After the suspension of the early sitting of the 16th in consequence of the stormy scene between Berthelier and Colladon, and a pause to permit the minds of all to regain a state of calm befitting the circumstances, proceedings of an informal kind only were taken later in the day. These are interesting, nevertheless, because of the recommendation of the Judges to Calvin in sequence to his avowal of himself as virtual prosecutor, to use every fair endeavour to bring the prisoner to what were thought to be better views, as well as to furnish the Court with further and more satisfactory evidence of his heretical guiltiness. To this end Calvin was requested by the Court to visit the prisoner, ‘the better to show him his errors—affin que myeux luy puyssent estre remonstrées ses erreurs: to assist him,à assister luy, and to do what he could with him in respect of the interrogatories put to him,et qu’il vouldra avec luy aux interrogatoires. This surely is both interesting and important. The Court would have spared the man, and given him an opportunity of coming to an understanding with the prosecutor on the difficult matters in debate between them. We shall accordingly find by-and-by that Calvin, accompanied by a number of ministers, in compliance with the benevolent intentions of the Court, paid Servetus a visit inprison; but with results that might have been foreseen—not only not advantageous to him, but damaging in the highest degree to his interests.
On the resumption of proceedings next day, August 17, Calvin took his seat on the Bench, and under him, in the area, were seen a number of ministers, his colleagues, specially introduced, as said, to show the prisoner his errors, but all, like their leader, we fear, rather bent on convicting the dangerous heretic than hopeful of convincing and winning over the mistaken theologian.
Colladon, as counsel for the prosecution, now went on with his interrogatories as at the last meeting; and various particulars which had hitherto remained in the shade were brought prominently forward. Among others it was positively averred that the prisoner had been tried and condemned in Germany, a point only hinted at before; and passages from private letters by Melanchthon and Œcolampadius were quoted in support of the allegation. In these the severest censure is certainly passed on the views of the prisoner; but, as he observed, the adverse opinions of the Reformers referred to by no means implied that he had ever been the subject of any judicial trial or condemnation in Germany; a remark for which Colladon had no better rejoinder than to say that had he and his printer been apprehended and tried, they would undoubtedly have been condemned.
Questioned as to who was the printer of his bookon ‘Trinitarian Error,’ he said it was Joannes Secerius of Hagenau. On this, Colladon went on to say that the book was full of heretical poison, and that it was impossible it should not have infected many persons. But there was no evidence adduced to show that it had; and it is not unimportant to observe that Colladon’s statements here are based on a document which is not before the Court, a copy of the book on ‘Trinitarian Error,’ though eagerly sought after, as we have seen, not being anywhere to be found.
On the note or scholium in the Ptolemy, calling in question the truth of the Bible account of Judæa as a land flowing with milk and honey, on which he was challenged, Servetus declared that it was not by him, but quoted from another writer, adding incautiously, from himself, however, that the note contained nothing reprehensible or that was not true. This aroused the ire of Calvin, who now interposed, not certainly in agreement with the recommendation of the Court to show the prisoner that he had been led into error through false information, as he might have done, but to declare that he who approved the words of another characterising Judæa as no land flowing with milk and honey, but as meagre, barren, and inhospitable, necessarily inculpated Moses; and that to use such language was egregiously to outrage the Holy Ghost.
Servetus, however, would not agree to this, coolly denying any such conclusion; insomuch so, as Calvin himself tells us, in no very choice terms, that ‘the villainouscur—ce vilain chien—though put to shame by the obvious reasons adduced, did but wipe his muzzle,ne fit que torcher son museau, and say: Let us go on, there is no harm here—passons oultre, il n’y a poynt là de mal’.76
Another important article of the impeachment brought into prominence in this day’s proceedings was from among the prisoner’s annotations to the reprint of Santes Pagnini’s Bible, which he supervised, as we know, for Hugo de la Porte, the publisher of Lyons. This Bible was said by the prosecution to be encumbered with many glosses or comments totally opposed to the Faith; the one most notably so of all perhaps being appended to the thirty-third chapter of Isaiah, where the servant of God who took on himself the sins of the people is spoken of by the Prophet. ‘This passage,’ said Calvin, ‘is referred by the prisoner to Cyrus, whilst every Christian Church refers it to Jesus Christ.’ But Servetus was again bold enough to maintain his position in so far as to say that the interpretation he had given of the passage was borne out insome sort by the opinions of the old Doctors of the Church, who acknowledged, as he said, a twofold sense in the Scriptures—one, literal and historical, applying to contemporaneous personages and events; another, mystical and prophetic, bearing on Christ and the future. ‘In speaking of the individual referred to, as he had done, and calling him Cyrus, he said that he nevertheless held the prophetical and most important bearing of the text to be on Christ.’ But this did not satisfy Calvin. He would by no means accept such an explanation, and far from attempting by reason and kindness to win the prisoner to views which he himself believed to be more in conformity with the truth, he launched out in passion, and declared that ‘the prisoner would never have had the hardihood thus villainously to corrupt so grand a passage had he not, abandoning all shame, taken he knew not what diabolical pleasure in getting rid of the whole Christian faith.’ The cool way in which Servetus stood this outburst appears to have irritated the Reformer extremely. Servetus was in truth far in advance of Calvin and his age in his exegesis. He was not blind, like all about him, to the true import of the Hebrew writings styled prophetical, but divined their only possible bearing upon events and individuals contemporaneous with their writers—in some cases even past and gone. It was to escape doing violence to the idea of the inspiration under which Servetus credited these ancient writings to have been composed, that he acknowledged a prospectivereference to incidents still in the womb of far distant time.
The printing of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was next adduced and made a principal topic of accusation against the prisoner. To the question what object he had proposed to himself in having the book printed, he replied that his main purpose was to ventilate his opinions and have them controverted in case they were seen to be erroneous. But Calvin rejoined that it was by no means necessary to print in order to obtain correction of erroneous opinions, and this more especially in a case such as his, where, as writer, he had already been admonished of his errors.
The delicate, difficult, and most essential element in the impeachment, that, namely, having reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity, was now and again brought into the foreground. Particularly questioned on this subject, Servetus maintained, that previous to the Council of Nicæa no Doctor of the Church had used the wordTrinity; and that if the Fathers did acknowledge a distinction in the Divine Essence, it was notrealbutformal; that thepersonswere nothing more in truth thandispensationsor modes, not distinct entities orpersonsin the usual acceptation of that word. If he had called the Doctrine of the Trinity, as commonly understood, a dream of St. Augustine and an invention of the Devil, which he did not deny; if he had further characterised the Trinity of modern theologians as a three-headed monster, like the Cerberusof the poets, and styled those who overlooked the true Trinity, which he himself recognised, as Tritheists, it was solely because he believed the unity of God to be denied or annulled by such a procedure. Colladon on this—and prompted we may presume by Calvin—maintained that the views imputed to the Fathers of the Church by the prisoner were false as well as mischievous, and that he could adduce none but apocryphal writings full of absurdities in support of what he said.
Most of the other views and opinions of the prisoner which were quoted as heretical in the act of impeachment were either owned to by him, interpreted in the way he understood them, or were taken as proven by the Court; passages in support of this conclusion having been referred to not only in the printed copy of the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ but in the manuscript sent privately six years before to Calvin for his strictures. There is one particular, however, not mentioned in the record of proceedings, but given by Calvin,77that is not uninteresting, as showing the extreme pantheistic views to which Servetus had attained, and may have prejudiced him not a little in the eyes of his Judges, the air of offensive absurdity which the pantheistic doctrine—adversely understood—assumes when pushed to extremes, being made so prominently to appear. The question had turned on the relations between the Divine substance and the substanceof creatures and things. ‘All things, all creatures,’ said Servetus, ‘are portions of the substance of God.’ Speaking in his own person, and interposing at this point, Calvin says: ‘Annoyed as I was by so palpable an absurdity, I answered: What, poor man, did one stamp on this floor with his foot and say he trod on God, would not you be horrified in having subjected the Majesty of God to such unworthy usage?’ He, on this, replied: ‘I have not a doubt but that this bench, this table, and all you can point to around us, is of the substance of God.’ When it was then objected to him that on such showing the Devil must be of God substantially; he, smiling impudently, said: ‘Do you doubt it? For my part,’ continued he, ‘I hold it as a general proposition that all things whatsoever are part and parcel of God, and that nature at large is His substantial manifestation.’ Calvin, we imagine, might have spared Servetus on this head when we call to mind how he commits himself to pantheistic views in that passage of his ‘Institutions’ we have already referred to, where he says he only objects to call Nature God because of the harshness and impropriety of the expression. He might further, with reference to the Devil, have bethought him of the verse of Isaiah xlv. 7, where these words occur as coming from Jehovah himself: ‘I form the Light and create Darkness; I make peace and create evil.’ Or of this from Amos iii. 6: ‘Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?’ Or yet this of Ezekiel xx. 25:‘I gave them statutes that were not good,’ &c. The Jews, through by far the greater part of their history, as a people acknowledged no Dualism in their Deity, as, indeed, they only looked on their God Jahveh as the greatest among the Gods. He was the good and the evil principle in one. But it is easy to imagine the damaging impression which Servetus’s logical but terribly unorthodox statement must have made on the minds of his Judges, ill-informed presumably as they were on such questions. Had Calvin been minded to help instead of determined to crush Servetus, he might even have quoted Luther, who speaks in this wise in his Table Talk: ‘God is present in all created things, and so in the smallest leaflet and tiniest poppy-seed—Gott also gegenwärtig ist in allen Creaturen; auch im geringsten Blättlein und Mohnkörnlein.’
Nor were the personal griefs of Calvin overlooked in the inculpation of the prisoner. Beside the thirty letters printed in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ addressed to the Reformer, a copy of his ‘Institutions’ was now laid before the Court. This, like the MS. of the ‘Restitutio,’ sent privately and confidentially to Calvin, was covered on the margins with numerous annotations, little in conformity, as may be supposed, with the accepted tenets of the Church of Geneva, and more rarely still complimentary to the author. At such insolent procedure we know that Calvin was greatly offended, as appears by the language he thought fit to use when writing to Viret and incidentally noticing theliberties that had been taken with him by the annotator: ‘There is not a page of the book,’ he says, ‘that is not befouled with his vomit.’
Neither was the tergiversation of the prisoner in what he had said about Geroult’s part in the printing of the ‘Restitutio’ unnoticed. He is now reproached with the variations in his replies on the subject to the Lieutenant on the 14th, and to the Court on the 15th. His first answer we believe was truthful—Geroult knew all about the book, as we shall find from a letter of Arnoullet to his friend Bertet; his second was untruthful, but uttered to shield the man who had aided him in his enterprise, compromised, as he had come to see, by what he had said before.
THE TRIAL IN ITS SECOND PHASE, WITH THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF GENEVA AS PROSECUTOR.
Arrived at this stage, all the documents on which it was proposed to proceed being before the Court, and something more than a presumption of the prisoner’s heretical opinions having already been made to appear, Nicolas de la Fontaine, on his petition to that effect, and his bail, Anthony Calvin, were formally discharged as parties to the suit, its further prosecution being handed over to Claude Rigot, the Attorney-General of the city of Geneva.
Before breaking up, however, and as if to occupy the time until the usual hour of rising, a number of questions irrelevant to the main plea, but tending to gratify the curiosity of the Court, were put to the prisoner. Among the number of these he was asked particularly how he had contrived to escape from the prison of Vienne. He informed the Judges, that he had only passed two nights there; that the Vibailly, De la Cour, was well disposed towards him, he having been of great service to M. Maugiron, an intimate friend of the Vibailly, who had ordered the gaoler to usehim well, and allow him the freedom of the garden. Taking advantage of this, he had scaled the wall and got away in the manner already described, the Vibailly having taken care that he should not be pursued and recaptured.
He added that he had intended and even tried in the first instance to get to Spain, his native country; but finding the obstacles so many, and fearing arrest at every moment, he retraced his steps and made his way to Geneva, purposing to proceed to Italy.
Questioned further about the printing of the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ he said it had been thrown off to the extent of 1,000 copies, of which the publisher had sent a bale to Frankfort in anticipation of the Easter book-fair of that great mart. This was a piece of information that was not lost on Calvin. He wrote a few days after, having meantime gained further information, to one of the Frankfort members, giving him intimation of what had been done, telling him where the packet was bestowed, and recommending its immediate seizure and destruction, for which he seems also to have furnished some sort of warrant or authority, how obtained we are not informed, though it was probably from Frelon.
Interrogated as to the money he had about him when imprisoned at Vienne, he replied that his cash and valuables had not been taken from him on his arrest there, but were still in his possession when he reached Geneva.
The result of the unwarranted and eventful prosecution of which he was the subject had thus far been anything but favourable to the prisoner. The intervention of Berthelier, above all, may be said to have been highly prejudicial by bringing Calvin into the field in person, and supplying him with an additional motive for urging the suit to the issue that could alone prove satisfactory to him—the condemnation capitally of his insolent, personal, and dreaded theological opponent, now associated with his political enemies. Calvin was in truth much too formidable a personage to be gainsaid on trifling grounds. More than one member of the Court who might have been disposed to favour the prisoner, could it have been done without open defiance of the Reformer, quailed under his glance, and shrank from the responsibility of opposing him, when the direction the prosecution had taken came to be understood. It was even said to be more dangerous to offend John Calvin in Geneva than the King of France on his throne! The prisoner whose life was in debate was a stranger, unknown to the majority of the Councillors; and it was doubtless thought better by the timid to leave him to his fate, than to compromise themselves by taking part with one who on his own admission entertained opinions adverse not only to the doctrine of the Church of Geneva, but to all they had ever had presented to them as characteristic of the Christian faith. There could be no doubt that the man was a schismatic, a heretic; and heretic in Genevameant an opponent of the head of its Church and the form of Christianity it represented.
Having by this time arrived at a better knowledge of the state of affairs around him, and more than ever aware of the possible danger in which he stood; beginning moreover to feel less confidence in the support which we may be certain had been privately promised him, face to face in fact with the man who had already sought his life and so nearly succeeded in bringing him to a fiery death, Servetus seems now to have seen the necessity of changing the somewhat confident tone he had hitherto maintained in defending his opinions: reticence takes the place of open assertion, and instead of any clear avowal or defence of the views he held, he is now found fencing with the obvious meaning of the language he has used, and the conclusions to which it leads, prevaricating too at times; in a word, doing all in his power to appear not to have written in the way the charges brought against him show from his works that he had.
The trial from this time may be said to have acquired new significance. The private prosecutor and his bail discharged, and the further conduct of the suit handed over to the public prosecutor of the city, gave it additional importance in the eyes of the community at large, and heightened the interest felt in the issues involved.
Thrown into fresh hands, proceedings were necessarily stayed for a few days to give the State Attorneytime to get ready his case, so that there was no meeting of the Court until the 21st. Between this date and that of the suspension on the 17th, Calvin is said to have been busy among those of the Council he reckoned either as friends or not as avowed antagonists, satisfying their doubts or strengthening their presumptions of the prisoner’s guilt; showing them the importance to the cause of religion and society that he should be convicted; picturing him as perhaps even less dangerous, if that were possible, on account of the particular theological grounds set forth, than as the enemy of all religion, sole foundation, as he said, of the entire social fabric. The man had been already tried, convicted, and condemned to death by the Roman Catholics of Vienne. Would they, the Senators of Geneva, show themselves less zealous than the Papists of France in the cause of God and their own true faith? Surely they would not, but doing their duty and finding on the evidence, which Calvin relied on as overwhelming, declare the prisoner guilty of the heresies laid to his charge.
Whether seen from a Popish or Protestant point of view, though the matters in debate had no more to do with real piety, with morality, or the foundations of society than with the course of the seasons, Servetus certainly entertained opinions on various topics of transcendental theology different from those commonly received, and in so far was a heretic. Of this much Calvin had no difficulty in satisfying his supporters,who consequently felt themselves absolved of any scruples they might have entertained about condemning one to death on purely speculative grounds which they did not even pretend to understand.78
Although what is said above about Calvin’s private interference with the course of justice has been questioned, when we know that he denounced his opponent from the pulpit in no measured terms, and tampered with the ministers of the Swiss Churches when they were consulted on the case, we need not be too scrupulous in accepting the statement as true. He may have been alarmed by reports of something like wavering on the part of certain members of the Court, and even of questions raised as to the propriety of continuing a suit involving matters so much out of the usual course of criminal procedure as known at Geneva, and the competence of laymen to take such subjects into consideration at all. Rumours to this effect reaching his ears may have led him into a course the impropriety of which in calmer moments he might possibly have understood. But Calvin was wholly without that freedom from passion and that sense of relative equity which go to the constitution of the judicial mind. He lived in a perpetual imbroglio of quasi-criminal proceedings, mostly begotten by his own arbitrary legislation; and he was in the constant habit of interfering in suits before the Courts of Geneva, less as jurisconsult than as judge—as judge, too, in causes so commonly hisown. Clerical writers who have lauded his comments on the criminal proceedings of Geneva have not seen these in their true bearings, or they would have expressed themselves more guardedly than they have done.79
That proposals had really been made at the meeting of the 21st to abandon further proceedings against the prisoner, though overruled by the majority, seems to be proclaimed by the resolution then come to, viz., ‘Inasmuch as the heresies charged against Michael Servetus appear to be of great importance to Christianity, resolved to continue the prosecution.’ Such a resolution, though we have no intimation of that which led up to it, coupled with Calvin’s activity out of doors, suffices to show that Servetus had really had a chance of escape from the grip of his pursuer at this particular moment. But the occasion passed; and by way of strengthening themselves in their determination to go on with the questionable business in which they were engaged, we now find the Councillors of the Protestant city of Geneva actually writing to the Popish authorities of Vienne, and making inquiry of them as to the grounds on which Michael Servetus of Villanova, physician, had been imprisoned and prosecuted by them, and how he had escaped from confinement.
To confirm themselves still further in their purpose to proceed, it was moreover resolved that the Councilsof Berne, Basle, Zürich, and Schaffhausen, together with the ministers of their Churches, should be written to and informed of what had thus far been done and was still in progress. In yielding to the instigations of Calvin, the Court in these last acts is plainly enough seen to hesitate, and be indisposed to trust entirely to his guidance. They would have the authorities of the other Protestant cantons of Switzerland informed of what was going on, and feel the pulse of their confederates as to the propriety of proceeding farther, they, under all the circumstances, being likely to be more impartially disposed than the Church of Geneva and its distinguished head.
The Council of Geneva had in fact already had occasion to know that where simple justice, whether in the interest of the General or the Individual, was concerned, Calvin’s lead should not always be too blindly followed. In the case of Jerome Bolsec, whom Calvin had arraigned for heresy two years before, against whom he had used all his influence to secure a conviction, and in which he would have succeeded (and the man, almost as much a personal enemy as Servetus, would have been beheaded) had he not been foiled by the recommendations of the Swiss Churches and Councils, which were unanimous in counselling moderation, the minor Council of Berne even went so far as to express a distinct opinion against the enforcement of pains or penalties of any kind in cases of imputed heresy.
But Calvin in his prosecution of those who opposed him always shows himself both vindictive and pitiless. Speaking of the way in which he would have had Bolsec disposed of he says: ‘It is our wish that our Church should be so purged of this pestilence that it may not, by being driven hence, become injurious to our neighbours.’ These words will bear one interpretation only—Calvin would have had Bolsec put to death. But he was withstood in his design, and mainly so by the Church of Berne, the language of which must have been highly displeasing to him; for the Reporter, in counselling moderation, says: ‘How much easier is it to win a man by gentleness than to compel him by severity;’ and still more displeasing perhaps was that which follows: ‘It cannot be said of God that He blinds, hardens, and gives to perdition any man, without at the same time assuming that it is God who is the Author of human blindness and reprobation, and therefore the cause of the sin committed.’ Now Bolsec’s offence had been in saying that men are not saved because elect, but are elect because of their faith. ‘None are reprobate,’ continues the Reporter from Berne, ‘by the eternal decrees of God, save those who of their own choice refuse the election freely offered to all. How shall we believe that God ordains the fate of men before their birth; foredooming some to sin and death, others to virtue and eternal life? Would you make of God an arbitrary tyrant, strip virtue of its goodness, vice of its shame, and thewicked of the reproaches of their conscience?’ But this is to cut the ground from under the feet of Calvin. No wonder, therefore, that as the proud man would not, and the self-satisfied man could not, bring himself to admit his error, he would have had him who exposed and led to such an exposition of it put out of the way.80
It was whilst expecting replies from Vienne, and waiting the convenience of M. Rigot, the Attorney-General, that the Court proceeded to make inquiries of the prisoner concerning his relations with Arnoullet, the printer of the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ a letter of his to a friend of the name of Bertet having now been put in and read to the Court. In this letter, dated July 14, 1553, Arnoullet informs his friend Bertet that he is still in prison, but is promised his liberty next week, having got six substantial sureties for his good behaviour in time to come. He had been villainously deceived, he says, by his manager Geroult, who corrected the rough proofs of the book, but never said a word of the heresies it contained.
‘I asked him,’ the letter proceeds, ‘whether it was all according to God? And he replied that it was; and further, that it contained a number of Epistles addressed to Mons. Calvin, which he was minded to translate into French. But this I forbade—without the permission of the author, which was refused.When last in Geneva, Geroult saw and informed M. Calvin that I had lately been there, without having waited on him. The truth is, that I did not think he would have me in such friendship now as in times past—by reason of my having had anything to do with such a monster, whom God look after! Geroult was in fact in league with the writer, and never let fall a syllable to me until after your departure for Frankfort [in charge of the Bale of the “Christianismi Restoratio” among other book merchandise]. This, as you know, gave occasion to your speaking to me so seriously as you did about the book in question.‘As to what you say about my sending someone else to Frankfort,—understand me, that I will have no one go but yourself, and that you are to see every copy of the book destroyed, so that there shall be left of it neither a leaf nor half a leaf. Understand, too, that this is to be done without prejudice to anyone. I am only sorry that we have all been so grossly deceived in the business; but if God, our Father, leave us the other goods we possess—more by far than those we shall destroy—it will be well. As to what you say of my having known that Villanovanus had been rejected by the Christian Churches, and that avarice had something to do with my having undertaken the work, let it suffice that I deny this; and our long intimacy must have made you so well acquainted with me, that you will not doubt I now speak the truth. How the Inquisitor came to have your name, I cannot tell. I can only assure you that in all the interrogations to which I have been subjected by him I never named a living soul; nor indeed was there ever mention made of you in my hearing.... Be good enough to say to Mons. Calvin that I shall not be in Geneva again without seeing him; and that if I have not done my duty towards him in all respects, beg him to find some excuse for me. He who is the cause of this [meaning Geroult, doubtless] is now there; and when Monsieur Calvinshall have spoken with me, he will understand the reason of my saying nothing more at present. Make my respects to him meantime, and forgive me if I do not now write more particularly of our affairs.’
‘I asked him,’ the letter proceeds, ‘whether it was all according to God? And he replied that it was; and further, that it contained a number of Epistles addressed to Mons. Calvin, which he was minded to translate into French. But this I forbade—without the permission of the author, which was refused.When last in Geneva, Geroult saw and informed M. Calvin that I had lately been there, without having waited on him. The truth is, that I did not think he would have me in such friendship now as in times past—by reason of my having had anything to do with such a monster, whom God look after! Geroult was in fact in league with the writer, and never let fall a syllable to me until after your departure for Frankfort [in charge of the Bale of the “Christianismi Restoratio” among other book merchandise]. This, as you know, gave occasion to your speaking to me so seriously as you did about the book in question.
‘As to what you say about my sending someone else to Frankfort,—understand me, that I will have no one go but yourself, and that you are to see every copy of the book destroyed, so that there shall be left of it neither a leaf nor half a leaf. Understand, too, that this is to be done without prejudice to anyone. I am only sorry that we have all been so grossly deceived in the business; but if God, our Father, leave us the other goods we possess—more by far than those we shall destroy—it will be well. As to what you say of my having known that Villanovanus had been rejected by the Christian Churches, and that avarice had something to do with my having undertaken the work, let it suffice that I deny this; and our long intimacy must have made you so well acquainted with me, that you will not doubt I now speak the truth. How the Inquisitor came to have your name, I cannot tell. I can only assure you that in all the interrogations to which I have been subjected by him I never named a living soul; nor indeed was there ever mention made of you in my hearing.... Be good enough to say to Mons. Calvin that I shall not be in Geneva again without seeing him; and that if I have not done my duty towards him in all respects, beg him to find some excuse for me. He who is the cause of this [meaning Geroult, doubtless] is now there; and when Monsieur Calvinshall have spoken with me, he will understand the reason of my saying nothing more at present. Make my respects to him meantime, and forgive me if I do not now write more particularly of our affairs.’
This letter we see by the date was written either shortly before or about the time of Servetus’s arrival in Geneva, whither Geroult, who was a native of the city, had betaken himself for safety on the arrest of Servetus and Arnoullet. Bertet, fearing that Arnoullet might suffer in the estimation of Calvin, seems to have thought that the best means of exculpating his friend of complicity with the writer of the heretical book was now to show the letter he had lately received from Vienne to Calvin; and he, we must conclude, laid it forthwith before the Court, with no purpose assuredly of aiding the prisoner in his defence. Arnoullet’s letter in exculpation of himself goes far, as we see, to compromise Geroult; and he being at this time in Geneva, his liberty, perhaps even his life, was brought into danger.81
The letter to Bertet being shown to the prisoner, he averred that he could not take it upon him to saywhether it was from Arnoullet or not, he never having seen any of the publisher’s handwriting; he said, however, that it certainly was at Arnoullet’s establishment that the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was printed, and that Arnoullet had been arrested and imprisoned at the same time as himself. Arnoullet’s disclaimer of having known anything of the burden of Servetus’s book must certainly be untrue. Unless all else we know in connection with the business be false, he must have had shrewd suspicions of its nature, and the suppression of his name as publisher, and of Vienne as the place of publication, shows that he was not without misgivings of possible unpleasant consequences following the appearance of the work were it known that he had had anything to do with it.
Arnoullet’s letter gave Calvin a hint which he did not fail to improve upon; for he too wrote to Frankfort informing his friends, the Protestant ministers there, of the bale of Servetus’s books that had been sent to their city—by Frelon, as I believe, not by Robert Etienne, the bookseller of Geneva, as has been said,82—recommending its seizure and the destruction of its contents.
Calvin begins his letter thus:—
‘I doubt not you have heard of Servetus, the Spaniard, who more than twenty years ago infected Germany with a villainous book, full of sacrilegious error of every kind. The scoundrel having fled from Germany and lain concealed inFrance under a false name, has lately concocted a second book out of the contents of the first, but replete with new figments, which he has had printed clandestinely at Vienne, a town not far from Lyons. Of this book we learn that many copies have been sent to Frankfort, in prospect of the approaching Easter fair. The printer, a pious and respectable person, when he came to know that the book was a mere farrago of Errors, suppressed the copies he had on hand. It were long did I enumerate the many Errors, the prodigious blasphemies against God, that are scattered over its pages. Imagine to yourselves a rhapsody made up of the impious ravings of every age; for there is no kind of impiety which this wild beast from hell has not appropriated. You will assuredly find in every page matters that will horrify you. The author is now in prison here at the instance of our magistracy, and I hope will shortly be condemned and punished. But you are to aid us against the further spread of such pestiferous poison. The messenger [the bearer of this] will tell you where the books are bestowed and their number; and the bookseller to whom they are consigned will, I believe, make no objections to their being given to the flames. Did he throw any obstacle in the way of this, however, I venture to think you are so well disposed, that you will take steps to have the world purged of such noxious corruption. You shall not want authority, indeed, for what you do in the business. If you are allowed to have your way, it will not then be necessary to seek the interference of your magistrates. But I have such confidence in you, that I feel persuaded my hint will suffice to guide your action. The matter, nevertheless, is of such moment, that I entreat you, for Christ’s sake, not to allow the occasion of showing yourselves zealous in your office to pass unheeded.‘Farewell, &c.‘Geneva, 6 Calends of September, 1553.’
‘I doubt not you have heard of Servetus, the Spaniard, who more than twenty years ago infected Germany with a villainous book, full of sacrilegious error of every kind. The scoundrel having fled from Germany and lain concealed inFrance under a false name, has lately concocted a second book out of the contents of the first, but replete with new figments, which he has had printed clandestinely at Vienne, a town not far from Lyons. Of this book we learn that many copies have been sent to Frankfort, in prospect of the approaching Easter fair. The printer, a pious and respectable person, when he came to know that the book was a mere farrago of Errors, suppressed the copies he had on hand. It were long did I enumerate the many Errors, the prodigious blasphemies against God, that are scattered over its pages. Imagine to yourselves a rhapsody made up of the impious ravings of every age; for there is no kind of impiety which this wild beast from hell has not appropriated. You will assuredly find in every page matters that will horrify you. The author is now in prison here at the instance of our magistracy, and I hope will shortly be condemned and punished. But you are to aid us against the further spread of such pestiferous poison. The messenger [the bearer of this] will tell you where the books are bestowed and their number; and the bookseller to whom they are consigned will, I believe, make no objections to their being given to the flames. Did he throw any obstacle in the way of this, however, I venture to think you are so well disposed, that you will take steps to have the world purged of such noxious corruption. You shall not want authority, indeed, for what you do in the business. If you are allowed to have your way, it will not then be necessary to seek the interference of your magistrates. But I have such confidence in you, that I feel persuaded my hint will suffice to guide your action. The matter, nevertheless, is of such moment, that I entreat you, for Christ’s sake, not to allow the occasion of showing yourselves zealous in your office to pass unheeded.
‘Farewell, &c.
‘Geneva, 6 Calends of September, 1553.’
The session of the 21st, preliminaries ended, was occupied in the beginning with a dispute between the prisoner and Calvin, who came into Court on this occasion again accompanied by a number of ministers, his colleagues, introduced, says the Record of proceedings, to maintain the contrary of the prisoner’s allegations in respect of the authorities he cites as favouring his views. Calvin thereupon, taking the lead, proceeded to interpret the passages of the Fathers referred to by the prisoner in a sense different from that put upon them by him, and showed satisfactorily that the word Trias or Trinity had really been used by writers before the date of the Nicæan Council.
It was on this occasion, as we learn from Calvin,83that on a copy of Justin Martyr being produced by him in support of his statement, Servetus expressed a wish to see a Latin translation as well as the original Greek, a slip which Calvin did not fail to turn to the prisoner’s disadvantage, for knowing that there was no Latin translation of Justin, he immediately challenged the prisoner with being ignorant of Greek. ‘Look’ee,’ says he in hisDéclaration pour maintenir la vraie foy, ‘this learned man, this Servetus, who plumes himself on having the gift of tongues, is found to be about as much able to read Greek as an infant to say the A. B. C. ‘Seeing himself thus caught’ continues Calvin, ‘I took occasion to reproach him with his impudence. What means this, said I? The book has not beentranslated into Latin, and you cannot read Greek. Yet, you pretend you are familiar with Justin. Tell me, I pray you, whence you have the quotations you produce so freely as if you had Justin in your sleeve? But he with his front of brass, as was his wont, though he had leapt from the frying pan into the fire—sauta du coq à l’ânc—quite unabashed, gave not the slightest sign of feeling shame.’ No one, however, who has been at the pains to look into the works of Servetus will doubt for a moment that he was not only a competent Greek scholar, but well advanced in the Hebrew also, with both of which languages he shows that he was even critically acquainted. Seeing himself beaten on the occurrence of the word Trinity in the Greek of Justin, he may have thought to find a makeweight in a Latin translation against the original produced by Calvin. There is indeed an ample display both of erudition and linguistic accomplishments even in Servetus’s first work, the seven books on Trinitarian Error.
Another and still more significant discussion now arose between the Reformer and the prisoner—and in these ever-recurring debates we see the persistency with which Calvin stuck to his opponent—as to the sense in which the expression Son of God was to be understood. Servetus maintained that it was not properly applied to him who bore it until the moment of his birth. Calvin, on the contrary, insisted that in conformity with the usual interpretation of the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, the authority of theCreeds and the teaching of the Churches, the words must be held to refer to the Divine Word which became incarnate in Jesus Christ, having until then been a distinct subsistence in the essence of God from Eternity. In reply to this, Servetus explained and said that the common interpretation of the language of John was mistaken; the Son, as he declared, having only existedformallyor as an idea, dispensation or mode in the mind of God previous to the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, not as an entity—aperson, in the usual acceptation of the word, possessed of distinct individual existence.
Speaking authoritatively now and as from himself, Calvin rejoined that if the Word had not been a distinctrealityin the essence of God, it could not have united itself as such with the humanity of Christ; that the body of Christ must then have been wholly of the substance of God; and being so—not being perfect man as well as perfect God—the redemption of mankind could not have been effected by his death. Why the impossibility, thus assumed, is not said. But let us pause an instant and think of one pious man tried for his life by another pious man, on grounds such as these!—grounds on which neither the one nor the other could find footing for a moment.
Without opposing his prosecutor by urging his own views more particularly at this stage, Servetus now requested that he might be furnished with the books necessary to him in his defence, and have pens,ink, and paper supplied to him, with which to write a petition to the Council. Calvin on this agreed to leave the volumes he had brought into Court in the hands of the prisoner, and the Judges ordered that any others he required should be purchased for him at his proper cost. The jailer finally was directed to supply him with writing materials; the paper, however, being limited to asingle sheet! and to see particularly to his being kept secluded—indication in either case, we must presume, that the prisoner was believed not to lack friends or prompters from whom Calvin thought it would be well to keep him apart.
THE TRIAL IN ITS SECOND PHASE—continued.
When the Court assembled, on August 23, a series of articles, embodying what may be characterised as a new Act of Impeachment, was presented to it by M. Rigot the Attorney-General, headed as follows: ‘These are the questions and articles on which the Attorney-General of Geneva proposes to interrogate Michael Servetus, prisoner, accused of heresy, blasphemy, and disturbance of the peace of Christendom.’
The questions and articles now presented differ materially from those proposed in the first instance by Calvin in the name of his man, Nicolas de la Fontaine. These, we have seen, refer almost exclusively to the speculative theological opinions of Servetus, his disrespectful treatment of Calvin, and his challenge of the doctrine preached in the Church of Geneva. The articles of the Attorney-General bear on matters more purely personal to the prisoner; on his antecedents; his relations with the theologians of Basle and Germany; the printing of his books, more particularly the last of them, and the fatal consequences that must follow from its publication; his coming to Geneva, andso on. Save his views on Infant Baptism, his other dogmatical opinions are not particularly specified or brought prominently forward; and his differences with Calvin and the Church of Geneva are not even hinted at. The theological element in the prosecution, in a word, is almost entirely abandoned for denunciations of the socially dangerous nature of the prisoner’s doctrines, and his persistence in their dissemination.
In the present mood of the Court, and aspect of the prosecution, it would almost seem that had Servetus been guilty of nothing more than offences in the region of speculative theology and the use of uncivil language towards Calvin and the Church of Geneva, his delinquencies would not have put him beyond the pale of escape from all but punishment of a secondary or insignificant kind. The Attorney-General’s articles appear in fact to have been framed under the mistaken idea that Servetus, through the whole course of his life, had been an immoral and so a dangerous and turbulent spirit, of the kind with which he was himself, perhaps, but too familiar in the City of Geneva. He did not, any more than Calvin and the other Reformers, think of Servetus as he was in truth—a speculative, yet perfectly pious scholar, intent on bringing the Reformation of Christian doctrine, begun by Luther, still nearer to the simplicity of Apostolic, or even of pre-Apostolic, times; for Michael Servetus had the mind to see and to say that there was a Christian Religion, based on love of God and man, with added faith in its Author,before there were any Gospels; so that these are truly but the varying and often discrepant reports of the Master’s teaching, with mythological accretions and interpolated Greek philosophoumena.
Rigot appears from his articles, which have no look of having been dictated by Calvin, to have regarded Servetus as one whose efforts from first to last had been directed to the confusion of society through the teaching of an immoral doctrine and the example of a dissolute life. To force an avowal of so much from the lips of the prisoner himself was therefore the main drift of the Attorney’s interrogatories. Must not the prisoner be aware, said he, that his teaching gives licence to youth to overflow in debauchery, adultery, and other social crimes, as he maintains that there is neither sin nor misdemeanour in such misdeeds, and no punishment due to them under the age of twenty years? Why had he not himself entered into the holy state of matrimony? Had he not studied the Koran and other profane books for arguments in favour of Jews, Turks, and the like, and to controvert the doctrines of all the Christian Churches? Had he not been imprisoned elsewhere than at Vienne through having been guilty of various crimes and misdemeanours? Had he not been a party to quarrels in which he had wounded another as well as been wounded himself? If he had not led a dissolute and immoral life, showing neither care nor zeal for all that became a Christian, what could have induced him to treat adversely so muchthat lies at the root of the Christian Religion? Had he not come, in fact, to Geneva with a view to spread his doctrines and to trouble the Church as there established? With whom had he had communication since he came? Had he not spoken with William Geroult, and was not Geroult aware of his intention to come to Geneva? and so on, in the same strain, the questions amounting to as many as thirty.
But this was ground on which Servetus felt himself secure; he could reply to all that was asked of him now with a clear conscience, and without reticence or prevarication. He had nothing to hide in his past life. No moral delinquency had been laid to his charge, and though he may have had a squabble with the Faculty of Paris, the doctors were notoriously a contentious crew, always quarrelling among themselves, though they never, like the theologians, went the length of burning one another. There was little, therefore, to be said on that head; for the rest, he had lived soberly, honourably, industriously; earning his bread in the sweat of his brain, and for the last twelve or fourteen years had been incessantly engaged in the practice of his profession, neither using the sword nor the spear, but salving the bruises and stanching the wounds that men in their madness inflict on one another, and nobly ministering to the yet longer list of ills in the shape of fevers, fluxes, consumptions, apoplexies, cancers, dropsies, &c., &c., that waylay us on our course and give us rest at length.
The task which the public Prosecutor had set himself of showing up Servetus as an ill-conditioned and quarrelsome person, as a debauchee and evil-liver, and in the imputed licentiousness and irregularities of his life to find a motive for his attack on the dogmas of the Christian faith, was, therefore, a complete failure.
The Attorney-General of Geneva did not imagine, as it seems, that the man who differed in his speculative theological opinions from the masses, who follow their leaders like sheep, could be other than an enemy to both God and man.
All the charges in the direction now taken, unsupported as they were by a shadow of evidence, fell to the ground. Servetus could say with truth that he was no disturber of the peace—had never in the whole course of his life provoked a personal quarrel, and if he had once drawn his sword, as hinted, it was not as aggressor, but in self-defence. By physical constitution he said he was indisposed to matrimony; his not having entered into that holy state being, as we have seen, one of the items laid to his charge! Far from having failed in chastity of life, he declared that he had been ever studious of Scripture precepts on the subject, and was even bold enough to think that he had always lived as a Christian. And truly and in so far as aught to the contrary was made to appear in the course of the protracted and searching trial to which he was subjected, Servetus must be held to come out stainless. The logical conclusion, however, that speculativetheological opinions, whether in conformity with or adverse to accredited systems of belief, had no influence one way or another on man’s moral conduct, was lost upon Calvin and his age; and the vulgar world of to-day cannot yet be said to have bettered their opinion.
The prosecution, losing ground the longer it continued on this tack, reverted to what for it was the surer course—the assumed danger to the cause of society and the peace of Christendom from the publication of books having the character ascribed to those written by the prisoner. In spite of all the warnings he had had, said Mr. Attorney Rigot, the kind and repeated admonitions of learned theologians, sole authorities on such subjects, and the unanimous condemnation his first publication had encountered, he not only continued to adhere to his errors, but with a view to spread them farther had written and printed a second, which was in fact but a reproduction and enlarged edition of the first.
To this Servetus answered that he thought he should have offended God had he not done so; ‘he had acted,’ he said, ‘with as perfect sincerity as if his salvation had been in question.’ ‘Our Lord,’ he continued, and quoting the tenth chapter of Matthew, ‘commands us to speak in Light that we have been told in Darkness; and in the fifth chapter, the Evangelist says further that we are not to put the Light we have under a bushel, but to set it where itmay be seen of all.’ Taking God and his conscience for guides, therefore, he thought he was but following the injunctions of the Scriptures and the ancient Doctors of the Church in all he had written, nor does he now think that he has done amiss, for his intentions were good; and, as the Evangelist already quoted (ch. v.) declares: ‘If the eye be single then is the whole body full of Light,’ he therefore believes that his intention having been good, the deed which followed must be accounted good also. As to the printing of the book entitled ‘The Restoration of Christianity,’ he had no regrets. He had written and had it printed because he hoped to bring back to its primitive meaning much that he thought was erroneous in current interpretations of Christian Doctrine; his title of itself showed that he intendedthe Restoration, not the Destruction, of Christianity, with which he had been charged. With all this, however, he did not presume to say that they who had written before him, and in a different sense, understood nothing of the Christian Religion; he only thought they had misconceived and misconstrued some things, they especially who had formulated their opinions subsequently to the date of the Council of Nicæa.
To the particular charge that he had spoken of the Doctrine taught in the Reformed Churches as being nowise Christian, and condemned all who did not think with himself, he replied that he never imagined that the Churches of Geneva and Germany were doomedto perdition because of their teaching; he only thought their ministers mistaken on some things.
At this point, a private letter addressed by the prisoner to Abel Poupin, one of the Ministers of Geneva, written many years before, was produced and read to the Court. Whence it came, or how it was obtained, is not said; but as highly characteristic of the writer, and foreshadowing the fate that was to befal him, it must have a place in our story.
Monsieur Abel!—Although it is most plainly shown, in my twelfth letter to Calvin, that the Law of the Decalogue had been abrogated, I shall add a few words that you may the better understand the innovation brought about by the advent of Christ. If you turn to Jeremiah xxxi., verse 31et seq., you will find it stated distinctly that the law of the Decalogue was to be annulled. The prophet teaches that the Covenant entered into with the Fathers, when they left Egypt, was to be no longer in force. But this was the Covenant of the Decalogue. For inIKings, chapter viii., it is said that the Covenant or Testimony—the Decalogue, to wit—was in the Ark with the Fathers at their exodus from Egypt, whence the Ark is called the Ark of the Covenant, that is of the Tables, or Ten Commandments of the Law. Now this was the form of the Covenant: God promised the Israelites that they should be his people, if they did according to the words of the Law, and they on their part engaged that they would obey them. Such was the Covenant. And it is of this Covenant that Jeremiah (chapter xviii.) speaks as being repealed, as does Ezekiel (chapter xvi.), and Paul likewise in his Epistle to the Hebrews. If God took us for his own under that Law, we should lie under the curse, and perish by its pressure. The Law therefore was repealed. God doesnot now receive us as his children but by faith in his beloved Son, Jesus Christ. See then what becomes of your Gospel when it is confounded with the Law. Your Gospel is without the One God, without true faith, without good works. For the One God you have a three-headed Cerberus; for faith a fatal dream, and good works you say are vain shows. Faith in Christ is to you mere sham, effecting nothing; Man a mere log, and your God a chimæra of subject-will. You do not acknowledge celestial regeneration by the washing with water, but treat it as an idle tale, and close the kingdom of heaven against mankind as a thing of imagination. Woe to you, woe, woe!This, my third Epistle, is addressed to you with the wish that you may be brought to better thoughts, and I mean not to admonish you any more. It offends you, perchance, that I meddle in those battles of the angel Michael, and seek to bring you into the strife. But study the part I refer to carefully, and you will see that there are men who do battle there, exposing their lives for Christ’s sake. That the Angels speak truth is proclaimed by the Scriptures. But see you not that the question is of the Church of Christ fled from Earth these many years? Is it not of division, of difference that John himself makes mention? And who is the Accuser challenging us with transgression of the Law and its precepts? Accusation and seduction of the world, he says, were to precede the battle; the battle therefore was to follow, and the time is at hand, as he also tells us. And who are they who shall gain the victory over the Beast? They who do not accept his mark. I know for sure that I shall die in this cause; but my courage does not fail me because of this; I shall show me a disciple worthy of my master.I much regret that, through you, I am not allowed to amend some places in my writings now in Calvin’s hands. Farewell, and look for no more letters from me.
Monsieur Abel!—Although it is most plainly shown, in my twelfth letter to Calvin, that the Law of the Decalogue had been abrogated, I shall add a few words that you may the better understand the innovation brought about by the advent of Christ. If you turn to Jeremiah xxxi., verse 31et seq., you will find it stated distinctly that the law of the Decalogue was to be annulled. The prophet teaches that the Covenant entered into with the Fathers, when they left Egypt, was to be no longer in force. But this was the Covenant of the Decalogue. For inIKings, chapter viii., it is said that the Covenant or Testimony—the Decalogue, to wit—was in the Ark with the Fathers at their exodus from Egypt, whence the Ark is called the Ark of the Covenant, that is of the Tables, or Ten Commandments of the Law. Now this was the form of the Covenant: God promised the Israelites that they should be his people, if they did according to the words of the Law, and they on their part engaged that they would obey them. Such was the Covenant. And it is of this Covenant that Jeremiah (chapter xviii.) speaks as being repealed, as does Ezekiel (chapter xvi.), and Paul likewise in his Epistle to the Hebrews. If God took us for his own under that Law, we should lie under the curse, and perish by its pressure. The Law therefore was repealed. God doesnot now receive us as his children but by faith in his beloved Son, Jesus Christ. See then what becomes of your Gospel when it is confounded with the Law. Your Gospel is without the One God, without true faith, without good works. For the One God you have a three-headed Cerberus; for faith a fatal dream, and good works you say are vain shows. Faith in Christ is to you mere sham, effecting nothing; Man a mere log, and your God a chimæra of subject-will. You do not acknowledge celestial regeneration by the washing with water, but treat it as an idle tale, and close the kingdom of heaven against mankind as a thing of imagination. Woe to you, woe, woe!
This, my third Epistle, is addressed to you with the wish that you may be brought to better thoughts, and I mean not to admonish you any more. It offends you, perchance, that I meddle in those battles of the angel Michael, and seek to bring you into the strife. But study the part I refer to carefully, and you will see that there are men who do battle there, exposing their lives for Christ’s sake. That the Angels speak truth is proclaimed by the Scriptures. But see you not that the question is of the Church of Christ fled from Earth these many years? Is it not of division, of difference that John himself makes mention? And who is the Accuser challenging us with transgression of the Law and its precepts? Accusation and seduction of the world, he says, were to precede the battle; the battle therefore was to follow, and the time is at hand, as he also tells us. And who are they who shall gain the victory over the Beast? They who do not accept his mark. I know for sure that I shall die in this cause; but my courage does not fail me because of this; I shall show me a disciple worthy of my master.
I much regret that, through you, I am not allowed to amend some places in my writings now in Calvin’s hands. Farewell, and look for no more letters from me.
I stand to my post and meditate, and look out for what may further come to pass. For come it will, surely it will come and that without long delay.84
This remarkable letter, interesting in so many respects, is unfortunately without a date; it is the last of three he had written, however, and must have been produced either in 1546, or early in 1547. Highly characteristic of the self-confidence and assurance of the writer, we see him as ready to challenge the Reformers as they were eager to denounce him. He does not call them heretics and blasphemers, it is true, nor does he speak of having them punished for the mistaken views they entertain; and therein he shows himself their superior. Crying woe upon them for their errors, he never hints at the propriety of burning them alive, though he is not blind to the great probability of being subjected himself to a fate of the kind.
The letter to Abel Poupin, said Servetus to his Judges, contains scholastic disputations on difficult subjects, in the course of which controversialists make use of strong language with no purpose but to enforce their views or bring their opponents to the same way of thinking as themselves, and not because they believe them to be lost souls by reason of the dissimilar opinions they entertain. For himself, he continues, he had had more objectionable terms of reproach appliedto him, than any he had used to others; and these not by word of mouth or in private letters like his own, but through printed books both in the French and Latin tongues. What he had written to M. Abel, now more than six years ago, was with no view to publicity, but simply to elicit the truth—certainly with no intention of slandering the Republic of Geneva and its Churches.
On the important question of baptism, he admitted being of opinion that they who were baptized in their infancy were not truly baptized; but added, that if it were shown him he was mistaken in this, he was ready to amend and ask forgiveness.
The prosecutor reverting to the book lately printed and asking the prisoner if he did not think it was calculated, through the doctrine it taught, to bring great troubles on Christendom? he replied that he did not think his book calculated to introduce dispute or difference among Christians; on the contrary, he thought it would be found profitable, and give occasion to the better spirits among men to speak better things; and the truth, once admitted and proclaimed by the few, would by and by spread to the many.
Challenged with having come to Geneva to disseminate his doctrines and sow dissension among the Churches, he gave sufficient reason for his presence among them when he said that he had only come on his way to Italy, having been turned from his first intention of trying to reach his native country, after hisescape from the prison of Vienne, through fear of arrest by the police of France.
It is but fair to infer, as M. Albert Rilliet observes, that the present bearing of Servetus, and the moderation and pertinence of his replies to all the questions put to him, must have made a favourable impression on the Court. He was not now confronted with Calvin, in whose presence he seemed to lose all self-control, neither was he pressed upon questions of speculative theology, upon which he either dared not declare himself openly, or, if he did, was at once in opposition to all his Judges knew of religion. In Rigot as his questioner he had nothing more than an officer discharging a public duty, not the hostile partisan he had encountered in Colladon who, as agent of Calvin, may have thought it incumbent on him to give the most unfavourable turn to everything capable of being construed to the advantage of the prisoner. The good impression presumed could hardly fail to be strengthened by the petition of the prisoner addressed to the Court and read on the next day of the trial, August 24, to this effect:
To the most honourable my Lords, the Syndics and Councillors of Geneva.The Petition of Michael Servetus, now lying under a criminal charge, humbly showeth—That it is a thing new and unknown to the Apostles, Disciples, and ancient Churches, to make the interpretation of the Scriptures, and questions thence arising, grounds of criminal accusation. This is clearly seen from Chapters xviii. and xix. of the Acts of the Apostles,where accusers are referred to the Churches, when the matters in question bear upon Religion only. So too in the time of Constantine, when the Arian heresy was broached, and accusations were brought on the part both of Athanasius and Arius, the great Emperor, by his Council and the Councils of the Churches, decided that, according to the old doctrine, suits of the kind could not be entertained by civil tribunals—not even in the case of such notorious heresy as that of Arius,—but were to be taken into consideration and decided by the Church. Further, that heretics were either to be brought to reason by argument, or were to be punished by banishment, when they proved refractory and refused to amend. Now that banishment was the award of the ancient Churches against heretics can be proved by a thousand histories and authorities. Wherefore, my Lords, in consonance with Apostolic teaching and the practice of the ancient Church, your petitioner prays that the Criminal Charge under which he lies may be discharged.Secondly, my Lords, I entreat you to consider that I have committed no offence within your territory; neither, indeed, have I been guilty of any elsewhere: I have never been seditious, and am no disturber of the peace. The questions I discuss in my works are of an abstruse kind, and within the scope and ken of men of learning only. During all the time I passed in Germany, I never spoke on such subjects save with Œcolampadius, Bucer, and Capito; neither in France did I ever enter on them with anyone. I have always disavowed the opinions of the Anabaptists, seditious against the magistrate, and preaching community of goods. Wherefore, as I have been guilty of no sort of sedition, but have only brought up for discussion certain ancient doctrines of the Church, I think I ought not to be detained a prisoner and made the subject of a criminal prosecution.In conclusion, my Lords, inasmuch as I am a stranger, ignorantof the customs of this country, not knowing either how to speak or comport myself in the circumstances under which I am placed, I humbly beseech you to assign me an Advocate to speak for me in my defence. Doing thus, you will assuredly do well, and our Lord will prosper your Republic.In the City of Geneva, the 22nd day of August, 1553.Michael Servetus,In his own cause.
To the most honourable my Lords, the Syndics and Councillors of Geneva.
The Petition of Michael Servetus, now lying under a criminal charge, humbly showeth—That it is a thing new and unknown to the Apostles, Disciples, and ancient Churches, to make the interpretation of the Scriptures, and questions thence arising, grounds of criminal accusation. This is clearly seen from Chapters xviii. and xix. of the Acts of the Apostles,where accusers are referred to the Churches, when the matters in question bear upon Religion only. So too in the time of Constantine, when the Arian heresy was broached, and accusations were brought on the part both of Athanasius and Arius, the great Emperor, by his Council and the Councils of the Churches, decided that, according to the old doctrine, suits of the kind could not be entertained by civil tribunals—not even in the case of such notorious heresy as that of Arius,—but were to be taken into consideration and decided by the Church. Further, that heretics were either to be brought to reason by argument, or were to be punished by banishment, when they proved refractory and refused to amend. Now that banishment was the award of the ancient Churches against heretics can be proved by a thousand histories and authorities. Wherefore, my Lords, in consonance with Apostolic teaching and the practice of the ancient Church, your petitioner prays that the Criminal Charge under which he lies may be discharged.
Secondly, my Lords, I entreat you to consider that I have committed no offence within your territory; neither, indeed, have I been guilty of any elsewhere: I have never been seditious, and am no disturber of the peace. The questions I discuss in my works are of an abstruse kind, and within the scope and ken of men of learning only. During all the time I passed in Germany, I never spoke on such subjects save with Œcolampadius, Bucer, and Capito; neither in France did I ever enter on them with anyone. I have always disavowed the opinions of the Anabaptists, seditious against the magistrate, and preaching community of goods. Wherefore, as I have been guilty of no sort of sedition, but have only brought up for discussion certain ancient doctrines of the Church, I think I ought not to be detained a prisoner and made the subject of a criminal prosecution.
In conclusion, my Lords, inasmuch as I am a stranger, ignorantof the customs of this country, not knowing either how to speak or comport myself in the circumstances under which I am placed, I humbly beseech you to assign me an Advocate to speak for me in my defence. Doing thus, you will assuredly do well, and our Lord will prosper your Republic.
In the City of Geneva, the 22nd day of August, 1553.
Michael Servetus,In his own cause.
This well-worded, and in its demands most reasonable address, strange to say, received no notice beyond an order to the clerk of the Court to enter it on the minutes; the prisoner being at the same time curtly admonished to go on answering the questions addressed to him. But how hardly the poor man was being used by his self-constituted Judges we shall see by the tenor of the next petition he addressed to them. He had been thrown into one of the foul cells or dungeons appropriated to criminals of the vilest class, accused of crimes against person and property; and there, in addition to mental anguish, he had to suffer all the bodily miseries that filth, foul air, cold and vermin inflict.
The feeling evinced of late by the Court, in the prisoner’s favour, appears now to have extended to the town; the liberal party, the native Genevese, opposed to Calvin, making of his prosecution of the solitary stranger a handle against him; his friends on the contrary speaking of it as proclaiming him the undaunted defender of the cause of God and religion! The trial we therefore see had become the occasion of alarm to one political party in the state, of hope to another, andof peculiar significance to both. Under present circumstances, matters proceeding in nowise to his satisfaction, Calvin must come again to the front; and we have it on unquestionable authority that it was at this, the very crisis in the fate of Servetus, that the Reformer was guilty of the crying injustice of availing himself of his pulpit, and in the face of numerous congregations denouncing and vilifying his opponent in no measured terms, exposing his unorthodox opinions in their most glaring and repulsive aspects, proclaiming what he characterised as their impious, blasphemous, demoralising nature, and thundering reproaches on the mistaken sympathy that had lately begun to be entertained for the author of such infamies. By right or by wrong Calvin was resolved that his old theological enemy, now turned, as he believed, into their tool for his humiliation by his political opponents, should not escape him.
THE TRIAL CONTINUED—THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL RECEIVES FRESH INSTRUCTIONS FOR ITS CONDUCT.
In the course of this extraordinary trial there seems never to have been the slightest difficulty made about shifting the grounds of the Accusation. The particulars on which the prisoner was interrogated were scarcely the same in all respects on any two successive days, and often wide as the poles asunder of the proper articles of impeachment produced against him. The petition just presented by the prisoner was thus, without scruple as without challenge, now made the ground of a series of questions and harangues by the prosecutor, studiously calculated to prejudice him in the eyes of his Judges.
Rigot had in fact made a great mistake in his own articles of inculpation. The prisoner, as it seemed, was even likely to escape through his mismanagement; but, otherwise advised, and as if to make amends for the line he had taken at first, he now showed himself either indisposed or afraid to follow further the dictates of his own more equitable nature. He had been in conclave with Calvin and received fresh instructionsfrom him, as Servetus affirmed without being contradicted. Rigot, in truth, was no longer free, but cowed by the stern resolve of the man of mind and iron will.85
August 28.—Abandoning the moderate tone he had hitherto observed, and taking the petition of the prisoner for his text, Rigot now entered on the task prescribed him of showing that the early Christian Emperors, contrary to the allegation in the petition, did take cognisance of heresy, and by their Laws and Constitutions consigned all who denied the doctrine of the Trinity to death. ‘But the prisoner,’ said Rigot, ‘his own conscience condemning him and arguing him deserving of death, would have the magistrate deprived of the right to punish the heretic capitally. To escape such a fate it is that he has now put forward the false plea that for false doctrine the guilty are never to be summarily punished. Not to seem to favour the errors of the Anabaptists, moreover, ever rebellious against the authority of the magistrate, it is that the prisoner in his petition now pretends to repudiate their doctrines; yet can he not show a single passage in his writings in which he reprobates their principles andpractices.’ All this was obviously most unfair to the prisoner. He was certainly opposed to infant baptism, and in so much agreed with the Anabaptists; but, far from declaring himself inimical to the constituted authorities of the state, he is emphatic in proclaiming the necessity of upholding them in the exercise of their lawful authority, and on the duty incumbent on subjects to obey.87
‘The further allegation of the prisoner,’ continued the public prosecutor, still harping on the petition, ‘that he never communicated his opinions to anyone, is manifestly false; for here we have had him saying that he should think he offended God did he not impart to others that which God had revealed to him. How shall we believe that, for the thirty years during which he has been engaged in elaborating and printing his horrible heresies, he has never communicated a word of them to anyone? Bethink ye, that he began at the age of twenty—an age when young people invariably communicate their views and opinions to one another, their friends and fellow-students—and by this judge of the kind of conscience the man puts into his answers with a view to abuse justice—as if he repented in any way of his horrible misdeeds! for though now saying that he is ready to submit to correction and ask pardon, he again and far oftener audaciously maintains that he has said nothing and done nothing amiss.’
Whether influenced by Calvin, to whose party inthe State Rigot appears to have belonged, or involved in the suit, and believing it his duty to do all in his power to obtain the conviction of the prisoner, we see him now speaking as if he were intimately persuaded of Servetus’s culpability, and even looking on him as already condemned; hence the indignation with which he repels the petitioner’s request to have Counsel to assist him in his defence. This, indeed, was a demand that could by no means be granted without taking the case from the criminal category in which it had been placed by Calvin from the first. It is not so very long since the felon or the incriminated for felony among ourselves was denied the advantage of Counsel, and we are not to wonder at the same rule obtaining in the Republic of Geneva more than three hundred years ago.
Had Servetus succeeded in obtaining Counsel, he could not, by the laws of Geneva, have been dealt with capitally; and this would not have met the views of Calvin, it being impossible in his opinion adequately to punish the crime of which he held the man had been guilty by any infliction short of death. Rigot therefore became eloquent on the petitioner’s insolence, as he called it, in asking for Counsel to aid him in his defence. ‘Skilled in lying as he is,’ said M. Rigot, ‘there is no reason why he should now demand an advocate. Who is there indeed,’ he proceeds, ‘who would or who could consent to assist him in his impudent falsehoods and horrible propositions? It has not yet come to thisthat such seducers as he have been allowed to speak through Counsel; and then there is not a shadow of the simplicity that might seem to require assistance of the kind. Let him therefore be disabused of any hope he may have conceived that so impertinent a demand can for a moment be entertained, and ordered to reply by yea or nay to the further questions to be put to him.’ Rigot, we might fancy, must have thought that artful lying was a principal part of a counsel’s duties to his client.
Descending to further particulars suggested by the petition, the prisoner was asked, ‘On what grounds he rested the statement he makes concerning the judgment of heretics in the ancient church?’ To which he answered: ‘On the histories we have of Constantine the Great.’ ‘In the course of his law studies at Toulouse, however,’ said the prosecutor, ‘the prisoner must have made acquaintance with the code of Justinian, with the chapters in particular which treat of the Trinity, of the Catholic Faith, and of Heresy and Apostacy, in which he must know that opinions such as those he professes are condemned.’ The prisoner replied that ‘it was now twenty-four years since he had seen Justinian, and indeed he had never read him save in a cursory way, as young men at school or college are apt to do; and then,’ he went on to say, ‘Justinian did not live in the age of the primitive church, but in times when many things had become corrupted; when Bishops had begun to tyrannise and had already made theChurch familiar with criminal prosecutions.’ To this most pertinent reply, no answer was attempted.
Reproached with having calumniated the Ministers of the Word of God as teachers of false doctrine—which on his part, said Monsieur Rigot, amounts to a capital crime—Servetus admitted that calumny of the kind deserved the severest punishment, but maintained nevertheless that in disputation it was common and not unpardonable for opponents to gainsay one another in strong language, without being held guilty of calumny or defamation, and so of deserving punishment by the civil authorities for what they say.
Referring next to his intercourse with Œcolampadius and Capito, to whom he had ascribed conformity with his views, although, said Rigot, he must know that they were both doctors well approved by the reformed churches, and consequently could not possibly be of his mind on the subjects in debate; he replied ‘that consonance in every particular was not universal either among the Reformers or the reformed churches; Luther and Melanchthon, for instance, had both of them written against Calvin on the subject of the sacraments and free will. Without being in a condition to prove what he says in his petition, he declares nevertheless that in conversation with Capito, when they were private and without other witness than God, he—Capito—did assent to his views. Œcolampadius, he owned, had withdrawn the approval he seemed to accord in the first instance.’
When we refer to Œcolampadius’s letters,88we have no difficulty in believing what Servetus here asserts to be the truth. It was only after Servetus had more thoroughly exposed his opinions in conversation, that the Reformer of Basle saw theunsoundness, which had not appeared in the confession of faith sent him at an earlier period by his correspondent. And here let us observe that, whilst Œcolampadius is now particularly cited, nothing is said of Capito, still a Minister in the Reformed Church. Capito, however, was, as it seems, not entirely to be relied on in his views of the Trinity, that stumbling-block in the way of the first Reformers, so many of whom we have found giving but a half-hearted assent to the verbal contradictions it involves: the Reformers could spare one another as it seems, on the subject, though they had no mercy for Servetus!
It being objected to the prisoner that he was in manifest contradiction with himself when he said he thought he should offend God did he not impart the doctrine that had been revealed to him; he replied that what he had stated was his opinion and the truth; not-withstanding which he had spoken of his views to none but the doctors of the Reformed Church particularly named; a course he had followed, indeed, in consonance with the commandment of our Lord, not to cast pearls before swine: ‘I would not proclaim myself to incompetent persons, and I was living among Papistsin times when there was active persecution going on and much cruelty practised.’
The prosecutor now alleged, but as usual without a tittle of evidence, that the prisoner had had extensive epistolary relations with Italy, a country in which it was believed his doctrines had many followers—a fact, said Rigot, which it was unlikely he did not know, and less likely, still, not to improve upon, did he know it. To this Servetus replied by a simple denial: he had had no communications with Italy by letter or otherwise; adding that his only correspondents had been Œcolampadius, Calvin, Abel Poupin, and F. Viret, from whom alone the Court had any information concerning letters of his. Had we no other intimation of Calvin’s prompting, at this stage of the proceedings, than the reference now made to the spread of Antitrinitarian doctrines in Italy, we should feel assured that it was he who was fighting under the mask of Rigot, as he had formerly fought under that of Trie and of De la Fontaine. Rigot was not likely to know much of the spread of Antitrinitarian views in Italy, but Calvin was, as we learn distinctly through the letter of Paul Gaddi to him, which we have quoted. Calvin, indeed, makes pointed and angry reference to such a state of things both in his ‘Refutatio Errorum’ and ‘Déclaration pour maintenir la vraie Foy.’