NEW SIGNBOARDS FOR OLD
The greatest of modern poets saw the world as a large ocean upon which
sailed many ships. Whenever these little vessels bumped against each
other, they made a “wonderful music” which people call history.
I would like to borrow Heine’s ocean, but for a purpose and a simile
of my own. When we were children it was fun to drop pebbles into a
pond. They made a nice splash and then the pretty little ripples caused
a series of ever widening circles and that was very nice. If bricks
were handy (which sometimes was the case) one could make an Armada of
nutshells and matches and submit this flimsy fleet to a nice artificial
storm, provided the heavy projectile did not create that fatal loss of
equilibrium which sometimes overtakes small children who play too near
the water’s edge and sends them to bed without their supper.
In that special universe reserved for grown-ups, the same pastime is not
entirely unknown, but the results are apt to be far more disastrous.
Everything is placid and the sun is shining and the water-wigglers are
skating merrily, and then suddenly a bold, bad boy comes along with a
piece of mill-stone (Heaven only knows where he found it!) and before any
one can stop him he has heaved it right into the middle of the old duck
pond and then there is a great ado about who did it and how he ought to
be spanked and some say, “Oh, let him go,” and others, out of sheer envy
of the kid who is attracting all the attention, pick up any old thing
that happens to lie around and they dump it into the water and everybody
gets splashed and one thing leading to another, the usual result is a
free-for-all fight and a few million broken heads.
Alexander was such a bold, bad boy.
And Helen of Troy, in her own charming way, was such a bad, bold girl,
and history is just full of them.
But by far the worst offenders are those wicked citizens who play this
game with ideas and use the stagnant pool of man’s spiritual indifference
as their playground. And I for one don’t wonder that they are hated by
all right-thinking citizens and are punished with great severity if ever
they are unfortunate enough to let themselves be caught.
Think of the damage they have done these last four hundred years.
There were the leaders of the rebirth of the ancient world. The stately
moats of the Middle Ages reflected the image of a society that was
harmonious in both color and texture. It was not perfect. But people
liked it. They loved to see the blending of the brick-red walls of their
little homes with the somber gray of those high cathedral towers that
watched over their souls.
Came the terrible splash of the Renaissance and overnight everything was
changed. But it was only a beginning. For just when the poor burghers had
almost recovered from the shock, that dreadful German monk appeared with
a whole cartload of specially prepared bricks and dumped them right into
the heart of the pontifical lagoon. Really, that was too much. And no
wonder that it took the world three centuries to recover from the shock.
The older historians who studied this period often fell into a slight
error. They saw the commotion and decided that the ripples had been
started by a common cause, which they alternately called the Renaissance
and the Reformation.
Today we know better.
The Renaissance and the Reformation were movements which professed to be
striving after a common purpose. But the means by which they hoped to
accomplish their ultimate object were so utterly different that Humanist
and Protestant not infrequently came to regard each other with bitter
hostility.
They both believed in the supreme rights of man. During the Middle Ages
the individual had been completely merged in the community. He did not
exist as John Doe, a bright citizen who came and went at will, who sold
and bought as he liked, who went to any one of a dozen churches (or to
none at all, as suited his tastes and his prejudices). His life from the
time of his birth to the hour of his death was lived according to a rigid
handbook of economic and spiritual etiquette. This taught him that his
body was a shoddy garment, casually borrowed from Mother Nature and of no
value except as a temporary receptacle for his immortal soul.
It trained him to believe that this world was a halfway house to future
glory and should be regarded with that profound contempt which travelers
destined for New York bestow upon Queenstown and Halifax.
And now unto the excellent John, living happily in the best of all
possible worlds (since it was the only world he knew), came the two
fairy god-mothers, Renaissance and Reformation, and said: “Arise, noble
citizen, from now on thou art to be free.”
But when John asked, “Free to do what?” the answers greatly differed.
“Free to go forth in quest of Beauty,” the Renaissance replied.
“Free to go in quest of Truth,” the Reformation admonished him.
“Free to search the records of the past when the world was truly the
realm of men. Free to realize those ideals which once filled the hearts
of poets and painters and sculptors and architects. Free to turn the
universe into thine eternal laboratory, that thou mayest know all her
secrets,” was the promise of the Renaissance.
“Free to study the word of God, that thou mayest find salvation for thy
soul and forgiveness for thy sins,” was the warning of the Reformation.
And they turned on their heels and left poor John Doe in the possession
of a new freedom which was infinitely more embarrassing than the
thralldom of his former days.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Renaissance soon made her peace with
the established order of things. The successors of Phidias and Horace
discovered that a belief in the established Deity and outward conformity
to the rules of the Church were two very different things and that one
could paint pagan pictures and compose heathenish sonnets with complete
impunity if one took the precaution to call Hercules, John the Baptist,
and Hera, the Virgin Mary.
They were like tourists who go to India and who obey certain laws which
mean nothing to them at all in order that they may gain entrance to the
temples and travel freely without disturbing the peace of the land.
But in the eyes of an honest follower of Luther, the most trifling
of details at once assumed enormous importance. An erroneous comma
in Deuteronomy might mean exile. As for a misplaced full stop in the
Apocalypse, it called for instant death.
To people like these who took what they considered their religious
convictions with bitter seriousness, the merry compromise of the
Renaissance seemed a dastardly act of cowardice.
As a result, Renaissance and Reformation parted company, never to meet
again.
Whereupon the Reformation, alone against all the world, buckled on the
armor of righteousness and made ready to defend her holiest possessions.
In the beginning, the army of revolt was composed almost exclusively of
Germans. They fought and suffered with extreme bravery, but that mutual
jealousy which is the bane and the curse of all northern nations soon
lamed their efforts and forced them to accept a truce. The strategy which
led to the ultimate victory was provided by a very different sort of
genius. Luther stepped aside to make room for Calvin.
It was high time.
In that same French college where Erasmus had spent so many of his
unhappy Parisian days, a black-bearded young Spaniard with a limp (the
result of a Gallic gunshot) was dreaming of the day when he should march
at the head of a new army of the Lord to rid the world of the last of the
heretics.
It takes a fanatic to fight a fanatic.
And only a man of granite, like Calvin, would have been able to defeat
the plans of Loyola.
Personally, I am glad that I was not obliged to live in Geneva in the
sixteenth century. At the same time I am profoundly grateful that the
Geneva of the sixteenth century existed.
Without it, the world of the twentieth century would have been a great
deal more uncomfortable and I for one would probably be in jail.
The hero of this glorious fight, the famous Magister Joannes Calvinus (or
Jean Calvini or John Calvin) was a few years younger than Luther. Date
of birth: July 10, 1509. Place of birth: the city of Noyon in northern
France. Background: French middle class. Father: a small clerical
official. Mother: the daughter of an inn-keeper. Family: five sons and
two daughters. Characteristic qualities of early education: thrift,
simplicity, and a tendency to do all things in an orderly manner, not
stingily, but with minute and efficient care.
John, the second son, was meant for the priesthood. The father had
influential friends, and could eventually get him into a good parish.
Before he was thirteen years old, he already held a small office in the
cathedral of his home city. This gave him a small but steady income. It
was used to send him to a good school in Paris. A remarkable boy. Every
one who came in contact with him said, “Watch out for that youngster!”
The French educational system of the sixteenth century was well able to
take care of such a child and make the best of his many gifts. At the age
of nineteen, John was allowed to preach. His future as a duly established
deacon seemed assured.
But there were five sons and two daughters. Advancement in the Church
was slow. The law offered better opportunities. Besides, it was a time
of great religious excitement and the future was uncertain. A distant
relative, a certain Pierre Olivétan, had just translated the Bible into
French. John, while in Paris, had spent much time with his cousin. It
would never do to have two heretics in one family. John was packed off
to Orleans and was apprenticed to an old lawyer that he might learn the
business of pleading and arguing and drawing up briefs.
Here the same thing happened as in Paris. Before the end of the year,
the pupil had turned teacher and was coaching his less industrious
fellow-students in the principles of jurisprudence. And soon he knew all
there was to know and was ready to start upon that course which, so his
father fondly hoped, would some day make him the rival of those famous
avocats who got a hundred gold pieces for a single opinion and who drove
in a coach and four when they were called upon to see the king in distant
Compiègne.
But nothing came of these dreams. John Calvin never practiced law.
Instead, he returned to his first love, sold his digests and his
pandects, devoted the proceeds to a collection of theological works and
started in all seriousness upon that task which was to make him one of
the most important historical figures of the last twenty centuries.
The years, however, which he had spent studying the principles of Roman
law put their stamp upon all his further activities. It was impossible
for him to approach a problem by way of his emotions. He felt things
and he felt them deeply. Read his letters to those of his followers who
had fallen into the hands of Catholics and who had been condemned to be
roasted to death over slow burning coal fires. In their helpless agony
they are as fine a bit of writing as anything of which we have a record.
And they show such a delicate understanding of human psychology that
the poor victims went to their death blessing the name of the man whose
teaching had brought them into their predicament.
No, Calvin was not, as so many of his enemies have said, a man without a
heart. But life to him was a sacred duty.
And he tried so desperately hard to be honest with himself and with his
God that he must first reduce every question to certain fundamental
principles of faith and doctrine before he dared to expose it to the
touchstone of human sentiment.
When Pope Pius IV heard of his death, he remarked, “The power of that
heretic lay in the fact that he was indifferent to money.” If His
Holiness meant to pay his enemy the compliment of absolute personal
disinterestedness, he was right. Calvin lived and died a poor man and
refused to accept his last quarterly salary because “illness had made it
impossible for him to earn that money as he should have done.”
But his strength lay elsewhere.
He was a man of one idea, his life centered around one all-overpowering
impulse; the desire to find the truth of God as revealed in the
Scriptures. When he finally had reached a conclusion that seemed proof
against every possible form of argument and objection, then at last he
incorporated it into his own code of life. And thereafter he went his way
with such utter disregard for the consequences of his decision that he
became both invincible and irresistible.
This quality, however, was not to make itself manifest until many years
later. During the first decade after his conversion he was obliged to
direct all his energies toward the very commonplace problem of keeping
alive.
A short triumph of the “new learning” in the University of Paris, an
orgy of Greek declensions, Hebrew irregular verbs and other forbidden
intellectual fruit had been followed by the usual reaction. When it
appeared that even the rector of that famous seat of learning had been
contaminated with the pernicious new German doctrines, steps were taken
to purge the institution of all those who in terms of our modern medical
science might be considered “idea carriers.” Calvin, who, ’twas said,
had given the rector the material for several of his most objectionable
speeches, was among those whose names appeared at the top of the list of
suspects. His rooms were searched. His papers were confiscated and an
order was issued for his arrest.
He heard of it and hid himself in the house of a friend.
But storms in an academic tea-pot never last very long. All the same, a
career in the Church of Rome had become an impossibility. The moment had
arrived for a definite choice.
In the year 1534 Calvin broke away from the old faith. Almost at the same
moment, on the hills of Montmartre, high above the French capital, Loyola
and a handful of his fellow students were taking that solemn vow which
shortly afterwards was to be incorporated into the constitution of the
Society of Jesus.
Thereupon they both left Paris.
Ignatius set his face towards the east, but remembering the unfortunate
outcome of his first assault upon the Holy Land, he retraced his steps,
went to Rome and there began those activities which were to carry his
fame (or otherwise) to every nook and corner of our planet.
John was of a different caliber. His Kingdom of God was bound to neither
time nor place and he wandered forth that he might find a quiet spot
and devote the rest of his days to reading, to contemplation and to the
peaceful expounding of his ideas.
He happened to be on his way to Strassburg when the outbreak of a war
between Charles V and Francis I forced him to make a detour through
western Switzerland. In Geneva he was welcomed by Guillaume Farel, one
of the stormy petrels of the French Reformation, fugitive extraordinary
from all ecclesiastical and inquisitorial dungeons. Farel welcomed
him with open arms, spoke to him of the wondrous things that might be
accomplished in this little Swiss principality and bade him stay. Calvin
asked time to consider. Then he stayed.
In this way did the chances of war decree that the New Zion should be
built at the foot of the Alps.
It is a strange world.
Columbus sets forth to discover the Indies and stumbles upon a new
continent.
Calvin, in search of a quiet spot where he may spend the rest of his
days in study and holy meditation, wanders into a third-rate Swiss town
and makes it the spiritual capital of those who soon afterwards turn
the domains of their most Catholic Majesties into a gigantic Protestant
empire.
Why should any one ever read fiction when history serves all purposes?
I do not know whether the family Bible of Calvin has been preserved.
But if it still exists, the volume will show considerable wear on that
particular page which contains the sixth chapter of the book of Daniel.
The French reformer was a modest man, but often he must have found
consolation in the story of that other steadfast servant of the living
God who also had been cast into a den of lions and whose innocence had
saved him from a gruesome and untimely death.
Geneva was no Babylon. It was a respectable little city inhabited by
respectable Swiss cloth makers. They took life seriously, but not quite
so seriously as that new master who was now holding forth in the pulpit
of their Saint Peter.
And furthermore, there was a Nebuchadnezzar in the form of a Duke of
Savoy. It was during one of their interminable quarrels with the house
of Savoy that the descendants of Caesar’s Allobroges had decided to make
common cause with the other Swiss cantons and join the Reformation.
The alliance therefore between Geneva and Wittenberg was a marriage of
convenience, an engagement based upon common interests rather than common
affection.
But no sooner had the news spread abroad that “Geneva had gone
Protestant,” than all the eager apostles of half a hundred new and crazy
creeds flocked to the shores of Lake Leman. With tremendous energy they
began to preach some of the queerest doctrines ever conceived by mortal
man.
Calvin detested these amateur prophets with all his heart. He fully
appreciated what a menace they would prove to the cause of which they
were such ardent but ill-guided champions. And the first thing he did
as soon as he had enjoyed a few months leisure was to write down as
precisely and briefly as he could what he expected his new parishioners
to hold true and what he expected them to hold false. And that no man
might claim the ancient and time-worn excuse, “I did not know the law,”
he, together with his friend Farel, personally examined all Genevans in
batches of ten and allowed only those to the full rights of citizenship
who swore the oath of allegiance to this strange religious constitution.
Next he composed a formidable catechism for the benefit of the younger
generation.
Next he prevailed upon the Town Council to expel all those who still
clung to their old erroneous opinions.
Then, having cleared the ground for further action, he set about to found
him a state along the lines laid down by the political economists of the
books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. For Calvin, like so many other of the
great reformers, was really much more of an ancient Jew than a modern
Christian. His lips did homage to the God of Jesus, but his heart went
out to the Jehovah of Moses.
This, of course, is a phenomenon often observed during periods of great
emotional stress. The opinions of the humble Nazarene carpenter upon the
subject of hatred and strife are so definite and so clear cut that no
compromise has ever been found possible between them and those violent
methods by which nations and individuals have, during the last two
thousand years, tried to accomplish their ends.
Hence, as soon as a war breaks out, by silent consent of all concerned,
we temporarily close the pages of the Gospels and cheerfully wallow
in the blood and thunder and the eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the Old
Testament.
And as the Reformation was really a war and a very atrocious one, in
which no quarter was asked and very little quarter was given, it need
not surprise us that the state of Calvin was in reality an armed camp in
which all semblance of personal liberty was gradually suppressed.
Of course, all this was not accomplished without tremendous opposition,
and in the year 1538 the attitude of the more liberal elements in the
community became so threatening that Calvin was forced to leave the city.
But in 1541 his adherents returned to power. Amidst the ringing of many
bells and the loud hosannas of the deacons, Magister Joannes returned to
his citadel on the river Rhone. Thereafter he was the uncrowned King of
Geneva and the next twenty-three years he devoted to the establishment
and the perfection of a theocratic form of government, the like of which
the world had not seen since the days of Ezekiel and Ezra.
The word “discipline” according to the Oxford Concise Dictionary, means
“to bring under control, to train to obedience and order, to drill.” It
expresses best the spirit which permeated the entire political-clerical
structure of Calvin’s dreams.
Luther, after the nature of most Germans, had been a good deal of a
sentimentalist. The Word of God alone, so it seemed to him, would show a
man the way to the life everlasting.
This was much too indefinite to suit the taste of the great French
reformer. The Word of God might be a beacon light of hope, but the road
was long and dark and many were the temptations that made people forget
their true destination.
The minister, however, could not go astray. He was a man set apart.
He knew all pitfalls. He was incorruptible. And if perchance he felt
inclined to wander from the straight path, the weekly meetings of the
clergy, at which these worthy gentlemen were invited to criticize each
other freely, would speedily bring him back to a realization of his
duties. Hence he was the ideal held before all those who truly aspired
after salvation.
Those of us who have ever climbed mountains know that professional guides
can upon occasion be veritable tyrants. They know the perils of a pile
of rocks, the hidden dangers of an innocent-looking snowfield. Wherefore
they assume complete command of the party that has entrusted itself to
their care and profanity raineth richly upon the head of the foolish
tourist who dares to disobey their orders.
The ministers of Calvin’s ideal state had a similar conception of their
duties. They were ever delighted to extend a helping hand to those
who stumbled and asked that they be supported. But when willful people
purposely left the beaten track and wandered away from the flock, then
that hand was withdrawn and became a fist which meted out punishment that
was both quick and terrible.
In many other communities the dominies would have been delighted to
exercise a similar power. But the civil authorities, jealous of their
own prerogatives, rarely allowed the clergy to compete with the courts
and the executioners. Calvin knew this and within his own bailiwick he
established a form of church discipline which practically superseded the
laws of the land.
Among the curious historical misconceptions which have gained such
popularity since the days of the great war, none is more surprising than
the belief that the French people (in contrast to their Teuton neighbors)
are a liberty-loving race and detest all regimentation. The French have
for centuries submitted to the rule of a bureaucracy quite as complicated
and infinitely less efficient than the one which existed in Prussia in
the pre-war days. The officials are a little less punctual about their
office hours and the spotlessness of their collars and they are given to
sucking a particularly vile sort of cigarette. Otherwise they are quite
as meddlesome and as obnoxious as those in the eastern republic, and the
public accepts their rudeness with a meekness that is astonishing in a
race so addicted to rebellion.
Calvin was the ideal Frenchman in his love for centralization. In some
details he almost approached the perfection for detail which was the
secret of Napoleon’s success. But unlike the great emperor, he was
utterly devoid of all personal ambition. He was just a dreadfully serious
man with a weak stomach and no sense of humor.
He ransacked the Old Testament to discover what would be agreeable
to his particular Jehovah. And then the people of Geneva were asked
to accept this interpretation of the Jewish chronicles as a direct
revelation of the divine will.
Almost over night the merry city on the Rhone became a community of
rueful sinners. A civic inquisition composed of six ministers and twelve
elders watched night and day over the private opinions of all citizens.
Whosoever was suspected of an inclination towards “forbidden heresies”
was cited to appear before an ecclesiastic tribunal that he might be
examined upon all points of doctrine and explain where, how and in what
way he had obtained the books which had given him the pernicious ideas
which had led him astray. If the culprit showed a repentant spirit, he
might escape with a sentence of enforced attendance at Sunday School.
But in case he showed himself obstinate, he must leave the city within
twenty-four hours and never again show himself within the jurisdiction of
the Genevan commonwealth.
But a proper lack of orthodox sentiment was not the only thing that could
get a man into trouble with the so-called Consistorium. An afternoon
spent at a bowling-alley in a nearby village, if properly reported
(as such things invariably are), could be reason enough for a severe
admonition. Jokes, both practical and otherwise, were considered the
height of bad form. An attempt at wit during a wedding ceremony was
sufficient cause for a jail sentence.
Gradually the New Zion was so encumbered with laws, edicts, regulations,
rescripts and decrees that life became a highly complicated affair and
lost a great deal of its old flavor.
Dancing was not allowed. Singing was not allowed. Card playing was not
allowed. Gambling, of course, was not allowed. Birthday parties were
not allowed. County fairs were not allowed. Silks and satins and all
manifestations of external splendor were not allowed. What was allowed
was going to church and going to school. For Calvin was a man of positive
ideas.
The verboten sign could keep out sin, but it could not force a man to
love virtue. That had to come through an inner persuasion. Hence the
establishment of excellent schools and a first-rate university and
the encouragement of all learning. And the establishment of a rather
interesting form of communal life which absorbed a good deal of the
surplus energy of the community and which made the average man forget the
many hardships and restrictions to which he was submitted. If it had been
entirely lacking in human qualities, the system of Calvin could never
have survived and it certainly would not have played such a very decisive
rôle in the history of the last three hundred years. All of which however
belongs in a book devoted to the development of political ideas. This
time we are interested in the question of what Geneva did for tolerance
and we come to the conclusion that the Protestant Rome was not a whit
better than its Catholic namesake.
The extenuating circumstances I have enumerated a few pages back. In a
world which was forced to stand by and witness such bestial occurrences
as the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the wholesale extermination of
scores of Dutch cities, it was unreasonable to expect that one side (the
weaker one at that) should practice a virtue which was equivalent to a
self-imposed sentence of death.
This, however, does not absolve Calvin from the crime of having aided and
abetted in the legal murder of Gruet and Servetus.
In the case of the former, Calvin might have put up the excuse that
Jacques Gruet was seriously suspected of having incited his fellow
citizens to riot and that he belonged to a political party which was
trying to bring about the downfall of the Calvinists. But Servetus could
hardly be called a menace to the safety of the community, as far as
Geneva was concerned.
He was what the modern passport regulations call a “transient.” Another
twenty-four hours and he would have been gone. But he missed his boat.
And so he came to lose his life, and it is a pretty terrible story.
Miguel Serveto, better known as Michael Servetus, was a Spaniard. His
father was a respectable notary-public (a semi-legal position in Europe
and not just a young man with a stamping machine who charges you a
quarter for witnessing your signature) and Miguel was also destined for
the law. He was sent to the University of Toulouse, for in those happy
days when all lecturing was done in Latin learning was international and
the wisdom of the entire world was open to those who had mastered five
declensions and a few dozen irregular verbs.
At the French university Servetus made the acquaintance of one Juan de
Quintana who shortly afterwards became the confessor of the Emperor
Charles V.
During the Middle Ages, an imperial coronation was a good deal like a
modern international exhibition. When Charles was crowned in Bologna in
the year 1530, Quintana took his friend Michael with him as his secretary
and the bright young Spaniard saw all there was to be seen. Like so many
men of his time, he was of an insatiable curiosity and he spent the
next ten years dabbling in an infinite variety of subjects, medicine,
astronomy, astrology, Hebrew, Greek, and, most fatal of all, theology.
He was a very competent doctor and in the pursuit of his theological
studies he hit upon the idea of the circulation of the blood. It is to be
found in the fifteenth chapter of the first one of his books against the
doctrine of the Trinity. It shows the one-sidedness of the theological
mind of the sixteenth century that none of those who examined the works
of Servetus ever discovered that this man had made one of the greatest
discoveries of all ages.
If only Servetus had stuck to his medical practice! He might have died
peacefully in his bed at a ripe old age.
But he simply could not keep away from the burning questions of his day,
and having access to the printing shops of Lyons, he began to give vent
to his opinions upon sundry subjects.
Nowadays a generous millionaire can persuade a college to change its name
from Trinity College to that of a popular brand of tobacco and nothing
happens. The press says, “Isn’t it good of Mr. Dingus to be so generous
with his money!” and the public at large shouts “Amen!”
In a world which seems to have lost all capacity for being shocked by
such a thing as blasphemy, it is not easy to write of a time when the
mere suspicion that one of its fellow citizens had spoken disrespectfully
of the Trinity would throw an entire community into a state of panic.
But unless we fully appreciate this fact, we shall never be able to
understand the horror in which Servetus was held by all good Christians
of the first half of the sixteenth century.
And yet he was by no means a radical.
He was what today we would call a liberal.
He rejected the old belief in the Trinity as held both by the Protestants
and the Catholics, but he believed so sincerely (one feels inclined
to say, so naïvely) in the correctness of his own views, that he
committed the grave error of writing letters to Calvin suggesting that
he be allowed to visit Geneva for a personal interview and a thorough
discussion of the entire problem.
He was not invited.
And, anyway, it would have been impossible for him to accept. The
Inquisitor General of Lyons had already taken a hand in the affair and
Servetus was in jail. This inquisitor (curious readers will find a
description of him in the works of Rabelais who refers to him as Doribus,
a pun upon his name, which was Ory) had got wind of the Spaniard’s
blasphemies through a letter which a private citizen of Geneva, with the
connivance of Calvin, had sent to his cousin in Lyons.
Soon the case against him was further strengthened by several samples of
Servetus’ handwriting, also surreptitiously supplied by Calvin. It really
looked as if Calvin did not care who hanged the poor fellow as long as he
got hung, but the inquisitors were negligent in their sacred duties and
Servetus was able to escape.
First he seems to have tried to reach the Spanish frontier. But the long
journey through southern France would have been very dangerous to a man
who was so well known and so he decided to follow the rather round-about
route via Geneva, Milan, Naples and the Mediterranean Sea.
Late one Saturday afternoon in August of the year 1553 he reached Geneva.
He tried to find a boat to cross to the other side of the lake, but boats
were not supposed to sail so shortly before the Sabbath day and he was
told to wait until Monday.
The next day was Sunday. As it was a misdemeanor for both natives and
strangers to stay away from divine service, Servetus went to church. He
was recognized and arrested. By what right he was put into jail was never
explained. Servetus was a Spanish subject and was not accused of any
crime against the laws of Geneva. But he was a liberal in the matter of
doctrine, a blasphemous and profane person who dared to have opinions of
his own upon the subject of the Trinity. It was absurd that such a person
should invoke the protection of the law. A common criminal might do so. A
heretic, never! And without further ado he was locked up in a filthy and
damp hole, his money and his personal belongings were confiscated and two
days later he was taken to court and was asked to answer a questionnaire
containing thirty-eight different points.
The trial lasted two months and twelve days.
In the end he was found guilty of “heresies against the foundations
of the Christian religion.” The answers which he had given during the
discussions of his opinions had exasperated his judges. The usual
punishment for cases of his sort, especially if the accused were a
foreigner, was perpetual banishment from the territory of the city of
Geneva. In the case of Servetus an exception was made. He was condemned
to be burned alive.
In the meantime the French tribunal had re-opened the case of the
fugitive and the officials of the Inquisition had come to the same
conclusion as their Protestant colleagues. They too had condemned
Servetus to death and had dispatched their sheriff to Geneva with the
request that the culprit be surrendered to him and be brought back to
France.
This request was refused.
Calvin was able to do his own burning.
As for that terrible walk to the place of execution, with a delegation
of arguing ministers surrounding the heretic upon his last journey, the
agony which lasted for more than half an hour and did not really come to
an end until the crowd, in their pity for the poor martyr, had thrown
a fresh supply of fagots upon the flames, all this makes interesting
reading for those who care for that sort of thing, but it had better be
omitted. One execution more or less, what difference did it make during a
period of unbridled religious fanaticism?
But the case of Servetus really stands by itself. Its consequences were
terrible. For now it was shown, and shown with brutal clearness, that
those Protestants who had clamored so loudly and persistently for “the
right to their own opinions” were merely Catholics in disguise, that
they were just as narrow-minded and cruel to those who did not share
their own views as their enemies and that they were only waiting for the
opportunity to establish a reign of terror of their own.
This accusation is a very serious one. It cannot be dismissed by a mere
shrug of the shoulders and a “Well, what would you expect?”
We possess a great deal of information upon the trial and know in detail
what the rest of the world thought of this execution. It makes ghastly
reading. It is true that Calvin, in an outburst of generosity, suggested
that Servetus be decapitated instead of burned. Servetus thanked him for
his kindness, but offered still another solution. He wanted to be set
free. Yea, he insisted (and the logic was all on his side) that the court
had no jurisdiction over him, that he was merely an honest man in search
for the truth and that therefore he had the right to be heard in open
debate with his opponent, Dr. Calvin.
But of this Calvin would not hear.
He had sworn that this heretic, once he fell into his hands, should never
be allowed to escape with his life, and he was going to be as good as
his word. That he could not get a conviction without the coöperation
of his arch-enemy, the Inquisition, made no difference to him. He
would have made common cause with the pope if His Holiness had been
in the possession of some documents that would further incriminate the
unfortunate Spaniard.
But worse was to follow.
On the morning of his death, Servetus asked to see Calvin and the latter
came to the dark and filthy dungeon that had served his enemy as a prison.
Upon this occasion at least he might have been generous; more, he might
have been human.
He was neither.
He stood in the presence of a man who within another hour would be able
to plead his case before the throne of God and he argued. He debated
and sputtered, grew green and lost his temper. But not a word of pity,
of charity, or kindliness. Not a word. Only bitterness and hatred, the
feeling of “Serve you right, you obstinate scoundrel. Burn and be damned!”
* * * * *
All this happened many, many years ago.
Servetus is dead.
All our statues and memorial tablets will not bring him back to life
again.
Calvin is dead.
A thousand volumes of abuse will not disturb the ashes of his unknown
grave.
They are all of them dead, those ardent reformers who during the trial
had shuddered with fear lest the blasphemous scoundrel be allowed to
escape, those staunch pillars of the Church who after the execution broke
forth into paeans of praise and wrote each other, “All hail to Geneva!
The deed is done.”
They are all of them dead, and perhaps it were best they were forgotten
too.
Only let us have a care.
Tolerance is like liberty.
No one ever gets it merely by asking for it. No one keeps it except by
the exercise of eternal care and vigilance.
For the sake of some future Servetus among our own children, we shall do
well to remember this.