The Institutes (1536)
Christianae Religionis Institutio, first edition (Basel, 1536)
John Calvin, aged twenty-six, in hiding under an assumed name
A pocket book by an unknown twenty-six-year-old, addressed to a king who was burning people like him.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 264
- Stat total
- 288
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Six chapters in a book you could carry in a pocket. Everything it is famous for is still ahead of it.
A defence brief, not a system: it was written to tell the king of France that the people he was burning were not anarchists.
Tight and well-made, and its author knew Roman law before he knew theology. It is not easy to find a loose thread.
It sold well enough for a first book by an unknown, which was more than anybody expected.
Cited for this book
Written at twenty-six, on the run, and prefaced by an open letter to Francis I of France asking him to look at what he was actually burning. Calvin revised it for the rest of his life — 1539, 1543, 1550, and finally 1559 — until six chapters had become eighty. He said in the preface to the last edition that he had never been satisfied until it was arranged as it now stood.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Some Sense of Deity | Natural Theology | Argument | 80 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 44 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 45 | The Returning Citizen | History | Argument | 90 | 100% | 5 |
| 46 | A Seed of Religion | Anthropology | Argument | 76 | 100% | 15 |
| 47 | Depraved Custom | Ethics | Argument | 88 | 100% | 5 |
| 48 | From His Mouth the Truth | Ecclesiology | Argument | 82 | 100% | 10 |
| 49 | The Secret Testimony | Presupposition | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 50 | To Serve, Not to Lord It | History | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 51 | Doctrine Before Miracles | Rationality | Argument | 88 | 100% | 5 |