There are some peculiar footnotes in the 1845 edition of Calvin’s Institutes translated by the industrious Henry Beveridge. The weirdest ones are the result of Beveridge double-checking his translation work by turning from the Latin Institutes to the French translation (much of which is by Calvin’s own hand). My favorite example is in Book I, chapter 11, when Calvin is ridiculing the practice of venerating statues. Since there are religious statues everywhere, Calvin asks, why is that people “fatigue themselves with votive pilgrimages to images while they have many similar ones at home?” At this point, Beveridge notices that the French translation offers a slightly different wording (”Pourquoy est-ce qu’ils trotent si loin en pelerinage pour voir un marmouset, duquel ils ont le semblable à leur porte?”), so he puts that, in English, into a footnote: “Why is it that they trot so far on a pilgrimage to see a marmoset, when they have one like it at their door?”

A marmoset? Um, you mean the South American monkey? What are 16th-century Europeans doing taking pilgrimages to bow down to South American monkeys, or for that matter keeping them at home? How many New World monkeys were there in Switzerland by that time? Were there constant marmoset runs being made between 1492 and 1559?
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