CalvinServatus

FROM time to time history seems to choose out of the millions one outstanding figure, as if to
symbolize some peculiar philosophic outlook. Such a man need not be a genius of the first rank.
Often destiny is satisfied to make a haphazard name conspicuous among many, which is
thenceforward ineradicably impressed in the memories of our race. Thus Miguel Servetus was
not a man of supreme intelligence, but his personality has been made memorable by his tragic
fate. He had many gifts, multifarious talents, but they were ill-assorted and badly arranged. He
had a powerful, alert, inquisitive, and stubborn mind, but he inclined to flit from one problem to
another; his keen desire to unveil the truth was blunted by a lack of creative clarity. His Faustian
intelligence never acquired a thorough knowledge of any science, although he studied them all.
He was a free lance in philosophy, medicine, and theology, often dazzling the reader by his bold
observations, but soon lapsing into quackery. Once, amid his prophetic revelations, he made a
pioneer observation, announcing the medical discovery of the lesser or pulmonary circulation;
but he never took the trouble to exploit his discovery, or to trace its relationships in the world of
scientific achievement; so his flash of insight was a transitory gleam of illumination upon the
dark visage of his century. He had much intellectual energy, though he was incapable of
following his own lights, and nothing but the sustained endeavour to reach a goal can transform
an able spirit into a creative genius.

It has become a commonplace to say that every Spaniard has some of the traits of a Don
Quixote; but certainly the remark applies admirably to Miguel Servetus, the Aragonian. His
physique was frail, his face pallid, with a beard trimmed to a point, so that outwardly he
resembled the long, lean hero of La Mancha, while inwardly he was consumed by Don Quixote's
splendid though grotesque craving to fight on behalf of the absurd, and to tilt blindly against the
windmills of reality. Utterly devoid of the power of self-criticism, always making or believing
himself to have made new discoveries, this knight errant of theology, lance in hand, rode
furiously against all possible obstacles. Nothing but adventure could stimulate him, nothing but
the preposterous, the unusual, the dangerous; and he laid about him contentiously, exchanging
shrewd blows with those who differed from him as to what was right or wrong, never joining a
party or belonging to a clan, the eternal solitary, imaginative in the good sense and fanciful in
the bad-and always unique and eccentric.

Being thus puffed up with conceit, a man everlastingly ready to do battle, it was inevitable that
he should raise up adversaries wherever he went. Still, his student days, first at Saragossa, and
then at Toulouse, were comparatively peaceful. Charles V's confessor, making his acquaintance
at the University of Toulouse, carried him off as private secretary to Italy and subsequently took
him to the Augsburg Diet. There the young humanist, like most of his contemporaries,
succumbed to the prevailing passions as far as the great religious dispute was concerned. The
ferment of the conflict between the old doctrine and the new set to work in him. Where all were
combative, this contentious fellow must be combative like the rest; where so many were eager
to reform the Church, he must have a hand in the game; and he considered, in his haste and
heat, that every previous departure from the teachings and solutions of the ancient Church had
been timid, lukewarm, indecisive. Even such able innovators as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were
not revolutionary enough for him in their cleansing of the gospels, for they had not broken away
from the dogma of the Trinity. Servetus, with the uncompromising spirit of youth, declared, at
twenty years of age, that the Council of Nicaea had decided wrongly, and that the dogma of the
three eternal hypostases was incompatible with the unity of the divine nature.

So radical a view was not anything remarkable in that period when the currents of religious
excitement ran high. Whenever values are being revalued and laws are being restated, people
claim for themselves the right of breaking away from tradition and of thinking independent
thoughts. What was disastrous to Servetus was that he took over from the quarrelsome
theologians, not only their fondness for debate, but also their worst quality, their fanatical and
dogmatical disputatiousness. He was eager to show the leaders of the Reformation that their
remoulding of the ecclesiastical doctrines had been wholly inadequate, and that he, Miguel
Servetus, was alone acquainted with the truth. He hastened to visit the greatest scholars of the
day-in Strasburg, Martin Bucer and Capito; in Basle, Oecolampadius--to urge them to make short
work, as far as the Evangelical Church was concerned, with the "erroneous" dogma of the
Trinity. The reader can imagine the fury and disgust of these dignified and mature preachers and
professors, when a Spanish greenhorn forced his way into their houses and, with the uncontrol
of a vigorous but hysterical temperament, insisted that they instantly modify their views and
unhesitatingly adopt his revolutionary thesis. They felt as if the devil himself had sent one of his
minions, and they crossed themselves to exorcize this fanatical heretic. Oecolampadius drove
him away as he would have driven away a rabid dog, declaring him to be a "Jew, Turk,
blasphemer, and a man possessed." Bucer, from his pulpit, denounced Servetus as a child of
the devil. Zwingli expressly warned his adherents against this "criminal Spaniard, whose false
and evil doctrine would, if it could, sweep away our whole Christian religion."

But, just as little as the knight of La Mancha was to be cured of his delusions by abuse or
violence, just so little would this quixotic theologian listen to argument or accept reproof. If the
leaders could not understand him, if the wise and the prudent would not listen to him in their
studies, then he must carry on his campaign among the public at large. The whole Christian
world should read his theses. He would publish a book. At twenty-two, Servetus gathered
together the last of his funds and had his views printed at Hagenau (De Trinitatis erroribus libri
septera, 1531). Thereupon the storm broke. Bucer did not hesitate to say that the rascal
deserved "to have the guts torn out of his living body"; and throughout the Protestant world
Servetus from this hour was considered to be nothing more nor less than an emissary of Satan.

It need hardly be said that one who had assumed so provocative an attitude, who had declared
both Catholic and Protestant doctrines to be false, could no longer find a resting-place among
Christians, or discover a roof beneath which he could lay his head. From the time when Miguel
Servetus had, in cold type, been guilty of espousing the "Arian heresy," he was hunted like a
wild beast. Nothing could save him but disappearance from the scene and the adoption of an
alias, since his name was in such evil odour. He therefore returned to France as Michel de
Villeneuve and, under this fancy appellation, secured work as proof-corrector to the Brothers
Trechsel in Lyons. In this new sphere of life his amateurish but strongly imaginative insight soon
found fresh stimulus and other polemic possibilities. When correcting the proofs of an edition of
Ptolemy's geography, Servetus, betwixt night and morning, transformed himself into a
professional geographer, and provided the work with a detailed introduction. Again, when he
was revising the proofs of medical books, his mobile mind became that of a doctor, and ere long
he did actually devote himself to the study of medicine. Removing to Paris with this end in view,
he worked beside Vesalius upon the preparation of dissections and gave anatomical lectures.
But here likewise, as before in the field of theology, the impatient man, ere he had completed his
studies and had been granted a medical degree, began to teach others and tried to excel his
competitors. Then, in the medical school at Paris, he announced that he was going to give
lectures on mathematics, meteorology, astronomy, and astrology; but the physicians at the
university were exasperated at this mishmash of astrology with the healing art, and they took
some of his quackeries amiss. Servetus Villanovus fell into disfavour with the authorities; and
the parlement of Paris received a complaint that he was doing much mischief with his "judicial
astrology," a science condemned both by divine and mundane laws. Once more Servetus saved
himself by flight, although not before the identity of "Michel de Villeneuve" with the wanted
heretic Miguel Servetus had been disclosed. Still, Villanovus the instructor quitted Paris as
inconspicuously as Servetus the theologian had previously quitted Germany. For a long time
nothing was heard of him; and when he cropped up again, he was wearing a new mask. Who
would suspect that Pierre Paulmier, archbishop of Vienne, could have engaged as his physician
in ordinary one who had been outlawed as a heretic and condemned by the parlement of Paris as
a charlatan? Anyhow Michel de Villeneuve was careful, in Vienne, to abstain from enunciating
heretical theses. He sang small and remained inconspicuous; he visited and cured many of the
sick; he earned considerable sums of money; and the wealthy burghers of Vienne raised their
hats whenever, with Spanish grandeza, Monsieur le docteur Michel de Villeneuve, physician in
ordinary to his archiepiscopal eminence, encountered them in his walks abroad. "What a
distinguished, pious, learned, and modest man!"

Truth to tell, the arch-heretic was by no means dead in this passionate and impatient Spaniard.
Miguel Servetus was still animated by the old spirit of inquiry and unrest. When an idea has
taken possession of a man, he is as if stricken by a fever. His ideals acquire independent vitality,
seeking expansion and liberty. Inevitably to every thinker comes the hour when some leading
notion seeks exit as irresistibly as a splinter seeks issue from a suppurating finger, as a child
seeks to come forth from the mother's womb, as a swelling fruit seeks to burst its shell. A man as
passionate and self-assertive as Servetus will not, in the long run, endure the constraint of
thinking his leading thoughts solely for himself; he craves irresistibly to compel the world to
think with him. For Servetus it was a daily torment to see how the Protestant leaders continued
to promulgate what he regarded as the erroneous dogmas of infant baptism and the Trinity; how
Christendom was still contaminated by "antiChristian" errors. Was it not his duty to come into the
open and proclaim his mission on behalf of the true faith? We cannot doubt that Servetus must
have suffered spiritual agonies during these years of enforced silence. The unspoken message
rioted within him, and, as an outlaw and one for whose safety it was essential that he should
remain invisible, he was compelled to keep his mouth shut. Servetus at length decided to find a
sympathetic correspondent with whom to carry on intellectual converse. Since, in his present
home, he could not venture to discuss his theological convictions with anyone by word of
mouth, he would discuss them secretly in writing.

The disastrous thing for Servetus was that, in his blindness, he pitched upon Calvin as a
theologian worthy of his confidence, hoping that this bold and revolutionary innovator would be
ready to sympathize with even bolder interpretations of Holy Writ. It may be that, in approaching
Calvin, Servetus was merely renewing an old acquaintanceship and resuming a conversation
begun long before. As undergraduates they had certainly met in Paris; but it was not until Calvin
had become master of Geneva, and until Michel de Villeneuve was physician in ordinary to the
archbishop of Vienne, that through the intermediation of Jehan Frellon, scholar and publisher in
Lyons, correspondence was opened between the pair. The initiative came from Servetus. With
urgency, nay with importunacy, he applied to Calvin, hoping to win for his anti-Trinitarian theses
the support of the most outstanding theoretician of the Reformation. With this end in view,
Servetus wrote letter after letter. Calvin's answers were at first only in the tone of one who
corrects errors in dogma. Believing it to be his duty to lead back into the true path those who
had strayed, to guide wandering sheep into the true fold, Calvin did his best to convince
Servetus of error. But at length he grew irritated at the overbearing and presumptuous tone
used by Servetus. Assuredly, to write to Calvin, authoritarian, opinionated, and prone to become
splenetic at the slightest contradiction: "I have often explained to you that you are on the wrong
path in disregarding the vast differences between the three divine essences," was to touch a
dangerous adversary on the raw. But when Servetus at length dared to send the distinguished
author of the lnstitutio religionis Christianae a copy of that book in which, like a master dealing
with a schoolboy's composition, the Spaniard had marked the supposed errors in the margin, it is
easy to understand how wrathful must have been the Genevese dictator at such arrogance on
the part of an amateur theologian. "Servetus seizes my books and defiles them with abusive
remarks much as a dog bites a stone and gnaws it," wrote Calvin contemptuously to his friend
Farel. Why should he waste his time disputing with such an incurable idiot? He rids himself of
Servetus's arguments with a kick. "I care as little for this fellow's words as I care for the hee-haw
of a donkey ('le hin-han d'un ane')."

The unlucky Don Quixote, instead of perceiving before it was too late against what an
armour-plate of self-satisfaction he was tilting with his slender lance, returned to the charge.
Calvin, who will have nothing to do with him, is the very man whom, above all others, he wants to
convince. It almost seemed as if Servetus, to quote Calvin's words, had been "possessed by the
devil." Instead of fighting shy of Calvin as the most formidable of possible opponents, Servetus
sent to Calvin the proofs of a work of his own which had not yet issued from the press, a
theological hook, whose very title was enough to enrage Calvin. For Servetus had named his
work Christianismi Restitutio, in order to demonstrate to the world that Calvin's Institutio must
be counterblasted by a Restitutio. For Calvin the morbid. controversialist's craving to convert
him, and the Spaniard's importunity, were now too much. He wrote to inform Frellon, the
bookseller who had acted as intermediary in this correspondence, saying that he (Calvin) had a
better use for his time than to read the letters of such an inflated idiot. Simultaneously, he
penned words which were subsequently to be of terrible moment. Here is what he wrote to
Farel: "Servetus wrote to me lately, and besides his letter sent me a great volume full of his
ravings, maintaining with incredible presumption in the letter that I shall there find things
stupendous and unheard of till now. He declares himself ready to come hither if I wish him to;
but I will not pledge my faith to him; for if he did come here, I would see to it, in so far as I have
authority in this city, that he should not leave it alive."

We do not know whether Servetus was informed of this threat, or whether (in a lost letter)
Calvin may have given him a hint of it. Certainly the Spaniard seems at length to have realized
that he had roused in Calvin a spirit of murderous hatred. For the first time he became uneasy
about the manuscript, which he had sent Calvin "sub sigillo secreti"; for it might prove
disastrous that this document was in the hands of one who so openly expressed hostility. "Since
you opine," wrote Servetus to Calvin in alarm, "that I am Satan, I propose to go no further. Send
me back my manuscript, and may all be well with you. But if you honestly believe the pope to be
Antichrist, you must also be convinced that the Trinity and infant baptism, which are parts of
papistical doctrine, are devilish dogmas."

Calvin made no reply. He had no intention of sending Servetus's manuscript back to the author,
but put the heretical writing carefully away in a drawer, where he could lay his hand on it
whenever he should need it. For both the contending parties knew, after the acrimony of their
last utterances, that a fiercer struggle was inevitable; and, his mind full of gloomy anticipations,
Servetus wrote at this time to a theologian: "It is now perfectly plain to me that I am doomed to
suffer death in this cause, but the thought cannot shake my courage. As one of Jesus's
disciples, I shall advance in the footsteps of My Master."

Castellio and Servetus and a hundred others had occasion to learn that it is extremely
dangerous to contradict so fanatical a dogmatist as Calvin, or to challenge such a man even
upon minor points of doctrine. In these respects Calvin was true to type, being rigid and
methodical. He did not succumb to outbursts of passion, as did Luther, the berserk, or to the
churlishness which was characteristic of Farel. His hatred was as harsh, as sharp, as incisive, as
a rapier, not deriving, like Luther's, from the blood, from temperament, from passion, or from
spleen. Calvin's tenacious and cold rancour sprang from the brain, and his hatred had a terribly
good memory. Calvin never forgot. De la Mare, the pastor, wrote of him: "Quand il a la dent
contre quelqu'un ce n'est jamais fait." A name once inscribed upon the tablets of his memory
would remain indelible until the man himself had been erased from the book of life. Thus it
mattered not that several years would elapse during which Calvin heard no more of Servetus.
Calvin continued to bear Servetus in mind. The compromising documents lay silent in the drawer
where they had been put for safe keeping; arrows were ready in his quiver; hatred smouldered
in his inexorable soul.

For years Servetus made no move. He gave up the attempt to convince a man who was
unteachable, devoting himself passionately to his work. With the most touching devotion, the
archbishop's physician in ordinary toiled in secret at his Christianismi Restitutio, a book which
would, he hoped, effect a reformation enormously superior to Calvin's, Luther's, and Zwingli's. It
would be true where their reformations had been false. Servetus's reformation was to redeem
the world by the diffusion of genuine Christianity.

For Servetus was never that "cyclopean despiser of the gospel" that Calvin in later days
pilloried; and still less was he the bold free-thinker and atheist whom those that believed
themselves to be his followers sometimes extol today. Servetus always kept on the rails in
religious matters. How earnestly he regarded himself as a pious Christian who must be prepared
to stake his life for faith in the divine is shown by the appeal in the preface to his book. "O Jesu
Christe, Son of God, thou which art given us from heaven, reveal thyself to thy servant, that so
great a revelation may become truly clear to us. It is thy cause which I, following an inward divine
urge, have undertaken to defend. In former years I made a first attempt. Now, since the times are
fulfilled, I am constrained to do so anew. Thou hast instructed us not to hide our light under a
bushel. Woe unto me if I fail to proclaim the truth!"

The precautions taken by Servetus in the typesetting of this book show that the author was well
aware of the dangers he was conjuring up by its publication. What a desperate undertaking for
one who was physician in ordinary to an archbishop to issue, in a gossipy provincial town, a
heretical book running to seven hundred pages. Not only the author, but .also the publisher and
the distributors, were staking their lives upon this foolhardy venture. Yet Servetus gladly
devoted all that he had saved during his practice as physician to fire his hesitating
collaborators. It was thought expedient to remove the printing press from its usual place to a
remote house rented by the author solely for this purpose. There, in defiance of the Inquisition,
the heretical theses were set up and printed by trustworthy persons who swore to guard the
secret. The finished volume contained no sign to show where it had been printed or published.
Servetus, however, disastrously for himself, left in the colophon, over the date, the identifying
initials M.S.V. (Miguel Servetus Villanovus), thus giving the bloodhounds of the Inquisition an
irrefutable proof of authorship.

Still, it was a work of supererogation for Servetus to betray himself thus, since his ruthless
adversary, though apparently slumbering, was in reality kept awake by the spur of hatred. The
elaborate organization for espionage that Calvin had established in Geneva-a network whose
meshes grew continually finer-extended its operations into neighbouring lands, being in France
even more effective than was the Holy Inquisition. Before Servetus's book had been actually
published, when the thousand volumes were still warehoused in Lyons or were on their way to
the Frankfort book-fair, when so few individual copies had been distributed that today only three
have come down to us, Calvin was already in possession of one. The Genevese dictator at once
addressed himself to the task of annihilating both the heretic and his writings.

Not many people are aware that Calvin opened his campaign against Servetus by a furtive
attempt at "liquidation" of an adversary which was even more repulsive than the subsequent
success on the plateau of Champel. For if, after the perusal of what he naturally regarded as an
extremely heretical book, Calvin wanted to thrust his opponent into the clutches of the
Inquisition, he might have chosen an open and honest way. It would have sufficed for him, from
the pulpit, to warn Christendom against the book, and the familiars of the Inquisition would have
discovered the author of this wicked work even though he lived within the shadow of the
archiepiscopal palace. But the great reformer saved the papal authorities the trouble of looking
for Servetus, and did so in the most perfidious way. Vainly do Calvin's apologists seek to defend
him even in this; their attempts throw a most sinister light upon his character. Calvin, who in his
personal behaviour was an honest zealot and a man animated by profoundly religious intentions,
became unscrupulous whenever his doctrine was impugned, or when the "cause" seemed to
him at stake. For his dogma, for his party, he was ready (like Loyola) to approve any means that
were effective. Almost as soon as Servetus's book was in his hands, one of Calvin's intimates, a
French refugee named Guillaume Trie, wrote from Geneva, under date of February 16, 1553, to a
cousin, Antoine Arneys-as fanatical a Catholic as he himself was a fanatical Protestant. In this
letter Trie began by describing in general terms how effectively Protestant Geneva suppressed
heretical intrigues, whereas in Catholic France these weeds were allowed to grow rankly. Then,
what had opened as friendly chaff suddenly grew serious. In France, for instance, there was a
heretic who ought to be burned the instant the authorities could lay hands on him ("qui merite
bien d'etre brule partout ou il sera").

Can we fail to be reminded of Calvin's "if he did come here, I would see to it . . . that he should
not leave [the city] alive"? But Trie, Calvin's henchman, wrote even more plainly, disclosing the
miscreant's name: "I refer to an Aragonian Spaniard, whose real name is Miguel Servetus, but
who calls himself Michel de Villeneuve, and practises as a physician"; and he went on to give
the title of Servetus's book, the table of contents, and a transcript of the first four pages. He
concluded his letter with a lamentation concerning the sinfulness of the world.

This Genevese mine was skilfully laid to explode in the right place. Everything worked out as
the informer had designed. The pious Catholic Arneys, beside himself with indignation, hurried
off to show the letter to the ecclesiastical authorities of Lyons; and with equal speed the cardinal
betook himself to the papal Inquisitor, Matthieu Ory. The stone thus set rolling by Calvin reached
the bottom of the hill with frightful momentum. The denunciation was sent from Geneva on
February 26, and on March 16 Michel de Villeneuve was formally accused at Vienne.

It must have been a great disappointment to the zealous informers in Geneva that, after all,
their mine missed fire. Some helpful person must have cut the fuse. Probably the archbishop of
Vienne gave his physician in ordinary a timely hint. When the Inquisitor appeared in Vienne, the
printing press had mysteriously disappeared; the journeymen printers solemnly swore that they
had never set up or printed any such work; and the highly respected physician Villanovus
indignantly repudiated his alleged identity with Miguel Servetus. Strangely enough, the
Inquisition was content with having made a protest, and the remarkable forbearance of this
terrible institution strengthens our belief that some powerful person must have extended a
protective hand over the culprit. The ecclesiastical court, which usually began its work with the
thumb-screw and the rack, left Villeneuve at large; the Inquisitor returned to Lyons, having
effected nothing; and Arneys was informed that his accusation had proved unfounded. The
Genevese attempt to get rid of Servetus by setting the Inquisition to work proved a failure. It is
possible that the whole matter would have come to nothing had not Arneys applied to Geneva,
begging his cousin Trie to supply additional and more damnatory material concerning the
aforesaid heretic.

Up to now it might seem possible to suppose, if we wish to take a lenient view, that Trie acted
on his own initiative in thus lodging a charge with his Catholic cousin about an author with whom
he had no personal acquaintance; and that neither he nor Calvin had dreamed that their
denunciation would leak through to the papal authorities. But now, when the machine of justice
had been set in motion, and when the group of zealots in Geneva must know that Arneys was
writing to them for further information, not in idle curiosity, but under promptings from the
Inquisition, they could not doubt the nature of the springes they were setting. Surely an
evangelical pastor would shrink from playing the part of informer to the terrible authority which
had roasted so many Protestants over a slow fire! But Servetus had good reason for thundering
at Calvin: "Do you not realize that it ill becomes a servant of the gospel to make himself an
official accuser, and to take advantage of his official position in order to set snares?"

Calvin, let me repeat, was unscrupulous when his doctrine was at stake. Servetus must be
"liquidated"; and since Calvin was a good hater, he cared not a jot what means were employed.
Nothing could have been more shameful than these means. Trie's second letter to Arneys,
unquestionably dictated by Calvin, was a masterpiece of hypocrisy. The writer declared himself
greatly astonished that his cousin had handed over the letter to the Inquisition. "It was intended
only for your eye," he said. "I had no other object than to give you a demonstration how little zeal
for the faith have those who style themselves pillars of the Church." But now, when he knew
that the faggots had already been piled, instead of repudiating the idea of further activity on the
part of the Inquisition, this contemptible informer went on to say unctuously that, since the
mistake had already been made, there could be no doubt "God purposes to rid Christendom of
this foul and deadly plague." What followed seems unbelievable. After dragging God's name in to
cover an inhuman manifestation of human hatred, Trie sent his cousin the most compromising
material he could find: letters penned by Servetus's own hand together with portions of the
manuscript of the book. Now those who were to take sharp measures against a heretic could get
quickly to work.

Letters in Servetus's own handwriting were sent. How did Trie, who had never corresponded
with Servetus, get hold of such letters? There is no possibility of glossing over this matter. We
must bring Calvin, who wanted to remain in the background, out into the limelight. Servetus's
letters, and some pages of the manuscript work, were those sent by Servetus to Calvin; and
Calvin knew perfectly well for what purpose he took them out of his drawer. He knew to whom
the documents would be sent; to those very "papists" against whom, from the pulpit, he daily
fulminated as "Satan's spawn," and who were in the habit of torturing and burning his own
disciples. He could not but know that the documents were needed to bring Servetus to the stake.

Vainly, therefore, did he subsequently endeavour to cover up his tracks, writing sophistically:
"It is rumoured that I took steps to secure the arrest of Servetus by the familiars of the
Inquisition; and some even say that it was dishonourable of me to hand him over to the deadly
enemies of our faith and to fling him into the wolf's jaws. Let me ask my accusers how I could
have suddenly got into touch with the pope's satellites. It is surely incredible that I could have
any such associations, and that those who are to me as Belial was to Christ could have joined
with me in a conspiracy." But the evasion is too palpable; for when Calvin asks naively: "How
could I have suddenly got into touch with the pope's satellites?" the documents provide a clear
and crushing answer. It was through the instrumentality of his friend Trie, who, in his letter to
Arneys, frankly avows Calvin's collaboration. "I must admit that only with great pains was I able to
secure from Monsieur Calvin the documents I enclose. I do not mean to imply that he is not
convinced measures must be taken to suppress such abominable blasphemy, but that he
considers it his duty to convince heretics by sound doctrine and not to attack them with the
sword of justice." Fruitless, therefore, is the attempt (manifestly at Calvin's instigation) of this
clumsy correspondent to avert blame from the real offender, writing: "I was so importunate as to
declare that if Monsieur Calvin would not help me, the reproach of bringing an unwarrantable
charge would attach to me, unless he handed over to me the confirmatory material I enclose."

Actions are more impressive than words. Reluctantly or not, Calvin delivered over Servetus's
private letters to the "pope's satellites," that they might be used for the destruction of their
author. Calvin, and Calvin alone, was responsible for Trie's letter to Arneys (really a letter
addressed to the Inquisition); Calvin alone enabled Trie to enclose the incriminatory material
and to conclude his letter to Arneys with the following words: "I think I am sending you some
irrefutable proofs, so that you will have no further difficulty in getting Servetus arrested and
brought to trial."

It is on record that Cardinal de Tournon and Grand Master Ory burst into uproarious laughter
when these irrefutable proofs of Servetus's guilt were forced upon their attention by their
deadly enemy, the heretic Calvin. Indeed it is easy to understand why the princes of the Church
were so delighted. Pious excuses might hide from us that Trie's motives were anything other
than goodness of heart and gentleness and loyalty to his friend-but they cannot hide the
preposterous fact that the leader of Protestantism was so accommodating as to help Catholic
Inquisitors to burn a heretic. Such courtesies were not usually exchanged between the notables
of the respective faiths, who, throughout the globe, were accustomed to use fire and sword, the
gallows and the wheel, in the attempt to destroy one another. Anyhow, after this mirthful
interlude, the Inquisitors devoted themselves to their task. Servetus was arrested and
stringently examined. The letters and the fragments of manuscript supplied by Calvin furnished
such overwhelming proofs that the defendant could no longer deny the authorship of the book,
or that Michel de Villeneuve and Miguel Servetus were one and the same person. His cause was
lost. The faggots were piled in Vienne, and soon the flames would rage.

For the second time, however, it appeared that Calvin's hope to rid himself of his arch-enemy by
summoning other arch-enemies to his aid was premature. Either Servetus, having made himself
beloved as physician, possessed influential friends, or else (which is more probable) the
ecclesiastical authorities preferred to be weary in well-doing for the very reason that Calvin was
so eager to send this man to the stake. Anyhow, the jailers were lax. Would it not be better to let
an unimportant heretic escape than to please the heretic-in-chief in Geneva? Servetus was not
closely guarded. The usual practice as regards heretics was to keep them in narrow cells,
chained to the wall. Servetus enjoyed exceptional treatment. He was allowed to go for a walk in
the garden every day, that he might breathe the fresh air. On April 7, during one of these walks,
the prisoner vanished, leaving for the head-jailer nothing but a dressing-gown and the ladder
with which the fugitive had climbed over the garden wall. Still, the faggots were not wasted, for,
instead of the living Servetus, his effigy and five packages of the Restitutio were burned in the
marketplace at Vienne. The Genevese plan of using the hands of foreign fanatics to rid
themselves of a foe, while they kept their own hands clean, had proved a fiasco. Henceforward
Calvin would be an object of scorn in the eyes of all humane persons. He would have to accept
full responsibility for continuing his campaign against Servetus, and for contriving a man's death
for the sole reason that he detested the man's convictions.

The Murder of Servetus

FOR some months after his escape from prison, Servetus vanished without leaving a trace. It is
unlikely that we shall ever learn what sufferings the hunted man endured until that August day
when, upon a hired hack, he rode into Geneva and put up at the "Rose." Nor are we likely to find
out why Servetus, prompted by an evil star ("malis auspiciis appulsus"), should have sought
refuge in Geneva. Was it his intention to stay one night, and continue his flight by taking boat
across the lake? Did he perhaps expect to conciliate his greatest enemy at a personal interview,
since correspondence was unavailing? Or, perhaps, was his journey to Geneva one of those
foolish actions characteristic of invalids whose nerves are overstrained, one of the pleasurable
toyings with danger not infrequent in persons whose situation is desperate? We do not know;
probably we never shall know. None of the official reports of what happened in Geneva explains
why Servetus came to the place where he could expect only the worst from Calvin.

But the unhappy fugitive did something even more foolish, more challenging. Almost
immediately after his arrival, on the same Sunday morning, August 13, 1553, Servetus attended
service at the cathedral of St.-Pierre, where the whole Calvinist congregation was assembled,
and where Calvin was to preach, Calvin, who could recognize Servetus because the two had
been students together long before in Paris. No reasonable explanation of such conduct is
possible, save that some mysterious impulsion, by a fascination like that which brings a
serpent's victims to their doom, must have been at work.

It was inevitable, in a town where everyone spied on everyone else, that a stranger should be
the cynosure of all eyes. What ensued was likewise inevitable. Calvin recognized the ravening
wolf among his pious flock and inconspicuously gave orders to his minions. Servetus was
arrested as he left the cathedral. Within an hour the fugitive was in chains. This arrest was a
breach of international law, and also of the laws of hospitality generally accepted throughout the
world. Servetus was not subject to Genevese jurisdiction, unless for an offence committed in
that city. He was a foreigner, a Spaniard, who had only just arrived, and who had committed no
crime that could justify his seizure. His books had been written and printed across the frontier,
so that his heretical views could not have harmed any of the pious Genevese. Besides, a
"preacher of God's word" had no right to order a man to be arrested and chained when no
charge had been brought, and when no trial had taken place. From whatever angle we regard
the matter, Calvin's seizure of Servetus was an outrageous exercise of dictatorial power, which,
in its open contempt of laws and treaties, can only be compared to Napoleon's arrest and murder
of the Duc d'Enghien. In this case, as in that, the arrest was to be followed, not by a properly
constituted trial, but by an illegal homicide.

Servetus was arrested and thrown into prison without any charge having been brought against
him. Surely then a charge must subsequently be invented? Would it not be logical to expect that
the man who had instigated the arrest--"me auctore," "at my instigation," is Calvin's own
admission--should himself come forward as Servetus's accuser? But the laws of Geneva were
exemplary and gave little encouragement to informers. They prescribed that any burgher who
accused another of a crime should himself be arrested, and should be kept in prison until he
had justified his accusation. Calvin, therefore, if he accused Servetus, would have to place
himself at the disposal of the court. The theocratic dictator of Geneva did not relish the
prospect. He would be in an unfortunate position if the Town Council were to declare Servetus
not guilty, and if he himself were to remain under arrest for having brought an unjustifiable
charge. What a blow that would be to his prestige, and what a triumph for his adversary! Calvin,
diplomatic as ever, assigned to his secretary--or cook--Nicholas de la Fontaine, the thankless
task of accuser. The worthy Nicholas went quietly to prison instead of his master, after he had
handed the authorities an indictment consisting of twenty-three points (a document compiled, of
course, by Calvin). Such was the comedy which served as curtain-raiser to a horrible tragedy.
After a gross breach of law, the affair was given a legal complexion. Servetus was examined, and
the various counts in the indictment were read aloud to him. His answers were calm and shrewd,
for his energies had not yet been undermined by long imprisonment. Point by point he rejected
the accusations. For instance, in answer to the charge that he had attacked Calvin in his
writings, Servetus declared this to be erroneous, for the attack had opened on Calvin's side,
and all that he, Servetus, had done was to reply that Calvin was not infallible. If Calvin accused
him of obstinately sticking to certain theses, he could rejoin that Calvin was no less stubborn. All
that was at odds between Calvin and himself was a difference of opinion about certain
theological matters, with which a secular court had no concern; and if Calvin had nevertheless
arrested him, this was the outcome of spite. The leader of Protestantism had denounced him to
the Inquisition, and if this preacher of God's word had had his way, he (Servetus) would have
been burned long ago.

The legality of Servetus's contentions was so indubitable that the prevailing mood of the
Council was very much in his favour, and it seemed likely that there would be no harsher
decision than the issue of an order for deportation. Calvin, however, got wind of the fact that
things were going well for Servetus, and he feared that in the end his victim might give him the
slip. On August 17, the dictator appeared before the Town Council and took a line which made an
end of the pretense of non-participation. He showed his colours, no longer denying that he was
Servetus's accuser; and he begged leave of the Council to attend the proceedings
henceforward, on the pretext that "thus the accused could be better convinced of his errors."
Calvin's real reason obviously was the wish to throw his whole influence into the scale in order
to prevent his victim's escape.

From the moment when Calvin autocratically thrust himself in between the accused and the
judges, Servetus's cause was lost. Calvin, a trained logician and learned jurist, was much more
competent to press home the charge than his servant de la Fontaine had been; and Servetus's
confidence was shaken. The Spaniard was obviously unmanned now that his enemy sat among
the judges, cold, severe, making a pretence of dispassionateness, as he asked one question
after another--but, as Servetus felt in the marrow of his bones, moved by an iron determination
to send the accused to doom. The defenceless man grew irritable, nervous, aggressive, bitter,
and wrathful. Instead of tranquilly sticking to his legal standpoint, instead of insisting that as a
foreigner he was not subject to Genevese jurisdiction unless he had broken the laws of the
town, he allowed Calvin to entice him onto the treacherous ground of theological discussion,
thus giving abundant justification for the charge of heresy. For even one of his contentions,
such as that the devil likewise was part of the substance of God, sufficed to make the pious
councillors shudder. But as soon as his philosophical vanity had been affronted, Servetus
showed no restraint in the expressions he used about the thorniest and most dangerous
problems, forgetting that the councillors were not able theologians before whom he could
unconcernedly expound the truth. His very eloquence, his eagerness for discussion, made
Servetus suspect to his judges. More and more they inclined to Calvin's view, that this
foreigner, who, with gleaming eyes and clenched fists, railed against the doctrines of their
Church, must be a dangerous disturber of the spiritual peace, and was probably an incurable
heretic. Anyhow it was a good thing that he was being subjected to thorough examination. The
court decided that he should remain under arrest, while his accuser, Nicholas de la Fontaine,
was to be set at liberty. Calvin had got his way and wrote joyfully to a friend: "I hope he will be
condemned to death."

Why was Calvin so eager to obtain a capital sentence upon Servetus? Why was he not satisfied
with the more modest triumph of having his adversary expelled from the country, or humiliated
in some similar way? Calvin did not detest Servetus more than he detested Castellio, and
everyone who defied his authority. He loathed all those who tried to teach others in a different
way from that which he advocated, such a detestation being instinctive in a man of his tyrannical
disposition. So here, if he was particularly enraged against Servetus and wished to take extreme
measures at this particular moment, his motives were not private but political. The rebel against
his authority, this Miguel Servetus, was to be the scapegoat for another opponent of Calvin's
orthodoxy, the sometime Dominican monk, Hieronymus Bolsec, whom he had also tried to
destroy as a heretic, and who, greatly to his annoyance, had escaped. Bolsec, generally
respected as family doctor to the leading patricians in Geneva, had openly attacked the weakest
and most vulnerable point of Calvin's teaching, the rigid doctrine of predestination, using the
argument that Erasmus had used against Luther. It was impossible, declared both these
"heretics," that God, as the principle of all good, could wittingly and willingly impel human beings
to perform their worst deeds. Everyone knows how infuriated Luther was by Erasmus's
reasoning, and what a flood of abuse the most noted champion of the Reformation, this master
of coarse invective, let loose against the elderly sage. Still, rough, ill-tempered, and violent as
Luther was, he nevertheless used logical considerations against Erasmus, and never thought of
having Erasmus haled before a secular court for challenging the doctrine of predestination.
Calvin, with his mania of infallibility, regarded and treated every adversary as a heretic,
objections to his religious doctrine being for him equivalent to a crime against the State.
Instead, therefore, of answering Bolsec with theological arguments, he had his critic clapped
into jail.

Unexpectedly, however, his attempt to make a terrible example of Hieronymus Bolsec was a
failure. There were too many in Geneva who knew the learned physician to be a god-fearing
man; and, just as in the Castellio affair, so also in that of Bolsec, Calvin's behaviour aroused the
suspicion that he desired to rid himself of one who was not completely subject to his will, that he
might reign henceforward alone in Geneva. Bolsec's plaint, penned while he was in prison,
passed from hand to hand in numerous manuscript copies; and, despite Calvin's clamours, the
Town Council was afraid of condemning the prisoner for heresy. To evade this painful decision,
they declared themselves incompetent to deal with religious matters, and refused to transcend
their powers by adjudicating in a theological affair. At any rate, the councillors declared, in this
thorny question they must demand the formal opinion of the other Reformed Churches of
Switzerland. This demand was Bolsec's salvation, for the Reformed Churches of Zurich, Berne,
and Basle--being in their hearts ready enough to give their fanatical colleague in Geneva a
set-back--unanimously refused to regard Bolsec's utterances as blasphemous. The accused was
acquitted by the Town Council; Calvin was refused his victim and had to content himself with the
municipal authority's decree that Bolsec should leave the town.

Nothing but a new and successful charge of heresy could make people forget that Calvin's
theological supremacy had been successfully impugned. A victory over Servetus must
compensate the dictator for his failure to make an end of Bolsec; and against Servetus the
chances of success were enormously more favourable. Servetus was a foreigner. He had not,
like Castellio and Bolsec, many friends, admirers, and helpers in Geneva. Besides, the reformed
clergy everywhere had for years been outraged by his bold attacks on the Trinity and by his
challenging ways. It would be much easier to make an example of this outsider who had no
backing. From the first the trial was pre-eminently political, was a question of whether Calvin was
or was not to rule, was a tug of war to show whether he would be able to enforce his will as
spiritual dictator. If Calvin had wanted nothing more than to rid himself of Servetus as a private
and theological adversary, he could have done so easily enough. Hardly had the Geneva inquiry
opened, when an envoy from the French judicial authorities arrived, to demand the handing
over to Vienne of a refugee already sentenced in France, where the scaffold was ready for him.
The Town Council of Geneva need merely approve the extradition, and, as far as Geneva was
concerned, the tiresome affair of Servetus would be over and done with. For centuries the
odium of condemning and burning this independent thinker would attach to the Catholic
Inquisition. Calvin, however, opposed extradition. For him, Servetus was not a subject, but an
object, with whose aid he would give an indubitable demonstration of the inviolability of his own
doctrine. Servetus was to be a symbol, not a man. The French emissary, therefore, was sent back
unsatisfied. The Protestant dictator intended to have the trial carried through under his own
jurisdiction, that all might be convinced how disastrous it was to contradict Maitre Calvin.

Calvin's friends in Geneva, as well as his enemies, were not slow to realize that the Servetus
case was nothing more than a test of the dictator's power. Naturally, therefore, the latter all did
what they could to prevent Calvin's getting his way. To these politicians the unhappy Servetus
was nothing more than an instrument, a crow-bar with which the tyrant could perhaps be
unseated. Little did any of them care whether this crow-bar might break in their hands. Those
who were most friendly to Servetus did their protege a very bad turn, for the false reports they
circulated served only to increase his hysterical exaltation; and their secret missives to the
prisoner urging him to stiffen his resistance could not fail to work mischief. All that interested
them was to make the trial as sensational as possible. The more Servetus defended himself, the
more rabid his onslaught on Calvin, the better.

Really, alas, there was no need to incite Servetus to fill the cup of his heedlessness. The
hardships of his long imprisonment inflamed the wrath of a man already prone to neurotic frenzy,
since, as Calvin could not but know, Servetus had been treated with refined harshness. For
weeks, though in his own eyes he was innocent, he was kept like a condemned murderer in a
cold and damp cell, with irons on hands and feet. His clothes hung in rags upon his freezing
body; he was not provided with a change of linen. The most primitive demands of hygiene were
disregarded. No one might tender him the slightest assistance. In his bitter need Servetus
petitioned the Council for more humane treatment, writing: "Fleas are devouring me; my shoes
are torn to pieces; I have nothing clean to wear."

A secret hand (we cannot but guess whose hand it was that gave the screw-press another turn)
interfered when the Council proposed to better Servetus's lot. The result was that this bold
thinker and independent scholar was left to languish in his cell as a mangy dog might have been
left to die upon a dunghill. Still more lamentable were the cries of distress uttered in a second
letter, dated a few weeks later, when the prisoner was, literally, being suffocated in his own
excrement. "I beg of you, for the love of Christ, not to refuse me what you would give to a Turk
or a criminal. Nothing has been done to fulfil your orders that I should be kept clean. I am in a
more pitiful condition than ever. It is abominably cruel that I should be given no chance of
attending to my bodily needs."

Still nothing was done! Can we be surprised that when, once more, he was brought into court
out of his befouled lair, he should explode with fury? A man in irons, clad in stinking rags, was
confronted by his arch-adversary on the judge's seat; by Calvin, wearing a spruce black gown,
calm and cool, thoroughly prepared for the fray; by Calvin, with whom the prisoner now wished
to discuss matters, mind against mind, scholar against scholar, but who reviled Servetus as a
criminal and an assassin. Was it not inevitable that Servetus, teased by the basest and most
malicious questions and insinuations relating to the most private affairs of his sexual life,
angered and tormented, should lose his self-control, and answer the outrageous queries with
invectives, should rail coarsely against his accuser? Servetus was wearied beyond endurance
by sleepless nights. Now the man to whom he owed so much inhuman treatment had to listen to
a volley of abuse.

"Do you deny that you are an assassin? I will prove it by your actions. As regards myself, I
confide in the justice of my cause and am not afraid of death. But you scream like a blind man in
the desert, because the passion for vengeance burns in your heart. You lied, you lied, ignorant
calumniator that you are. Wrath boils up within you when you are hounding anyone to death.
Would that all your magic were still hidden away within your mother's womb, so that I could have
a chance to recount your errors."

In this outburst of wrath the unhappy Servetus forgot the powerlessness of his position. His
chains clanking, foaming at the mouth, he demanded of the Council, of his judges, that, instead
of condemning him, they should pass sentence upon Calvin the law-breaker, upon the
Genevese dictator.

"Magician that he is, you should not only find him guilty and sentence him, but should banish
him from your city, while his property should be made over to me in compensation for mine,
which, through him, I have lost."

It need hardly be said that the worthy councillors were horrified at such words and at the
spectacle before them, that of a lean, pallid, emaciated man, with a tangled beard, who, with
glowing eyes and speaking foreigner's French, hurled abominable accusations at their Christian
leader. They could not but consider him a man possessed, a man driven by the promptings of
Satan. From hearing to hearing their feelings towards him grew more and more unfavourable.
Really the trial was over, and nothing left but to condemn the accused. But Calvin's masked
enemies wanted the affair to be long drawn out, still doing their utmost to deprive the dictator of
the triumph he would secure from the condemnation of his adversary. Once more they did their
utmost to save Servetus, arranging, as in Bolsec's case, to secure the opinion of the other Swiss
Reformed synods, actuated by the secret hope that in this instance, likewise, the victim of
Calvin's dogmatism would be torn from the zealot's claws.

Calvin, however, was only too well aware that his authority was shaken and might fall. It was
essential for him to avoid a second reverse. He took measures accordingly, dispatching, while
his victim still rotted in prison, missive after missive to the synods of Zurich, Basle, Berne, and
Schaffhausen, to influence the opinions of these bodies. Messengers were speeded to all
points of the compass; friends were set in motion to warn his colleagues against helping so
wicked a blasphemer to escape judgment. He was aided in his machinations by the fact that
Servetus was known to be a disturber of the theological peace, and that, since the days of
Zwingli and Bucer, the "impudent Spaniard" had been loathed throughout Protestant Europe.
The result was that the Swiss synods unanimously pronounced Servetus's views to be
erroneous and wicked. Even though not one of the four religious communities frankly demanded
or even approved capital punishment, they nevertheless endorsed on principle any severe
measures that might be taken.

Zurich wrote: "We leave it to your wisdom to decide how this man should be punished." Berne
answered that the judges in Geneva should "borrow the spirit of wisdom and strength," so that
their Church and the other Swiss Churches should be well served, and they should all be freed
"from this plague." Still, the reference to settling the matter by violence was weakened by the
exhortation: "We trust that you will decide to act in such a way as to do nothing which might
seem unbecoming to Christian municipal authorities." Not one of those whose counsel Calvin
sought ventured openly to urge the passing of a death sentence. Nevertheless, since the
Churches had approved the legal proceedings against Servetus, Calvin felt they would also
approve the inevitable sequel; for, by their studied ambiguity, they left him a free hand.
Whenever Calvin's hand was free, it struck hard and resolutely. Vainly now did those who
secretly desired to help Servetus endeavour at the last hour, when the opinions of the synods
had been sent in, to avert the doom. Perrin and other republicans proposed an appeal to the
Council of Two Hundred, the supreme authority. But it was too late; even Calvin's opponents felt
it would be perilous to resist. On October 26, by a majority vote of the Little Council sitting as
High Court of Criminal Justice, Servetus was sentenced to be burned alive, this cruel verdict to
take effect next day on the plateau of Champel.

Week after week, Servetus, shut away from the outer world, had indulged in extravagant hopes.
He was a highly imaginative man; he had been yet more disordered by the whisperings of his
alleged friends; and he clung more and more desperately to the illusion that he had convinced
his judges of the soundness of his theses; so he felt assured that within a few days Calvin, the
usurper, would be shamefully expelled from Geneva. How terrible was his awakening when, with
an inscrutable expression, the secretary of the Council entered his cell early in the morning of
the twenty-seventh and ceremoniously unrolled a parchment to read the sentence. Servetus
was thunderstruck. He listened as if unable to understand the words which informed him that
this day he was to be burned alive as a blasphemer. For a few minutes he stood as if deaf and
unconscious. Then the unhappy man's nerves gave way. He began to sob and to groan, until at
length in his Spanish mother tongue he cried aloud: "Misericordias!" His arrogance gave way
before these terrible tidings. Crushed, almost annihilated, he succumbed to overwhelming
discouragement. The domineering preachers, likewise a prey to illusion, believed that the hour
had come in which, after gaining a secular triumph over Servetus, they would gain a spiritual
triumph as well, that despair would wring from the prisoner a voluntary avowal of error.

Yet, marvellously enough, as soon as the poor, broken wretch was asked to repudiate his
theses, as soon as his innermost faith was challenged, his pride flamed up anew. If his body was
to be burned, his body was to be burned; but he would not abate a tittle of his beliefs; and
during his last hours the knight errant of science rose to the stature of a martyr and hero of
conviction. Though Farel hastened over from Lausanne to share in Calvin's triumph, Servetus
contemptuously rejected Farel's promptings, declaring that a secular legal decision could never
be accepted as proof of a man's rightness or wrongness in divine concerns. You might murder a
man without convincing him. His mind had not been convicted of error, though his body was to
be put to death. Neither by threats nor by promises could Farel extract from the chained and
doomed victim as much as a word of recantation. Still, since he held firmly to his conviction that
he was no heretic but a believing Christian whose duty it was to reconcile himself even with the
fiercest of his enemies, Servetus expressed a wish to see Calvin.

The only report of Calvin's visit is Calvin's own. Dead men tell no tales. Calvin's report of
Calvin's behaviour admirably discloses Calvin's rigidity and harshness. The triumphant dictator
came down into the cold, dank, and dark cell, not to offer consolation to the doomed man, not to
say a brotherly or Christian word of kindness to him who was about to die in torment. Quietly, in
the most matter-of-fact way, Calvin opened the conversation by asking why Servetus had
summoned him. Plainly he expected Servetus to kneel, to urge from the almighty dictator a
cancelment, or at least a mitigation of the sentence. Servetus answered simply, so that anyone
with a human heart in his breast must be touched by the record, that his only object in sending
for Calvin had been to beg forgiveness. The victim offered reconciliation to the inquisitor who
had sent him to his doom. Calvin, however, stony of visage, could never regard a political and
religious opponent as either a Christian or a man.

Read the words of his frigid report: "My only answer was to say that I had never (this being the
truth) regarded him with personal animus."

Calvin could not or would not understand the eminently peaceful nature of Servetus's last
gesture. There could, said Calvin, be no reconciliation between him and Servetus. The latter
must cease thinking of his own person, and frankly acknowledge his errors, his sinfulness
towards God, whose Trinitarian nature the condemned man had denied. Wittingly or unwittingly
the ideologist in Calvin refused to recognize as a man and a brother this poor wretch, who that
day would be committed like a worthless billet to the flames. As a rigid dogmatist, he could see in
Servetus nothing more than one who had rejected his (Calvin's) conception of God, and thus
had denied God. The only use Calvin wanted to make of his dictatorial power was to extract from
Servetus during these last hours the avowal that Servetus was wrong and Calvin right. Since,
however, Servetus recognized that this iron zealot wanted to deprive him of the only thing still
left alive in his wasted body, that which the prisoner regarded as the immortal part of him--his
faith, his conviction--Servetus stubbornly resisted, and resolutely refused to make the cowardly
avowal. He had voluntarily declared his willingness to become reconciled with his adversary,
man to man, Christian to Christian; but nothing would induce him, whose life was counted by
minutes, to sacrifice the convictions to whose advocacy he had devoted a lifetime. The attempt
at conversion failed. To Calvin it seemed that further speech was needless. One who in religious
matters would not unhesitatingly comply with Calvin's will was no longer Calvin's brother in
Christ, but only one of Satan's brood, a sinner on whom friendly words would be wasted. Why
show a trace of kindness to a heretic? Calvin turned away, leaving his victim without a syllable
and without a friendly glance. Here are the words with which this fanatical accuser closes his
report, words which condemn him for all eternity: "Since I could achieve nothing by argument
and warning, I did not wish to be wiser than my Master. I followed the rule laid down by St. Paul,
and withdrew from the heretic who had passed judgment on himself."

Death at the stake by roasting with a slow fire is the most agonizing of all modes of execution.
Even the Middle Ages, famous for cruelty, seldom carried out this punishment to an extremity. In
most cases those sentenced to such a fate were not left to the mercy of the flames. They were
strangled, or benumbed in some way. But this abominable death had been decreed for the first
heretic sentenced to it by Protestants; and we can well understand that Calvin, when a cry of
indignation rose from the humane persons still left in the world, would endeavour, long
afterwards, very long afterwards, to shuffle off responsibility for the exceptional cruelty of
Servetus's execution. He and the other members of the Consistory, so he tells us years after
Servetus's body had been reduced to ashes, tried to obtain that the sentence of death by slow
fire should be commuted into the milder one of death by the sword. Their labours had been vain.
("Genus morris conati sumus mutare, sed frustra.") In the minutes of the Council we cannot find
a word about such frustrated endeavours; and what unprejudiced person will believe that
Calvin, who throughout the trial had put the screw upon the Council to pass a death sentence on
Servetus, and had gained his end, should have suddenly become no more than an uninfluential
private citizen in Geneva, and should have been unable to ensure a more merciful method of
execution? As far as the latter is concerned, it is true that Calvin had contemplated a mitigation
of the sentence--but only if Servetus were to purchase this mitigation by a spiritual sacrifice, by
a last-hour recantation. Not from human kindliness, but from crude political calculation, Calvin
would then, for the first time in his life, have shown himself gentle to an adversary. What a
triumph it would have been for Genevese doctrine if Servetus, just before going to the stake,
had admitted himself to be wrong and Calvin to be right! What a victory to have compelled the
Spanish blasphemer to acknowledge that he was not dying on behalf of his own doctrine, but
must admit before the whole population that Calvin's was the only true doctrine in the world!

Servetus, however, knew the price he would have to pay for any concession. Stubbornness was
faced by stubbornness, fanaticism by fanaticism. He would rather die in unspeakable torment on
behalf of his convictions than secure a more merciful death to favour the dogmas of Maitre
Jehan Calvin. He would rather suffer agonies for half an hour, winning thereby the crown of
martyrdom, and attaching to Calvin for all time the stigma of utter barbarism. Servetus bluntly
refused to comply, rallying his forces to endure his awful fate.

The rest is a tale of horror. On October 27, at eleven in the morning, the prisoner was brought
out of prison in his befouled rags. He was looking his last, with blinking eyes, at the light of day.
His beard tangled, his visage dirty and wasted, his chains rattling, he tottered as he walked, and
his ashen tint was ghastly on that clear autumn day. In front of the steps of the Town Hall the
officers of the law, having hustled him along (since weeks of inaction had almost robbed him of
the power of walking), thrust him onto his knees. With lowered head he listened to the sentence,
which a syndic now read aloud to the assembled populace. It ended with the words: "We
condemn thee, Miguel Servetus, to be conveyed in bonds to Champel, there to be burned alive,
and with thee the manuscript of thy book and the printed volume, until thy body is consumed to
ashes. Thus shalt thou end thy days, as a warning to all others who might wish to repeat thine
offence."

The doomed man's teeth chattered with cold as he listened. In his extremity he crawled on his
knees nearer to the municipal authorities, assembled on the steps, and implored that by their
grace he might be decapitated before his body was burned, "lest the agony should drive me to
repudiate the convictions of a lifetime." If he had sinned, he went on, it had been unwittingly; for
he had always been impelled by the one thought of promoting the divine honour.

At this moment Farel pushed between the judges and the kneeling man. In a voice that could be
heard far and wide, he asked whether Servetus was prepared to renounce the teaching he had
directed against the Trinity, and thus to secure the boon of a milder form of execution. Servetus,
however, though in most respects he was but a mediocre man, contemptuously rejected this
offer, thus showing his moral greatness, his willingness to fulfil his pledge, his determination to
suffer the worst on behalf of his convictions.

Now the procession moved on towards the place of execution. It was led by the lord lieutenant
and his deputy, wearing the insignia of their rank and surrounded by a guard of archers. The
crowd, eager for sensation, followed. All the way across the city, past numerous affrighted and
silent spectators, Farel clung to the side of the condemned man, keeping step with Servetus,
whom he continually asked for an acknowledgment of error and for repudiation of false doctrine.
When Servetus, with genuine piety, answered that, though he was being put to death unjustly,
he nevertheless implored God to be merciful to his accuser, Farel replied with dogmatic wrath:
"What? After having committed the most abominable sin, do you still try to justify it? If you remain
obstinate, I shall leave you to God's judgment, and shall go no farther beside you, although I had
determined not to leave you before you should draw your last breath." Servetus made no further
reply. He was nauseated by the executioners and the disputations theologians, and would not
vouchsafe them another word.

Unceasingly this alleged heretic and atheist murmured, as if for his own comfort: "O God, save
my soul; O Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have pity on me." Then, uplifting his voice, he begged
all present to pray with him and for him. On reaching the place of execution, within sight of the
stake. he kneeled once more to collect his thoughts in pious meditation. But the fanatical Farel,
fearing lest this purehearted demeanour of a reputed heretic might make an impression upon
the people, cried to them over the head of the condemned: "You see what power Satan
possesses when he has a man in his claws! This fellow is most learned, and believed himself to
be acting rightly. But now he is in Satan's grip and the like may happen to any of you."

Meanwhile the loathsome preparations were begun. The wood was piled round the stake to
which the clanking chains had been nailed. The executioner bound the victim's hands. Then
Farel, for the last time, pressed nearer to Servetus, who was only sighing, "O God, my God," and
shouted fiercely: "Have you nothing more to say?" The contentious pastor still hoped that the
sight of the post where he was to endure martyrdom would convince Servetus that the Calvinist
faith was the only true one. But Servetus answered: "What else can I do than call on God?"

The disappointed Farel quitted his victim. Now it only remained for the other executioner, the
official one, to perform his hateful task. The chains attached to the stake were wound four or
five times around it and around the poor wretch's wasted body. Between this and the chains, the
executioner's assistants then inserted the book and the manuscript which Servetus had sent to
Calvin under seal to ask Calvin's fraternal opinion upon it. Finally, in scorn, there was pressed
upon the martyr's brow a crown of leaves impregnated with sulphur. The preliminaries were
over. The executioner kindled the faggots and the murder began.

When the flames rose around him, Servetus uttered so dreadful a cry that many of the
onlookers turned their eyes away from the pitiful sight. Soon the smoke interposed a veil in front
of the writhing body, but the yells of agony grew louder and louder, until at length came an
imploring scream: "Jesus, Son of the everlasting God, have pity on me!" The struggle with death
lasted half an hour. Then the flames abated, the smoke dispersed, and attached to the
blackened stake there remained, above the glowing embers, a black, sickening, charred mass,
which had lost human semblance. What had once been a thinking earthly creature passionately
straining towards the eternal, what had been a breathing fragment of the divine soul, was now
reduced to a vestige so offensive, so repulsive, that surely the sight of it might have made even
Calvin aware how inhuman had been his conduct in arrogating to himself the right of becoming
judge and slayer of one of his brethren.

But where was Calvin in this fearful hour? Either to show himself disinterested or else to spare
his nerves from shock, he had remained at home. He was in his study, windows closed, having
left to the executioner and to Farel (a coarser brute than himself) the odious task of witnessing
the execution. So long as no more was needed than to track down an innocent man, to accuse
him, browbeat him, and bring him to the stake, Calvin had been an indefatigable leader. But in
the hour of performance he left matters to Farel and the paid assistants, while he himself, the
man who had really willed and commanded this "pious murder," kept discreetly aloof. Next
Sunday, however, clad in his black cassock, he entered the pulpit to boast of the deed before a
silent congregation, declaring it to have been a great deed and a just one, although he had not
dared to watch the pitiful spectacle.