DISCOVERY OF ARNOULLET’S PRIVATE PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT—SEIZURE AND BURNING OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO’ ALONG WITH THE EFFIGY OF ITS AUTHOR.
The remainder of the month of April was spent in making a renewed and more particular examination of the books, papers, and letters of Villeneuve, and in having copies made of the letters addressed to Calvin, the originals of which were placed for safe custody under the official seals. And here, if our surmises be well founded: that the authorities of Vienne had really no wish, on testimony supplied by Calvin, to convict of heresy a man who had always comported himself as a good Catholic and still professed himself a true son of the Church, every way disposed to receive instruction and bow to the decisions of those who must know so much better than himself what was the true saving faith—the matter would probably have ended, in so far as those of Vienne were concerned. But Ory, the Inquisitor, nowise anxious like the others to hush up so promising an affair, had by some means been informed in the beginning of the month of May thatthere had been a couple of presses kept at work away from the proper printing establishment of Arnoullet.
Of this significant fact, no mention had been made either by Villeneuve or Arnoullet on their examination, and whence Ory had the intimation we are left to conjecture. There seems hardly room for doubt, however, that it reached him through the old channel, viz., Arneys; that Arneys had the news he gave to Ory from Trie, and that Trie had the tale he told from Calvin. Frelon, as we have seen, must have been in the secret of Servetus, and Frelon was also the friend of Calvin; from Frelon alone could Calvin have had the particular information he shows he possessed concerning the terms on which the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was printed; and it was only from Calvin that Trie could have obtained intelligence of the kind he communicates to his relative Arneys of Lyons. The process against Servetus, as we know, began from Lyons; and from Lyons was it now resuscitated. But who living there was so likely to have heard of a printing press worked privately at Vienne, twelve miles away, as he who had all he knew about the heretic Villeneuve from Geneva, and had been the instrument in setting on foot the movement that was now to proceed to more disastrous issues?
With the new and important hint but just received, Ory sped off to Vienne from Lyons, his head-quarters; and he may possibly have used even greater diligence on this occasion than he did before when he is said tohave spurred his steed so vigorously. Summoning the Vibailly and Grand Vicar to his side, the three proceeded immediately to the premises that had been indicated as the private printing place of the publisher Arnoullet; and entering, sure enough, they found three compositors at work, Straton, Du Bois, and Papillon by name. It is not difficult to imagine the terror of these men at the sight of such visitors. Before proceeding to interrogate them severally, the Inquisitor took care to address them generally on the enormity of the crime of which he assumed they had been guilty, and to say that they deserved the severest punishment for having withheld the important information they could have supplied. When proceedings were commenced against their master and M. Villeneuve, he said, they must be aware that it had been specially enjoined upon all and sundry, under pain of being dealt with as heretics, to communicate whatever they knew about the book, which he declared they must have known to be written by Villeneuve and printed by their master Arnoullet. Stretching a point, as we may imagine, he told the men further, that he had proofs in his hands that they were the very parties who had worked at the composition and printing of the book in question. He now, therefore, exhorted them to speak the truth and to ask pardon if they had been guilty or hoped for favour, the authorities he added, indeed, intending correction, not punishment.
The workmen, terribly alarmed, fell as with oneaccord upon their knees, and Straton, speaking for himself and the others, owned that they had printed an octavo volume entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ but were not aware that it contained heretical doctrines, being ignorant of the Latin language in which it was written, and never having heard that it did, until after the prosecution had been set on foot. He informed his questioner further that he and his associates had been steadily engaged on the book from the feast of St. Michael to January 3 last—over three months—when the printing was completed; yet more, that they had not dared to give information of their part in the business for fear of being burned alive; and to conclude, they now sought forgiveness, and threw themselves on the mercy of the authorities. More particularly questioned, Straton said that Michel de Villeneuve had had the book in question printed at his own expense, and had corrected the proofs in person. To end the tale, and he may have thought to make amends for his past silence, he said further that on January 13 he had despatched five bales of the book to the care of Pierre Merrin, typefounder, of Lyons.
Delighted with the great discovery just made, inasmuch as they would now have grounds of their own to proceed upon, the three associates hastened to communicate the information they had acquired to the Archbishop of Vienne, who in turn imparted it to Cardinal Tournon. Next day the Inquisitor Ory and the Grand Vicar Arzelier set off for Lyons. Proceedingat once to the establishment of Pierre Merrin, they questioned him as to what he knew of the business, and particularly about certain bales, five in number, that had lately come into his possession and were believed to contain heretical books. Merrin, having no motive for concealment, informed his visitors that about four months back he had received by the canal boat of Vienne five bales with the following address: From M. Michel de Villeneuve, doctor in medicine, these five bales, to be delivered to Pierre Merrin, typefounder, near Notre Dame de Confort, Lyons. On the day the bales were received, he added, a priest of Vienne, Jacques Charmier by name, had come to him and requested him to keep the bales until called for, saying that they contained nothing but printing-paper. From the time named, however, he had heard nothing from the sender, neither had anyone called to enquire after the bales or to take them away; and for his part he knew not whether they contained white paper for printing as said, or printed books as now alleged.
Having finished their interrogatory and seen the bales, the Inquisitor and Vicar made no scruple about seizing them in the name of the public authorities. Carrying them off at once, they were taken to Vienne and deposited in a room of the Archiepiscopal palace.
The priest Charmier was of course the next person visited and questioned. He persistently denied all knowledge of the contents of the bales which he, as he was proceeding to Lyons, recommended to the care ofMerrin, at the request of M. Villeneuve. The mere act of the poor priest, however, and his known intimacy with Villeneuve, were held to have compromised him to such an extent that he was put on his trial some time afterwards, and sentenced to imprisonment for three years!
The bales once safe in the Archiepiscopal palace of Vienne, were speedily undone, and there, sure enough, as Straton had said, five hundred copies of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ complete, were displayed to the eager eyes of the lookers-on. A single copy was abstracted and given to Ory, to enable him at his leisure to extract and take exception to such passages as he might deem heretical; the rest were left in safe custody under the palace roof.
Every information up to June 17—for so long had it taken to get at the facts as they have been stated—having now been acquired, and the proofs in the process being held complete, the Vibailly of Vienne, in a session of the Court duly summoned, and in the absence of Michel de Villeneuve, proceeded to pass sentence on him, finding him attainted and convicted of the crimes and misdemeanours laid to his charge, viz., Scandalous Heresy and Dogmatisation; Invention of New Doctrines; Writing heretical books; Disturbance of the public peace; Rebellion against the King; Disobedience of the ordinances touching heresy, and Breach of the Royal Prison of Vienne. ‘For reparation of the crimes and misdeeds set forth,’ said theJudge, ‘we condemn him, and he is hereby condemned, to pay a fine of 1000 livres Tournois to the King of Dauphiny; and further, as soon as he can be apprehended, to be taken, together with his books, on a tumbril or dust-cart to the place of public execution, and there burned alive by a slow fire until his body is reduced to ashes.’ The sentence now delivered, moreover, is ordered to be carried out forthwith on an effigy of the incriminated Villeneuve, which is to be publicly burned along with the five bales of the book in question, the fugitive being further condemned to pay the charges of justice, his goods and chattels being seized and confiscated, to the advantage of anyone showing just claims to the proceeds, the fine and expenses of the trial, as aforesaid, having been first duly discharged.
On the same day about noon the effigy of Villeneuve, made by the executioner of the High Court of Justice, having been put upon a tumbril along with the bales of the book, was paraded through the streets of Vienne, brought to the place of public execution, hanged upon a gibbet erected for the purpose, and finally set fire to, and with the five bales burned to ashes.
The matter, however, did not rest here; it was not yet concluded in all its parts. The secular arm had done what was required of it, having burned the criminal in effigy, failing his person, along with his heretical book; but the ecclesiastical authorities must also have their say in the case. When the utterance came, and it came not until six months after the civiltrial and sham execution, it was in every particular confirmatory of the sentence already delivered, the grounds of the decision however being gone into with greater minuteness than before. Among other matters particularly mentioned now, are the marginal notes in the handwriting of the culprit on two printed leaves, cut out of a copy of Calvin’s ‘Institutions;’ Seventeen letters addressed to John Calvin and acknowledged by Villeneuve to be from him; his answers to the Inquisitor Ory, the Vibailly, and the rest, and the minutes which had been made of his escape from the prison; finally, his books, one entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ and another in two parts: ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus, Libri septem,’ and ‘De Trinitate, Dialogi duo.’ ‘From all that has been brought to light,’ the judgment proceeds, ‘it is made manifest that the said Villeneuve is a most egregious heretic, and as such is hereby adjudged, convicted and condemned, his body to be burned, and his goods to be confiscated, the judicial expenses incurred and yet to be incurred to be defrayed out of the proceeds of the sale.’ All the books written by Villeneuve are further ordered to be diligently searched for, and wherever found, to be seized and burned.
It is not unimportant to notice that Arnoullet, the publisher and printer, is associated with Servetus in this ecclesiastical judgment. ‘The said Villeneuve and Balthazar Arnoullet are attainted and to be held conjoined in the sentence because of their complicity and connection.’ Arnoullet however was more mercifullydealt with than Villeneuve; he was not condemned to be burned alive; neither did he suffer imprisonment for any great length of time, but was by and by set at liberty on giving security for his good behaviour in future. If Charmier, the priest, was sentenced to incarceration for three years, having, as far as we know, done nothing more than deliver a message from Villeneuve to Merrin the type-founder, we might have imagined that Arnoullet would scarcely have escaped with so little scath; for to have aided and abetted in the printing of such a book as that entitled the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ which impugned the system that placed the whole of his judges—Cardinal Tournon, Archbishop Paumier, Ory, Arzelier, and the rest—in positions of affluence and influence, could only have been looked upon as a crime little less heinous than that of which the author of the book himself had been guilty. But Charmier was known to have been on friendly terms with Villeneuve; and Paumier may have guessed what that implied; for let us not forget that all we speak of came to pass shortly after Giovanni de Medici, under the title of Leo X., had been Pope; and that if the Reformation had more well-wishers in France than dared to proclaim themselves, Scepticism too, and of the deepest dye, was at the same time rife in high places. The poor priest Charmier, however, being of the rank and file only, must pay for having meddled; but let us hope that Archbishop Paumier interfered in due season and succeeded in greatly abridging the term of his imprisonment.
BOOK II.SERVETUS IN GENEVA, FACE TO FACE WITH CALVIN.
Ioanis Calvinus
Ioanis Calvinus
SERVETUS REACHES GENEVA—DETAINED THERE, HE IS ARRESTED AT THE INSTANCE OF CALVIN.
Escaped from the Dauphinal prison of Vienne, Servetus must, in all likelihood, have found hiding at first with friends in Lyons. But there, as indeed anywhere else in France, his life was in imminent danger; so that for his own sake, as well as that of his friends, terribly compromised by his presence, he had to seek safety at a distance—even in another country. Nor was it present safety only that was in question: the means of living in time to come had further to be thought of. But master of a profession that is welcome everywhere, he may have had little anxiety on that score; and he who had lived so long unmolested as Villeneuve or Villanovanus, after compromising himself as Serveto, alias Revés, would have been at no loss to find another name to shield him from recognition. His first thoughts carried him in the direction of Spain, but he found so many difficulties from the French gendarmerie, that he turned back; believing then that the best course he could follow would be to betake himself to Naples, where he knew there was a largesettled population of his own countrymen, among whom he would find a sufficient field for the exercise of his calling.
Calvin—erroneously beyond question—speaks of Servetus having wandered for four months in Italy after his escape from the prison of Vienne. Had he reached Italian ground at this time, he would not have returned upon Geneva, and then—presuming that he escaped Calvin’s further pursuit—he might have lived, usefully engaged, to a good old age, and died quietly in his bed. Servetus arrived in Switzerland from the side of France, and must have been in hiding in that country, or wandering about in disguise from place to place between April 7, the date of his evasion from Vienne, and the middle of July when he reached Geneva. The hue and cry from Vienne was probably not of a kind to be heard afar; they who left the prison door open may have seen to that—Servetus indeed says himself that they did. It was not such, at all events, as to prevent his baffling pursuit and escaping recognition: for he entered Geneva in safety; and feeling the soil of a state beneath his feet where other than Roman Catholic views of religion prevailed, he could hardly have thought that he would suffer molestation did he but keep quiet during the day or two he meant to remain in order to rest and recruit.
The experience Servetus had had so lately must have satisfied him that he could hope for nothing from the forbearance of Calvin; but he did not mean to putthis to the test: his business was to make no noise, and to be gone as quickly as possible. Though he had made the latter part of his journey on horseback, the usual mode of locomotion in those days, he even deemed it prudent, as less likely to attract attention, to enter Geneva on foot. He therefore discharged his steed at Louyset, a village a few miles distant, where he passed the night, and reached the city in the early morning of some day after the middle of July, 1553. Putting up at a small hostelry on the banks of the lake, having the sign of the Rose, he appears to have lain there privily and unchallenged for nearly a month.
What could have induced Servetus to linger in a place where we see, from the precautions he took both in arriving and subsequently, that he could not have thought himself safe, long remained a mystery; but is cleared up in a great measure by the information we obtain through the particulars of the trial to which he was immediately subjected, and of which it is only of late years that a full and entirely satisfactory account has been obtained. We were disposed, at one time, to ascribe the delay in setting out for Italy to the fascination which the strong have over the weak, and to imagine that our wanderer was still anxious for the personal interview with Calvin he had formerly sought, but been forced to forego, in Paris, and for which, as we learn by the letter of Calvin to his friend Farel, he had made fresh proposals at a later date.67He wasnow aware, however, that it was by Calvin he had been denounced to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne, arrested in consequence, put upon his trial, and only saved his life by escaping from prison. He could not possibly, therefore, have flattered himself that the man who was so disposed towards him would receive him in any friendly mood; though it probably never came into his mind to imagine that the Reformer would be disposed to take the knife in hand himself.
As we now read the tale, we perceive that Servetus’s presence in Geneva could not have been unknown to all in the city, even from the day of his arrival; and our persuasion is, that for some time at least he was kept there against his will. On his trial we find him stating, incidentally, that the windows of the room he occupied at the Rosehad been nailed up!What interpretation can possibly be put on this? The nailing up could not have been done to keep anyoneoutof a place of public entertainment. It was therefore to keep someonein. Servetus must in fact have been anxious from the first to be gone; but he was detained by certain parties in Geneva, not among the number of Calvin’s friends, who thought to make political capital out of his presence among them.
Nor were it hard to imagine that he, smarting as he then was under the sense of all that had but just befallen him through the interference of the Reformer, and listening for the moment to the influential persons who promised him support, and possibly redress, was not altogetherindisposed to pay his enemy back for the irreparable injury he had suffered at his hands. But there is nothing in all we know of Michael Servetus that leads us for a moment to think of him as a revengeful man; and though he may have lent an ear for a while to the suggestions of his new friends, he must soon have come to conceive misgivings as to the real meaning of their attentions.
Even whilst lying hidden in his inn he could hardly have failed, after a while, to learn something of the state of political partisanship prevalent in the theocratic republican city of Geneva, and so have been more than ever anxious to be gone. Hence the nailing up of his chamber windows. On Sunday, August 13, he had even spoken to the landlord of the ‘Rose’ to procure him a boat for the morrow, to take him by the Lake as far as possible on his way to Zürich. But his resolution to delay his departure no longer was taken too late. Weary of confinement, and always piously disposed, he ventured imprudently to show himself at the evening service of a neighbouring church; and being there recognised, intimation of his presence in Geneva was conveyed to Calvin, who, without loss of a moment, and in spite of the sacredness of the day, denounced him to one of the Syndics, and demanded his immediate arrest.
To effect this in the city of Geneva of the year of grace 1553 was no matter of difficulty, little being made in those days of seizing on the person, and notmuch of taking the life. The accredited officer, armed with a warrant, found Servetus in his inn; informed him he was to consider himself a prisoner; led him away, and threw him into the common jail of the town.
GENEVA AND THE STATE OF POLITICAL PARTIES AT THE DATE OF SERVETUS’S ARREST.
‘The year 1553,’ says Beza, in his life of Calvin, ‘by the impatience and fury of the factious, was a year so full of trouble that not only was the Church, but the Republic of Geneva, within a hair’s breadth of being wrecked and lost; all power had fallen into the hands of the wicked (i.e., the patriotic party of freethought, opposed to Calvin, and designated the Libertines), that it seemed as though they were on the point of attaining the ends for which they had so long been striving.’ Eighteen years had then elapsed since the Reformation first found footing in Geneva, and twelve since Calvin had resumed his position—interrupted during a period of two years—as a sort of spiritual dictator—‘the Lycurgus of a Christian Democracy’—not only as Organiser of the Faith, and Minister in the Church, but as regulator and supervisor of the morals and manners of the people.
The Reformation, in so far as Geneva was concerned, seems to have been hailed on political much more than on religious grounds. Emancipation fromthe yoke of the Roman Catholic bishop, under which its citizens had long fretted, meant escape from the political machinations, through the Priest, of France on the one hand, of Savoy on the other. The change from Romanism to Protestantism appears to have been due, in fact, to no particular discontent of the Genevese with the old Popish forms, or to any zeal for the new doctrines of Luther and his followers, but to a cherished hope of being suffered to pass their lives with as little control as might be from authority of any kind, and that little imposed and administered by themselves.
Moral discipline was notoriously lax over Europe in the early years of the sixteenth century, nowhere perhaps more so than at Geneva; and the liberty after which its people sighed was often understood as license rather than as life within the limits of moral law. Accident, however, having brought John Calvin, already a man of mark, to Geneva in the course of the year 1536, he was seized upon by William Farel, then in principal charge of the spiritual concerns of the city, and yielding to his most urgent entreaties—conjured, indeed, in the name of God, to remain and aid in the work of the Reformation—Calvin consented to cast in his lot with the Genevese, still jubilant over their lately recovered liberties and little amenable to discipline of any kind.
A more unlikely conjunction of elements can hardly be conceived than that of the ascetic, gloomy Calvinwith the lively, self-indulgent Genevese, to whom life meant present enjoyment, and religion a pleasant addition to existence on festivals and Sundays, to be put off and on with their holiday garments and less to be thought of than the next excursion to the mountains in summer, or the approaching assembly for merriment and the dance in winter.
To Calvin life and its import wore a totally different aspect. To him the present was but a prelude to the future, a discipline preparing for eternity, and religion therefore the great end and aim of existence. Anchorite himself in the truest sense of the word, he would possibly have had herbs the food, the crystal spring the drink of the community. Fatalist too to a great extent through his doctrine of election and predestination, the joys of life—if life perchance had any joys—and its trials—and they were many, were to be taken with like passiveness and equanimity. Even the inclemencies of the seasons, as dispensations of providence, were not to be over-anxiously guarded against: the school-house windows, it is true, were to be glazed or protected in some sort by diaphanous skins or horn; but this was to be no higher than their lower halves; and in so much only that the snow-drift, the wind and the rain might not interfere with the work of the scholars.
Conscious himself, through natural endowment and added learning, of superiority to all about him, Calvin had little or no sympathy with the liberty the Genevesewere so proud of having achieved. A despotism was his ideal of civil government; and his proclaimed purpose from the first in settling at Geneva was to make the city a stronghold of the Gospel, its people subjects of the Lord, and their faith and morals a model of all that had been proposed by the Reformation in the sense in which he understood it. And how much he differed in this from Luther, and Zwingli, need not be said. The
Wer liebt nicht Weiber, Wein und GesangEin Narr ist er und bleibts sein Lebenslang68
Wer liebt nicht Weiber, Wein und GesangEin Narr ist er und bleibts sein Lebenslang68
Wer liebt nicht Weiber, Wein und GesangEin Narr ist er und bleibts sein Lebenslang68
of him of the Wartburg, must have sounded as simple profanity to Calvin.
That Calvin’s heavy hand was borne with by the Genevese for two years, in the first instance, with no small amount of discontent, indeed, but with no outbreak of rebellion, must be set down, we imagine, to the credit of human nature, which endures for a season the irksome and even the ill, in hope of the good to follow; but when the pressure is crushing, and there is no prospect of alleviation, resistance, inevitably, follows in the end.
Calvin and the special Court he had inaugurated under the title of the Consistory, had been anxious to impose some new and still more stringent ordinance on the city, but the Council, whose sanction was required before any of the consistorial edicts could have way,refused assent, and the citizens, emboldened by this, forthwith appeared in open rebellion against what they rightly construed as the tyranny and self-assertion of the clergy. So unpopular in fact did the whole clerical party become at this time, that its leader and his colleague Farel were formally banished from the city, and the subordinate ministers had to shrink into something like obscurity if they would escape the necessity of accompanying them.
In sore displeasure with the ungrateful conduct of the people, as he regarded it, Calvin sought shelter first in Basle and then in Strasburg, where he was welcomed by his brother Reformers, and by and by provided with honourable means of subsistence, by an appointment as Professor of Theology in the University.
But he was not destined long to enjoy the leisure of the Professor’s chair. Before two years had elapsed, the more moderate, orderly, and pious party had come again into power in Geneva, and he was waited on by a deputation, headed by Amied Perrin, a man of the highest influence among his fellow citizens, and entreated to return and save them from themselves; orderly existence, not otherwise attainable as it seemed, being seen after all to be not too dearly bought even by heavy payments in the shape of subserviency to theocratic rule.
Calvin returned to Geneva, then, and under circumstances that gave him a great advantage over thedifficulties he had formerly encountered in carrying into effect the system of discipline he was bent on introducing. Perrin’s appearance at the head of the deputation to Strasburg, he had seen as an omen of the best augury; for Perrin’s influence in the Civic Council was very great, and his approval of any measure proposed, was taken as a sufficient guarantee by the citizens at large, of its value. But Perrin was ambitious, and certainly reckoned without his host when he hoped by patronising John Calvin to make him in any way the instrument of his own selfish or party designs;
Two stars keep not their orbit in one sphere;
Two stars keep not their orbit in one sphere;
Two stars keep not their orbit in one sphere;
and if Perrin was bent on power, so was Calvin.
Perrin, it may be, had never heartily sympathised with the Reformation in its religious aspects; he certainly sympathised still less with the Reformer. A man of pleasure at heart, he was perhaps somewhat indifferent to religion. Ready enough to abet Calvin in his austerities towards the many, he was minded to keep his own neck and the necks of his friends out of the yoke. Calvin, however, had no idea of anything of the kind: his law was of general application, or it had no significance; his rule wasoneand it was for all. No wonder, therefore, that Perrin’s league with the Reformer came to an end ere long; and that when it was not open dissidence between them, it was always smouldering enmity.
Calvin’s grand instrument in enforcing his disciplinewas the Consistory, an assembly made up of the entire acting clergy of Geneva, with a limited number—no more than twelve—of the laity added. This body was entrusted with very extensive powers, which it may be imagined were not suffered to lie idle, when we find it pretending to regulate the head, and even the foot, gear of the women; intruding itself into the dwellings of the people, too, and looking into their saucepans and pint pots to see that there was no indulgence in the way of eating and drinking!
Supported by a certain number of the native Genevese, Calvin’s hands were immensely strengthened by the crowd of refugees for conscience sake who poured into Geneva from France and Italy, to escape the persecution that had already begun to rage in these countries. Henry II. of France, having presented his mistress, Diana of Poitiers, with the proceeds of all confiscations for heresy, her agents were indefatigable in hunting out converts to the doctrines of Luther and bringing them to justice, as it was called: the greater the number of heretics burned, the higher rose the fame for piety of the profligate king, and in like measure the revenue of the heartless courtesan.
The refugees as a rule, and almost as a matter of necessity, were entirely devoted to the Reformer; and having been most liberally met by the Genevese at first, and put on a footing of all but perfect political equality, they made themselves felt, through their numbers, in the frequently recurring elections thatformed elements in the Genevese Republican system. Favoured in all by Calvin, the strangers, as they increased in numbers, came at length to be ever more and more disliked and distrusted by the native population; so that Calvin may be found using language such as this, when, speaking in the same breath of the fugitives, his friends, and of the people who sheltered both him and them within their walls:—‘They (the Genevese) are dissatisfied with you (the Refugees), because you run not riot with them in their disorderly and barren lives.’ The native population, in a word, found themselves, ere long, controlled and overcrowed by a host of aliens, led by a bigoted and intolerant ecclesiastic—a state of things never to be patiently endured, but to be ended at the first favourable moment; and it is to the culminating dissatisfaction of the Genevese with clerical rule in 1553, much akin to that of the year 1538, when Calvin had been forced to quit the field, that Beza refers in the passage quoted above.
So unpopular had Calvin again become in the year 1553, that, in writing to one of his friends, he speaks of discontent and distrust as universally prevalent, especially among the more youthful of the population. ‘The accumulated rancour of their hearts,’ he says, ‘breaks out from time to time; so that when I show myself in the street, the curs are hounded on me: hiss! hiss! is shouted to them; and they snap at my legs and tear my clothes.’ Calvin must in truth have had a trying time of it during most of the years he lived among theGenevese; his own bed could as little have been of roses without thorns, as he suffered the beds of the citizens to be of down; for, save during brief lulls, he and they seem to have passed their lives in a state of covert, when it was not one of open, warfare.
One of the earlier hostile moves of the civil Council in the present crisis against the Reformer was the exclusion, from the Greater Council of the State, of some members of the Minor Council, known to be among the number of his adherents. More than this, his enemies having come to outnumber his friends in the lately elected Council, he found himself frequently outvoted in directions in which he had been used to think of his wish or his will as already the law. Among those who had now obtained a seat in the Supreme Council, was one whom he had put under the consistorial ban for some infringement of discipline, and forbidden, until he showed signs of amendment, to present his child for baptism. To choose Councillors from among persons such as this, however, was, in Calvin’s eyes, to fly in the face not only of all authority, but of the Almighty himself.
Another move against him was a resolution taken by the Council to deprive the Refugees of the arms with which they, like the native population, had been entrusted at an earlier period for the common defence. This was taken greatly to heart by Calvin, who stigmatised it as a ‘barbarous and brutal act, perpetrated by enemies of the Gospel against exiles for Christ’ssake.’ But the Council did not stop here in showing its hostile mood. The priests, in the olden time, had been privileged like the rest of the Community to be present at the deliberations of the Council, and the Ministers, their successors, had never been challenged in their title to show themselves as auditors in the same way. They were now, however, by a resolution of the Council, declared incompetent to appear at its sittings without special permission given. Of no great moment in itself or politically considered, this interdict pointed with even needless significance to mislike and mistrust of the clergy as a body, and of their distinguished head in particular—the Council would neither have him nor his followers immediately informed of all the business they had in hand.
How keenly all these proceedings were felt by Calvin is apparent from the tone of the letters he wrote to more than one of his friends at this time. To his friend Sulzer, of Basle, he says that for the last two years they pass their lives at Geneva as if they were living amid the declared enemies of the Gospel! and he complains bitterly of the interference he suffers in the exercise of his multifarious functions.
Among the particular incidents that tended to widen the breach between Calvin with the ecclesiastical party behind him, and the civil authorities backed by the more liberally disposed of the citizens, was the case of Philibert Berthelier, one of the Councillors, a man of note, respected and much looked up to by theGenevese; for he was the son of that Philibert Berthelier who had nobly striven for the liberties of the city, in former years, and gone to his death on the scaffold in their assertion. Berthelier, some eighteen months or so before, for an offence against one or other of the arbitrary ordinances of the Consistory—for having gone to a ball with his wife and daughter, we think, they having further exceeded in the matter of dress—had fallen under the interdict of the Ministers, and been forbidden to present himself at the celebration of the Lord’s supper, until he had made submission and promised amendment.
Now Berthelier was not only a man of weight in the Republic politically, but in the opinion of his fellow citizens, of really irreproachable life and conversation; and, his friends being then in power, he took steps to have the interdict removed, which kept him from gratifying his pious feelings by partaking of the commemorative feast. To this end he presented a petition to the Council, setting forth the grievance under which he laboured, and praying for relief; and they, on their part, took it on them forthwith not only to absolve him of the disability of which he complained, but, proceeding a step farther, they declared the Consistory incompetent in time to come to pronounce sentences of Excommunication at all; transferring the right to do so from the Ecclesiastical Assembly to the Minor Council of the State.
This was felt by Calvin as the heaviest blow thathad yet been dealt him. Of course he opposed the measure with all his might. Heard in opposition to its adoption, he declared that if it were maintained the very foundations of the Reformation, in so far as Religion was concerned, would be compromised. But all his eloquence was thrown away; after long and eager discussion the decree was finally confirmed. Disgusted with the opposition he encountered at every point, Calvin—though he soon shows that he is anxious to free himself from any suspicion of the kind—appears at the time to have had serious thoughts of throwing up his charge and abandoning the city of Geneva to its own evil devices. It was probably the consciousness that if he left Geneva he would seem to be turning his back on the whole of the Reform movement, which kept him from taking the extreme step he may probably have meditated. He had become accustomed, moreover, to play the despot, and he who has once indulged in the bitter sweets of arbitrary power scarcely retires otherwise than by compulsion into the shade of private life. And then, whither was he to betake himself? Not to France, though he still looked with longing eyes towards his native country; for open heresy, such as he must have felt himself bound to profess, there led inevitably to the stake; neither to Germany, where his own peculiar views were not popular, and the several centres of the great and glorious movement towards light and freedom, brought to a head by Luther, were all adequately occupied. He must stay at Geneva,then, his ‘coign of vantage;’ abide the storm of the present, and hope for better days to come. But it was in bitterness of heart, waiting till reaction had spent itself, and his voice could again be heard as the voice of authority.
It was at this moment precisely, whilst debate and dispute, ecclesiastical and civil, were at their height, that Michael Servetus reached Geneva, and altogether unwittingly and unwillingly on his part became a subject of contention between the party of free thought, now in open rebellion against Calvin and the more rigid of his blind or compliant followers. And we shall possibly see reason to conclude that Servetus, though tried for heresy and finally condemned and done to death by slow fire for blasphemy against God, was in some measure also the victim of the political situation—the scape-goat of the two parties contending for supremacy in Geneva. Had there been less of political rancour there in the year 1553, and Servetus been allowed competent counsel to defend him, it seems to us, on the most careful consideration of the whole subject, that the proceedings would not have been suffered to take the turn they did, which led inevitably to his condemnation to death, whilst the memory of Calvin would have escaped the portentous blot that goes so far to obscure all the other great qualities that attach to his name. The world might then have had triumphs within the domain of physical science other than the discovery of the lesser circulation of the blood,from the man of genius; and the Reformation—type of the holy cause of human progress—have advanced without the lamentable compromise of principle it suffered when its leaders sent one of the very foremost men of his age to the stake.
In presence of the individual he had come to look on as his personal enemy as well as the enemy of God, Calvin appears to have forgotten all his earlier aspirations after toleration. He was not now thinking of himself as editor of ‘Seneca on Clemency,’ when to the text of his author enjoining self-control or moderation of mind—animi temperantia—having the power to take vengeance, he adds: ‘It belongs to the nature of the merciful man that he not only uses opportunities of vengeance with moderation, but does not avail himself of even the most tempting occasions to take revenge;’69—a noble sentence, but written in days long past, when he saw persecution for conscience sake inaugurated by Francis I. Neither had he himself as author of theearlier editions of the ‘Institutions’ in his mind, where he is as emphatic in denouncing the ‘Right of the Sword’ in dealing with heresy as he was now, having become the spiritual dictator of Geneva, ready to call it at all times into requisition. Calvin’s natural temperament, in fact, disposed him to severity in furtherance of his purposes and his will. We have seen him in his letter to Farel of February 1546, threatening Servetus with death, did opportunity serve; and writing to a French lady—Madame de Cany—about or a little before the time that now engages us, in referring to some one who had behaved ungratefully both to his correspondent and himself, he says: ‘I assure you, madam, that had he not taken himself off so speedily, I should have held it my duty, in so far as it lay with me, to have had him burned alive.’70
But everything seemed to conspire against Servetus at the moment of his reaching Geneva; for almost immediately after his arrival there, and whilst his presence was still unknown to Calvin, the Reformer received a letter from a correspondent, Paul Gaddi of Cremona by name, that must have greatly strengthened his fears of Servetus’s objectionable influence in the world, and, on theological grounds, confirmed him in his purpose of pushing matters to extremities and silencing the dangerous heretic for ever, did he but find the opportunity. Gaddi, as it seems, had lately reached Zürich from the north of Italy. At Ferrara, he informshis correspondent that he had had many long and interesting conversations with the Duchess, who showed the very best and most friendly dispositions towards the Reformed Faith. But she was sorely in want of a competent person, ‘a faithful Minister of the word of God,’ as a guide against those by whom she was surrounded. Gaddi, therefore, at the desire of the Duchess requests Calvin to send her some one who would give her true instruction, and free her from the teaching ‘of the miserable Monk she has at her elbow, who seeks not after what Christ requires, but after the things that be profitable to himself.’
‘Much have I seen in these [northern] Italian cities,’ continues Gaddi, ‘and many have I met with who profess Christ; but few and far between are those who faithfully serve the Lord. Various, truly, are the heresies that there abound, so that the land is, in truth, a very Babylon. This, you may be sure, I have not beheld without extreme distress of mind and tearful eyes; but the heresy that flourishes the most of all, is the doctrine of the proud and Satanic Servetus, insomuch that many of the faithful entreat you to come forward, and controvert his writings; a task to which they think you are the more bound to apply yourself, as he boasts that no one has yet dared to write against him. I, too, if my entreaty may be of any avail, beseech you to undertake the business. I know the influence your writings have with all in Italy, who fear God. If you deigned to take pen in hand against George [he had published a tract against predestination], who was every way unworthy of your notice, for he was plunged in the deepest ignorance, how much rather ought you to come forward against this diabolical spirit, who is looked on by somany as having the highest authority in matters of doctrine. And truly his teaching, though it be of the most impious and pestilent kind, is calculated to impose on those whose eyes serve them not to see far before them. Wherefore, I entreat you yet again, to undertake the task I propose. Postpone, I pray you, for a few days your other studies; betake you to this most necessary work, and be the hammer that shall smite the enemy.Your most devoted,Paulus Gadius Cremonensis.Zürich, July 23rd, 1553.71
‘Much have I seen in these [northern] Italian cities,’ continues Gaddi, ‘and many have I met with who profess Christ; but few and far between are those who faithfully serve the Lord. Various, truly, are the heresies that there abound, so that the land is, in truth, a very Babylon. This, you may be sure, I have not beheld without extreme distress of mind and tearful eyes; but the heresy that flourishes the most of all, is the doctrine of the proud and Satanic Servetus, insomuch that many of the faithful entreat you to come forward, and controvert his writings; a task to which they think you are the more bound to apply yourself, as he boasts that no one has yet dared to write against him. I, too, if my entreaty may be of any avail, beseech you to undertake the business. I know the influence your writings have with all in Italy, who fear God. If you deigned to take pen in hand against George [he had published a tract against predestination], who was every way unworthy of your notice, for he was plunged in the deepest ignorance, how much rather ought you to come forward against this diabolical spirit, who is looked on by somany as having the highest authority in matters of doctrine. And truly his teaching, though it be of the most impious and pestilent kind, is calculated to impose on those whose eyes serve them not to see far before them. Wherefore, I entreat you yet again, to undertake the task I propose. Postpone, I pray you, for a few days your other studies; betake you to this most necessary work, and be the hammer that shall smite the enemy.
Your most devoted,Paulus Gadius Cremonensis.
Zürich, July 23rd, 1553.71
SERVETUS IS ARRAIGNED ON THE CAPITAL CHARGE BY CALVIN.
In ordering the summary arrest of Servetus at the instance of Calvin, as we have seen, the Syndic only conformed with usage. But by the law of Geneva grounds for an arrest on a criminal charge must be delivered to an officer styledLe Lieutenant Criminel, or the Lieutenant of Criminal Process—a personage evidently holding a responsible position in the city—within twenty-four hours thereafter, failing which the party attached was set at liberty. To prepare the articles of impeachment required, Calvin must have spent the greater part of the night, turning over the leaves of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ for the matter of his charges. These bear very obvious marks of the haste in which they were put together, several of them being repetitions of others that had gone before, and scarcely anything like order being observed in the arrangement of the particulars adduced. Within the legal time, however, the prosecutor was ready with his articles, no fewer than thirty-eight in number, upon which, as a preliminary to further proceedings, it wasthe duty of the ‘Lieutenant Criminel’ to interrogate the prisoner, and from his replies to determine whether or not there were grounds to found what we should call a True Bill against him.
Nor was this all. Criminal charges must be made at the instance of some one who should avow himself aggrieved, and not only bind himself over to prosecute the suit he sought to institute to a conclusion, but be content to go to prison with the party he accused, and, in conformity with the requirements of the Lex Talionis, or law of retaliation, engage, in case his charges were not made good, to undergo the penalty that would befall the incriminated party if they were substantiated.
It would of course have been not only inconvenient, but unbecoming for Calvin, the real prosecutor in the case, to go into durance vile, his presence in the outer world being so much required. He had therefore to procure a substitute; and we might have expected to find William Trie again brought forward, and made to figure in setting on foot the trial for life or death at Geneva, as he had already lent himself to figure in that of Vienne. But Trie was not produced; it was a certain Nicolas de la Fontaine, a French refugee in the service of Calvin, in what capacity report speaks variously, some designating him cook, whilst others, to enhance his dignity, call him the Reformer’s Secretary. Calvin himself speaks of him familiarly asNicolaus meus, my man Nicolas. That Fontaine was really the Reformer’s cook seems now to have been satisfactorilyascertained; but he may have been a man of parts and education for all that; refugees for conscience sake could not always choose their calling in their new abodes.72
On the morning of August 14th, accordingly, Nicolas de la Fontaine presented himself before theLieutenant Criminel, Tissot, and the prisoner having been produced, De la Fontaine declared himself formally the Prosecutor of Michael Servetus of Villanova on certain criminal charges, demanding at the same time that the prisoner should, under penalties, be required to answer truthfully to each of the articles now to be alleged against him.
These articles, thirty-eight in number, are taken exclusively from Servetus’s work entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ which is assumed as having been published and found detrimental to the public peace (although it had as yet been seen by no one in Geneva but Calvin himself), not any of them from the earlier work entitled ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ the printing of which and its presumed influence in troubling the Churches of Germany, infecting the world with heresy and causing many to lose their souls, being nevertheless, as we see, the first item in the list of its author’s delinquencies. Calvin must have seen the propriety of producing the treatise on Trinitarian Error, published two and twenty years ago; but he had not a copy himself, neither could he hear of one either in Geneva or Lausanne; for hehad written to his friend Viret for aid in the matter. But Viret could not help him—he had no copy himself; his friend Sonnerius, however, he thinks, has one; ‘were he at home he would not assuredly refuse us the use of it.’ Obtaining it on Sonnerius’s return, he will send it with the least possible delay to Geneva.73
The articles of impeachment, classified and summarised, with the answers of Servetus, are as follows:
I. and II. That about twenty-four years ago he began to trouble the Churches of Germany with his errors and heresies, and published an execrably heretical book by which he infected many, and for which he had been condemned and forced to fly the country that he might escape punishment.
To this Servetus replies: That he is not conscious of having troubled any of the Churches of Germany; and though he owns that he had published a little book at Hagenau, he is not aware that he had infected anyone, and certainly was never either tried or condemned for anything he had done in Germany, neither had he been forced to fly from that country to escape punishment.
III. and IV. Item: That he has not ceased since then from spreading abroad his poison, in annotations to the Bible and to the Geography of Ptolemy, and more recently in a second book, clandestinely printed, containing an infinity of blasphemies, &c.
Replies: That it is true he wrote notes to theBible and to Ptolemy; but thinks he said nothing in them that is not good; and in the book lately printed, he does not believe that he blasphemes; but if it be shown him that he says anything amiss he is ready to amend it.
V. Item: That having been imprisoned at Vienne, when he saw that the authorities there would not accept of his retractations, he had found means to escape from prison.
Replies: That he was indeed prisoner at Vienne, having been denounced to the authorities there by Monsieur Calvin and Guillaume Trie, and had made his escape from prison, because the Priests would have burned him alive had he stayed; the prison, however, having been so kept that it seemed as though the authorities meant him to save himself.
VI., VII., VIII. Item: That he had written, published, and said that to believe there were three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the single essence of God was to forge or feign so many phantoms; to have a God parted into three, like the three-headed Cerberus of the heathen poets; all this being said in the face of such doctors of the Church as Ambrose, Augustin, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and the rest, as well as of many holy men of the present day—Melanchthon among the number, whom he had called a Belial and Satan.
Replies: That in the book he wrote on the Trinity, he had followed the teaching of the Doctors who livedimmediately after Christ and the Apostles; that he believes in a Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—but owns that he does not attach the same meaning to the wordpersonas do modern writers; and though he admits that he spoke of Melanchthon in the terms stated, it was not in any printed book or in public, but in a private letter; whilst Melanchthon, on his part, and in a printed book, had used language of the same kind towards him.
IX. to XX. and XXVI. The whole of these articles, with wearisome prolixity and iteration, refer to the transcendental theological dogmas that touch on the way and manner in which Christ is to be regarded as the Son of God; the relationship in which He stands to the ‘Word’ of the Gospel according to John, and how the Word was made Flesh; in what respect Christ is God, and in what respect he is Man, and how, as the Son of God, he could have died like a man. To these recondite propositions Servetus replies in a way that has a sufficient look of orthodoxy, and was evidently intended by him so to appear. He avows his belief in the items generally on which he is challenged with unbelief; and it may be that he could do so with a clear conscience, he putting his own interpretation on the language he used. Christ he acknowledged as the Son of God, but this was because of his having been begotten in some mysterious way by the Deity in the womb of the Virgin Mary, He not having existed actually but only potentially in the mind of God beforethe epoch of his incarnation. Christ, however, he says, wasprefiguredby the angels who make their appearance from time to time in the Hebrew Scriptures. Whenpersonsare spoken of, further, they are to be thought of asimages,formalities, not real entities or individuals; so that the three persons he acknowledges in the Godhead are but so manydispensations,modes, ormanifestationswhich the Invisible God makes of himself in creation.
XXIV., XXV. and XXXV. These articles bear upon Servetus’s conceptions of the Deity, in whose Oneness of Being he declares that he yet acknowledges not merely threehypostases, as generally said, but a hundred thousanddispositionsordispensations, so that God is part of ourselves, we part of His Spirit; theideasorpatternsof all creatures and of all things having been eternally present in the Divine Mind, though they only acquired form and substance in Creation.
XXVII. and XXIX. Item: That he had said that the soul of man was mortal; that there was nothing immortal in fact, but an elementary breath, the soul having become mortal after Adam’s transgression.
He replies by denying the allegations, and declares that he never thought the soul of man to be mortal; all he has said in his writings in connection with the subject of immortality being to the effect that the soul was clothed in corruptible elements which perished, not that the soul itself was mortal or died in its essence.
XXX., XXXI., and XXXIII. Item: That hehad spoken of Infant Baptism as a diabolical invention, competent to destroy the whole of Christianity.
He admits that he has said so, and is still of this opinion; believing as he does that none should be baptized until they had attained to years of discretion. But he adds, that if it be shown him he is mistaken in this, he is ready to submit to correction.
XXXVII. Item: That in his printed book he has made use of scurrilous and blasphemous terms of reproach in speaking of M. Calvin and the Doctrines of the Church of Geneva.
Replies: That he himself had had abusive language applied to him by Calvin in public; Calvin having said that he, Servetus, was intoxicated with his opinions; a reproach which had led him to reply in similar terms to his opponent, and to show at the same time from his writings that he was mistaken in many things.
XXXVIII. Item: That knowing his last book would not be suffered, even among the Papists, he had concealed his views from Geroult, the superintendent of the office where it was printed.
Replies: That he corrected the press at Vienne, but did not conceal his views from Geroult, who knew well enough what his opinions were.
August 15.The information taken by the Lieutenant in conformity with the course of procedure required having been communicated to the Syndicsand Council now constituted Judges in a criminal case, and, the Court of Judicature solemnly inaugurated, the prosecutor and prisoner were produced; when Nicolas de la Fontaine made a formal demand that Michael Servetus of Villanova, whom he charged with heresy, should be put upon his trial. He presented an address or petition, at the same time, in which the heads of the charges he proposed to prove against the prisoner were briefly enumerated, namely, the grave scandals and troubles he had caused among Christians for twenty-four years or thereabout; the heresies and blasphemies he had spoken and written against God with which he had infected the world; the wicked calumnies and defamations he had published against the true servants of God, more especially against Monsieur Calvin, whose honour as his Pastor, he—the prosecutor—felt bound to uphold if he himself would be accounted a Christian, and also because of the discredit that would attach to the Church of Geneva, did the prisoner go at large, condemning, as he does, and in an especial manner, the doctrine that is there preached. ‘In as much, therefore,’ continues Calvin through the mouth of Fontaine, ‘as the prisoner on his examination yesterday replied in nowise satisfactorily and simply by yea or nay to the questions put to him, as you must have perceived, the greater number of his answers being mere frivolous songs, may it please your Lordships to compel him to answer formally, without divergence or circumlocution, to each of the articlesproposed; to the end that he be not suffered to go on mocking God and your Excellencies, and that the proponent be not frustrated in his rights.
‘Now the proponent havingprima faciemade good his allegations and satisfied you that the prisoner has been guilty of writing heresy and dogmatising in the manner alleged, he begs you humbly to recognise the prisoner Michael Servetus as a criminal deserving of prosecution by your attorney-general; and that he, the proponent, be now declared free of all charge, damage, and interest in the business. Not that he shuns or declines to follow up a cause of the kind, which every child of God ought indeed to pursue to the death, but in compliance with the usages of your city, and because it is not for him to undertake duties that belong to another.’
Having taken this petition into consideration, and determined that there wasprima facieevidence of criminality on the part of the prisoner, the Council proceeded in the afternoon of the same day to the old Episcopal Palace, now turned into the Court in which criminal causes were tried, and commenced proceedings according to the forms in such cases used and provided.
THE TRIAL IN ITS FIRST PHASE.
Formally installed in the Court of Criminal Judicature, Nicolas de la Fontaine and Michael Servetus were ordered to be brought before them by the Judges; and the prosecutor declaring that he persisted in his allegations, and the prisoner being put on his oath to speak the truth under penalties to the extent of 60 sols, the Trial commenced.
To the question as to his name and condition, the prisoner replied that his name was Michael Serveto, of Villanova, in the kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, and that by profession he was a physician. The articles of impeachment already produced were then restated seriatim, and to each he was required to answer categorically. This he did, and generally in the terms he had used in his preliminary examination, but accusing Calvin, and Calvin alone, more imperatively than before, of having provoked his arrest and prosecution at Vienne, adding that had Calvin had his way, he—the prisoner—would assuredly have been burned alive. To all that had reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Nature of Christ, the relationsbetween God and created things, he spoke as he had already done. He again and pointedly denied that he had ever said the soul was mortal; but admitted having written that he thinks man commits no mortal sin before the age of twenty years, adding that ‘under the Law God had so ordered it.’ The Baptism of Infants he acknowledged to be in his eyes a diabolical invention, and calculated to corrupt the whole of Christianity; declaring however, as formerly, that if it were shown he erred in this opinion he was ready to retract and amend.
As to the alleged attacks on the Church of Geneva through the person of Calvin, he answered as before, and now added that all he had written against Calvin was with no view or desire to calumniate or injure him, but only to show him his errors; and he now offers in open congregation to make good his words by a variety of reasons, and the authority of the Scriptures.
This was to throw down the gauntlet to Calvin and offer him battle on ground he could not decline, since he too acknowledged no authority but holy writ, and we need not doubt of his readiness to take up the pledge: there was nothing indeed, as he declared, for he was present in Court watching the proceedings, that he desired more than to show himself in such a cause before all the world.74The Court may be excused for having imagined that in agreeing to such a wordy duel between Calvin and Servetus they would be letting thequestion slip out of their proper hands; or, as M. Albert Rilliet75suggests, the friends whom Servetus had among its members, measuring the mental calibre of the two men, may have feared to see him they favoured worsted by his redoubtable opponent, whose dialectical skill and theological lore were so well known to all. Deciding against the proposal of the prisoner, therefore, the tribunal determined that the trial should proceed in the usual way.
So far as they had gone we can readily conceive that the answers of Servetus must have seemed little satisfactory to the Court. On even a large proportion of the allegations made, they may have felt their incompetency to form an opinion; but upon a few they believed themselves fully able to come to a conclusion. What he had said on Infant Baptism in particular was greatly calculated to prejudice him in the minds of his Judges; the doctrine he held being one among the dangerous moral, social, and political principles of the Anabaptists, though the whole of these were emphatically disavowed and condemned by Servetus, who really appears to have had nothing in common with the dreaded sect but the opinion that Baptism should not be performed until years of discretion were attained, and that the rite should be solemnised by immersion or affusion, not by merely sprinkling the face with water.
The decision of the Court at the end of the day’s proceedings was to the effect that, as the answers of theprisoner Michael Servetus implied criminality, the trial should go on; but that the prosecutor, Nicolas de la Fontaine, whilst bound over to continue the suit, might be released on the production of sufficient bail; and this being immediately forthcoming in the person of Monsieur Antoine Calvin, brother of the Reformer, Calvin’s substitute andChef de Cuisinewas discharged from custody, whilst Servetus was remanded to gaol. Thus formally constituted prisoner on a criminal charge, Servetus now delivered to the gaoler all the money and valuables he possessed, the coin amounting to ninety-seven gold crowns, the valuables being a gold chain of the value of twenty crowns, and as many as seven gold rings set with a table diamond, a ruby and other stones of price.
August 16, the Court, constituted as usual, was observed to be less numerously attended than on the day before, but with two important additions: Philibert Berthelier among the Councillors, by right, and Germain Colladon, introduced as Counsel for De la Fontaine. Between these two men, says M. Rilliet, more perhaps than between any other notable members of the Republic of Geneva, the contrast was striking and complete. They might even severally have been assumed as representatives of the parties which divided the state and contended for mastery. Berthelier was the acknowledged head of the patriotic party, mostly native Genevese, the Libertines as they were called, from theirzealous defence of the immunities and privileges of the citizens against the old tyranny of the Roman Catholic Bishops and the recently introduced consistorial rules and regulations of the Reformer. As son of one of the martyrs to the public liberties of Geneva, and possessed of wealth and influence, Berthelier had long been opposed to the authority of Calvin; his patriotism and his self-respect revolting against the domineering character of the man and the stringency of his religious and sumptuary regulations, so that the struggle in which he and Colladon now engaged, with the unhappy Servetus as their subject of contention, was but an interlude in the strife that had been carried on between Berthelier and Calvin for years.
In Calvin’s arrest and prosecution of Servetus there can be no question that Berthelier, making light of the theological grounds on which the Spaniard was arraigned, and trusting to the strength of his party in the Council, believed he saw a means and opportunity of worsting his old irreconcilable enemy. He thought little, and it may be perhaps felt somewhat indifferent as to the fate that would befal the individual whose cause he espoused, did he fail in the purpose he proposed to himself. Hate of Calvin blinded him to more remote contingencies.
Colladon, engaged of course by Calvin on behalf of Nicolas de la Fontaine and the prosecution, was a man of a totally different stamp from Berthelier. A refugee from France, his native country, for conscience sake,and seeking in Geneva freedom to enjoy his religious convictions; austere in disposition, rigid in morals and punctilious in outward observance, he had been forced to fly from his home in consequence of zeal too openly expressed for the cause of the Reformation. Safe in Geneva, he gave himself heart and soul to Calvin, and was found by him among the most useful of his auxiliaries in formulating his discipline and enforcing its observance, Colladon’s familiarity with business and his legal knowledge qualifying him in every way for the part he was ambitious to play. The party of which he was a distinguished member were now in the minority, but did not so remain for long. Within two years of the time that engages us, they had gained the ascendency, and were not slow to avenge themselves on the legitimate sons of Geneva by forcing them in numbers into banishment, and filling their places by naturalising the French and Italian refugees, who continued pouring into Geneva in crowds, to escape the persecution that then raged in their native countries.
The fiery dispute in which Berthelier and Colladon engaged at this day’s sitting, seems to have concerned Calvin much more than Servetus, its ostensible subject: the FrenchReformerof Christianity far more than its would-be SpanishRestorer, was the true object of the attack and defence. The debate in the old episcopal palace, in a word, was between the representatives of the two factions that contended for supremacy in Geneva.
We have unfortunately no complete account of what transpired on this the first encounter between Berthelier and Colladon. The Records of the Criminal Court are significantly silent on the subject; but that it was violent there can be no question, so violent that the morning sitting had to be suspended before the usual hour of rising. Yet are we at no loss to divine the ground on which the presumed altercation arose, when we note the point where the blank in the proceedings occurs, coming as it does in immediate connection with the articles having reference to the subject of the Trinity. Servetus, in the course of the interrogatory to which he was subjected, having replied equivocally or unsatisfactorily as to the sense in which the word person is to be understood in speaking of the Trinitarian Mystery, Colladon must have contended that he could show by various passages of the printed book before the Court, that the prisoner now spoke otherwise of the Trinity than he really believed, and proceeded to handle him somewhat sharply, in the way Counsel learned in the Law are still wont to treat those they have under cross-examination; somewhat unfairly, too, as Berthelier may have thought, so that he interposed, and must even have said something not only in defence of the prisoner, but of the opinions incriminated. And here it was, and in consequence of the warmth of the debate, that the proceedings had to be suspended.
Before breaking up, a number of books, which had been produced by the Counsel for the prosecution insupport of his case, were directed to be left with the clerk of the Court; and each party in the suit, having noted its case, was ordered to be in readiness to go on at the next sitting. The books in question were the works of Melanchthon and the letters of Œcolampadius, the Geography of Ptolemy, and the Bible of Pagnini; the two last of which the prisoner owned to having edited and annotated. The most important of all, however, was the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ upon the interpretation of some of the passages of which, in contrast with the present replies of the prisoner, arose the altercation that led to the momentary suspension of the proceedings.
From the Registers of the Grand Council we learn that on the morrow of the stormy session of the sixteenth, Calvin presented himself before the Council and demanded an audience. He had learned, he said, that Philibert Berthelier had meddled in the suit against Michael Servetus, and even spoken in defence of some of the incriminated passages of the prisoner’s book—a mortal offence in Calvin’s eyes, and an indication, not to be mistaken, of hostility to himself as virtual pursuer of the obnoxious heretic. The time had come, in fact, when, throwing aside disguise, Calvin must come from behind Nicolas de la Fontaine, avow himself the prosecutor, and nip in the bud, if he could, the new growth of rebellion against his rule for which Servetus, he saw, was now to be made the pretext.
In the interference of Berthelier, which we seemust have given such umbrage to Calvin, we have the first open indication by the Libertine party of their sympathy with the prisoner; sympathy, real or pretended, that may be said to have sealed the fate of the unhappy Servetus; for the issue, though continuing to be debated on the ground of speculative theology, on which so many questions might be raised and doubts entertained, was henceforth to a certain extent transferred to the domain of politics, on which there was the one practical issue involved, as to who or which party that divided the state of Geneva should have the upper hand.
It may be fairly presumed that Calvin, with the great advantage he had in natural talent and acquirements, had no difficulty in satisfying the majority of the Judges of the culpability of Servetus on theological grounds; his opinions differed too obviously from all they had ever been led to believe concerning the Trinity and Infant Baptism, especially, to leave them in any doubt as to this. Servetus differed, in fact, on every point brought forward, from the doctrine familiar to the mind of Geneva—enough of itself to lay him under suspicion; and, accepting Calvin’s interpretation of the incriminated passages of his book, which his Judges must have felt bound in some sort to do, they could have had nothing for it, had the prosecution now insisted on having made out their case, but to proceed to judgment, and pronounce the prisoner guilty. But this was not done; the Judges appear not only to have feltno kind of hostility towards the solitary stranger in the singular and painful position in which he stood, but even to have been moved to something like compassion in his behalf.