Flight or Death The Writings of the Genevan Reformers on the Necessity of Exile for the Reformed Christians (1545–1555)

In the mid-1540s, what Calvin called “nicodemism”, which consisted of practising one’s faith in secret but devoting oneself to the rites of a dominant religion, led him and Viret to construct a theory of necessary exile, in order to encourage the French Protestants to leave to Geneva, in order to save their souls from damnation or their bodies from being burnt at the stake. It was in this context that some major migrations to the Reformed Rome took place in that period.