quincuplex Psalterium, "I have tried to write a short exposition of the Psalms with the assistance of Christ, who is the key to the understanding of David. He is the one about whom David spoke."

In spite of all these ideas that anticipated and predated the Reformation, most scholars do not consider Lefèvre a Protestant. He did, however, set the stage for others.

Some of Lefèvre's students, such as Bishop Briçonnet of Meaux, stayed loyal to the Roman Catholic Church and tried to reform it from within. Briçonnet encouraged everyone in his diocese to read the Scriptures and even financed a new French translation of the Greek Bible. These actions pitted Briçonnet against the Sorbonne, a guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, but King Francis I shielded the bishop from harsh punishments. Ultimately the bishop proved to be more a humanist than a reformer.

Many of Lefèvre's students, however, broke with the Catholic Church and had to flee the country. Lefèvre left after the Sorbonne and the Parlement of Paris broke up Briçonnet's reform-minded circle in 1525. Melchior Wolmar, a professor of Greek at Bourges who taught John Calvin, fled to Germany. The famous poet Clement Marot, who authored the French Psalter, spent time in Navarre. Other refugees included Pierre Viret and Theodore Beza, who fled to Lausanne, and Guillaume Farel and Calvin, who settled in Geneva.

The impact of Calvin's thought and example among the Huguenots cannot be overemphasized. His Institutes of the Christian Religion was translated into French by 1541 and became the standard for French Protestant thought, which did not follow the Lutheran but the Calvinist ideal. The French Reformed Church also followed Calvin's lead in its organizational pattern, instituting the offices of pastor, elder, teacher, and deacon as Calvin set forth in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541). The Academy of Geneva, founded by Calvin, served as a training ground for French pastors.

Scholars view Beza as a transitional figure between the era of Calvin and that of Calvinism. He continued Calvin's ministry in Geneva and wrote extensively on a number of topics, notably the doctrine of predestination. His treatise on the subject, The Sum of All Christianity (1555), defended Calvin against the attacks of Jerome Bolsec (1524-1574), a former Carmelite monk who accused Calvin of making God the author of sin. Beza argued for a strict "double predestination," whereby God decrees some to be destined for heaven and the rest of humanity to damnation.

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