William Farel

William Farel
Oil on wood, 16th Century in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Geneva.
Born	Guilhem Farel 1489 Gap, Kingdom of France
Died	1565 (aged 75–76) Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Residence	Switzerland
Occupation	Pastor, theologian
Years active	1522–1565
Theological work
Era	Reformation
Language	French, Swiss
Tradition or movement	Reformed, Calvinist

William Farel (1489 – 13 September 1565), Guilhem Farel or Guillaume Farel (French: [gijom faʁɛl]), was a French evangelist, and a founder of the Reformed Church in the cantons of Neuchâtel, Berne, Geneva, and Vaud in Switzerland. He is most often remembered for having persuaded John Calvin to remain in Geneva in 1536, and for persuading him to return there in 1541, after their expulsion in 1538. They influenced the government of Geneva to the point that it became the "Protestant Rome", where Protestants took refuge and non-Protestants were driven out. Together with Calvin, Farel worked to train missionary preachers who spread the Protestant cause to other countries, and especially to France.

Farel was born in 1489 in Gap. He was a pupil of the pro-reform Catholic priesthood, at the University of Paris, in the earliest years of the Reformation. There he met the scholar Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples who helped Farel obtain a professorship to teach grammar and philosophy at the Collège Cardinal Lemoine in Paris. With Lefevre he became a member of the Cercle de Meaux gathered together from 1519 by the reform-minded bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briçonnet. Farel eventually became regent of the college. By 1522 he was appointed a diocesan preacher by the Reformist bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briçonnet. Farel now could invite a number of evangelical Humanists to work in his diocese to help implement his reform program within the Catholic Church.