The sentence once resolved on, appears to have been immediately communicated to Calvin, and he in the same hour proceeded to inform his most intimate friend Farel of the result. In anticipation of the event, he had, indeed, written to Farel some days before, begging him to come to Geneva. The clergy of the city having acted with Calvin to a man in the prosecution, it was thought more seemly that a stranger should attend the prisoner in his last moments, than one of themselves;hence Calvin’s first letter of October 14, in anticipation of the final sentence, and to the following effect:
I have no words, my dear Farel, adequately to express my thanks to you for your great solicitude in respect of ourself and our Church. I purposely abstained from writing to you for fear of inducing you to take horse so soon (Farel had been dangerously ill), and I would not be troublesome to you until time pressed. You say, indeed, that you do not thank me for sparing you; and I know how willing, nay, how eager you are at all times to labour for the Church of God, how ready ever to come to our aid.As to the state of affairs with us, I imagine you are already well informed, through Viret, or rather through my letters to him, which, however, were really meant for you both in common. The enemy is now intent on the business that comes on for discussion before the General Council about the Ides of November, and I think it would be well were Viret to come to us then; but I would have you here somewhat sooner—about the time when the affair of Servetus will be drawing to a close; and this I hope will be before the end of the ensuing week.... I would not, however, incommode you, or have you stir, where no immediate necessity compels.
I have no words, my dear Farel, adequately to express my thanks to you for your great solicitude in respect of ourself and our Church. I purposely abstained from writing to you for fear of inducing you to take horse so soon (Farel had been dangerously ill), and I would not be troublesome to you until time pressed. You say, indeed, that you do not thank me for sparing you; and I know how willing, nay, how eager you are at all times to labour for the Church of God, how ready ever to come to our aid.
As to the state of affairs with us, I imagine you are already well informed, through Viret, or rather through my letters to him, which, however, were really meant for you both in common. The enemy is now intent on the business that comes on for discussion before the General Council about the Ides of November, and I think it would be well were Viret to come to us then; but I would have you here somewhat sooner—about the time when the affair of Servetus will be drawing to a close; and this I hope will be before the end of the ensuing week.... I would not, however, incommode you, or have you stir, where no immediate necessity compels.
Farel had not arrived so soon as Calvin expected, so he writes again on the 26th, and informs his friend that answers had been received from the Churches unanimous in their condemnation of Servetus. Alluding to the proceedings during the last few days of the trial, when Perrin, the First Syndic, made vain attempts by delay and entreaty to save the prisoner’s life, Calvin speaks of the merciful man by the nickname under which he was wont to characterise his great Libertine opponent, and says:
Our comical Cæsar having feigned illness for three days, mounted the tribune at length with a view to aid the wicked scoundrel—istum sceleratum—to escape punishment. Nor did he blush to demand that the cause might be remitted to the Council of the Two Hundred. But in vain, all was refused, the prisoner was condemned, and to-morrow he will suffer death.
Our comical Cæsar having feigned illness for three days, mounted the tribune at length with a view to aid the wicked scoundrel—istum sceleratum—to escape punishment. Nor did he blush to demand that the cause might be remitted to the Council of the Two Hundred. But in vain, all was refused, the prisoner was condemned, and to-morrow he will suffer death.
Self-centred, resolute as he was, we yet see in Calvin’s anxiety to have Farel beside him, that he felt the want of such support as an all-devoted friend alone can give in supreme moments of our lives. His last letter could not have reached Farel in such time as would have enabled him to be in Geneva on the day of the execution; but when it was despatched Farel was already on his way from Neuchatel, and reached Geneva in the evening of the 26th, so that he had the news of all that had taken place, and of the fate that awaited the unhappy Servetus on the morrow, from the mouth of Calvin himself.
THE ATTITUDE OF CALVIN—THE HOPES OF SERVETUS.
Informed of the decree of the Court, Calvin tells us that he bestirred himself to have the sentence carried out in the way usual in criminal cases, by beheading with the sword, instead of burning by slow fire. The heretic must be got rid of, he must die, but the Reformer would give a civil rather than an ecclesiastical complexion to the business, and escape imitation of the Roman Catholic cruel mode of putting God’s enemies, as heretics were called, to death. The Council, however, did not enter into his views. The Canon Law, still in force over Europe, condemned the convicted heretic to death by fire, and the majority of the Court determined to abide by the statute as it stood. Bigotry and intolerance, fanned to fever heat, were in the ascendant, and would forego none of their most terrible means of punishing the offender, and striking terror into the vulgar mind. The oblation in such cases provided, would even have appeared to lose its significance, had it been presented otherwise than as ‘a sacrifice of a sweet savour made by fire to the Lord’; for still influenced by the ritual of the old Hebrew Law, which,in earlier days, required the first-born of man and beast for the altar, and had criminals of all sorts ‘hung up before the sun,’ lives forfeited for theological errors, were, in reality, offerings to appease the wrath or win the favour of the Supreme!
Servetus, meanwhile, made aware that the trial was at an end, and that nothing more remained for him but to learn his fate, though he may have been alarmed by the additional measures taken for his safe custody, seems not yet, as we have said, to have abandoned the persuasion that he would either be acquitted or subjected to some minor or merely nominal penalty. He was not conscience-stricken; he knew himself guilty of no impiety or intentional blasphemy; his object from first to last had been to present what he thought were higher, truer views of the Revelation which he believed God had made of himself to mankind in the olden time in Judæa; and the proclaimed purpose of his latest work, as he said himself to his Judges, was theRestoration, not the destruction of Christianity. More than this: he was not now among Papists bound to intolerance by their creed, but among Protestants in Geneva—the stronghold of free thought and its necessary logical adjunct, toleration; among men who had studied, reasoned, and, like himself, put their own construction on writings which he as well as they believed to be the Word of God. And then, had he not all along been upheld by Perrin and Berthelier, in the belief of triumphing over his persecutor? How should hopes oflonger life in view of further effort in the cause that was dear to him, and of freedom to shape out thoughts on matters high and holy, have forsaken him? True, Calvin had aimed at his life through the people of Vienne; and in his present bonds, and all the unworthy usage he suffered, he could not fail to realise the persistent hostility of the man who held him in such despite. Still he was in Geneva, though a prisoner, and Calvin was not all in all within that Republican city. There was a powerful party opposed to the tyranny and self-assertion of the ecclesiastic, the distinguished heads of which gave him their countenance and support—there seemed hardly room for doubt: he would not be found guilty of having blasphemed, but would be acquitted and set at liberty.
Cherishing such hopes and so supported, are we to wonder that the Sentence of Death took the unhappy Servetus entirely by surprise? Only imparted to him in the early morning of the day on which he was doomed to die, he was at first as if struck dumb by the intelligence. He did but groan aloud and sigh as if his heart would burst; and when he recovered speech at length, it was only to rave like one demented, to strike his breast, and cry in his native Spanish, Misericordia, Misericordia! By degrees, however, he recovered his self-possession and became more calm. Master of himself, and reverting in thought to his pursuer, his first coherent words were to request an interview with Calvin, which he, we need not doubt, was nowise slowto grant, for he must have thought it both a flattering and a hopeful proposal. Now had the sinner come to his senses; now would he make a clean breast of it, abjure the convictions of his life, and with a lie on his lips be made meet for glory! But nothing of all this was in the mind of Servetus. He had no misgivings about his theological conclusions; in these he was securely anchored; but he felt like a true man in the face of impending fate, and would own that he had not comported himself with all the respect that was rightfully due to his theological opponent. Hence his request for the interview.
Accompanied by two of the Councillors, Calvin entered the prison an hour or two before noon of the fateful October 27, 1553, and prefacing the account he has left us of what transpired at the meeting, by saying that Servetus had received the notice of his sentence and impending doom with a ‘sort of brutish stupidity—cum belluina stupiditate,’ he proceeds: ‘I asked him what he wanted with me—quidnam vellet?To which he replied, that he desired to ask my pardon.’ I then said that I had never prosecuted anyone on merely personal grounds; that I had admonished him with all the gentleness I could command as many as sixteen years ago, and not without danger to my own life had spared no pains to cure him of his errors. But all in vain! my expostulations appeared rather to excite his bile. Quitting speech of myself, however, I then desired him rather to ask pardon ofthe Eternal God, towards whom he had shown himself but too contumelious, presuming, as he had done, to take from his Essence the three hypostases that pertain to it; and saying that were it possible to show a personal distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we should have a three-headed Cerberus for a God; with much beside that need not now be repeated. Seeing, ere long, that all I said went for nothing, and feeling indisposed to trespass on the time of the Magistrates, or to appear something more than my Master, in obedience to the precept of Paul, I took my leave of the heretic, αὐτοκατάκριτος—self-condemned.99
But there is a deep-lying truth in the French adage: ‘Qui s’excuse s’accuse—he who excuses accuses himself.’ The first impulse of the tolerant Servetus, on coming to his senses, was to ask pardon of the man who had brought him to his death; the first impulse of the implacable Calvin was to apologise for his deed, and to shift to a sense of public duty, a course to which his secret soul informed him he had been mainly prompted by private hate. Nor is that which Calvin connects with his apology, when he speaks of having imperilled his life for Servetus’s sake, to be received as true in fact. That he would have braved any danger that might have accompanied the public discussion of their opinions proposed by Servetus in 1534, we can well believe; but he was not requiredto face it, and all their subsequent correspondence, private and confidential as it was, could have been attended with peril neither to him nor Servetus—or if to either it must have been to Servetus had he been discovered in correspondence with the arch-heretic of Geneva. We can hardly imagine Calvin to have been so totally devoid of humanity as to have felt no compunctious visitings when he stood face to face with the man whom his persistent enmity alone had brought to such a pass; but he would also have been other than he meets us in history, and otherwise circumstanced than he was as αὐτοκράτωρ—despot of Geneva—had he not felt something of self-gratulation and even of triumph, when pardon was asked of him by his humbled foe.
THE SENTENCE AND EXECUTION.
An hour before noon of October 27, 1553, the ‘Lieutenant Criminel,’ Tissot, accompanied by other officials and a guard, entered the gaol, and ordered the prisoner to come with them, and learn the pleasure of My Lords the Councillors and Justices of Geneva.
The tribunal, in conformity with custom, now assembled before the porch of the Hotel de Ville, received the prisoner, all standing. The proper officer then proceeded to recapitulate the heads of the process against him, Michael Servetus, of Villanova, in the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, in which he is charged—
First: with having, between twenty-three and twenty-four years ago, caused to be printed at Hagenau, in Germany, a book against the Holy Trinity, full of blasphemies, to the great scandal of the Churches of Germany, the book having been condemned by all their doctors, and he, the writer, forced to fly that country.Item.With having, in spite of this, not only persisted in his errors and infected many with them, but with having lately had another book clandestinely printed at Vienne in Dauphiny, filled with the like heresies and execrable blasphemies against the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, the Baptism of Infants, and other sacred doctrines, the foundationsof the Christian religion.Item.With having in the said book called all who believe in a Trinity, Tritheists, and even Atheists, and the Trinity itself a dæmon or monster having three heads.Item.With having blasphemed horribly, and said that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God from all Eternity, but only became so from his Incarnation; that he is not the Son of David according to the flesh, but was created of the substance of God, having received three of his constituent elements from God, and one only from the Virgin Mary, whereby he wickedly proposed to abolish the true and entire humanity of Jesus Christ.Item.With declaring the Baptism of Infants to be sorcery and a diabolical invention.Item.With having uttered other blasphemies, with which the book in question is full, all alike against the Majesty of God, the Son of God, and the Holy Ghost, to the ruin of many poor souls, betrayed and desolated by such detestable doctrines.Item.With having, full of malice, entitled the said book, though crammed with heresies against the holy evangelical doctrine, ‘Christianismi Restitutio—the Restoration of Christianity,’ the better to deceive and seduce poor ignorant folks, poisoning them all the while they fancied they were sitting in the shadow of sound doctrine.Item.With attacking our faith by letters as well as by his book, and saying to one of the ministers of this city that our holy evangelical doctrine is a religion without faith, and indeed without God, we having a Cerberus with three heads, for our God.Item.For having perfidiously broken and escaped from the prison of Vienne, where he had been confined because of the wicked and abominable opinions confessed in his book.Item.For continuing obstinate in his opinions, not only against the true Christian religion, but, as an arrogant innovator and inventor of heresies against Popery, which led to his being burned in effigy at Vienne, along with five bales of his book.Item.And in addition to all of which, being confined in the gaol of this city, he has not ceasedmaliciously to persist in the aforesaid wicked and detestable errors, attempting to maintain them, with calumnious abuse of all true Christians, faithful followers of the immaculate Christian religion, calling them Tritheists, Atheists, and Sorcerers, in spite of the remonstrances made to him in Germany, as said, and in contempt of the reprehensions and corrections he has received, and the imprisonment he has undergone as well here as elsewhere.Now, we the Syndics and Judges in criminal cases within this city, having reviewed the process carried on before us, at the instance of our Lieutenant having charge of such cases, against thee, Michael Servetus of Villanova, in the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, whereby guided, and by thy voluntary confessions made before us, many times repeated, as well as by thy books produced before us, we decree and determine that thou, Michael Servetus, hast, for a long time, promulgated false and heretical doctrine, and, rejecting all remonstrance and correction, hast, maliciously, perversely, and obstinately, continued disseminating and divulging, even by the printing of books, blasphemies against God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in a word, against the whole foundations of the Christian religion, thereby seeking to create schism and trouble in the Church of God, many souls, members of which may have been ruined and lost—horrible and dreadful thing, scandalous and contaminating in thee, thou, having no shame nor horror in setting thyself up in all against the Divine Majesty and the Holy Trinity, and having further taken pains to infect, and given thyself up obstinately to continue infecting the world with thy heresies and stinking heretical poison (tes heresies et puante poyson hereticale)—case and crime of heresy grievous and detestable, deserving of severe corporal punishment.These and other just causes moving us, desiring to purge the Church of God of such infection, and to cut off from it sorotten a member, we, sitting as a Judicial Tribunal in the seat of our ancestors, with the entire assent of the General Council of the State, and our fellow-citizens, calling on the name of God to deliver true judgment, having the Holy Scriptures before us, and saying: In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we now pronounce our final sentence and condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound and taken to Champel, and there being fastened to a stake, to be burned alive, along with thy books, printed as well as written by thy hand, until thy body be reduced to ashes. So shall thy days end, and thou be made an example to others who would do as thou hast done. And we command you, our Lieutenant, to see this our sentence carried forthwith into execution.
First: with having, between twenty-three and twenty-four years ago, caused to be printed at Hagenau, in Germany, a book against the Holy Trinity, full of blasphemies, to the great scandal of the Churches of Germany, the book having been condemned by all their doctors, and he, the writer, forced to fly that country.Item.With having, in spite of this, not only persisted in his errors and infected many with them, but with having lately had another book clandestinely printed at Vienne in Dauphiny, filled with the like heresies and execrable blasphemies against the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, the Baptism of Infants, and other sacred doctrines, the foundationsof the Christian religion.Item.With having in the said book called all who believe in a Trinity, Tritheists, and even Atheists, and the Trinity itself a dæmon or monster having three heads.Item.With having blasphemed horribly, and said that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God from all Eternity, but only became so from his Incarnation; that he is not the Son of David according to the flesh, but was created of the substance of God, having received three of his constituent elements from God, and one only from the Virgin Mary, whereby he wickedly proposed to abolish the true and entire humanity of Jesus Christ.Item.With declaring the Baptism of Infants to be sorcery and a diabolical invention.Item.With having uttered other blasphemies, with which the book in question is full, all alike against the Majesty of God, the Son of God, and the Holy Ghost, to the ruin of many poor souls, betrayed and desolated by such detestable doctrines.Item.With having, full of malice, entitled the said book, though crammed with heresies against the holy evangelical doctrine, ‘Christianismi Restitutio—the Restoration of Christianity,’ the better to deceive and seduce poor ignorant folks, poisoning them all the while they fancied they were sitting in the shadow of sound doctrine.Item.With attacking our faith by letters as well as by his book, and saying to one of the ministers of this city that our holy evangelical doctrine is a religion without faith, and indeed without God, we having a Cerberus with three heads, for our God.Item.For having perfidiously broken and escaped from the prison of Vienne, where he had been confined because of the wicked and abominable opinions confessed in his book.Item.For continuing obstinate in his opinions, not only against the true Christian religion, but, as an arrogant innovator and inventor of heresies against Popery, which led to his being burned in effigy at Vienne, along with five bales of his book.Item.And in addition to all of which, being confined in the gaol of this city, he has not ceasedmaliciously to persist in the aforesaid wicked and detestable errors, attempting to maintain them, with calumnious abuse of all true Christians, faithful followers of the immaculate Christian religion, calling them Tritheists, Atheists, and Sorcerers, in spite of the remonstrances made to him in Germany, as said, and in contempt of the reprehensions and corrections he has received, and the imprisonment he has undergone as well here as elsewhere.
Now, we the Syndics and Judges in criminal cases within this city, having reviewed the process carried on before us, at the instance of our Lieutenant having charge of such cases, against thee, Michael Servetus of Villanova, in the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, whereby guided, and by thy voluntary confessions made before us, many times repeated, as well as by thy books produced before us, we decree and determine that thou, Michael Servetus, hast, for a long time, promulgated false and heretical doctrine, and, rejecting all remonstrance and correction, hast, maliciously, perversely, and obstinately, continued disseminating and divulging, even by the printing of books, blasphemies against God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in a word, against the whole foundations of the Christian religion, thereby seeking to create schism and trouble in the Church of God, many souls, members of which may have been ruined and lost—horrible and dreadful thing, scandalous and contaminating in thee, thou, having no shame nor horror in setting thyself up in all against the Divine Majesty and the Holy Trinity, and having further taken pains to infect, and given thyself up obstinately to continue infecting the world with thy heresies and stinking heretical poison (tes heresies et puante poyson hereticale)—case and crime of heresy grievous and detestable, deserving of severe corporal punishment.
These and other just causes moving us, desiring to purge the Church of God of such infection, and to cut off from it sorotten a member, we, sitting as a Judicial Tribunal in the seat of our ancestors, with the entire assent of the General Council of the State, and our fellow-citizens, calling on the name of God to deliver true judgment, having the Holy Scriptures before us, and saying: In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we now pronounce our final sentence and condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound and taken to Champel, and there being fastened to a stake, to be burned alive, along with thy books, printed as well as written by thy hand, until thy body be reduced to ashes. So shall thy days end, and thou be made an example to others who would do as thou hast done. And we command you, our Lieutenant, to see this our sentence carried forthwith into execution.
The staff, according to custom, was then broken over the prisoner, and there was silence for a moment.
The terrible sentence pronounced, the pause that followed was first broken by Servetus; not to sue for mercy against the final award, from which he knew there was no appeal, but to entreat that the manner of carrying it out might be commuted for one less dreadful. ‘He feared,’ he said, ‘that through excess of suffering he might prove faithless to himself, and belie the convictions of his life. If he had erred, it was in ignorance; he was so constituted mentally and morally as to desire the glory of God, and had always striven to abide by the teachings of the Scriptures.’ The appeal to the humanity of the Judges, however, met with no response. Farel, indeed, who was present, interposed, telling him that to obtain any favour he should begin by acknowledging and showing contrition for his errors. But hegave no heed to this, and went on to say that ‘he had done nothing to deserve death; he prayed God, nevertheless, to forgive his enemies and persecutors.’ Rising from the suppliant attitude he had assumed, he exclaimed, ‘O God, save my soul; O Jesu, Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!’
From the porch of the Hotel de Ville, where the sentence was delivered, a solemn procession was now formed for Champel, the place of execution, passing by the Rue St. Antoine, and leaving the city by the corresponding gate: the ‘Lieutenant Criminel,’ and other officers on horseback, a guard of archers surrounding the prisoner and Farel, who accompanied him on his death walk, and did not cease from efforts to wring from him an avowal of his errors. But in vain; he had no answer other than broken ejaculations and invocations on the name of God. ‘Is there no word in your mouth but the name of God?’ said Farel. ‘On whom can I now call but on God?’ said the unhappy Servetus. ‘Have you no last words for anyone—for wife or child, perhaps, if you have either?’ said the well-meaning pastor; but he met with no reply; though when admonished to do so, the doomed man made no difficulty about asking the people to join him in his prayers. This gave Farel an opportunity to say to the crowd, ‘You see what power Satan has when he has taken possession of the soul. This is a learned man, who perhaps even meant to do well; but he fell into the power of the devil, and the same thing mighthappen to any one of you. Though he has said that you have no God, he yet asks you to join him in his prayers!’
But this is not all we have on the last moments of Servetus. Writing to his friend, Ambrose Blaurer, soon after the fatal October 27, Farel says, ‘You ask me about Servetus, so justly punished by a pious magistracy. I was at Geneva when the sentence was delivered, and with him when he died. The wretched man could not be brought to say that Christ was the Eternal Son of God. When I urged him on the subject, he desired me to point to a single place in the Scriptures in which Christ is spoken of as the Son of God before his birth. All that could be done had no effect in turning him from this error; he said nothing against what was urged, but went on his way; we could by no means obtain what we desired, viz., that he should own his error and acknowledge the truth. We exhorted, we entreated, but made no impression. He beat his breast, asked pardon for his faults, invoked God, confessed his Saviour, and much besides, but would not acknowledge the Son of God, save in the man Jesus. Nor was I alone in my exhortations; some of the brethren also interposed, and admonished him ingenuously to admit and say that he hated his errors; but he only replied that he was unjustly condemned to death. On this I said: “Do you, who have so greatly sinned, presume to justify yourself? If you go on thus I shall leave you to the judgment of God, andaccompany you no farther. I meant to exhort the people to pray for you, hoping you would edify them; and thought not to leave you till you had rendered your last breath.” After this he said nothing more of himself, although when I spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whom we preach in our churches, and in whom the faithful believe, he said that it was right and good to do so; but when I went on to say that he did not really think thus, and had written otherwise, he would not admit it. He told me by the way that he had had some things from a man who enjoyed no small reputation among some of us. But though I do not doubt of Erasmus having been infected in no trifling degree by the writings of the Rabbins, I know that in his later works at least he expresses himself otherwise than in those of earlier date. But the unhappy Servetus could not readily be made to imbibe the truth and put it to increase; neither could he be cured of his errors by the sound teaching of others.
‘It were long did I repeat—I do not think, indeed, I can remember—all that was said between seven in the morning and mid-day. In sum, however, although he made no particular confession of his faith, God hindered his name and doctrine from being impugned by any open contumelious expression.’
When he came in sight of the fatal pile, the wretched Servetus prostrated himself on the ground, and for a while was absorbed in prayer. Rising and advancing a few steps, he found himself in the handsof the executioner, by whom he was made to sit on a block, his feet just reaching the ground. His body was then bound to the stake behind him by several turns of an iron chain, whilst his neck was secured in like manner by the coils of a hempen rope. His two books—the one in manuscript sent to Calvin in confidence six or eight years before for his strictures, and a copy of the one lately printed at Vienne—were then fastened to his waist, and his head was encircled in mockery with a chaplet of straw and green twigs bestrewed with brimstone. The deadly torch was then applied to the faggots and flashed in his face; and the brimstone catching, and the flames rising, wrung from the victim such a cry of anguish as struck terror into the surrounding crowd. After this he was bravely silent; but the wood being purposely green, although the people aided the executioner in heaping the faggots upon him, a long half-hour elapsed before he ceased to show signs of life and of suffering. Immediately before giving up the ghost, with a last expiring effort he cried aloud: ‘Jesu, Thou Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!’ All was then hushed save the hissing and crackling of the green wood; and by-and-by there remained no more of what had been Michael Servetus but a charred and blackened trunk and a handful of ashes. So died, in advance of his age, one of the gifted sons of God, the victim of religious fanaticism and personal hate.
AFTER THE BATTLE—VÆ VICTORIBUS!
Even before the trial of Servetus had come to an end we have seen it attracting the attention of some of the freer minds of Geneva—such as were not over-awed by the dominant spirit of Calvin or not absorbed in the political strife of the hour. A criminal suit on the ground of a new interpretation of Scripture, as it had been made in fine so clearly to appear, struck reasonable men not only as illogical but as indefensible in a city whose autonomy and entire religious system were founded on a right of the kind assumed by itself. Calvin’s dictum, that Servetus’s purpose was the overthrow of all religion, was not seen to be borne out by the facts of the case when calmly considered, and, to the popular apprehension, was wholly belied by the pious bearing of the man in the last hours of his life. Even Farel, misled as he was by his fanaticism, could not help saying to the people, that ‘after all the man may have meant well.’
The protracted trial at an end, the sacrifice made, the Councillors of Geneva seem immediately to have come to their senses, and discovered that they had transgressedthe true limits of their authority in condemning to death one who owed them no allegiance, who had been guilty of no crime or misdemeanour whether within the bounds of their jurisdiction or elsewhere, and whose heresies implied no rejection of the Scriptures as the Word of God, or of the teaching of Christ and his Apostles as the means of salvation. Servetus’s heresy amounted to no more than repudiation of what he maintained to be erroneous interpretations of the language of the Gospels, of metaphysical assumptions from heathen philosophies, and mystical procedures unwarranted by a line whether of the Old or the New Testament. They overlooked the fact that the presence of the man among them was due to flight from the fate that waited on all who had the courage of their opinions amid the blood-stained intolerance of Roman Catholicism; that he was only another among the host of refugees—their spiritual Dictator himself not excepted—who now crowded the streets of Geneva; and that, but for the hostile interference of Calvin, he, like so many more, would have been welcomed as ‘a bird escaped from the net of the fowler;’ sheltered had he elected to remain, furthered on his way had he chosen to depart.
That thoughts of the kind had taken possession of the Council is proclaimed by the fact of their quashing the indictment preferred by Farel and the Consistory against Geroult, Arnoullet’s foreman, three days after the death of Servetus, on the score of thepart he had had in printing the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ and concealing the character of its contents from his master. Farel and the clergy in their blind zeal would have persevered in their efforts to have another victim. But the civilians interposed. Enough—more than enough had already been done to satisfy the outer world that the Genevese, if reputed heretics themselves, were no favourers of heresy of another complexion than their own. Left to calm reflection, the Council may well have come to see that they had only lent themselves to theological intolerance, when they imagined they were fulfilling an important part of their magisterial duties.
The entire ground, indeed, on which the trial had been instituted would not bear close scrutiny. The book, on the presumed publication and dissemination of which it had been set on foot, had not yet been seen in Geneva save by Calvin: there was not then another copy in the city but the one sent, as I believe, by its hapless author through Frelon to the Reformer. Neither had the ostensible institutor of the suit, Nicolas de la Fontaine, the shadow of a grievance against Michael Servetus, the writer of the book. He could never have seen it out of Calvin’s hands, he was almost certainly unacquainted with the language in which it was written, and, if he were not, he could still never have read a word of it but at Calvin’s prompting—he had not, in all probability, even heard the name of Servetus until he had it from the mouthof his master! De la Fontaine, moreover, was no citizen of Geneva any more than Calvin himself100—neither of them could have had a legal title to prefer a criminal charge; master and man were aliens alike, and in Geneva on the same plea as Servetus; they fleeing for their lives from the Inquisitors and agents of the concubine of Henry of France, he from the Inquisitor and Church authorities of Dauphiny.
More than this. ‘He,’ it is said, ‘who casts the first stone should be himself without sin.’ Calvin pursued Servetus to death mainly on the ground of his divergent interpretation of the Trinitarian mystery. But was Calvin himself quite sound on this head, and was he equally hostile to all who called the dogma in question? We have had him saying that he only objected to speak of God and Nature as signifying the same thing, because of the harshness or impropriety of the expression. But he who so delivers himself identifies God and the Universe, and excludes ideas of personality and subdivision in the essence of the Deity. No wonder, therefore, that Calvin was oftener than once charged with unorthodoxy from the Catholic point of view on the subject of the Trinity. In the Confession of Faith which he formulated for the Church of Geneva in the year 1536, it is certain that neither the word Trinity nor the wordPerson is to be found;101and when challenged at a later period by Caroli, the colleague of Viret at Lausanne, on the matter, he did not so express himself as to satisfy his accuser. In a remarkable note, moreover, ‘On the word Trinity and the word Persons,’ written apparently to meet the surmises suggested by the absence of the sacred vocables from the Confession, Calvin says:
‘Inasmuch as these words, ‘Trinity’ and ‘Persons,’ are found by us to be very serviceable in the Church of Christ, as by them the true distinction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more clearly expressed, and controversial discussions are better served by their means, we say that we have no such objection to them as forbids us to receive them from others or to make use of them ourselves. Therefore, do we again declare, as we have formerly declared, that we accept the words, and would not that they ceased to be used in the Churches. For neither in our expositions of the Scriptures or when preaching to the people do we shun them; and we have instructed others [in private]—docebimus alios, that they should not superstitiously avoid them. Did anyone, however, from religious scruples, feel indisposed to make use of the words—although we avow that such superstition is not approved by us, and we shall continue striving to correct it—still, this seems no sufficient reason why a man, otherwise pious and having like religious views as ourselves, should be rejected. His want of better knowledge in this direction ought not to carry us the length of casting him out of the Church, or lead us to conclude that he was therefore altogether unsound in the faith. Neither, meantime, are we to thinkevilly of the Pastors of the Church of Berne, if they refuse to admit anyone to the ministry who declines to use the words.’102
‘Inasmuch as these words, ‘Trinity’ and ‘Persons,’ are found by us to be very serviceable in the Church of Christ, as by them the true distinction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more clearly expressed, and controversial discussions are better served by their means, we say that we have no such objection to them as forbids us to receive them from others or to make use of them ourselves. Therefore, do we again declare, as we have formerly declared, that we accept the words, and would not that they ceased to be used in the Churches. For neither in our expositions of the Scriptures or when preaching to the people do we shun them; and we have instructed others [in private]—docebimus alios, that they should not superstitiously avoid them. Did anyone, however, from religious scruples, feel indisposed to make use of the words—although we avow that such superstition is not approved by us, and we shall continue striving to correct it—still, this seems no sufficient reason why a man, otherwise pious and having like religious views as ourselves, should be rejected. His want of better knowledge in this direction ought not to carry us the length of casting him out of the Church, or lead us to conclude that he was therefore altogether unsound in the faith. Neither, meantime, are we to thinkevilly of the Pastors of the Church of Berne, if they refuse to admit anyone to the ministry who declines to use the words.’102
We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions from this, and only ask him to say, on its showing, what excuse can be found for Calvin’s deed in burning Servetus? Scattered throughout the writings of the Genevese Reformer we encounter many expressions which prove plainly enough how much against the grain he finally confessed partition in the unity of God. ‘The first principle to be acknowledged in the Scriptures,’ he says, ‘is the Being of One God; but as the same Scriptures speak of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, what have we for it—quid aliud restat—but to own three Persons in the Godhead? These, however,’he proceeds in the usual orthodox fashion to say, and in contradiction to the words first made use of, ‘imply no plurality of persons, neither do they destroy the essential unity of God; for where were Quaternity to be found does the one God comprise in himself three properties—ubi autem quaternitas reperitur si unus Deus tres in se proprietates contineat?’104Where, indeed! But the question is ofpersonsnot of properties; as in the affair with Caroli it was of an Eternal Son not of an Eternal Word.
In another place we find him using such language as this: ‘The words of the Council of Nicæa are these: God of God—a hard expression I admit, for the removal of the ambiguity of which no better interpreter can be found than Athanasius, who indited it—Deum a Deo—dura loquutio fateor, sed ad cujus tollendam ambiguitatem nemo potest esse magis idoneus interpres quam Athanasius qui eam dictavit.’
Elsewhere, though we have omitted to note the place, he declares that the Athanasian symbol was never approved by any of the legitimate [i.e. Protestant] Churches—cujus symbolum nulla unquam legitima ecclesia approbâsset.’105Such writing is surely very noteworthy. Calvin’s acknowledgment of a Trinity is neither of his understanding nor his faith; it is enforced merely and obviously in opposition to the reasonhe had from God for his guidance. But Michael Servetus, whom he sent to a fiery death, not only does not deny, but expressly, and oftener than once, avows that he acknowledges a Trinity in the Essence of God. He, too, found the words Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the Scriptures; and, as little disposed as Calvin to gainsay a word they contain, he actually uses language the simple sense of which is that precisely under which Calvin seeks to shield himself; only he employs the worddispositionsinstead ofproperties. Calvin, when he attempts to reconcile the idea of a Trinity of persons co-existing with an unity of Being, and does not use language that contradicts itself, speaks no otherwise than Servetus, and arrives in fine at the same interpretation of the Trinitarian Dogma: thepersonsaredispositionsto the one,propertiesto the other!
After the most careful study of the writings of Servetus we have been able to bestow, we have it forced upon us that had Calvin been so minded he could from them, more readily, and far more consistently, have defended their author as a sincerely pious, though in his opinion, a much mistaken man in his interpretation of Christian doctrine, than prosecuted him as the enemy of all religion, a monster, as he says, made up of mere impieties and horrible blasphemies! But to the intolerant bigot, engrossed by his own conceits and dislikes, all Servetus’s confiding piety was hypocrisy, his touching prayers mockery, and his eloquence asbecoming in him as a coat of mail to a hog—‘qu’une jaserame un Truie’(!)
Nor can Calvin have credit given him for religious zeal, as the principal, still less as the sole ground for his prosecution of Servetus. He would condone the Church of Berne for repudiating him who denied the Trinitarian mystery, but could not forgive the Spaniard’s intemperate and disrespectful style of address to himself. In this lay the prime cause of offence to the man, accustomed to have all the world bowing down before him, who was always addressed as ‘Monsieur,’ not as ‘Maître,’ like the rest of the clergy, and whose appointments, however modest in our eyes, equalled those of a dignitary of the Church in neighbouring lands. One of Nicolas de la Fontaine’s counts against the man he did not even know, but whom he arraigned for life or death, is the objectionable language indulged in towards his pastor; and we have Calvin’s own words against himself when he says that Servetus’s ‘arrogance, not less than his impiety, led to his destruction;’ whilst he elsewhere owns, that ‘had Servetus but been possessed of even a show of modesty he would not have pursued him so determinedly on the capital charge.’
By way of conclusion here, let us observe that Calvin’s fundamental principle of Election by the Grace of God ought to have stayed his hand from all persecution on religious grounds. He is constantly spoken of as a man possessed of a peculiarly logicalmind. But if it be by the eternal decrees of God that some are ordained to salvation and some to perdition, how should Servetus or anyone else come between God and his purposes? How should the Elect be prejudiced, or the Reprobate made worse by the act of man?
CALVIN DEFENDS HIMSELF.
Dissatisfaction with what had been done appears to have become general immediately after the execution of Servetus. It extended beyond the walls of the Council chamber and found wider expression than in the arrest of proceedings against Geroult. Ballads and pasquinades, little complimentary to Calvin and his party, circulated freely, and were all the more persistently spread in private if none dared to utter them in public or sing them in the streets. Calvin himself acknowledges that fear alone of consequences repressed for a time any open expression of abhorrence for the death of Servetus. Certain it is, that before the year was out, save among friends and obsequious followers, the act in which he had taken the prominent part came to be so unfavourably construed that he felt forced to appear as his own apologist, and in justification of his deed to proclaim his victim not only a heretic because of theological dissidence, with which the people of Geneva were familiar enough and not always greatly scandalised, but to hold him up as wholly without religious convictions himself, the openenemy of all religion in others, the conspirator against the moral well-being of the world, and the conscience-stricken craven in face of his impending fate!
To this task Calvin would seem to have been more especially incited by Bullinger, who loses no opportunity of showing himself hostile to Servetus; and even thinks that ‘were Satan to come back from hell and take to preaching for pastime, he would make use of much the same language as Servetus the Spaniard.’106Writing to Calvin at this time, and thinking doubtless of the growing unpopularity of his friend, Bullinger says: ‘See to it, dear Calvin, that you give a good account of Servetus and his end, so that all may have the beast in horror—ut omnes abhorreant a bestia!’ To which Calvin replies: ‘If I have but a little leisure I shall show what a monster he was.’107
Such were the inducements Calvin had for entering on the apologetic defence of himself through denouncing the errors, impugning the motives, and blackening the fame of Servetus to which he now applied himself and had ready for publication both in French and Latin early in the year 1554, the title of the French book in brief being ‘Déclaration pour maintenir la vraye Foy;’ that of the Latin, ‘Defensio Orthodoxæ Fidei de sacra Trinitate contra errores Michaelis Serveti, &c.’108
In his introduction Calvin informs the reader that he had ‘not at first thought it necessary to come forward with any formal refutation of the errors of Servetus,’ the ponderous absurdity of his ravings appearing so plainly that he imagined it would be like winnowing the wind to do so, for there was really no danger of anyone of sound mind and ordinary understanding not being found superior to such follies. ‘But better informed, knowing the poison to be deadly in its kind, and having regard to the amount of stupidity and confusion which God, to avenge Himself, inflicts on all who despise his doctrine, I have felt myself compelled as it were to take up the pen, and in exposing the errors of the man to furnish grounds for better conclusions. When Servetus and his like, indeed, presume to meddle with the mysteries of religion, it is as if swine came thrusting their snouts into a treasury of sacred things. May God pay all with the wages they deserve whose vicious proclivities lead them to burn after one novelty or another, which they can no more resist than can theman from scratching who has the itch!—pas plus que celui qui a la ratelle qui démange.’
‘The punishment that befel Servetus,’ he continues, ‘is always ascribed to me. I am called a master in cruelty, and shall now be said to mangle with my pen the dead body of the man who came to his death at my hands. And I will not deny that it was at my instance he was arrested, that the prosecutor was set on by me, or that it was by me that the articles of inculpation were drawn up. But all the world knows that since he was convicted of his heresies I never moved to have him punished by death. There needs no more than simple denial from me to rebut the calumnies of the malevolent, the brainless, the frivolous, the fools, or the dissolute.’
There is much in what precedes to challenge comment, and the language, self-condemnatory of the writer in one respect, if not purposely meant to mislead, is yet greatly calculated to do so in another. If Servetus’ teaching was such ponderous folly that it could by no possibility have any influence in the world, why did Calvin proceed against him from the first on the capital charge? It is God, too, who inflicts such stupidity on mankind as makes the intervention of John Calvin necessary to set things right; and the denial and vituperative epithets at the end of the paragraph last quoted do not cover an obvious intention on his part to have the reader conclude that he had had nothing to do with the doom which befel the Spaniard. But Calvin knewthat by the law of Geneva the convicted heretic must die; and he had written to his friend Farel on August 20, within a week of the arrest, that he hoped the sentencewould be capital at the least—spero capitale saltem judicium fore. All the favour Calvin ever asked for Servetus was that he might die by the sword instead of by brimstone and slow fire. He does not say so much indeed, but it almost looks as if he would have the world believe that he had moved to save the man’s life! We have his own acknowledgment, however, of the active part he took in the prosecution of Servetus at Geneva, and his expressed hope of what the sentence should be. This much he could not deny; the facts of the case put it out of his power. But he always shirked complicity with all that happened at Vienne. There there was underhand dealing and betrayal of trust, and he would fain have the world believe that he had had nothing to do with the ugly business. But here, too, everything we know, is against him, and all he says by way of freeing himself from the charge of having denounced Servetus to the authorities of Lyons seems but to strengthen the conclusion that he did. Calvin was an able man undoubtedly, but he was not a cunning man, and often lets his pen give expression to thoughts of things gone by, which he would not have suffered to appear had he been more artful.
In one of his epistles he says, ‘Nothing less is said of me than that I might as well have thrown Servetus amid a pack of wild beasts as into the hands of the professed enemies ofthe Church of Christ; for I have the credit given me of having caused him to be arrested at Vienne. But why such sudden familiarity between me and the satellites of the Pope? Is it to be believed that confidential letters could have passed between parties who had as little in common as Christ and Belial? Yet why many words to refute that which simple denial from me suffices to answer! Four years have now passed since Servetus himself spread this report. I only ask why, if he had been denounced by me, as said, he was thereafter suffered to remain unmolested for the space of three whole years? It must either be allowed that the crime I am charged withal is a pure invention, or that my denunciation did him no harm with the Papists.’
In one of his epistles he says, ‘Nothing less is said of me than that I might as well have thrown Servetus amid a pack of wild beasts as into the hands of the professed enemies ofthe Church of Christ; for I have the credit given me of having caused him to be arrested at Vienne. But why such sudden familiarity between me and the satellites of the Pope? Is it to be believed that confidential letters could have passed between parties who had as little in common as Christ and Belial? Yet why many words to refute that which simple denial from me suffices to answer! Four years have now passed since Servetus himself spread this report. I only ask why, if he had been denounced by me, as said, he was thereafter suffered to remain unmolested for the space of three whole years? It must either be allowed that the crime I am charged withal is a pure invention, or that my denunciation did him no harm with the Papists.’
True, and answers to all he says are not far to seek. Why the familiarity with the satellites of the Pope? That he might be avenged through them on one whom he regarded at once as a dangerous heretic and a personal enemy. How should confidential letters have passed between parties who had so little in common as himself and the Roman Catholics of Lyons? Because he would have had them the instruments of his vengeance. If denounced by him, as said, how did Servetus remain unmolested for three whole years? Because denunciation for heresy of one who lived in good repute with his friends as a true son of the Church, by another standing in the very foremost ranks of heresy, was taken no notice of by Cardinal Tournon and his advisers.—All that Calvin says now seems but to demonstrate the truth of what we have from Bolsec, and may possibly have been the groundof the warning against the over free expression of his opinions which Servetus is said to have received long before thedenouementthat followed the printing of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio.’ Calvin continues:
‘Would that the errors of Servetus might have been buried with him; but as his ashes continue to spread a pestiferous stench I go on to expose his heresies, a task delayed till now through no fear of measuring myself with one like him, for I have coped with adversaries much more redoubtable than he, but because I had other work in hand of more importance as I believed. He, however, who contends that it is unjust to punish heretics and blasphemers, I say, becomes their deliberate associate. You tell me of the authority of man; but we have the word of God and his eternal laws for the government of his Church. Not in vain has He commanded us to suppress every human affection for the sake of religion. And wherefore such severity, if it be not for this, that we are to prefer God’s honour to mere human reason.’
‘Would that the errors of Servetus might have been buried with him; but as his ashes continue to spread a pestiferous stench I go on to expose his heresies, a task delayed till now through no fear of measuring myself with one like him, for I have coped with adversaries much more redoubtable than he, but because I had other work in hand of more importance as I believed. He, however, who contends that it is unjust to punish heretics and blasphemers, I say, becomes their deliberate associate. You tell me of the authority of man; but we have the word of God and his eternal laws for the government of his Church. Not in vain has He commanded us to suppress every human affection for the sake of religion. And wherefore such severity, if it be not for this, that we are to prefer God’s honour to mere human reason.’
But the St. Bartholomew and all the nameless horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of religion and to uphold what is called the honour of God, are the logical outcome of principles that lead to such language. Calvin’s treatment of Servetus was in truth nothing less than a direct encouragement to the Roman Catholics of France to persevere in their atrocities towards the Protestants. Geneva, which had been looked on as the bulwark of independent thought and of freedom to worship God according to conscience came to be regarded as the seat of another Inquisition. All and sundry who pretended tothink for themselves, and who did not include Election and Predestination in their creed, must be silent. Did they speak or say a word against the rules and regulations of the modern propounder of the doctrine of God’s partiality, they were mercilessly hunted down, fined, imprisoned, scourged on the back, branded on the cheek, banished from their homes, or, as in the case of Servetus, put to death; even as the moving cause of all these atrocities would himself have been dealt with in France had he there avowed what were there styled the heretical opinions he entertained—the damnable doctrines he taught. Persecution which follows necessarily from the principles on which the Church of Rome is founded, could not be entered on by the Reformed Churches without a total abnegation of those to which they owe their existence.109
But it is not with Servetus’s doctrines alone thatCalvin occupies himself in his ‘Declaration’ and ‘Defence.’ He must further darken the fame of the man whom he slew, for the consistency and fortitude he displayed when confronted with death, as we have seen him essaying to detract from the purity and probity of his life on his trial. ‘Servetus,’ says Calvin, ‘was only bold when he had no fear of punishment before him; but so overwhelmed was he in face of his impending fate, that he was lost to all and everything about him. Praying with the people he had said were Godless, he yet prayed as if he had been in the midst of the Church of God, and thereby showed that his opinions were nothing to him! Giving no sign of regret or repentance, saying never a word in vindication of his doctrines, what, I ask you, is to be thought of the man who, at such a time, and with full liberty to speak, made no confession one way or another, any more than if he had been a stock or a stone? He had no fear of having his tongue torn out; he was not forbidden to say what he liked; and though at last he declined to call on Jesus as the eternal Son of God (Calvin omits to say that he called devoutly with his latest breath on Jesus as Son of the eternal God), inasmuch as he made no declaration of his faith, who shall say that this man died a martyr’s death?’ ‘Theological hatred,’ says a late esteemed writer,110‘never inspired words more atrociously cruel and unjust thanthese of Calvin;’ and we do not hesitate to indorse the dictum. Calvin’s challenge of Servetus’s fortitude in the face of death is most unjust. Servetus went bravely to his death; though to him, in the vigour of life, and possessed of all his powers,