The Heresiarch
His career began. He wandered to Strasbourg, Basel, Ferrara, and finally settled at Geneva in 1536 as preacher. There he was to show his full worth, not only as a preacher, but also as a political virtuoso. In five years, he was able to solidify his authority over the Consistory the Council of the Ancients, a disciplinary tribunal that passed sentence on all public sinners]; first as leader of the Protestants in exterminating the Catholics (half the city fled, ruined, all their property and possessions confiscated), then as president of the Council that voted on the right interpretation of the Bible, and finally as chief of the tribunal and the army of informers and police in charge of morality and doctrine.
The Tyrant
He began obsessively multiplying laws of public morality. Death was the penalty for high treason against religion as well as for high treason against the city, and for the son who would strike or curse his father, and for the adulterer and the heretic. Children were whipped or hanged for calling their mother a devil. A mason wearily exclaimed "to the devil with the work and the master," and was denounced and condemned to three days in prison. Magicians and sorcerers were hunted down. They always confessed, of course. According to the city register, in 60 years, some 150 were burnt at the stake.
The years went by; Calvin's obsession gripped the Genevans. The number of dishes that could be served at table was regulated, as well as the shape of shoes, and the ladies' hair styles. In the registers are to be found condemnations such as these: "Three journeymen tanners were sentenced to three days on bread and water in prison for having eaten at lunch three dozen pates, which is a great immorality."
That was in 1558. Drunkenness, taverns and card games were punished by fines. The city's coffers filled up and served to pay new informers. For there were ears everywhere in the republic of evangelical liberty, and the failure to inform was itself a misdemeanor. "They are to be stationed in every quarter of the city, so that nothing can escape their eyes," wrote Calvin. Sermons were given on Thursdays and Sundays. Attendance was obligatory under pain of fine or flogging. Not even children were excused. The spies would verify that the streets and houses were empty. Every year, the controllers of orthodoxy went house-to-house to have everyone sign the profession of faith voted that year. The last Catholics disappeared by death or exile. None spoke of changing religion, for Calvin had had a law voted punishing by death anyone who would dare question the reforms of the "servant of Geneva."
Calvin humbly took the title of "servant of Geneva," but God, he held, spoke by his mouth. "Since God has deigned to make known to me what is good and what is evil, I must rule myself by this measure..." And everyone else, too!
One morning the city awoke to find gallows had been erected in all the public squares, to which a placard was attached: "For whomever shall speak ill of Mr. Calvin." A letter from the dictator sums up his attitude: "It is necessary to rid the land of these damned cads who exhort the people to resist us, blacken our conduct ...such monsters must be stamped out."
And let's go way back, long before there were any Protestants you can demonize. We'll see how Rome was already using religion to motivate political conquest and slaughter, centuries before the Reformation. The Pope incited a crusade against "heresy" in Languedoc, the region now considered the south of France, by offering the property of that region to the French who agreed to fight. With the huge wealth of this advanced region dangled before the bloodthirsty, sociopathic warlords of northern France, the result was inevitable: Years of war, about a million dead, and conquest by the French king. All the things you talk about--genocidal massacres, burnings, princelings flip-flopping as conditions changed--happened, and all at the instigation of the Roman church!
This established a pattern which went on and on. His Catholic Majesty of Spain tried to conquer England and force Catholicism down the throats of its people. Did the Pope object? Of course not. The Pope had the nerve to give the entire New World to the pet Catholic powers of Spain and Portugal. When a small colony of Huguenots driven out of their French homeland settled peacefully in Florida, a Spanish force descended on them and massacred the entire lot. You can't find any act by a Protestant nation which compares to the outright genocide inflicted on the Huguenots, a large minority within France, by the power of the royalty united with the Roman religion. Within a few years, Protestantism was almost dead in France. This would have been the fate of Protestants elsewhere, had they not taken up arms and attained alliance with political leaders in Germany and elsewhere. This kind of crap is why our Founders did not want any nationally established church in the U.S.!