CHAPTER I.

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SERVETUS AND CALVIN

* * * * * *

_By the same Author._

BENEDICT D’ESPINOZA; his Life, Correspondence, and Ethics.

G. E. LESSING’S NATHAN THE WISE. With an Introduction.

THE SUDORIPAROUS AND LYMPHATIC GLANDULAR SYSTEMS; the Vital Nature

of their Functions, and the Effect of Implications of these on the

Diseases ascribed to Malaria.

* * * * * *

[Illustration: MICHEL SERVETUS]

SERVETUS AND CALVIN

A Study of an Important Epoch in the

Early History of the Reformation

by

R. WILLIS, M.D.

Περὶ τῆς τριάδος--scis me semper veritum fore. Bone Deus, quales

tragœdias excitabit ad posteros hæc questio: εἰ ἐστὶν ὑπόστασις ὁ λόγος;

εἰ ἐστὶν ὑπόστασις τὸ πνεῦμα? MELANCHTHON

Henry S. King & Co., Londo

1877

Universal history is at bottom the history of the great men who have

lived and worked here. And truly the inexhaustible, the perennial Epic

is the story of man’s life from age to age.

THOMAS CARLYLE

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

TO

HIS FRIENDS

SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D.

AND

R. W. MACKAY, M.A.

This Work is Dedicated

WITH EVERY EXPRESSION OF AFFECTIONATE REGARD

AND ESTEEM

BY THE WRITER

PREFACE.

Some years ago I was led to make a study of the Life and Writings of

Spinoza, and took considerable pains to present the gifted Jew of

Amsterdam in such fulness to the English reader as might suffice to

convey a passable idea of what one of the great misunderstood and

misused among the sons of men was in himself, in his influence on his

more immediate friends and surroundings through his presence, and on

the world for all time through all his works. This study completed,

and leisure from the more active duties of professional life enlarging

with increasing years, I bethought me of some other among the sufferers

in the holy cause of human progress as means of occupation and

improvement. Spinoza led, I might say as matter of course, to Giordano

Bruno, with whose writings I was familiar, and who was Spinoza’s

master, if he ever had a master. But having, at a former period,

undertaken to edit the works of Harvey for the Sydenham Society, and

the discovery of the circulation of the blood having become renewed

matter of discussion with medical men and others, labourers in the

field of general literature, I was turned from Bruno to Servetus, as

the first who proclaimed the true way in which the blood from the right

reaches the left chambers of the heart by passing through the lungs,

and who even hinted at its further course by the arteries to the body

at large.

Of Servetus at this time I knew little or nothing, save that he had

been burned as a heretic at Geneva by Calvin; and of his works I had

seen no more than the extract in which he describes the pulmonary

circulation. But meditating a revision and prospective publication

of the Life of Harvey, with which I had prefaced my edition of his

works, I went in search of further information concerning the ingenious

anatomist who had not only outstripped his contemporaries, but his

successors, by something like a century in making so important an

induction as the Pulmonary Circulation. Nor had I far to go. In the

ample stores of the British Museum Library I found a complete mine of

Servetus-literature, and with access to the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’

as reproduced by a learned physician, Dr. De Murr, and other works of

the unfortunate Servetus, I encountered not only the physiologist

already known to me, but the philosopher and scholar, the practical

physician, freed from the fetters of mediæval routine, the geographer

and astronomer, the biblical critic, in days when criticism of the

kind, as we understand the term, was unimagined, and, alas for him!

the most advanced and tolerant of the Reformers,--that sacred band to

which Servetus by indefeasible right belongs. Luther, Calvin, and the

rest repudiated the discipline and most of the outward rites and shows

of the Roman Catholic Church; but they retained the most abstruse of

her creeds. Servetus went at least as far as they in the rejection

of externals; but, appealing to the scriptures of the New Testament,

he satisfied himself and dared to say to the world that some of the

fundamentals of Christianity as formulated by the Church of Rome,

and acquiesced in by the Reformers of Germany, had no warrant in the

teaching of the Prophet of Nazareth. Rejecting, as he did, the whole of

the post-apostolic dogmatic accretions of the Church of Rome, Servetus

is the source of the more ‘reasonable service’ we are now permitted to

render, and--strange conjunction!--through his disastrous intercourse

with Calvin, in no small measure the original of the free enquiry that

is leading on to conclusions yet uncontemplated as to man’s relations

to the Unseen and the Eternal.

The life and labours of the man of whom so much may be said can never

be otherwise than interesting to the world. Nor is it in his life only

that Servetus has been influential. His death has, perhaps, been even

more influential than his life; for when his pyre began to blaze,

the beacon was lighted that first warned effectually from the shoals

of bigotry and intolerance on which religion misunderstood has made

shipwreck so long. The custom of consigning heretics, as dissidents in

their interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures were called, to death by

fire then began to fall into abeyance; princes and chief magistrates

ceased from assisting at autos-da-fé as edifying spectacles; and

persecution to less terrible conclusions--imprisonment, banishment,

fine, and social ostracism--has been coming gradually, however slowly,

to an end.

We have more than one book in English purporting to give an account

of the life of Servetus, but none, I think, that is not either a

compilation at second hand, or a translation wholly or in principal

part from the French. No one among us appears to have referred to the

works of Servetus and his contemporaries for the information that would

have enabled him to give something like a true presentment of the man

as he lived and died. To do this--to make the English reader acquainted

with another of the great devoted men who have toiled on life’s

pilgrimage with bleeding feet, to smooth and make straight the way for

others, healers in the strife and in front of the battle, not to strike

but to staunch the wounds that men in their ignorance and madness make

on one another--such is the purpose of the work now presented to the

reader.

In appealing mainly to the original sources of information on the life

of Servetus, I have still not failed to make myself master of what has

been done in later days by others in this direction. The references

that occur in the course of my book to the writings of La Roche,

Allwörden, Mosheim, D’Artigny, Trechsel, Rilliet, and, last but not

least, of Henry Tollin, make it unnecessary for me to do more in this

place than to acknowledge my obligations to them.

One word on the portrait of Servetus. Of the original of this Mosheim

gives a particular account; but all Tollin’s enquiries, as well as

those I have made myself, lead to the belief that it is no longer in

existence. Doubt has even been expressed as to the authenticity of

this portrait of which we have indifferent engravings in Hornius’

‘Kirchengeschichte,’ in Allwörden’s ‘Historia,’ and in Mosheim’s

‘Ketzergeschichte.’ After careful study of these, my daughter has done

her best to reproduce in the etching appended what must have been a

striking and is certainly a typical Spanish countenance.

The etching of Calvin is after an engraving from one of the numerous

more or less authentic portraits of the Reformer that are extant.

BARNES, SURREY: _Midsummer 1877_.

CONTENTS.

_BOOK THE FIRST._

EARLY LIFE--WORKS--ARREST AND TRIAL AT VIENNE.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MICHAEL SERVETUS: HIS BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY EDUCATION 3

II. SERVICE WITH FRIAR JUAN QUINTANA, CONFESSOR OF THE EMPEROR

CHARLES V. 19

III. THE SERVICE WITH QUINTANA COMES TO AN END 29

IV. INTERCOURSE WITH THE SWISS REFORMERS 33

V. THE REFORMERS OF STRASBURG. PUBLICATION OF THE WORK ON

TRINITARIAN ERROR 37

VI. THE AUTHORITIES OF BASLE. THE TWO DIALOGUES ON THE TRINITY.

LEAVES SWITZERLAND 71

VII. PARIS. ASSUMPTION OF THE NAME OF VILLENEUVE OR VILLANOVANUS.

ACQUAINTANCE WITH CALVIN 79

VIII. LYONS. ENGAGEMENT AS READER FOR THE PRESS WITH THE

TRECHSELS. EDITS THE GEOGRAPHY OF PTOLEMY 86

IX. LYONS. DR. SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER 99

X. RETURN TO PARIS. STUDIES THERE. JO. WINTER OF ANDERNACH;

ANDREA VESALIUS. DEGREES OF M.A. AND M.D. LECTURES ON

GEOGRAPHY AND ASTROLOGY 104

XI. THE TREATISE ON SYRUPS, AND THEIR USE IN MEDICINE 111

XII. THE MEDICAL FACULTY OF PARIS SUE SERVETUS FOR LECTURING

ON JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY 116

XIII. CHARLIEU. ATTAINMENT OF HIS THIRTIETH YEAR. VIEWS OF

BAPTISM 125

XIV. SETTLEMENT AT VIENNE UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE ARCHBISHOP.

RENEWAL OF INTERCOURSE WITH THE PUBLISHERS OF LYONS.

SECOND EDITION OF PTOLEMY 130

XV. EDITION OF SANTES PAGNINI’S LATIN BIBLE WITH COMMENTARY 139

XVI. ENGAGEMENT AS EDITOR BY JO. FRELON OF LYONS. CORRESPONDENCE

WITH CALVIN 157

XVII. ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO,’ THE RESTORATION OF

CHRISTIANITY. DISCOVERY OF THE PULMONARY CIRCULATION 191

XVIII. CALVIN RECEIVES A COPY OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO’ 231

XIX. CALVIN DENOUNCES SERVETUS THROUGH WILLIAM TRIE TO THE

ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITIES OF LYONS 235

XX. ARREST OF SERVETUS AND ARNOULLET, THE PUBLISHER. THE TRIAL

FOR HERESY AT VIENNE. SERVETUS IS SUFFERED TO ESCAPE FROM

PRISON 252

XXI. DISCOVERY OF ARNOULLET’S PRIVATE PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT.

SEIZURE AND BURNING OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI

RESTITUTIO,’ ALONG WITH THE EFFIGY OF ITS AUTHOR 269

_BOOK THE SECOND._

SERVETUS IN GENEVA, FACE TO FACE WITH CALVIN.

I. SERVETUS REACHES GENEVA. DETAINED THERE, HE IS ARRESTED AT

THE INSTANCE OF CALVIN 281

II. GENEVA, AND THE STATE OF POLITICAL PARTIES AT THE DATE OF

SERVETUS’ ARREST 287

III. SERVETUS IS ARRAIGNED ON THE CAPITAL CHARGE BY CALVIN 304

IV. THE TRIAL IN ITS FIRST PHASE 314

V. THE TRIAL IN ITS SECOND PHASE, WITH THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL

OF GENEVA AS PROSECUTOR 333

VI. THE TRIAL IN ITS SECOND PHASE, CONTINUED 351

VII. THE TRIAL CONTINUED. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL RECEIVES

FRESH INSTRUCTIONS FROM CALVIN 366

VIII. SERVETUS IS VISITED IN PRISON BY CALVIN AND THE

MINISTERS 386

IX. THE COURT DETERMINES TO CONSULT THE COUNCILS

AND CHURCHES OF THE FOUR PROTESTANT SWISS CANTONS 391

X. THE TRIAL IS INTERRUPTED THROUGH DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN CALVIN AND THE COUNCIL 393

XI. THE TRIAL IS RESUMED ON NEW ARTICLES SUPPLIED BY CALVIN 398

XII. THE TRIAL CONTINUED. SERVETUS ADDRESSES A

LETTER TO CALVIN AND PETITIONS HIS JUDGES 423

XIII. CALVIN ANTICIPATES THE JUDGES IN THEIR APPEAL

TO THE SWISS CHURCHES 428

XIV. SERVETUS SENDS A LETTER AND A SECOND REMONSTRANCE

AND PETITION TO HIS JUDGES 441

XV. THE SWISS COUNCILS AND CHURCHES ARE ADDRESSED

BY THE COUNCIL OF GENEVA 446

XVI. SERVETUS AGAIN ADDRESSES THE SYNDICS AND COUNCIL

OF GENEVA, AND ACCUSES CALVIN. THE

ANSWERS OF THE COUNCILS AND CHURCHES CONSULTED 450

XVII. THE ATTITUDE OF CALVIN. THE HOPES OF SERVETUS 474

XVIII. THE SENTENCE AND EXECUTION. VÆ VICTIS! 480

XIX. AFTER THE BATTLE. VÆ VICTORIBUS! 488

XX. CALVIN DEFENDS HIMSELF 498

XXI. CALVIN’S DEFENCE IS ATTACKED 517

XXII. CALVIN’S BIOGRAPHERS AND APOLOGISTS 528

APPENDIX 535

BOOK I.

EARLY LIFE--WORKS--ARREST AND TRIAL AT VIENNE

CHAPTER I.

MICHAEL SERVETUS, HIS BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY EDUCATION.

Michael Serveto, or as we know him best by his name with the Latin

termination, Servetus, appears, from the most trustworthy information

we possess, to have been born either at Tudela, in the old Spanish

kingdom of Navarre, or at Villaneuva, in that of Aragon; but whether

here or there, and in the year 1509 or 1511, is an open question. In

the course of the Trial he stood at Vienne in Dauphiny, in the spring

of 1553, he says himself that he is a native of Tudela, and forty-two

years of age; which would make Navarre the country, and 1511 the year,

of his birth. But in the Geneva Trial, only four months later, he

declares that he is of Villanova, and forty-four years old; which would

give us Aragon as the land, and 1509 as the date, of his nativity. When

he spoke of himself as a Navarrese at Vienne, it may have been done

to conciliate his French judges, Navarre having once been a province

of France, and the natives of the two countries having still much

in common. It was at a moment, too, when he had paramount motives

for seeking to conceal his identity. When he said at Geneva that he

was ‘Espagnol Arragonois de Villeneuve’ and forty-four, he was face

to face with one who knew him well, and when he had neither motive

nor opportunity for concealment. Servetus’s subscription of himself

as ‘Michael Serveto, alias Revés, de Aragonia, Hispanus,’ on the

title-page of his first work; as ‘Michael Villanovanus,’ on the titles

of all the books he edited, and the name ‘Villeneuve’ by which alone

he was known through the whole of the years he lived in France, to say

nothing of the ‘M. S. V.,’ evidently Michael Servetus Villanovanus,

on the last leaf of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ the printing of

which led to his death, supply, as it seems, preponderating evidence

as to the place of his birth, though the year may still be left

uncertain. The _alias_ Revés which appears on the title of the book ‘De

Trinitatis Erroribus,’ the first-fruits of his genius, has hitherto

been a puzzle and subject of debate with his biographers, but can now

be satisfactorily interpreted. Servetus’s mother, it appears, was of

French extraction, of the Revés family, and her son took occasion in

his first work piously to preserve his mother’s family name beside his

proper patronymic.[1] Of the parents of Servetus, however, we in fact

know little more than that we have from himself when, on his trial at

Geneva, he informed the Court that they were _d’ancienne race, vivants

noblement_, of old families and independent, or in easy circumstances,

and that his father was a Notary by profession. Report adds that he was

of a family which had been jurists for generations, and that his father

was nearly related to Andrea Serveto d’Aninon, some time Professor

of Civil Law in the University of Bologna, subsequently member of

the Cortes of Aragon, and one of the Council of the Indies. So much

makes it clear that Michael Servetus was of gentle blood, of Christian

parentage, and neither of Jewish nor Moorish descent, as has been said

on no better ground apparently than that he shows he was acquainted

with Hebrew, had read the Koran, and in his writings is not intolerant

towards Jews and Mahomedans, like his countrymen.

Neither have we any very precise information as regards Servetus’s

earlier years and education. Of somewhat slender build, and so of

presumably delicate constitution, though he showed no trace of this

in after life, he is said to have been destined by his parents to

the service of the Church; in which view, whilst yet a youth, he was

placed for nurture in one of the convents of his native town or its

neighbourhood. And this we should imagine must almost necessarily be

true; for the rudiments of the liberal education Servetus shows himself

to have received, could only have been obtained in the early part of

the sixteenth century in the quiet of the cloister, and under the

fostering care of some monk more learned than the general.

The precocious ability and pious temperament with which we must credit

Servetus may have been a further motive for the line of life chalked

out for him by his parents. The Church was then, as it still continues

to be, the close through which an easy and a pious life can be best

secured where there is neither talent nor aspiration; as it is also

the highway to worldly wealth and power, where there is ambition and

ability to back what passes for piety. By mental and moral endowment

Servetus probably appeared to all about him a born churchman, with

the crosier, and even the cardinal’s hat, in perspective. But side

by side with so much that pointed in this direction, the reasoning,

sceptical, and self-sufficing nature of the man that led the opposite

way, as it had not yet appeared, so was it unsuspected. Servetus as

a youth unquestionably received the education that would have fitted

him for the Priesthood; and we think complacently of the solace and

relaxation from the monotony of monastic life, which the worthy brother

we evoke as his principal teacher found in imparting all he knew, and

pointing out the onward way to one both apt and eager to learn. Before

leaving the convent, or the convent school, where he doubtless remained

for several years, Servetus must have been not only a tolerable

Latin scholar, but, it may have been, also grounded in Greek and the

rudiments of Hebrew.

At what age Servetus left his convent teachers we are not informed;

some time however, we should imagine, before definitive vows are

required of the youthful aspirant to the holy office, when aptitude for

the prospective vocation is made subject of particular inquiry. Now it

may have been that he was discovered to be indifferently qualified by

mental constitution to follow further the line of life intended for

him--a conclusion to which we are led from all we know of the man in

his works. He was pious enough and credulous enough through life; but

his religion must be of the kind he thought out for himself, and his

beliefs of his own fashioning, not such as could be presented to him

ready shaped for acceptance. The very air of Europe at the beginning of

the sixteenth century was alive with mutterings of the storm that had

long been gathering, and found vent at length through the manly voice

of Martin Luther; and when we find hints that fears of the Inquisition

had had something to do with Servetus’s subsequent movements, we are

disposed to imagine that the call to free thought which had sprung up

on the revival of letters and found out the northern Monk in his cell,

had also reached the Friar of the south, and from him flowed over upon

the receptive mind of his youthful scholar.

Be this as it may, when twelve or fourteen years of age, Servetus

appears to have entered as a student at the University of Saragossa,

then the most celebrated in Spain; and if he had Peter Martyr de

Angleria among the number of his teachers, as we are assured he

had,[2] he was in the hands of one of the most accomplished as well

as liberal-minded men of his age. Angleria was in fact still more

distinguished as a scholar, diplomatist, teacher and writer, than as

a soldier. Having come to Spain in the suite of one of the Italian

embassies to Ferdinand and Isabella, he joined the army of the Catholic

king and queen as a volunteer, and having distinguished himself on more

than one occasion in the field, he was presented to the sovereigns

on the conclusion of hostilities, entered the service of Isabella,

in especial, and having taken orders--an indispensable condition to

acknowledgment as a teacher--he was engaged by the queen as tutor and

general supervisor of the education of the host of young noblemen and

gentlemen who thronged the Court. The influence exerted by such a man

in such a situation cannot be doubted; and it has been surmised that

more than one of the distinguished personages who appeared in Spain,

in the early part of the sixteenth century, owed not a little of all

that made them notable in after life to their teacher. Angleria was

in fact a man in advance of his age, morally, and, we must believe,

religiously also--although Spain was not always the devoted slave of

Rome we have been accustomed to think her in these our days. He had

seen enough in his campaigning and its consequences to disgust him

with conversions to Christianity at the point of the sword, and the

wholesale deportation from their native country of a great civilised

community because of their adhesion to the religion of their fathers.

An Italian by birth, it was no part of Angleria’s religion to hate Jews

and Saracens with such a hatred as made baptizing, banishing, torturing

and putting them to death the virtue it appeared in the eyes of the

Spaniards.

At Saragossa Servetus may have remained four or five years, working

hard at all that qualified him to appear as he meets us in after

life--perfecting himself in classics, and introduced not only to the

Ethics of Aristotle and the scholastic philosophy, but also to the

more positive domains of human knowledge--the mathematics, astronomy

and geography--geography more especially, brought into vogue as it was

by the great discoveries of Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and the hardy

navigators and travellers who came after them, then made accessible to

the general reader by the works of Angleria, Grynæus and others.

Having broken definitively with the idea of the Church as a calling,

Servetus must now have made up his mind to follow what might fairly

be spoken of as the hereditary vocation of his family--Law; and the

School of Toulouse being at this time the most celebrated in Europe,

to Toulouse he was sent as a student of Law by his father. Here he

seems to have remained for two or three years--short while enough in

which to fathom the intricacies of civil and canon law, to say nothing

of other studies that must have continued to engage some share of his

attention; but that the time given to the study of Law at Toulouse was

not misspent, is proclaimed by the occasional scraps of legal lore we

notice interspersed in his writings. In the covenant between God and

Abraham, to cite one among many instances, he observes that we have the

first case on record of one of the four forms of unindentured contract,

still spoken of as the form _Facio ut facias_. Elsewhere also, and at

other times, on his trial at Geneva in particular, he is credited by

his prosecutor with an adequate knowledge of the Pandects, although he

says himself that he had never done more than read Justinian in the

perfunctory manner usual with young men at college. On the occasion

referred to, nevertheless, we find him quoting the decisions of

jurisconsults in support of his conclusions.

But Law, we believe, was never the subject that engrossed the thoughts

of Servetus. The natural bent of his mind, and the teaching he had

received during his earlier years, led him to Theology; and it was at

Toulouse, as he tells us himself, that he first made acquaintance with

the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It is not difficult

to imagine the effect which the perusal of these writings must have

produced on the ardent religious temperament of Servetus. In his

earliest work he speaks of the Bible as a book come down from heaven,

the source of all his philosophy and of all his science--language,

however, that is to be seen as hyperbole to a great extent; for he

was already imbued with scholastic philosophy, and, we must presume,

with patristic theology also, before he had read a word of the Bible;

and in his published works we find him at various times subordinating

the teaching of the Scriptures to the conclusions of his reason.

Toulouse, indeed, in the early part of the sixteenth century, was

an unlikely school for religious study in any but the most rigidly

orthodox fashion; and how far Michael Servetus swerved from this--to

his sorrow--need not now be more particularly noticed. It was even the

boast of the Toulousans for long, that their city had not been infected

with what was spoken of as the poison of Lutheranism. So strict a watch

had been kept over them by their shepherds, the priests, that, whilst

in neighbouring and other more distant cities of France the Reformation

had many adherents, it had none--openly, at all events--in Toulouse. It

were needless to insist that training of a special kind, in addition to

originality and independence of mind, was required to lead to views and

conclusions such as those attained to by Servetus.[3]

He had read the Bible, however, at Toulouse; and there, too, if it were

not at an earlier period, he must have met with some of the writings

of Luther, of which several had been translated into Spanish soon

after their publication.[4] But there is another book which enjoyed an

extensive reputation through the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, and seems to supply the kind of aliment precisely of which

a mind constituted like that of Servetus must have felt the want. This

is the ‘Theologia Rationalis sive Liber de Creaturis’ of Raymund de

Sabunde, in which the Creator is reached by a gradual ascent from lower

to higher grades of created things.

The ‘Rational Theology’ of Sabunde is indeed a most noteworthy book;

full of true piety, resting on the wider and surer grounds of nature at

large in harmony with human intelligence, than the dogmatic theologian

can show in the written text and unwritten traditions on which he

relies for his conclusions. Containing no word that is not thoroughly

orthodox, doctrine, nevertheless, is not that which it is the grand

object of the ‘Rational Theology’ of Sabunde to propound. Neither is

authority paraded, as it would have been had the book been written by

a professed theologian, instead of a pious naturalist; for Sabunde

was a physician, one of the guild whose destiny it is to lead the van

of progress. We cannot believe that the work, though often reprinted,

was ever heartily approved by the heads of the Church of Rome. Its

title went far to condemn it. The Roman Catholic Church requires faith,

submissiveness, subserviency, not reason, of its sons; and we are

not, therefore, surprised to find that though the ‘Rational Theology’

of Sabunde, as a whole, long escaped being placed on the index of

prohibited books, the prologue with which we find one of the early

editions, if it be not the first (Argentorati, 1496), introduced, was

soon ordered to be expunged; nor, indeed, as culture extended and the

Reformation spread, with ever-increasing alarm to the dominant Church,

that the book itself was at length pointedly forbidden to be read by

the faithful. It was put upon the ‘Index’ by the Congregation of the

Council of Trent in 1595, the author ‘holding too much by Nature,’

say the reverend councillors, ‘to give us a knowledge of God and his

providential dealing with the world, and making too little reference to

the Fathers and the authority of Holy Writ.’

The Prologue of Sabunde is in truth a very remarkable piece of writing,

the age considered in which it flowed from the pen. Beginning in

the accredited orthodox fashion: ‘Ad laudem et gloriam altissimæ et

gloriosissimæ Trinitatis,’ &c., the author proceeds to say that his

purpose is ‘to expose the errors, as well of the ancient philosophers

as of pagan and infidel writers, by the science he has to propound;

to set forth the catholic faith in its infallible truthfulness, and

to show every sect opposed thereunto in its necessary falsity and

erroneousness. Two books,’ he continues, ‘are given to us by God for

our guidance: one, the universal book of created things, or the book

of Nature; the other, the book of the sacred Scriptures. The first

was given to man from the beginning, when the world was made; the

second is to supplement and solve the difficulties met with in the

first. The book of the Creatures lies open to all; but the book of the

Scriptures can only be read aright by the clergy. The book of Nature

cannot be falsified, neither can it be readily interpreted amiss, even

by heretics; but the book of the Scriptures they can misconstrue and

falsify at their pleasure.’ The author’s design, therefore, is to write

a book which gentle and simple alike may read and understand without a

master; and he ends his prologue with a compliment and submission to

Holy Mother Church, which her hierarchs, however, have not accepted

either gratefully or graciously; for they did not of old, any more

than they do now, want books that would enable readers to go their own

way without the guiding hand of a master. Shall we wonder, therefore,

that this notable prologue was looked on at an early date as highly

objectionable, and is not to be found in any of the later editions of

the book?[5]

Michel de Montaigne has given an interesting account of this ‘Rational

Theology’ of Sabunde. His father thought so highly of it that he set

his son, the immortal Essayist, to translate it into French: a task

which it were needless to say he performed in a very admirable manner,

though the sire did not live to see the work in type and in the hands

of the public he was anxious to reach through its means. The book, says

Montaigne, is composed by a Spaniard, in indifferent Latin--_basti

d’un Espagnol, baraguiné des terminaisons Latines_--but well adapted

to meet a want of the day. The novelties of Luther coming into vogue

and shaking old beliefs, Sabunde, as he thinks, ‘gives very good

advice against a disease that ever tends towards execrable atheism.’

If Sabunde does give _tres bon advis_, his ‘Book of the Creatures’

is nevertheless the text from which the most sceptical perhaps of

the whole series of the ‘Essays’ is written; and if the ‘Theologia

Rationalis’ fell into the hands of the youthful Michael Servetus, as

we believe it must almost necessarily have done, we have no difficulty

in imagining that it influenced him in a still greater degree, and

not much otherwise than it did young Michel de Montaigne. A rational

exposition of God’s revelation of himself in nature, we apprehend, must

have been a craving in the soul of the serious Spaniard still more than

in that of the lively Gascon.[6]

But there is another writer whose influence on his age and the progress

of free thought it is impossible to estimate too highly, and from whose

teaching Servetus on his death-walk owned that he had had _something_.

This is Erasmus. What Servetus had he does not say. Whatever it may

have been, it was unaccompanied by the caution and cold discretion that

distinguished the great scholar of Rotterdam. In the Scholia which

Erasmus added to his Greek New Testament, however, we fancy we see

heralds of the far bolder and more original exegetical annotations with

which Servetus, under his assumed name of Villanovanus, accompanied his

reprint of the Pagnini Bible, which we shall have to speak of by and by.

In addition to all he learned from his convent teachers, from the

professors of Saragossa and Toulouse, from Sabunde, Luther, Erasmus,

and others on the subject of theology, Servetus must further have been

well read in general history and the works of travellers in foreign

lands, as we shall find when we come to study his edition of Ptolemy’s

Geography, and refer particularly to his biblical criticisms, in days

when criticism of the kind he brought to bear on the text of the

Scriptures was unknown. It was only in the early part of the sixteenth

century that the Hebrew Bible and Greek Testament began to be appealed

to by the learned, and made the subject of critical study in a way

never thought of before. Long limited to the letter, the study was

widened in its scope by Servetus, and, embracing general history, made

to include a new and highly important element in its bearing on the

Religious Idea. If Servetus of himself arrived at the interpretation he

gives of the Psalms and Prophetical writings of Israel, he must indeed

have been possessed of no ordinary share of natural sagacity informed

by study, and of moral courage in addition; for it runs counter to

all that had been assumed from the date of the New Testament writings

almost to the present day. The free use he makes of his historical

reading in its application to David, Cyrus, and Hezekiah, may have

been that which led some of his biographers to imagine that he was of

Jewish descent, and to say that he had visited Africa, and had had

Mahomedan as well as Jewish teachers, from whom he imbibed his notions,

hostile to the common orthodox interpretation of the Prophets, and the

conception of a Triune God.

It were absurd to suppose that Servetus’s early convent education and

subsequent studies at Saragossa and Toulouse had made him all he shows

himself to be in his works. He continued a student through the whole

of his life, and it is indeed among the privileges of the physician

that his education never ends; but it was certainly at an early period

of his career that he became possessed of the theological ideas which

he went on elaborating, even to the day when his ‘Restoration of

Christianity’ was in type and ready for the publication it did not

obtain. It is therefore of moment with us to seize and follow up every

incident in his life that induced or strengthened the bent of his mind

towards theological speculation; and the event which now befel, we must

presume, had no slight influence in this direction.

CHAPTER II.

SERVICE WITH FRIAR JUAN QUINTANA, CONFESSOR OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.

School and college days come naturally to an end, or are cut short

by one intervening incident or another; and the studies of Michael

Servetus at Toulouse were interrupted by an invitation to enter his

service from brother Juan Quintana, a Franciscan friar, confessor

to the Emperor Charles V., about to attend on his Sovereign to his

coronation in the imperial city of Bologna, and, of still greater

significance, to the Diet of Augsburg, which followed it closely. In

what capacity Servetus joined Quintana we are not informed; but if

father confessors ever engaged private secretaries, we can hardly doubt

that it must have been in the intimate relationship suggested, for

which the accomplishments of the younger man so obviously qualified

him. The invitation from Quintana is interesting on many accounts,

and was certainly an important element in the mental development

of Servetus. Though he may have quitted Spain hurriedly, perhaps

secretly--in fear of the Inquisition, as said--he could have left

nothing but a good name for conduct and accomplishment behind him,

otherwise he would never have been recommended as a fit and proper

person to act as secretary to the confessor of the great Emperor. Not

forgotten by his old masters of Saragossa, the clever student was

thought of by them when Quintana made known his want of a secretary,

and must have been recommended to him as in every way qualified to fill

a situation of the kind.

Michael Servetus, as we apprehend him, was one of those sensitive

natures which, like the stainless plate of the photographer, retains

at once and reflects every object presented to it; his service with

Quintana, consequently, was one of the incidents that influenced the

whole of his after life. Up to the time of his engagement with the

confessor he had been but one among hundreds of other students, known

to his teachers as a young man of superior abilities, it may be,

but not an object of more particular attention to any one of them.

In the intimate relationship implied between the elderly principal

and the youthful underling matters were entirely changed; and recent

inquiries[7] lead to the conclusion that the hood of the barefooted

friar Juan Quintana covered the head of a man of superior powers,

cherishing larger, more liberal and more tolerant views than were

current in his age, more especially among the class to which he

belonged.

Quintana appears to have attracted the notice of the Emperor so far

back as the date of the Diet of Worms, during the sittings of which he

had distinguished himself as a preacher and become generally known as a

theologian and man of learning. He had at the same time, however, and

in like measure, fallen out of favour with his party, opposed at every

point to the reform movement, in consequence of the moderation of his

views. Matters at Worms had gone in no wise to the satisfaction of the

Emperor, owing in no inconsiderable degree, as he must have believed,

to the intolerance and mismanagement of his clerical advisers. To give

the approaching Diet of Augsburg, of which Charles was thinking far

more seriously than of the pageant of Bologna when he made Quintana his

confessor, a chance of proving the bond of union he desired between the

two great religious parties which now divided his empire, he saw that

he must rid himself of the narrow-minded and utterly irreconcilable

Dominican Loaysa, whom he had had at Worms as his spiritual director.

From Loaysa he knew he had no prospect of receiving those counsels

of concession and compromise which, as a politician, he saw were

indispensable and to which he was himself at the moment by no means

disinclined. He must have another confessor of more liberal views, not

utterly opposed to the reformation of the Church in all its aspects

and to the whole body of the Reformers with whom, as heretics, it was

condescension on the part of a Roman Catholic dignitary to communicate,

and contamination, if it were not sin, to sympathise. The old director

had therefore to be got rid of, for a time at least; but he must

suffer no slight, be subjected to no show of mistrust, to no seeming

loss of confidence; he must not even be superseded in his office, but

only removed to a distance and so made innocuous. Charles therefore

discovered that a representative, who must be presumed to be familiar

with the most secret aspirations of his soul, would be required at

Rome as the medium of communication between himself and his holiness

the Pope, in connection with the important business in prospect

at Augsburg. Loaysa, accordingly--greatly to his disgust beyond

question--was dispatched with all the honours to Rome, whilst Juan

Quintana, summoned from the quiet of the cloister to the bustle of the

Court, found himself unexpectedly with a royal and imperial penitent at

his ear in the confessional, and an upper seat in the council chamber

pending the discussion of affairs of state.

How should we imagine that an invitation to take service with a man

possessed of qualities that brought him into such relationships could

have been otherwise than instantly embraced by the youthful student of

Toulouse; or how doubt that intimate contact with so great a nature

as Quintana’s could fail to impress him deeply? Attached forthwith to

the service of the confessor and in the suite of the Emperor, not the

least observant among all who accompanied him of the pomp and pageantry

displayed at the coronation at Bologna, the open-eyed secretary was

witness of much besides that sank into his mind, gave matter for future

thought, and found free but needlessly offensive expression in his

writings. Here, at Bologna, it was in fact, and not at Rome as has been

said, that Servetus saw the Pope ‘borne aloft above the heads of the

people, the multitude kneeling in the dust, adoring him, and they among

them who could but kiss his slipper accounting themselves blessed.’ Nor

was it the ignorant multitude alone that showed such abject servility.

He saw in addition ‘the most powerful prince of his age, at the head of

twenty thousand veteran soldiers, kneeling and kissing the feet of the

Pope;’[8] an exhibition which appears to have been thought of as simply

degrading instead of edifying by the independent-minded secretary.

So great an event as the coronation of the Emperor was too favourable

an occasion to be neglected for a stroke of business by the financiers

of the Romish Church: indulgences were in the market in plenty, and at

prices to suit all purchasers, immunity from the pains of purgatory

being to be obtained for terms in the ratio of the money paid. How

shall we imagine that so glaring an abuse could fail to touch Servetus,

in the state of mind to which he must already have attained, in the

same way as the proceedings of Tetzel and his coadjutors touched the

common sense and conscience of Luther? It was doubtless with all he

now observed before him that we, short while after, find him speaking

in such virulent terms of the Papacy and exclaiming: ‘O bestia

bestiarum, meretrix sceleratissima’--‘O beast most beastly, most

wicked of harlots!’[9] Some of Luther’s epithets, we might conclude,

had found their way into the vocabulary of Servetus; and it may be

that the violence of Luther’s invective, unchallenged by the rest of

the Reformers, led him to fancy that he too might indulge without

impropriety in language of an unseemly kind.

When we think of the times in which Servetus lived, his early education

and subsequent surroundings, the violent hatred he seems already to

have conceived against the Papacy is not a little extraordinary. We

might be tempted to conclude that the free thought of Europe, of

which the Reformation was the outcome and expression, had found even

a more genial soil in the mind of this Spanish youth than in that of

Luther himself, or any of his accredited followers. They went little

way in freeing the religion of Jesus of Nazareth from the accretions

which metaphysical subtlety, superstition, and ignorance of the laws

of nature and the principles of things had gathered around it in the

course of ages. Their business, as they apprehended it, was to reform

the Church rather than the religion of which it was presumed to be the

exponent; the task that Servetus set himself in the end was to reform

religion, with little thought of a Church in any sense in which an

institution of the kind was conceived in his day, whether by Papist or

Protestant.

From reading the Bible at Toulouse and contrasting the humble life

and simple theistic morality of the Prophet of Nazareth with the

metaphysical subtleties and dogmatic deductions of the schoolmen,

the pomp, the power, the tyranny and the greed of the priests so

conspicuously displayed at Bologna, we can readily imagine the

impression made on the independent spirit of Servetus--an impression

that found more seemly utterance anon than that we have already quoted,

and in words like these: ‘For my own part I neither agree nor disagree

in every particular with either Catholic or Reformer. Both of them

seem to me to have something of truth and something of error in their

views; and whilst each sees the other’s shortcomings, neither sees

his own. God in his goodness give us all to understand our errors and

incline us to put them away. It would be easy enough, indeed, to judge

dispassionately of everything, were we but suffered without molestation

by the Churches freely to speak our minds; the older exponents of

doctrine, in obedience to the recommendation of St. Paul, giving place

to younger men, and these in their turn making way for teachers of

the day who had aught to impart that had been revealed to them. But

our doctors now contend for nothing but power. The Lord confound all

tyrants of the Church! Amen.’--The voice of this nineteenth century

verging on its close, from the mouth of a man little more than of age,

living in the first half of the sixteenth![10]

The business of the coronation at Bologna concluded, the Emperor betook

himself to Germany in view of the great Diet of Augsburg, formally

inaugurated in the summer of 1530, accompanied of course by his

confessor, as the confessor was attended by his youthful secretary. And

here it must have been that Servetus saw and may perchance have spoken

with Melanchthon and others of the leading Reformers, among the number

of whom, however, the greatest of them all did not appear. Luther’s

friends believed that the danger he must run by showing himself at

Augsburg was too great to be incurred. The brave man would himself have

faced the peril, but his princely protectors positively forbade the

exposure. They feared that at Augsburg the Emperor might be tempted to

violate the ‘safe conduct’ he had been reproached by his Papal advisers

with having so honourably observed at Worms; for there were still some

among the Roman Catholics, high in place, so ill-informed, so blind to

events, as to believe that were the head of the man who had inaugurated

the movement which compromised their power but off his shoulders, the

Reformation would collapse and die! Luther was therefore permitted by

his friends to approach the scene of action on this occasion no nearer

than Coburg.

Neither at Augsburg any more than at Worms did matters proceed so

entirely to the satisfaction of the Emperor as he wished, and may

have anticipated. The Protestant princes, with little cohesion

among themselves, showed, nevertheless, that severally they were

more resolute than ever in their requirements touching religion,

less obsequious too to the advances of their suzerain than he found

agreeable. They felt themselves in fact, and in so far, masters of the

situation, and had mostly quitted Augsburg before the sittings of the

Diet came to a close, content to leave Melanchthon and his colleagues

to give final shape to the business for which the Diet had been mainly

convoked, and in the great RELIGIOUS CHARTER OF THE AGE--the Confession

of Augsburg--to establish Protestantism as an integral and recognised

element, not only in the religious, but in the political system of

Europe.

During his attendance on his chief at Augsburg, Servetus, though

he saw and may have spoken with more than one of the distinguished

Reformers, could have been an object of particular attention to none

of them: his youth and subordinate position precluded the possibility

of this. That he may have been disappointed at not seeing the original

of the great movement which had brought together the august assembly

he looked on around him, we may well believe, but we find no evidence

in contemporary documents that would lead us to think he had ever come

into contact with Luther, as has been said.[11]

CHAPTER III.

THE SERVICE WITH QUINTANA COMES TO AN END.

It is greatly to be regretted that we have nothing from Servetus on

the other impressions he received, during the term of his service with

Quintana, beside those connected with the pomp and power of the Papacy.

We do not even know precisely how long he continued with the confessor

of the Emperor, nor where, nor at what moment he left him. Neither

have we a word of his whereabouts and mode of life, after vacating his

office, until we meet him seeking an interview with Jehan Hausschein,

the individual, with his name turned into Greek, so familiar to the

world as Œcolampadius. From Servetus himself we have it that he quitted

the service of Quintana on his death, which, he says, occurred in

Germany. But the truth of this statement has been called in question

on very sufficient grounds, Quintana having been seen alive in the

flesh, and still in attendance on the Emperor, years after dates at

which we know positively that Servetus had been in Basle and Strasburg,

communicating with Œcolampadius, Bucer, and others of the Reformers.

More than this, he had come before the world as author of the book

entitled ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ a copy of which having been found

by Joannes Cochlæus, an ecclesiastic in the suite of the Emperor, in a

bookseller’s shop at Ratisbon, was by him shown to Quintana, who, we

are informed, expressed extreme disgust that a countryman of his own

and personally known to him--_quem de facie se nôsse dicebat_--should

have fallen so far into the slough of heresy as to write on the mystery

of the Trinity in the style of Michael Servetus, alias Revés.[12] Nor

indeed is this the last we hear of Quintana. After the settlement of

affairs at Ratisbon and Nürnberg, he attended the Emperor to Italy, and

thence to his native Spain, where we find him installed as Prior of

the Church of Monte Aragon and a member of the Cortes of the kingdom.

Quintana appears in fact to have lived for yet two years, actively

engaged in his duties, having only been gathered to his fathers towards

the end of the year 1534.[13]

Servetus did not therefore leave the service of Quintana after, or

in consequence of, the death of the confessor. We find it difficult

indeed to think of one with the decidedly unorthodox opinions to which

Servetus had attained at an early period of his life, continuing on

terms of intimacy with a man of Quintana’s capacity, without showing

something of the leaven of unbelief that must have been already

fermenting in his mind. There is, it is true, commonly enough, so

much more of policy than of piety among hierarchs of the Church of

Rome, and indeed of any church largely possessed of wealth and culture,

that their real opinions and beliefs have often been made subject of

debate. But Quintana was a monk, although a liberal one, and he was

Charles V.’s confessor. Of the Emperor’s orthodoxy, bigotry, and hatred

of heresy, however, there can be no question; so that, though policy

moved him for a time to entertain as his spiritual adviser a man more

tolerant than the general, the occasion for this ceasing, Charles was

not likely to find himself altogether at his ease with one at his elbow

much more liberally disposed than himself. Quintana consequently on

the return to Spain, being absolved of his office of confessor, but

handsomely provided for in the Church, Charles recalled Loaysa, his

former director in matters of faith, from Rome, and lapsed into the

groove of intolerance from which considerations of state had for a

moment withdrawn him.

From the false account Servetus gives of the cause of his quitting

Quintana, we therefore think it probable that soon after the settlement

of matters at Augsburg in the early autumn of 1530, he had incautiously

betrayed the state of his mind on some point of the religious question,

and been dismissed from his service by the confessor. Service of any

sort, indeed, from the estimate we are led to form of the mental

constitution of Michael Servetus, could only have been a bondage never

patiently to be endured, but to be shaken off at the earliest possible

opportunity. His was not a nature that could brook a master; and we

have the assurance of Œcolampadius that Michael Servetus was in Basle

and making himself obnoxious by his theological fancies previous to the

month of October 1530. The coronation at Bologna having taken place in

the autumn of 1529, and the Diet of Augsburg assembled at midsummer

1530, Servetus could not, thus, have been in the following of Quintana

for more than a year, or eighteen months--no long term if reckoned by

the lapse of time, but certainly covering a vast area in the sphere

of his mental development. He may have had little leisure for the

study of books, but he had his eyes open to the doings of men; and

his inner senses were awakened to truths, his reason to conclusions,

that influenced him through the rest of his life, and possibly had no

insignificant part in bringing him to his untimely end.

CHAPTER IV.

INTERCOURSE WITH THE SWISS REFORMERS.

It would appear that Œcolampadius, Bucer, Bullinger, Zwingli and

others, their friends, had had a sort of ‘clerical meeting’ for talking

over the theological questions of the day at Basle in the autumn of

1530. On this occasion Œcolampadius informed his friends that he had

been troubled of late by a hot-headed Spaniard, Servetus by name,

overflowing with Arian heresies and other objectionable opinions,

maintaining particularly that Christ was not really and truly the

Eternal Son of God; but if not, then was he not, and could not be, the

Saviour--_were Christus nit rächter, warer, ewiger Gott, so were er

doch und könte nit seyn unser Heiland_. Waxing warm in his tale, and

fearing that such poison, as he conceived it, would not be poured into

his ears alone, but would reach those of others, he was minded that

measures should be taken against such a contingency. To this Zwingli,

addressing him as brother Œcolampady, replied, that ‘there did seem

good ground for them to be on their guard; for the false and wicked

doctrine of the troublesome Spaniard goes far to do away with the

whole of our Christian religion.’ ‘God preserve us,’ said he, ‘from the

coming in among us of any such wickedness. Do what you can, then, to

quit the man of his errors, and with good and wholesome argument win

him to the truth.’ ‘That have I already done,’ said Œcolampady; ‘but so

haughty, daring and contentious is he, that all I say goes for nothing

against him.’ ‘This is indeed a thing insufferable in the Church of

God,’ said Zwingli--_Ein unleydenliche Sach in der Kyrchen Gottes_.

Therefore do everything possible that such dreadful blasphemy get no

further wind to the detriment of Christianity.’[14]

Besides the personal communication with Œcolampadius of which we

have this interesting notice, Servetus must have written him several

letters--unfortunately lost to us--about the same time, for we have two

from the Reformer to the Spaniard, which have happily been preserved.

In one of these (probably the second that was written), Servetus

having, as it seems, complained that he had been somewhat sharply

handled by his correspondent, Œcolampadius replies that he, for his

part, thinks that he himself has the greater reason to complain. ‘You

obtrude yourself on me,’ he says, ‘as if I had nothing else ado than

to answer you; asking me questions about all the foolish things the

Sorbonne has said of the Trinity, and even taking it amiss that I do

not criticise and in your way oppose myself to those distinguished

theologians, Athanasius and Nazianzenus. You contend that the Church

has been displaced from its true foundation of faith in Christ, and

feign that we speak of his filiation in a sense which detracts from

the honour that is due to him as the Son of God. But it is you who

speak blasphemously; for I now understand the diabolical subterfuges

you use. Forbearing enough in other respects, I own that I am not

possessed of that extreme amount of patience which would keep me silent

when I see Christ dishonoured.’ He then goes on to criticise and rebut

Servetus’s theological views--his denial of Two natures in the One

person of Christ, and his opinion that in the prophetical writings of

the Old Testament it is always a prospective or coming Son of God that

is indicated. ‘You,’ continues Œcolampadius, ‘do not admit that it was

the Son of God who was to come as man; but that it was the man who came

that was the Son of God; language which leads to the conclusion that

the Son of God existed not eternally before the incarnation.’

To satisfy the Reformer, or seeking to get upon a better footing with

him, Servetus appears now to have composed and sent him a Confession

of Faith, which has come down to us. On the face of this there was

such a semblance of orthodoxy that Œcolampadius found nothing at

first to object to in its statements; but having conversed with the

writer and heard his explanations, he had come to see it as utterly

fallacious, misleading, and inadmissible. He concludes by exhorting

his correspondent to ‘confess the Son to be consubstantial and

coeternal with the Father, in which case,’ he says, ‘we shall be able

to acknowledge you for a Christian.’[15]

CHAPTER V.

THE REFORMERS OF STRASBURG--PUBLICATION OF THE WORK ON TRINITARIAN

ERROR.

The letter of Œcolampadius, as we have it, is without date, but must

have been written from Basle at the close of 1530, or the beginning of

1531, and so before the book on Trinitarian Error had been published,

as we find no mention made of the work. By this time, however, Servetus

must have had the treatise ready for press, for it was now that he

put it into the hands of Conrad Kœnig or Rous, a publisher, having

establishments both at Basle and Strasburg. Kœnig was not a printer

himself; but accepting the work for publication he sent it to Jo.

Secerius, of Hagenau, in Alsace, a well-known typographer of the day,

to be put into type. To Hagenau accordingly went the MS., followed

by the author to superintend the printing; intending from thence to

proceed to Strasburg, where he was anxious to have interviews with the

leading Reformers of that city, Martin Bucer and W. F. Capito, and

propound to them, as he had done to the Switzers, the new views of

Christian doctrine at which he had arrived.

From what we know already we might conclude that he found little more

encouragement from the ministers of Strasburg than he had had from

those of Basle. Servetus himself, however, appears to have thought

otherwise, and left them with the impression that neither of the

Strasburgers was so wholly opposed to his views as Œcolampadius in

particular had shown himself at Basle. We find him, by and by, in fact,

speaking as if he even believed that in the first instance they were

alike disposed to abet rather than condemn his conclusions. And this,

from what came out subsequently, seems really to have been the case, in

so far, at least, as Capito stands concerned. Capito was, in fact, the

most advanced and truly tolerant of all the early Reformers, and if we

may rely on the report we have of his opinions from the author of the

‘Antitrinitarian Library,’[16] he was really not behind Servetus in his

rejection of the orthodox tripartite Deity. A kindly sympathy with a

young enthusiast, full of fancies on topics really beyond the reach of

demonstration, may have induced Bucer as well as his colleague, Capito,

to feel a certain interest in the subject of our study, and so led

them both to treat him otherwise than as the irreverent dreamer he had

appeared to Œcolampadius; to see him, in a word, as he was in truth--a

well-read and piously disposed, albeit in their opinion a more or less

mistaken, scholar.

Servetus undoubtedly possessed the character of the enthusiast in

perfection, and by natural constitution was not only indisposed, but

to a certain extent incapable of seeing a question in any light save

that in which he set it himself. Bucer, although he became hostile to

Servetus in the end, must in fact have been not a little taken with him

on their earlier intercourse, when in a letter to a friend he speaks of

him as ‘his dear son’--‘filius meus dilectus.’ When not curtly met as

the rash innovator and heretic, Servetus was neither the proud nor the

impracticable man he appeared to Œcolampadius and Calvin. During his

visit to Strasburg, when he was doubtless busy with his ‘De Trinitatis

Erroribus’--revising, polishing, and seeing it through the press--in a

notable modification of the terms in which one of the cardinal points

of his doctrine is spoken of in an earlier and in a later passage of

the work, Bucer’s kindly counsel, it is presumed, may be detected.

Whilst in Book IV. we find these words, ‘The Word is never spoken of

in Scripture as the Son; the Word was the shadow only, Christ was the

substance,’ in Book VII. he says, ‘The Word is never spoken of in

Scripture as the Son; but to Christ himself there is ascribed a kind

of eternity of engenderment. The things that were under the _Law_ were

shadows of the body of Christ.’[17]

Whatever the two distinguished Reformers of Strasburg may have said,

however--and we can hardly doubt of their having tried to win him to

the views that were commonly entertained--he was not stayed for a

moment in his purpose of getting into print. Nay--and we know not why

the right should be refused him--he seems to have thought himself

at as full liberty as the leaders of the great movement then afoot

to give his own interpretation of the kind of reform which not the

Church only, but its doctrine, required. For such an undertaking he

was as well qualified by culture as any of the Reformers--better

qualified, in fact, than many among them, as in genius we believe he

was surpassed, and in liberality and tolerance approached by none.

Servetus, in truth, had started in the reforming race unweighted, and

so, and in so far with a better chance of reaching the goal of simple

truth than either Luther or Calvin; for though he had received the

education of the cloister, he was neither professed monk nor priest;

and, without detriment to the piety of his spirit, or his belief in

what were held by the world as the oracles of God, he had freed himself

from the fetters of necessary assent to the interpretations put upon

these, formulated into dogmas, by the Church in which he had been born

and bred. Servetus seems never to have had any misgivings about his

title to show himself among the number of the Reformers. He was in

Germany, the land of free thought, as he imagined; among men who had

thought freely, and whom he had been used to hear spoken of by his

clerical surroundings, whilst in the suite of Quintana, as heretics and

blasphemers. These names he did not fear in such respectable company as

he found the Reformers of Switzerland and Germany to be; and though he

did not agree with them on some topics, he could bear with them as well

in that wherein he differed from them as in that wherein they differed

among themselves, and saw no reason why they should not in like manner

bear with him. He thought of nothing, therefore, but prospective fame

for himself in the publication he contemplated. The names of Luther,

Melanchthon, Calvin, and the rest, appeared on the title-pages of their

works: why, then, should his name be withheld from the world? On the

title-page of the ‘Seven Books on Mistaken Conceptions of the Trinity’

accordingly, which now came forth from the press, we find not only his

family name, Servetus, but the alias, Revés, from his mother’s side of

the house, and the name of the country that called him son:--

‘De Trinitatis Erroribus, Libri Septem.

Per Michaelem Serveto, alias Revés,

Ab Aragonia, Hispanum,

1531.’

The publisher and printer, having an eye to business, not notoriety,

and suspicious in all probability of the reception the article in the

production of which they were aiding and abetting, might receive,

were more cautious than the author; for the name neither of printer,

publisher, nor place of publication, appears on the title-page. In the

month of July, 1531, however, the book was to be bought at once in

the cities of Strasburg, Frankfort, and Basle: but no one knew for

more than twenty years where it had been printed, nor who besides the

author--who had also vanished out of sight--had been accessory to its

publication. The truth only came out in the course of the author’s

trial at Geneva in the year 1553. Basle had the credit for a time of

having hatched the cockatrice; and that the charge was taken seriously

to heart appears from a letter of Œcolampadius to Bucer which has been

preserved.

The Swiss churches, as is known, were not all at one with Luther

and his followers upon some of the transcendental topics of their

common faith; and Servetus in his book having attacked the Doctrine

of Justification by Faith--the leading feature in Luther’s theology,

in terms neither complimentary nor respectful, the Switzers were

anxious to have the great head of the Reform movement informed that

they had nothing in common with the Serveto, alias Revés, of the book

‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ and that it had not fallen from any of the

presses of their country. In his letter to Bucer dated from Basle,

August 5, 1531, Œcolampadius informs him that ‘several of their friends

had seen Servetus’s book and were beyond measure offended with it.’ ‘I

wish you would write to Luther,’ he continues, ‘and tell him it was

printed elsewhere than at Basle, and without any privity of ours. It is

surely a piece of consummate impudence in the writer to say that the

Lutherans are ignorant of what Justification really means. Passing

many things by, I fancy he must belong to the sect of the Photinians,

or to some other I know not what. Unless he be put down by the doctors

of our church, it will be the worse for us. I pray you of all others

to keep watch; and if you find no better or earlier opportunity,

be particular in your report to the Emperor in excusing us and our

churches from the breaking in among us of this wild beast. He indeed

abuses everything in his way of viewing it; and to such lengths does he

go that he disputes the coeternity and consubstantiality of the Father

and the Son--he would even have the man Christ to be the Son of God in

the usual natural way.’[18]

Bucer having perused the ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus’ would seem to have

been excessively disturbed or scandalised by its contents. Known as

a man of a perfectly humane disposition in a general way, he is now

violent even to slaying. Denouncing its author from the pulpit, he is

said to have declared that the writer of such a book deserved to be

disembowelled and torn in pieces! Yet was not Martin Bützer always of

this savage way of thinking. In a Preface and Postscript to an early

work--a translation by a friend, of Augustin’s Treatise ‘on the Duty of

the Ruler in matters of Religion,’[19] he is as mercifully disposed

towards the erring as could be desired. They are to be prayed for,

instructed, and it may be punished, but it is to be mildly; they are

never to be put to death. He refers to his ‘Dialogues’ in which the

subject is treated at length.

Luther, too, must have read the work, and it is not a little

interesting to us to be made aware from what he says himself that

he, like others of the Reformers, as well as Michael Servetus, had

been troubled with doubts about the conformity of the orthodox

Trinitarian dogma with the dictates of simple reason. In the

Table-Talk--Tisch-Reden--of 1532, he refers to what he characterises

as ‘a fearfully wicked book--ein greulich bös Buch--’ which had lately

come out against the doctrine of the holy Trinity. ‘Visionaries like

the writer,’ says Doctor Martin, ‘do not seem to fancy that other folks

as well as they may have had temptations on this subject. But the

sting did not hold; I set the word of God and the Holy Ghost against

my thoughts and got free.’ Luther as usual imagined that the doubts he

felt were inspired by the Devil, instead of by God, through the reason

given him for his guidance.[20]

But of all his contemporaries Melanchthon appears to have been more

taken with the work on Trinitarian Error than any other of the leading

Reformers; and he is much more outspoken in expressing his opinion of

the incomprehensible and really unscriptural nature of the dogma which

it is the gist of Servetus’s book to impugn. To one of his friends he

begins his letter by telling him ‘that he has been reading Servetus

a great deal--_Servetum multum lego_--though I am well aware of the

fanatical nature of the man. In his derisive treatment of Justification

he sees nothing but the _quality_ of Augustin; and he plainly raves

when, misinterpreting the text of the Old and New Testament, he denies

to the Prophets the Holy Spirit. I also think he does injustice both

to Tertullian and Irenæus, when, treating of the Word, he makes them

question its being an hypostasis. But I have little doubt that great

controversies will one day arise on this subject, as well as on the

distinction of the two natures in Christ.’[21]

To Camerarius, another friend, he writes: ‘You ask me what I think

of Servetus? I see him indeed sufficiently sharp and subtle in

disputation, but I do not give him credit for much depth. He is

possessed, as it seems to me, of confused imaginations, and his

thoughts are not well matured on the subjects he discusses. He

manifestly talks foolishness when he speaks of Justification. Περὶ

τῆς τρίαδος--on the subject of the Trinity--you know, I have always

feared that serious difficulties would one day arise. Good God! to what

tragedies will not these questions give occasion in times to come: εἴ

ἐστιν ὑπόστασις ὁ λὀγος--is the Logos an hypostasis? εἴ ἐστιν ὑπόστασις

τὸ πνεῦμα--is the Holy Ghost an hypostasis? For my own part I refer me

to those passages of Scripture that bid us call on Christ, which is to

ascribe divine honours to him, and find them full of consolation.’[22]

This is surely very candid and beautiful. But the spirit of the

Prophet of Nazareth did not always find such a resting place as it

did in the heart and mind of Philip Schwarzerde, though he too could

forget himself and approve of violence, as we shall see, when certain

beliefs which he held sacred and thought it a public duty to profess

were assailed. At this time, however, on this occasion, he is in his

proper placable frame of mind and continues thus: ‘I find it after

all of little use to inquire too curiously into that which properly

constitutes the nature of a _Person_, and into that wherein and whereby

persons are distinguished from one another. It is very provoking that

in Epiphanius, except a few trifling passages, we have nothing from the

days when the same questions were agitated by Paul of Samosata--nothing

in fact whence we might know what was thought of Paul’s opinions at the

time, and of what mind were they who condemned him. I am even greatly

distressed when I think of such negligence on the part of the hierarchs

of the age of this Paul, as well as of times more near our own.’ When

writing thus Melanchthon plainly sympathised more with Paul of Samosata

and his opinions than he would have liked to acknowledge at a later

period of his life; for he, too, like so many who become narrow and

intolerant in age, was liberal enough when younger, and in the earlier

editions of his ‘Loci Theologici’ could speak of the Holy Spirit as

nothing more than an ‘Afflatus of Deity.’

The above extracts from confidential letters seem to show that

Melanchthon was not himself quite clear as to the sense in which a

Trinity of the Godhead was to be understood; a state of mind shared in,

unless we much mistake, by more than one among the most influential

men of the Swiss Churches, by none more certainly than by Calvin,

their great head, himself, as we shall show. Melanchthon indeed in

his next letter to the same friend, speaking of Servetus’s assumption

that Tertullian did not think the Logos an hypostasis--a distinct

substantial reality--proceeds:--‘To me Tertullian seems to think on

this subject as we do in public--_quod publice sentimus_, and not in

the way Servetus interprets him. But of these things more hereafter

when we meet.’ Melanchthon would not therefore trust in writing, even

to an intimate friend, all he thought on the subject of the Trinity;

and truly there is matter enough when critically scanned in the first

edition of his best-known work--‘The Loci Theologici’ of 1521--that

puts him out of the pale of orthodox Trinitarianism.[23]

Neither was Joannes Œcolampadius without something of a fellow feeling

for Servetus, although he repudiated his conclusions. Writing to Martin

Bucer on July 18, 1531, shortly after the publication of the work on

Trinitarian misconception, he informs his friend that he had heard from

Capito of Strasburg, who tells him that the book is for sale among them

there, and has rejoiced some of the enemies of the Church, as it will

also afford matter of gratulation to the Papists of France when they

see that writings of the kind are suffered to be published in Germany.

‘Read the book,’ continues the writer, ‘and tell me what you think of

it. Were I not busy with my Job, I should be disposed to answer it

myself; but I must leave this duty to another with more leisure at

command. Our Senate have forbidden the Spaniard’s book to be sold here.

They have asked my opinion of its merits, and I have said that as the

writer does not acknowledge the coeternity of the Son, I can in no

wise approve of it as a whole, although it contains much else that is

good--_Etiamsi multa alia bona scribat_.’[24]

In the days of Philip Melanchthon and Joannes Œcolampadius we therefore

see that men had _private_ opinions on subjects to which they were

committed by their subscriptions, which differed we know not how widely

from their public professions, precisely as among the ancients, and

ourselves at the present time: culture would still seem to make an

esoteric and an exoteric doctrine a necessity of existence.

Made aware, as we are by these letters of the Reformers, that

Servetus’s book was causing a considerable stir both in Switzerland

and Germany, it seems, in so far as we have ascertained, to have

been entirely neglected by the Roman Catholics of these lands as

well as of France. We have searched in vain for any notice of it

in French theological writings of the period; neither have we been

able to discover, though condemned and ordered to be suppressed by

the Emperor Charles V. when brought under his notice by Cochlæus and

Quintana at Ratisbon, that it figures at any early date on the Roman

Index of prohibited books. There are good reasons for believing,

nevertheless, that Servetus’s book on Trinitarian Misconception had a

large amount of influence on Italian ground. It had been sent south

in numbers; and aware of this Melanchthon took it upon him by-and-by

to address the Senate of Venice on the subject, informing them that

a highly objectionable work was for sale among them, and suggesting

that measures should be taken for its suppression. The Sozzini, uncle

and nephew--Lælius and Faustus Socinus--and their followers, the

Unitarians, have consequently been seen as the disciples of Servetus,

though it may be that they were so only indirectly; for Servetus

himself, as we shall find, declares that he does not deny a kind of

trinity in the unity of God. But his trinity is _modal_ or _formal_,

not _real_ or _personal_ in the usual sense of the word.

If overlooked by theologians of the Latin races, the work of our

author appears to have attracted all the more attention from the men

of Teutonic descent who had espoused the cause of the Reformation.

In their ranks in the early period of the sixteenth century the

intelligence of Europe, in so far as the religious question was

concerned, seems to have been concentrated. They took pains to inform

themselves generally on all that was going on in the republic of

letters, and in so much of it very particularly as bore on the subject

they had most at heart. It is among the Swiss and German Reformers

consequently that we find any particular notice taken of Servetus’s

book on Trinitarian Error. They alone show themselves scandalised by

the opinions of its author and his style of expressing them, jealous

too, it might seem, at the intrusion of a mere layman into their

domain--a phenomenon as yet perfectly unheard of, and startled further

by the advances they discovered in the book upon all that they, as

inheritors of apostolic traditions in common with their Roman Catholic

brethren (from whom in matters of Dogma they differed so little),

regarded as the truth. Paul of Tarsus preaching his own independent

gospel to the Gentiles, proclaiming the universality of the fatherhood

of God, the nothingness of Circumcision, and, in opposition to the

whole Levitical code, that all days were alike holy and that it was not

what went into the mouth of a man that defiled him, could scarcely

have been more ominous to the intolerant Nazarene Church of Jerusalem

than was the appearance of this daring innovator upon the religious

stage of Germany. His book, everywhere freely sold in the first

instance, must have been read by everyone of liberal education, though

it became so scarce ere long, denounced and decried as it must have

been universally by the ministers, that twenty years afterwards a copy,

most pressingly wanted, and eagerly sought after, was nowhere to be

found in Switzerland; so effectually had zealotry succeeded in having

it committed to the flames!

Strasburg and Basle, however, must have been the emporiums whence

the supplies of the ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis’ were sent forth; for

after its author’s visit to the capital of Elsass and his happy

delivery of this the first-born of his genius at Hagenau, we find

him again in Basle and making himself obnoxious to Œcolampadius as

before. Writing what we must presume to be a second or third letter

to the Reformer, and complimenting him on what he is pleased to

style his correspondent’s clear apprehension of Luther’s doctrine of

Justification, Servetus goes on to make a personal request. ‘Somewhat

fearful of writing to you again,’ he says, ‘lest I should molest you

still more than I have already done, I yet venture to ask of you not

to interfere with my sending the books to France which I have with

me here, the book-fair of Lyons drawing near; for you of all men

are better entitled than any one else to pronounce an opinion upon

things unheard of until now. If you think it better that I should not

remain here, I shall certainly take my leave; only, you are not to

think that I go as a fugitive. God knows I have been sincere in all I

have written, although my crude style perchance displeases you. I did

not imagine you would take offence at what I say of the Lutherans;

especially when from your own mouth I heard you declare you were of

opinion that Luther had treated Charity in too off-hand a style;

adding, as you did, that folks were charitable mostly when they had

nothing else to think of. Melanchthon, too, as you know, affirms that

God has no regard for charity. Such sayings, believe me, are more

hurtful to the soul than anything I have ever written. And this all the

more as I see that you are not agreed among yourselves on the subject

of faith; for with my own ears I have heard you say one thing, which

is otherwise declared by doctor Paulus, otherwise by Luther, and yet

otherwise by Melanchthon;[25] and of this I admonished you in your own

house; but you would not hear me.

‘Your rule for proving the Spirit, I think, deceives you; for, if in

your own mind there be any fear, or doubt, or confusion, you cannot

judge truly of me; and this the more because, although you know me in

error in one thing, you ought not, therefore, to condemn me in others,

else there were none who should escape burning a thousand times over.

This truth is forced on us on all hands, most especially perhaps by the

example of the Apostles, who sometimes erred. And, then, you do not

condemn Luther in every particular, although you are well aware that

he is mistaken in some things. I have myself entreated you to instruct

me, which, however, you have not done. It is surely an infirmity of our

human nature that none of us see our own faults, and so commonly look

on those who differ from us as impious persons or impostors. I entreat

you, for God’s sake, to spare my name and reputation. I say nothing of

others who are not interested in the questions between us. You say that

I would have no one punished or put to death, though all were thieves

alike; but I call the omnipotent God to witness that this is not my

opinion; nay, I scout any such conclusion. If I have spoken at any

time on the subject (the punishment proper for heresy), it was because

I saw it as a most serious matter to put men to death on the ground

of mistake in interpreting the Scriptures; for do we not read that

even the elect may err? You know full well that I have not treated my

subject in so indifferent or indiscreet a manner as to deserve entire

rejection at your hands. You make little yourself of speaking of the

Holy Spirit as an angel, but think it a great crime in me when I say

that the Son of God was a man.

‘Farewell.

‘MICHAEL SERVETO.’[26]

This letter, so characteristic of the writer, is full of interest even

at the present hour. Servetus would have Œcolampadius instruct him; but

the invariable complaint of all with whom he came in contact was that

he could never be made to receive instruction; in other words, secure

in his own conclusions, he thought his would-be instructors mistaken in

theirs. And this, indeed, for good or ill, is characteristic of all who

impress their age, and show themselves leaders in art, in science, in

policy, or religion. Genius measures with its own rod, and is its own

guide on the way it goes. The world is not moved by men who have all

they own from teachers.

But especially worthy of note is the remark our writer makes on the

serious responsibility men assume when they put each other to death

for mistaken interpretations of Scripture. Had no scholar in modern

times before Servetus come to so great and charitable a conclusion,

we should still have to hallow the memory of the man who, more than

three hundred years ago, had the head and the heart to proclaim so

great a principle, in the enforcement of which in all its aspects the

better spirits of the world still find such opposition; though it is

not now by the infliction of death that bigotry and intolerance revenge

themselves on their victims, the advocates of freethought and outspoken

religious criticism.

A good deal has been said, by its author as well as others, of the

crude style of the book on Trinitarian Error. But this to us seems

the least of its faults--the language is generally simple enough, not

Ciceronian certainly, but the meaning, save where the writer probably

did not quite understand himself, is not doubtful. As a composition,

it is the arrangement that is most defective. The parts have so little

either of coherence or sequence, that of the seven books or chapters

into which it is divided, the last, as it seems, might advantageously

have been made the first. For there it is, and not until the

penultimate page of the entire treatise is attained, that the key to

the writer’s most important conclusions is discovered. ‘Two fundamental

rules or principles,’ he says, ‘are to be steadily kept in view:--1st,

That the nature of God cannot be conceived as divisible; and 2nd, That

that which is accidental to the nature of anything is disposition.’ The

corollary he would have to follow from these premisses or postulates

being, that the orthodox idea of a Trinity, _i.e._, of the existence

of three distinct persons or entities in the unity of the Godhead, is

an impossibility, and so a fundamental religious error. As Servetus

himself believed in God, and acknowledged a Son of God and a Holy

Spirit--finding mention of these in the Scriptures, no word of which

would he overlook, though putting his own interpretation on all they

say--he held that the Son and Holy Ghost, in consonance with his Second

Principle, must be what he calls _dispositions_, or _dispensations_ of

the one eternal indivisible Deity--in other words, manifestations of

God in the world.

The ‘Idea of God’ to which Servetus had attained is unquestionably

grand. ‘God,’ he says, ‘is eternal, one and indivisible, and in himself

inscrutable, but making his being known in and through creation; so

that not only is every living, but every lifeless thing, an aspect of

the Deity. Before creation was, God was; but neither was he Light,

nor Word, nor Spirit, but some ineffable thing else--_sed quid aliud

ineffabile_--these, Light, Word, Spirit, being mere dispensations,

modes or expressions of pre-existing Deity. (‘Dial.’ i. 4.) God, he

says, has no proper nature; for this would imply a beginning; and

_before_ and _after_ are terms that have no significance when they are

referred to God. Though God knew what to man would be a future, his

own prescience was without respect to _time_, and involved no such

necessity as is implied in _choice_. God, he continues, can be defined

by nothing that pertains to body; he created the world of himself, of

his substance, and, as essence, he actuates--_essentiat_--all things.

(‘Dial.’ ii.) The Spirit of God is the universal agent; it is in the

air we breathe, and is the very breath of life; it moves the heavenly

bodies; sends out the winds from their quarters; takes up and stores

the water in the clouds, and pours it out as rain to fertilise the

earth. God is therefore ever distinct from the universe of things, and

when we speak of the Word, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we but speak

of the presence and power of God projected into creation, animating and

actuating all that therein is, man more especially than aught else;

‘the Holy Spirit I always say is the motion of God in the soul of

man, and that out of man there cannot properly be said to be any Holy

Spirit.’ (‘De Trin. Err.’ f. 85, b, and ‘Dial.’ ii.) This is obviously

a statement of what may be called the Exo-pantheistic principle in very

broad terms, akin to what we find in the Grecian mythology and certain

schools of philosophy; other than the Endo-pantheistic conception of

later times--the Causa Principio et Uno of Giordano Bruno,[27] the

Substantia of Spinoza, the Universum or Kosmos of Goethe,[28] Hegel,

Humboldt, Schopenhauer, D. F. Strauss,[29] &c. It is the Principle

inseparable from the mighty All as from the individual Atom, or

Pantheism proper.

We shall, by-and-by, find our author, on his Geneva trial, damaging his

case and exciting, we may imagine, the astonishment of the unlettered

among his judges, by the assertion of his pantheistic notions,

and arousing the needless, and it may even be, the assumed ire of

Calvin--for he was familiar with the idea, having said himself that he

only objected to call Nature, God, because it was a hard and improper

expression--_quia est dura et impropria loquutio_.[30]

Criticising the first verse of the Fourth Gospel: ‘In the beginning

was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’

Servetus maintains that the Greek λὀγος, translated Word with us, does

not designate an entity but utterance or speech, as appears by its

etymology, derived as it is from λἐγω, to speak, to discourse. Of the

Word of God, therefore, to make the Son of God is to do as did the

heathen, who turned ideas or abstractions into mythical beings--Echo

into a Nymph, Fortitude into Minerva, &c., and so to bring discord

and dissidence upon the truths of Scripture. (‘De Tr. Err.’ f. 47,

b.) The Word spoken by God in the beginning implies fore-thought,

fore-knowledge; whence it is characterised as Wisdom, ‘that was from

the beginning or ever the earth was. Under the mystery of the Word, the

older apostolic tradition understood a certain dispensation whereby

God willed to reveal himself to mankind. The Word of God therefore is

equivalent to the Act of God; and even as Light came of the spoken

word, so too came Creation, so too came Man.’ In this way, says our

author, do we readily comprehend the expression of John: ‘The Word was

made flesh,’ and learn in what sense Christ is truly the Word: ‘He is,

as it were, the voice of God enunciating to mankind the will of the

Universal Father.’ (Ib. f. 49 b.) The Word, consequently, is nothing

different from God, but is God himself evoking all things, Christ among

the number in the fulness of time. If a reasonable meaning is to be

attached to mystical language, it seems difficult to imagine any more

satisfactory interpretation than this of Servetus, with which we see

that of a distinguished liberal divine of our own day essentially to

agree, as he says: ‘The Logos of the New Testament means not only the

Word as translated, but Reason, Intelligence, communicating itself

in thought and speech. It is the divine wisdom which was from the

beginning in the mind of God made manifest in time.’[31]

The title _Son of God_, again, Servetus maintains is nowhere to be

found in the Scriptures otherwise applied than to a man--to the man

Jesus in particular; and the word _Person_ he insists is always to be

understood in the sense of the Greek προσῶπον and the Latin _persona_,

a mask, an appearance, and not any _real_ or individual thing. With

this style of exposition the Reformers could of course by no means

agree. They had adopted all the symbols of their predecessors of

the Church of Rome; and it seems to have been Servetus’ insistance

on his own divergent interpretation of the language of John and the

creeds that more especially aroused the enmity of Œcolampadius, Bucer,

Calvin, and the rest, they holding that to be accounted a Christian

it was necessary not only to acknowledge Christ to be the Son of God,

which Servetus was quite ready to do, in the way he understood the

filiation, but to acknowledge him to be the Logos or Word of St. John,

consubstantial and coeternal with the Father--which, to Servetus, was

impossible. It is probable that the way and manner in which in any

conceivable fashion such coeternity and consubstantiality could be

apprehended was among the topics on which Servetus craved enlightenment

from Œcolampadius; and as he could obtain none, pique and personal

dislike, opposition and enmity, took the place of dispassionate and

friendly discussion; precisely as happened in later years and mainly on

the same subjects between our author and Calvin.

In his attempt to develope and explain his own conception of the

mystery of the Trinity--for it is a mistake to suppose that Servetus

was opposed to something of the kind--he does not set out like the

writer of the Fourth Gospel from the transcendental Word, but starts

with the historical Jesus, the man, the reputed son of Joseph the

Carpenter, but verily or naturally, as he says, the Son of God. To

this son the name Jesus was given at the time of his circumcision,

the title Christ being conferred by his disciples; whilst it was only

at his baptism that he was designated Son of God. The Holy Spirit and

power of the Highest overshadowing the Virgin Mary, and acting in her

as generator or generative dew, Jesus the Son of God and her Son was

engendered. It is not the Word consequently, but Jesus the Son of Mary

who is a Son of God: ‘The holy thing that shall be born of thee,’ says

the angel addressing the Virgin, ‘shall be called a Son of God.’ ‘They

therefore plainly err,’ says Servetus, ‘who speak of the Word as the

Son of God: the man Jesus was the Son of God, not the Word; the man

Jesus engendered, as stated above, by God in the womb of the Virgin.’

‘All the Trinitarian errors,’ he concludes, ‘have arisen from not

understanding the true nature of the Incarnation.’

When he comes to speak of the Holy Ghost, Servetus unhappily forgets

what is due to the discussion of a subject that has engaged the serious

thoughts of so many pious men. He would seem to have seen some portions

of the catholic Christian dogma as so unreasonable that they were even

open to ridicule; and this leads him to the use of improper language.

The Holy Ghost, he maintains, is never spoken of save confusedly in

the Scriptures, the term being applied variously now to an angel, now

to the soul of man, and again to nothing more than wind or breath

(Ib. f. 22, a.). The Hebrew word _Ruach_, of which spirit or wind is

a translation, has indeed a still greater variety of meanings. On a

subject so indefinite and undefined as the Holy Spirit, we cannot

wonder that Œcolampadius in one of his letters should declare he can

make nothing of what Servetus says on the matter--‘_dicit nescio

quid_--he says I know not what.’ This much, however, we do make out

as our author’s opinion, viz.: that the Holy Spirit is nowhere spoken

of in Scripture as a distinct and independent entity, but always as a

motion, an agency, an afflatus of God or the power of God,--a view in

which he certainly had Melanchthon as his predecessor: ‘_Nec aliud

spiritus sanctus est nisi viva Dei voluntas et agitatio._’ (‘Loci

Theol.’ p. 128, ed. 1521.)

Referring to the dogma of the ‘Two Natures,’ Servetus holds that this,

too, is founded in error. ‘To speak of the _Nature_ of God,’ he says,

‘is absurd; for the word nature can only apply to something created,

something born (from the Latin _natus_). But God is from Eternity. For

my own part,’ he proceeds, ‘I never take nature to signify aught but

the thing to which the term is applied--the nature of a thing is the

thing itself. To use the word nature in connection with the name of God

is, therefore, to speak of God himself. And so of the Son of God: that

which was an idea, image, or type of the Son in the mind of God, when

the Word was made flesh, became or was Christ, Reality then superseding

Idea (‘De Tr. Er.’ f. 92). There was consequently no aggregate of two

natures or two different things in Christ; he was one entity or person,

in the usual sense of the word.’ Servetus very inconsistently, as it

seems at first sight, often speaks of the man Jesus as God. But he can

do so only on the same ground as Cyrus in the Bible, Augustus Cæesar,

and other rulers, are called _Dii_ or _Divi_--gods. The Son of God,

to Servetus, in conformity with the pantheistic idea, can only be an

aspect or _Mode_ of the One God. If this be not his meaning, I know not

what it is.

We have said above that Servetus is not opposed to the idea of a

Trinity of dispositions, powers, or properties in the Deity, but only

denies such a trinity of persons or entities as is embodied in the

symbols of orthodox Christianity. It is not unimportant, therefore, to

learn what the precise idea was which he had of the threefold state

he acknowledged as extant in the essence of God. His words are these:

‘_Tres sunt admirandi Dei dispositiones in quarum qualibet divinitas

relucet, ex quo sanissime Trinitatem intelligere posses_, &c.--There

are three admirable dispositions in God, in each of which divinity

appears, and from which you may satisfactorily understand the Trinity.

For the Father is the one God, from whom proceed certain dispensations.

But these imply no distinction into separate entities. By the economy

of God--_Dei_ οἰκονομίαν--they are no more than so many forms or

aspects of Deity; for the divineness that is in the Father, the same is

in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost.’

In another passage, he asserts his belief in a Trinity still more

distinctly: ‘I concede one person of the Father, another person of the

Son, another person of the Holy Ghost: three persons in one God, and

this is the true Trinity.’ (Ib. f. 64, b.) Had we not our author’s

explanation of the way in which he understands the word _person_, this

would make his conception, in so far, not different from the orthodox

interpretation of the mystery. But his language here must be regretted,

for it is misleading, the word _person_ with Servetus not signifying,

as we have seen, any real or individual entity distinct from other

entities, but property, appearance, or outward manifestation. The

second and third persons, therefore, as understood by Servetus, are to

be thought of as dispositions or modes of God, the universal Father,

and not as individuals or persons in the usual acceptation of these

words, though of them it is that distinct personages have been made,

and spoken of as being at once God and other than God, as being three

and yet no more than one.

In sequence to this, our author goes on to say that ‘he will not make

use of the word Trinity, which is not to be found in Scripture, and

only seems to perpetuate philosophical error. It were well, indeed,’

he continues, ‘that all distinction of persons in the one God were

henceforth abandoned and rooted out of the minds of men’ (Ib. f. 64,

b.); words in which we see reason getting the better of subserviency to

the letter of Scripture, and putting an extinguisher, as it were, upon

his own as well as other vain attempts to give a rational explanation

of the mystical Neo-Platonic Logos-Doctrine of the Fourth Gospel, of

which the Trinitarian Church-Dogma is the outcome. Hampered, however,

by the idea that everything in the Bible is the word of God, Servetus

insists on trying to find, for himself and his readers, something like

an acceptable interpretation of the leading words of the Imaginative

Mystical Discourse entitled the Gospel according to John. In this he

fails, as might have been anticipated; and then, his eyes being opened

to the fact, he has nothing for it but to conclude that the orthodox

Trinitarian mystery were well discarded from the thoughts and the

beliefs of man. ‘To believe, however,’ he continues, ‘suffices, it is

said; but what folly to believe aught that cannot be understood, that

is impossible in the nature of things, and that may even be looked on

as blasphemous! Can it be that mere confusion of mind is to be assumed

as an adequate object of faith?’ (Ib. f. 33, b.)

The Trinitarian doctrine of dogmatic Christianity Servetus held to

have been a great obstacle to the spread of the religion of Christ.

Opposed to the conception of the Oneness of Deity to which the Jews

had finally attained, the religious system in which it was made so

prominent an element, could not possibly be accepted by them; neither,

on the same ground, could it be received by Islam; for Mahomet,

whilst he acknowledged Jesus as a prophet and power in the world,

born of a Virgin, too, like other distinguished individuals, in some

incomprehensible manner, never for a moment thought of him as the Son

of God; for ‘God,’ says he, ‘as he is not engendered, so neither does

he engender.’

But it is not in connexion with the subject of the Trinity alone that

Servetus shows the advances he had made on his age in the sphere of

Biblical exposition. Commenting on the text, ‘No man hath ascended up

to heaven but he who came down from heaven’ (John iii. 13), he says:

‘It is the spiritual heaven that is here to be understood, and this

exists wherever Christ is; “to ascend to heaven” means no more than

to discourse of heavenly things. “He that hath seen me hath seen the

Father,” says the text (Ib. xiv. 9), i.e., says our expositor, ‘he who

appreciates the priceless treasures of Christ’s love easily attains to

a knowledge of God the Father. But how should an invisible, intangible

Word give us to know God?’ (‘De Tr. Err.’ f. 46 _et seq._)

There are others among the accepted doctrines of the reformed

Churches which, as repudiated by Servetus and so arraying the whole

of their adherents against him and influencing his fate, require a

passing notice at our hands. Justification by Faith, for instance, he

maintains, comes not by belief in the merits or sufferings of Christ,

but by belief in his worth or dignity as Son of God. On this ground,

he says, the Lutherans do not understand what Justification really

is. It is by belief of the kind he specifies, however, that we show

our obedience to God, accept the new covenant instead of the old

law, become the children of our heavenly Father, and have the Holy

Spirit imparted to us. Such belief is, in fact, the very kernel of the

Christian dispensation, and that on which the new covenant of grace

reposes. It is the real rock on which Peter was to build the Church,

against which the gates of hell should not prevail. But as hell does

seem to have got the upper hand, he adds, we can only conclude that

neither the Church on the rock nor the true Faith is now to be found

among us. The Lutheran Justification by Faith, in a word, is mere

magical fascination and folly (f. 82-84, Conf. ‘Ep. ad Calvin.’ xiii.).

But Faith, even the most fervent, is not yet sufficient for salvation.

The Justification thereby attained is still no more than negative

in kind; to become positive, it must be associated with Love,

i.e., with Charity in the widest sense of the word; with the Love,

that is the fulfilment of the law, whereby alone do we secure for

ourselves treasures in heaven. Faith is the entrance, Charity the

sanctuary--_Fides ostium, Charitas perfectio_; and there is a fine

passage in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ (p. 349), comparable in some

sort to Paul’s eloquent outburst on the excellence of that much misused

sentiment. When Servetus speaks of Charity, therefore, it is not the

eleemosynary idea of his day that is meant, with its mendicant friars,

its convent doles, and its engendered sloth and beggary; neither is it

the mistaken view of later days, which gives indolence and improvidence

a legal claim on industry and thrift. It is of the nobler, truer kind

that, beside good works, gives man a right to think and to speak

unfettered, and forbids him to fancy that his brother is damned for

divergency in theological opinion.

To the leading Calvinistic doctrines of Predestination and Election,

involving as they do fettered instead of free will, Servetus is still

more violently opposed than to the Lutheran Justification by Faith.

‘In your fatal, not to say fatuous, necessity of all things, or your

servile will,’ says he, at a later period in his life, ‘there is a

certain show of folly, seeing that you would have a man do that which

you must know he cannot do. You speak of free acts, yet tell us there

is no such thing as free action. And it is absurd in you to derive the

servile will you abet from this: that it is God who acts in us. Truly

God does act in us, and in such wise that we act freely. He acts in us

so that we understand and will and pursue. Even as all things consist

essentially in God, so do all acts proceed essentially from him. But

the power in us to do is one thing, the necessity of doing is another;

and though God may deal with us as the potter deals with his clay, it

does not follow that we are nothing more than clay, and have no power

of action in ourselves.’ (Ib f. 79, b, et ‘Epist. ad Calvinum,’ xxii.)

Another of the most essential doctrines underlying Pauline

Christianity, original sin, is made little of by Servetus. Although

I spent much time in reading his books, I do not appear to have

made a note of more than one or two passages in which he refers to

that subject; and when he does, it is by the way rather than more

particularly. It is on the necessity of faith in Christ, as he

understands the Sonship, that he dwells continually, making of this

the prime factor in his scheme of restored Christianity. ‘This faith

it is,’ says he, ‘that first makes us aware of our poverty, of our

misery; for if we believe that Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour

of the world, we already assume that the world is sinful, and requires

saving’ (‘Chr. Rest.’ p. 349). He does not refer particularly to

what is called ‘the Fall,’ neither does he say very pointedly how the

world came into the sorry plight in which he admits that he finds

it. The reason usually assigned must have appeared unsatisfactory

to an understanding so clear as that of Servetus, when unclouded by

fancies of his own creating; but we can hardly think he mends matters

by ascribing the origin of sin to heaven and the rebellion of the

angels, as he does, instead of to the earth and Adam’s disobedience.

Far from maintaining that the heart of man is corrupt and evil by

nature, he holds that the cause of good works and well-doing is proper

and spontaneous to the individual, who is only answerable for his own

sin, not for the sin of another. Faith in Christ, therefore, as the

naturally-begotten Son of God; Charity, in which are comprised all the

virtues, and a good life, in so far as we can make it out, form the

backbone of Servetus’s Christianity, as it is unfolded in his earliest

work on ‘Current Misconceptions of the Trinity.’[32]

CHAPTER VI.

THE AUTHORITIES OF BASLE TAKE NOTICE OF HIS BOOK. HE WRITES TWO

DIALOGUES BY WAY OF APPENDIX TO IT AND LEAVES SWITZERLAND.

Failing to make any impression on the Swiss and German Reformers whose

countenance he had been so anxious to gain, we have seen Servetus in

his letter to Œcolampadius declaring his readiness to quit Basle, to

which he must have returned, if it were only not said that he went as a

fugitive, and giving something like an engagement to his correspondent

to review and, reviewing, to modify or retract some things he had said

in his book. That some such engagement was given we conclude from the

letter of Œcolampadius to the magistrates of Basle, to which we shall

refer immediately, and from which it would seem that it was through

the forbearance, if not even the more friendly interference, of the

Reformer that our author escaped arrest and imprisonment at this time.

The seven books or chapters on erroneous ideas of the Trinity had not

fallen stillborn from the press; neither had the presence of the writer

in Basle passed unobserved. The book being seen as heretical in the

highest degree by the ministers, the presence of its writer among them

was felt as matter of grievance by both clergy and laity; so that the

Civic Council held it within the scope of their duties to take notice

of the innovator, of whom they heard so much that was discreditable,

and, by laying hands on him, either to make him pay in person then and

there, or to send him away, like an infected bale, to spread his poison

elsewhere.

Previous to acting, however, they thought it would be well to have the

opinion of their chief Pastor, Œcolampadius, on what had best be done,

and so requested him to advise with them on the subject. He replied

by a long letter in which he recapitulates the chief topics discussed

by Servetus in his treatise. ‘He, Œcolampadius, will do what he can

to place the good man’s views before them,--if indeed he may venture

to speak of the writer as a good man; for it seems that he strives at

times as much to darken the light as to enlighten the darkness, mixing

up incongruities rashly and not seldom stopping short of contradicting

himself. He opposes the orthodox doctors continually, and uses certain

words in an arbitrary and unusual sense. He denies the coeternity of

the Father and the Son, a doctrine hitherto held sacred by all the

Christian churches; and only recognises the sonship from the moment of

the engenderment, or rather of the birth of Christ. He even derides the

idea of God having a son from eternity, and asks whence the heavenly

father had his wife, or whether he were of both sexes in himself? He

will only recognise the eternity of the Son as an _Idea_ in the divine

mind: the Son was to be, but was not yet, until he appeared in the

flesh. He will by no means concede that the Word of St. John was the

Christ; yet he speaks of three persons in the one God; but it is with

glozing and an arbitrary meaning attached to the word person, and

with reasonings which, if they sometimes make for his views, are at

other times opposed to them, he neither thinking nor speaking as do

the apostles, and wresting the words of the fathers--of Tertullian and

Irenæus especially--from the interpretation commonly put upon them.

‘Along with all this and much more that is objectionable, there are

still some things in the book that are good; nevertheless as a whole

it could not but offend me. God grant that the writer acknowledge

the rashness which has led him to speak so unadvisedly as he has

done of matters which transcend our human intelligence, and that

he may live to amend what he has said. As to the book, it would be

well perhaps that it were either totally suppressed, or were read by

those only who are not likely to be hurt by objectionable writings.

The errors he has fallen into acknowledged, _he will retract_ in his

writings--_retractârit scriptis_. Perhaps he was not himself aware of

their extent, or they were not seen by him as of such importance as

they are in fact. But I leave all to your prudence and discretion,

humbly commending myself and my work to your favour.’[33]

If we are to understand the _retractârit scriptis_ of the above as a

promise from Servetus to retract in a future work what he has said

in his first, he certainly did not keep his word in the ‘Dialogi de

Trinitate,’[34] which he published in the course of the following year.

In the Preface to these dialogues, it is true, he informs the candid

reader that he retracts all he had ‘lately written in the seven books

of erroneous conceptions concerning the Trinity, not because what I

say there is false, but because the work is imperfect and written as

it were by a child for children. I pray you nevertheless to hold by so

much as you find there that may help you to understand the subjects

discussed. All that is barbarous, confused and faulty, ascribe to my

inexperience and the carelessness of the printer. I would not that any

Christian were offended by what I say; for God is used sometimes to

make known his wisdom to the world by weak vessels. Look at the thing

itself, therefore, I pray you, and if you take good heed, my stammering

will prove no hindrance to you.’

The reputed printer of Servetus’s Treatise and Two Dialogues, Jo.

Secerius, has no particular name as a typographer. But these little

works are by no means incorrectly printed; they show few typographical

errors--so few that they must almost certainly have been read for press

by the writer himself. The printer therefore is not to be blamed for

any shortcomings of the kind referred to by the author--if there be

defect it is his own, and it was the matter not the manner that had

been found fault with. But the Preface is apologetic in directions

uncalled for, and is meaningless in fact. Servetus did not think

himself a weak vessel; neither did he look on his work as the work of

a child for children; and as for any retractation of his opinions,

nothing seems to have been further from his mind. On the contrary the

mysticism of the writer of the Fourth Gospel appears to have taken a

firmer hold of our author than it had done before, and to have acted as

fresh ferment to the mystical element so abundant in his proper nature.

There may be modification of some of the views already enunciated, but

from none of them is there recession. The opposition he met with from

the leading Reformers seems even to have added point and precision to

his writing. He is more outspoken than before, and is still less chary

in the kind of language he uses towards opponents. The usual conception

of a _partitioned_ Deity he declares to be simply blasphemous; they who

seriously entertain it are fools, and so blind that were Christ to come

among them now and declare he was the Son of God, they would crucify

him anew. The Dialogues, instead of any denial and retractation,

are a reiteration and defence of almost all he has said in his first

production; although, indeed, we do observe that where he can he

occasionally approximates somewhat to more orthodox views; in that

passage very notably where he speaks of the Son being of the same

essence (homousios), and even consubstantial with the Father. (‘Dial.’

i., f. II, b.) But these are really no more than words set down under

the varying impulses of mind to which the writer gave way, and are

deprived of any meaning that might attach to them by something that has

either gone before or that comes immediately after.

The discussion of Luther’s Justification by Faith, to which it must be

presumed his attention had been particularly called by Œcolampadius as

likely to be offensive to the Lutherans, is renewed in the Dialogues;

and the writer is so far carried away by his own exaggerated estimate

of the mental condition implied in faith or belief, that he seems even

to accept _in toto_ the principle he would controvert. Though he is

elsewhere and ever so emphatic in praise of good works or charity,

we here find him not sparing in condemnation of those who hope

through their doings of any kind to achieve salvation. Monks and nuns

accordingly, who sin more especially in this direction and who by the

assumption of peculiar habits and behaviour think to make themselves

agreeable to God, are an especial abomination to him. Man, he declares,

cannot be justified by the observance of vows or rules of any kind;

for these are not written in the law of God, and in themselves are

without significance. ‘A most pestilent thing it is, that Papal decrees

and monastic vows are assumed as means of salvation. When men bind

themselves by vows to particular observances, they virtually declare

that the salvation they have through Christ is insufficient, and lay

themselves fast in those bonds of the law from which Christ came to set

them free.’

In spite of frequently recurring contradictions and something that is

objectionable on the score of taste, we nevertheless think that no one,

however little disposed to abet Servetus’s general views, could peruse

these dialogues without coming to the conclusion that the writer was

a man of a sincerely pious nature, who had read much, and reflected

deeply, feeling it a necessity of his nature to expend himself in the

mystical verbiage in which religious enthusiasm loves to robe itself as

in a sufficient and seemly garment.

The seven Books and two Dialogues on the Trinity of Servetus have been

spoken of as an attempt to hold a middle course between the Roman

Catholic and the Reformed churches; and there may be something to

warrant such a conclusion from what is said in the chapter ‘De Justitia

Regni Christi.’ But Servetus’s Trinity is of another kind from that

of either the older or the younger sister, and where not assimilable

to the Neoplatonic ideas of Philo, it followed from the Pantheistic

principles which, like deep thinkers in general, he had adopted. God to

Servetus was the ἓν καὶ πᾶν, the One and the All; and if at any time

he speaks of Christ as God, it is as a manifestation of the Divine

in human form--a _dispensation_ in his own phraseology, a _mode_ in

Spinozistic language. The Divine Unity, and its manifestation in the

world in infinite modes, may be said to be the fundamental idea in the

philosophical as well as the theological system of Servetus.[35]

CHAPTER VII.

PARIS. ASSUMPTION OF THE NAME OF VILLENEUVE OR VILLANOVANUS.

ACQUAINTANCE WITH CALVIN.

His indifferent reception by the German and Swiss Reformers must have

satisfied Servetus that there was no abiding place for him among them.

He was doubtless disappointed and not a little disconcerted by the

treatment he met with at their hands. He had come as a light-bringer,

as a fellow striver for the Truth through independent reading of the

Scriptures. Studious and learned; smitten with divine philosophy;

emancipated from the fetters of the church of Rome; tolerant and

charitable, he doubtless thought that the liberal studies in Humanity

and the Greek letters in which he knew the Reformers excelled, must as

a matter of course have imparted to them something of the liberality

and comprehensiveness he felt in himself. Face to face with their

leaders in Basle and Strasburg, however, he was undeceived; and when he

saw that his book on Trinitarian Error, instead of bringing him fame

and friends, earned him nothing but evil report and enemies, and might

even compromise his personal safety, there was nothing left for him

but to pack up and begone.

He must have quitted Switzerland immediately after writing his letter

to Œcolampadius, and in all likelihood taken up his quarters at

Hagenau, where he lived quietly for some weeks or months engaged in

writing and supervising the printing of the ‘Two Dialogues,’ with which

and the concluding anathema against all tyrants of the church, as a

parting shot, he went on his way to France, reaching Paris towards

the end of 1532. He had in fact made the German-speaking parts of

Switzerland and Elsass where he was known, too hot for him, to use

a familiar phrase; and the parts where French was the mother tongue

had not yet taken up with Calvin or another great name opposed to

the Papacy, that might have led his thoughts towards them. He was

besides but indifferently acquainted with the German language; in

circumstances, too, we may presume, that made it impossible for him to

remain in any place where he had not remunerative occupation of some

sort; and this, with the whole world of the Reformation against him, he

saw he could not now obtain in quarters where he had once hoped to find

a welcome and a footing. He had therefore no choice left but retreat;

and Paris was the place where accomplishments of the kind he possessed

were most likely to find a market.

With all his hardihood and self-confidence, Servetus was not without

so much prudence as assured him that a certain amount of caution

and reticence was required of everyone who would live at peace among

his fellow men. He doubtless imagined at one time, but had already

discovered his mistake, that among heretics, as he had been accustomed

to hear the Reformers designated, he might freely expend himself

in heresy. To the very end of his life, he seems to have had some

difficulty in divining why he had not been welcomed by them with open

arms as a brother. But he was well aware that Roman Catholic France had

yet less in common with Michael Serveto, alias Revés, author of the

Seven books and Two dialogues on Trinitarian Error, than Protestant

Switzerland and Germany.

Servetus felt that the writer of these works could not safely show

himself in Paris under either his proper family or his maternal name,

and so fell readily upon one derived from the town of his nativity,

Villanueva. Servetus seems indeed at no time to have been very

particular as to his name and designation. On his trial at Vienne he is

of Tudela in Navarre, on that at Geneva, of Villanova in Aragon; and

Tollin finds him inscribed in the academic register of Paris (1536) and

in that of Montpellier, which he must have visited some time in 1540,

as neither of Tudela nor Villanova, but of Saragossa! During all the

years he lived in France, he was never known save as Monsieur Michel

Villeneuve, or, when he wrote in Latin, as Michael Villanovanus. Under

the name of Villeneuve he now announced himself, entered as student of

mathematics and physics at one of the colleges, and at a later period

took his degrees of M.A. and M.D. in the University of Paris. Under

the same name he subsequently wrote and edited various works at Lyons;

and it was as M. Villeneuve that he finally became known in the town

of Vienne in Dauphiny, where he lived for twelve years engaged in the

practice of medicine, and on terms of intimacy with the Archbishop and

all the notabilities of the place, both lay and clerical.

As a man of scholarly acquirements Servetus in the first instance

probably found employment, and the means of living with some of the

typographers of Paris, as reader and corrector of the press, a line of

life which he certainly followed for the next three or four years, in

the course of which we find notices of him first at Orleans, then at

Avignon, and finally at Lyons, one of the chief centres of the printing

and publishing business that had been called into such vigorous life

by the revival of learning, the discovery of the art of printing with

moveable types, and finally and very essentially by the Reformation.

It was during his first residence of about two years at Paris,

1532-1534, that he made the acquaintance of the man who became in

the end his most implacable enemy, and the immediate cause of his

untimely and cruel death. This was no other than the celebrated John

Calvin, then a young man and about the same age as himself. Partially

emancipated from the fetters of the faith in which he had been born

and bred, but not less firmly bound in others of his own fashioning,

Calvin had already attracted the notice of his friends and the public

by his natural abilities and his scholarly acquirements, and been

pointed out as likely to influence the progress of the Reformation in

his native France. Hearing of Calvin’s presence in Paris, Servetus as

Villeneuve must have sought him out, and, still full of the familiar

theological subject, have made an attempt upon him as he had already

done upon Œcolampadius and the others, for countenance and approval

in the discovery he had made of what he believed to be the true

saving Christian faith. But with no better success we must conclude;

for though the two young men met oftener than once in private, it

was without coming to any agreement. They had, therefore, actually

resolved on a public discussion, with a view to the voidance of their

theological differences.

This, however, never came to pass. Such an exhibition, indeed, could

not have taken place at the time without danger to both. Calvin, in

his young zeal, and for what he held to be the honour of God, would

have faced the danger, but the individual known to his Parisian friends

and Calvin as Michel Villeneuve must have seen on afterthought that he

could make no public appearance as defender of the _outré_ opinions he

entertained, without betraying the Michael Serveto of the De Trinitatis

Erroribus and Dialogues who lay hidden behind the adopted name; and

this he knew would be not only to disconcert all his present plans,

but assuredly to compromise his life. Calvin, we must presume, had not

at this time heard of Servetus’s books; very certainly he had not read

them; for one so acute and well-informed on theological matters as he,

would not have been more than a few minutes face to face with their

author without detecting him. But we find no hint in Calvin’s writings

that he then surmised who Villeneuve, his Parisian acquaintance, really

was, and conclude that he lived for a dozen years or more without

suspecting that the individual he discovered as Michael Serveto of the

Book on Trinitarian Error in his correspondent of Vienne, of the year

1546, was the same Villeneuve he had known in Paris in 1534.

Calvin then would have faced the danger of the public discussion,

though persecution was hot at the time against heresy, and he was not

unsuspected on this score. The danger to him, however, would have been

slight in comparison with that which Servetus must have incurred.

Calvin would not have stood forth on this occasion as the defender of

any heresy, but of the very fundamentals of the Christian faith as

embodied in its Creeds; to some of the most essential propositions in

which Servetus, on the contrary, must have shown himself diametrically

opposed. Servetus therefore, in this instance at least, saw perforce

that discretion was the better part of valour, and wisely stayed away.

He was in truth far too deeply compromised to venture on an appearance;

for if discovered to be Michael Serveto, nothing could have saved him

from the heretic’s death. He had nothing for it therefore but to

forfeit his engagement and lay himself open to Calvin’s reproachful

‘_vous avez fuy la luite_’--you fled the encounter--of a later and to

him more momentous epoch in their common lives.

CHAPTER VIII.

LYONS. ENGAGEMENT AS READER FOR THE PRESS WITH THE TRECHSELS. EDITS THE

GEOGRAPHY OF PTOLEMY.

Theology, however, after which we see Servetus still hankering--_hæret

lateri letalis arundo!_--and even the study of the mathematics on

which he was now engaged, had to be abandoned for present means of

subsistence; and as Lyons seemed even a better field for the scholar

than Paris, to Lyons, after a short stay at Avignon and Orleans, he

betook himself. There he appears immediately to have found employment

as reader and corrector of the press in the house of the distinguished

typographers, the Brothers Trechsel; and if the Age have its character

from the aggregate of its science and culture, and the Individual his

bent from his more immediate surroundings, we cannot but think of

Servetus’s connection with these light-spreaders as another among the

highly influential events in his life.

Books in the early days of printing were much more generally written in

Latin than in the vernacular, and ever more and more with references to

Greek, lately brought greatly into vogue by Erasmus and the Reformers.

The reader for press in the best establishments was therefore, and

of necessity, a scholar and man of letters; and the opportunities

for improvement now put in the way of one like Servetus, even whilst

pursuing the mechanical part of his duties, have only to be hinted at

to be appreciated. The reading room of the distinguished typographers

of those days was, indeed in some sort, a continuation of school and

college to the competent corrector of the press.

Servetus’s liberal elementary education, therefore, stood him in good

stead at this time; for the Trechsels ere long, instead of holding

him to the subordinate though still important duties of reader and

corrector, engaged him further as editor of various costly works that

issued from their press. Among the number of these a handsome edition

of the Geography of Ptolemy[36] deserves particular mention, both as

evincing the good repute in which he stood when we find him entrusted

with such a work, and also as showing the extent of his reading and

general knowledge--strangely enough, also, as influencing in some

remote degree the fate that finally befel him.

Earlier editions of the Ptolemy were faulty in several ways, and

disfigured in different degrees by errors due, in part at least, to

indifferent editing. These, where literal, Villanovanus corrected in

the new issue; and where the sense was obscure through faulty wording,

he brought light by the better readings he supplied, having formed his

text, as he says, by collating all the editions he could lay his hands

on, and where these gave him no aid, by suggestions of his own.

In his address to the reader, our editor, whom we shall often speak of

under his adopted name of Villanovanus, gives a short account of his

author, Claudius Ptolemæus, his birth-place, the Roman emperors under

whom he flourished, ‘his knowledge of philosophy and the mathematics,

and the more than Herculean glory he achieved by his successful but

peaceful invasion of so many lands. Nor indeed was this all, for he may

be said to have bound earth to heaven by assimilating the measurements

of the one to those of the other; and, coming after Strabo, Pliny, and

Pomponius Mela, he as far surpassed them, as they excelled all the

geographers who had gone before them.’

But Villanovanus did much more than edit and amend the text of Ptolemy.

‘We,’ he says, ‘have added scholia to the text, whereby the book is

made more interesting and more complete. Using our familiarity with

the historical, poetical, and miscellaneous writings of the Greeks and

Romans, in so far as they bear on our subject, we have given the names

by which the countries, mountains, rivers, and cities were known to

them; and, to aid the tyro, have further translated the ancient titles

of places into those by which they are now designated--into French

for France, Italian for Italy, German for Germany, &c., all of which

countries we have seen, besides having a knowledge of their languages.’

Extending his vision beyond the mere physical features of the lands

he is passing under review, he might have added that he also gives

short, but graphic accounts of their inhabitants, the prominent traits

of their character, their manners, customs, &c., which are extremely

interesting. But Michael Villanovanus is not one of those who hide

themselves behind their good works, and so is he now careful to inform

his readers of the pains he has taken in their behalf. By them, he

says, he hopes his vigils will be properly appreciated, ‘for day and

night have I laboured assiduously at my task--_dies noctesque jugiter

laboravi_.’ He concludes his preliminary address in these words: ‘No

one, I imagine, will under-estimate the labour, though pleasant in

itself, that is implied in the collation of our text with that of other

earlier editions, unless it be some Zoilus of the contracted brow, who

cannot without envy look on the serious labours of others. But thou,

candid reader, whoever thou art, we trust wilt be well disposed, kindly

to receive and to approve our work. Farewell!’

Villanovanus’s edition of the Ptolemy is certainly an advance on that

of Bilibald Pirckheimer, which formed its groundwork; but it is not so

free from literal errors as the laudatory address of the editor might

lead us to expect. And it would have been better had he said that he

had enlarged and improved the short and meagre scholia of his editorial

predecessor than spoken as if he had supplied them wholly of himself.

Villanovanus’s improved comments, however, impress us very favourably

with a sense of the pains he must have bestowed on the work, and arouse

our respect for the extent and variety of the reading he had undertaken

to obtain the information he brings to bear on the physical aspects

and natural productions of the several countries described, as well

as of the customs, manners, and moral qualities of their inhabitants.

Now it was that the smattering of geographic and historic lore he

may have picked up as a student at Saragossa and elsewhere stood him

in good stead, enabling him, as it did, to advance and profit by

the ample stores of information of the kind which the city of Lyons

placed within his reach. Living immediately after the age of the great

navigators--Columbus, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, the Vespucii, and the

rest--and in the very days when the works of Peter Martyr of Anghiera,

Simon Grynæus, Sebastian Munster, and others enabled the educated to

acquire something like a true knowledge of the world they lived in, the

new edition of Ptolemy by Michael Villanovanus was a happy thought, and

contributed, we need not doubt, no less to his own development than

to the spread of useful and humanising information. Engaged on the

Ptolemy, the super-subtleties of scholasticism and theology seem to

have vanished before the light of the more positive kind of knowledge

that now broke around him.

When we turn to the writings of the able individuals mentioned above,

we have no difficulty in discovering whence Servetus had most,

perhaps all, of his geographical and astronomical knowledge. The Opus

Epistolarum of Angleria, in particular, seems to have been the mine

from whence he made himself rich in mental wealth of many kinds. We

find him imitating, and even improving upon, the lines which head

Angleria’s _De Rebus Oceanicis_ and Grynæus’s _Typi Cosmographici_,

as the reader may see by comparing the verse below[37] with the one

he will find further on, which is prefixed to the 2nd edition of the

Ptolemy.

Turning to the Scholia of Villanovanus, we find it not a little

interesting in these days to have a glimpse of ourselves in our sires,

and of our neighbours in theirs, from the pen of a man of genius

hard upon three centuries and a half ago; and as Michael Servetus is

really only known to us through his works and the judicial trials he

underwent, we make no apology for referring briefly to his additions to

the bald and matter-of-fact text of the original Ptolemy.

The map of the first country in the series of fifty by which the

work is illustrated is that of Great Britain. The people of SCOTLAND,

Villanovanus informs his reader, are hot-tempered, prone to revenge,

and fierce in their anger; but valiant in war and patient beyond belief

of cold, hunger, and fatigue. They are handsome in person, and their

clothing and language are the same as those of the Irish, their tunics

being dyed yellow, their legs bare, and their feet protected by sandals

of undressed hide with the hair on. They live mainly on fish and flesh;

they have numerous flocks, mostly of sheep, for the country is free

from wolves; and they have milk and cheese in abundance. Their arms

are bows and arrows and broad swords--_lati gladii_. Instead of wood,

they have coal for fuel. Unlike the people of the last few generations,

he says the Scotch are not a particularly religious people. He ‘who

never feared the face of man,’ as the Earl of Morton said of Knox,

when looking down on his dead body, had not yet made himself felt in

the land of his birth; and the School-house had not yet risen as a

necessary complement to the Kirk and the Manse, to make the people of

Scotland what they have become since his day--among the very foremost

of the sons of men.

ENGLAND, Villanovanus observes, is wonderfully well peopled, and

the inhabitants are long-lived. Tall in stature, they are fair in

complexion, and have blue eyes. They are brave in war, and admirable

bowmen. He has the familiar tale of the English children seen as

captives at Rome by the blessed Gregory, who said they were called

Angli, indeed; but in form and feature showed like Angeli. He must, as

it seems, have given some little attention to the English language, if

he did not study it more particularly. He says it is so difficult to

learn and to pronounce, because the people who speak it are a compound

of so many different races.

Of IRELAND and the Irish our editor does not speak so favourably. The

country, he observes, is generally marshy, so that, unless the summers

are dry, the cattle are apt to get lost in the bogs. It is free from

noxious creatures of every kind, there being no reptiles, such as

snakes, toads, and frogs, and no insects, such as spiders and bees--a

state of things which, if it ever obtained, certainly does so no

longer. The climate is very temperate, and the soil of great fertility;

but the people are rude, inhospitable, barbarous, and cruel, more

given to hunting and idle play than to industry. Only three days’ sail

from Spain, the Irish, he says, have many customs in common with the

Spaniards.

Of SPAIN, the account given is particularly full, but by no

means complimentary, and its people are contrasted--not to their

advantage--with their neighbours the French. The extreme dryness of

the climate is noticed, which tends to make the country less fertile

than France. Irrigation, however, being practised on an extensive

scale in many parts, tends to make up for the infrequency of rain,

the conduits being often carried to great distances from the rivers.

His description of the people is far from laudatory. ‘The Spaniard,’

he says, ‘is of a restless disposition, apt enough of understanding,

but learning imperfectly or amiss, so that you shall find a learned

Spaniard almost anywhere sooner than in Spain. Half-informed, he thinks

himself brimful of information, and always pretends to more knowledge

than he has in fact. He is much given to vast projects, never realised;

and in conversation he delights in subtleties and sophistry. Teachers

commonly prefer to speak Spanish rather than Latin in the schools and

colleges of the country; but the people in general have little taste

for letters, and produce few books themselves, mostly procuring those

they want from France.’ The Spanish language, indeed, he speaks of as

defective in many respects, and does not fail to remark on the number

of Moorish words incorporated with it. The people, he says, ‘have many

barbarous notions and usages,’ derived by implication from their old

Moorish conquerors and fellow-denizens. ‘The women have a custom that

would be held barbarous in France, of piercing their ears and hanging

gold rings in them, often set with precious stones. They besmirch their

faces, too, with minium and ceruse--red and white lead--and walk about

on clogs a foot or a foot and a half high, so that they seem to walk

above rather than on the earth. The people are extremely temperate, and

the women never drink wine. Spaniards, he concludes, are notably the

most superstitious people in the world in their religious notions; but

they are brave in the field, of signal endurance under privation and

difficulty, and by their voyages of discovery have spread their name

over the face of the globe.’

Of FRANCE, M. Villeneuve has less to say than of Spain; but what

he tells us of the royal touch for the cure of scrofula is still

interesting in the annals of superstition. ‘I have myself seen the king

touching many labouring under this disease, but I did not see that they

were cured.’

Of GERMANY, and he uses the title in a very comprehensive sense--he

speaks at considerable length. Smarting under the rebuff he had

received at the hands of the Swiss and German Reformers, he is nowise

disposed to find the Teutons and their congeners or neighbours however

designated, an interesting people, or their territories as in any

way attractive. Referring to Tacitus’s account of Germany proper, as

overgrown by vast forests, and defaced by frightful swamps, its climate

he says is at once as insufferably hot in summer as it is bitterly

cold in winter. ‘Hungary,’ he observes, ‘is commonly said to produce

oxen, Bavaria swine, Franconia onions, turnips and liquorice, Swabia

harlots, Bohemia heretics, Switzerland butchers, Westphalia cheats,

and the whole country gluttons and drunkards. The Germans, however,

are a religious people; not easily turned from opinions they have once

espoused and not readily persuaded to concord in matters of schism,

everyone valiantly and obstinately defending the heresy he has himself

adopted;’ words in which we may presume Villanovanus sought to give

ease to the pent-up displeasure he felt against his repudiators, the

Reformers of Basle and Strasburg.

Of ITALY and its people he has little to say; and that not good. The

natives readily enough pretend to forgive injuries, but, occasion

offering, none revenge themselves so savagely. They make use in their

everyday talk of the most horrid oaths and imprecations. Holding all

the rest of the world in contempt and calling them barbarians, they

themselves have nevertheless been alternately the prey of France, of

Spain, and of Germany.

In his survey of BABYLONIA, he refers to a certain abominable custom

observed by young marriageable women, which is particularly mentioned

by Herodotus and also by the writers of the Bible, when read by

unsealed eyes, as obtaining among the Jews, and of the money, so

objectionably earned in our estimation, being devoted to the service of

the Temple.

But the most interesting to us perhaps of all the commentaries attached

to the Ptolemy, inasmuch as it influenced the fate of Servetus on

his trial at Geneva, is the one appended to the map of PALESTINE or

the Holy Land. Demurring to much that is said in praise of JUDÆA in

the Bible and by Josephus, as a country specially blessed in various

ways, as being well-watered, fertile, &c., the commentator says, that

in so far as climate is concerned, it is a temperate land, obnoxious

to the extremes neither of heat nor of cold; a condition of things

that may have led the Israelites or Hebrews to imagine that it must

be the land that was promised to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac

and Jacob; a land metaphorically said to be flowing with milk and

honey. ‘The Israelites,’ it is said in continuation, ‘lived at length

under laws received from Moses, although they had gone on piously and

prosperously enough through countless ages, before his day, without

any written law, having had regard to the oracles of divine or natural

truth alone, gifted as they were with aptitude and greatness of mind.

Moses, however, that distinguished theologian, thinking that no state

could exist without a written code of law and equity, gave them one

reduced to ten principal heads, engraved on two tables of stone; with

the addition of a great number of minor commandments for the regulation

of their lives and dealings with one another. But any more particular

notice of these, they being so numerous--great birds not sitting in

little nests--must here be passed by. Know, however, most worthy

reader, that it is mere boasting and untruth when so much of excellence

is ascribed to this land; the experience of merchants and others,

travellers who have visited it, proving it to be inhospitable, barren,

and altogether without amenity. Wherefore you may say that the land

was _promised_, indeed, but is of _little promise_ when spoken of in

everyday terms.’

The Ptolemy of Villanovanus was well received, and though costly, a

second edition was by and by required. We find it much commended in

subsequent reprints by their publishers; and no wonder, for the Ptolemy

is really a sumptuous book, upon which a large sum of money must have

been spent, the typography being excellent and the text profusely

ornamented with woodcuts on the sides of the pages as well as at the

heads and tails of the chapters.[38]

CHAPTER IX.

LYONS. DOCTOR SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER.

It was whilst engaged in the revision of such works as the Ptolemy and

others on the natural sciences, anatomy, medicine, pharmacy, &c., in

the service of the Trechsels, that Servetus may be said to have entered

on the second, if it were not rather the third, stage of his mental

development. The typographer’s reading-room had in truth proved the

means of his continued education; each new volume he read and corrected

being found a teacher not less influential than the Professor from his

chair. The Convent school, Toulouse, and his engagement with Quintana

had borne fruit of the kind we discover in the book on Trinitarian

error; it was the reading-room of the printers of Lyons that brought

him back from the empyrean of metaphysics to the earth, and put him

in the way of becoming the geographer, astrologian, biblical critic,

physiologist and physician we are made familiar with in his subsequent

life and writings.

Among the learned works that flowed in a sort of ceaseless stream from

the presses of the Trechsels during Servetus’s tenure of his office

as reader with them, were several from the fertile pen of Doctor

Symphorien Champier, or, when he latinised his name, Campeggius, a

man of large and liberal culture, of a truly noble nature, an admirer

of learning and a patron of the learned; possessed moreover of that

restless vanity which made him feel it as much a matter of necessity

to live in the eye of the world as to breathe; the effect of which

was that he exerted the widest and most beneficent influence among

his fellow men. Indefatigable in his proper calling, there was yet

nothing which interested the citizens of Lyons that did not interest

him. Fearless in bringing help on the battle-field, to which he

accompanied his chief the Duke of Lorraine, he was no less ready to

brave pestilence in the city, and was as often to be seen in the hovels

of the poor as in the palaces of the great and wealthy--_inopibus et

infortunatis æque indiscriminatimque succurris opitularisve_, says his

biographer--a true physician, a great and good man.[39]

Among Champier’s numerous works published about this time, we note

the PENTAPHARMACUM GALLICUM (Lyons, 1534), which Servetus we believe

read and corrected for press, the gist of the work being to show that

each country produces the medicines best adapted to cure the diseases

of its inhabitants, and that to them exotics are for the most part

not only useless, but injurious; an assumption in which he differs

notably from present experience and the great writer, his countryman,

who came after him, and said that ‘God had inflicted fever on Europe,

but put its remedy in America.’ Correcting the proofs of Champier’s

five-fold French Pharmacopœia, Servetus must have introduced himself

to, or become acquainted with, the author; and if we may credit Pastor

Henry Tollin, who will have everyone as truly interested in Servetus as

himself, Champier was so much taken by the accomplishments of the poor

scholar as even to make a home for him in Lyons. Be this as it may,

certain it seems that contact with Champier was that which led Servetus

to study medicine, of which he had not thought until now, for it was a

science much looked down on by Spaniards in general, its practice being

mostly in the hands of Jews and Moors, whom to contemn, where not to

oppress, was a religion with all who boasted of their blue blood.

Another of Champier’s books printed by the Trechsels, which we need not

doubt Servetus had also read and put to use, was the ‘Hortus Gallicus’

(Lyons 1533). But more influential on him still, though printed in

another establishment (that of Seb. Gryphius) during the time he lived

in Lyons, was the great Lyonnese Doctor’s CRIBRATIO MEDICAMENTORUM,

with the MEDULLA PHILOSOPHLE--the Marrow of Philosophy--appended.

In his chapter on the Vital, Animal, and Natural Spirits (p. 137),

Champier speaks of ‘spirit as a subtle, aerial, translucid substance

produced of the finest part of the blood, and carried by it from the

heart, as principal vital organ, to all parts of the body. Spoken of

as three,’ he continues, ‘there are in truth but two kinds of spirit,

the vital and the animal.’ The sameness of this to what we shall find

in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ will be obvious to all. It strikes us

in fact that Villanovanus’s first medical production--the Treatise on

Syrups--was wholly inspired by this Marrow of Philosophy of Champier,

in which we discover much upon digestion and concoction, the maturation

and evacuation of the humours, etc., precisely as in the treatise ‘De

Syrupis.’

Nor did Champier’s influence on our scholar end here. One of the

Doctor’s treatises is entitled, ‘Prognosticon perpetuum Astrologorum,

Medicorum et Prophetarum--The guide of the Astrologer, Physician

and Prophet in their prognostications or forecasts.’ Like so many

in his age, Champier was a devoted astrologer; and it was he we may

conclude who made Servetus one too. Champier having been attacked on

the score of his astrology by Leonhard Fuchs, Professor of Medicine

in Heidelberg,[40] Michael Villanovanus, as grateful pupil, took up

the pen in defence of his master, and replied by a pamphlet entitled,

‘Defence of Symphorien Champier, addressed to Leonhard Fuchs,[41] and

an Apologetic Dissertation on Astrology.’[42] Villanovanus, it seems,

would not neglect what he must have thought a favourable opportunity

of showing himself to the world in company with so distinguished an

individual as the great Physician of Lyons, to whom he owns himself

much indebted--_cui multum debeo_, and ventilating a subject that

interested him, like so many of his age, only in a less degree than

theology itself.

CHAPTER X.

RETURN TO PARIS. STUDIES THERE. JO. WINTER OF ANDERNACH; ANDREA

VESALIUS. DEGREES OF M.A. AND M.D. LECTURES ON GEOGRAPHY AND ASTROLOGY.

Villeneuve, we must presume, had reached Lyons poor enough in pocket if

rich in lore; but so diligently had he laboured and so liberally had he

been paid by the princely publishers of the day, that within two years

he found himself in funds sufficient to authorise a return to Paris

with a view to the study of Medicine, which he had now resolved to

make his profession for life. The rebuff he had had from Œcolampadius,

Bucer, and the rest, had probably sickened him for a while with

theology and scholasticism, from which, however, we may presume he had

only been diverted by his failure to make an immediate impression on

the Reformers and the necessity of providing for his daily wants. But

‘the fresh fields and pastures new’ brought into sight by the study

of Ptolemy, and the healthy influence of Champier, the physician and

naturalist, gave another turn to his mind, and with the money he had

earned in his purse, but still comporting himself as the poor scholar,

he entered first the College of Calvi, and then that of the Lombards.

To these as a subject of the Holy Roman Empire he probably had ready

access, and in their quiet shades devoted himself to the new course of

study he had determined to pursue.

His larger experience and intercourse with Champier must have

shown Servetus that medicine was a more assured means of earning a

subsistence than theology, and opened up a far wider field to his

ambition than continued service with the typographers. Without utterly

neglecting older studies, therefore, he now gave his chief attention to

the great and useful art and science of medicine; and we shall find as

we proceed that the lessons of such teachers as Joannes Guinterus (Jo.

Winter of Andernach), Jacobus Sylvius (J. du Bois), Joannes Fernelius,

and others of name and fame in their day, found congenial soil in the

receptive mind of the student.

Servetus, indeed, would seem immediately to have made his presence

felt in the medical school of Paris; he was at once more than a

listener to the prelections of its professors. Associated with no less

distinguished an individual than Andrea Vesalius, he was one of Winter

of Andernach’s two prosectors, and prepared the subject for each day’s

demonstration.

And let not the conjunction of talent that meets us here be overlooked.

Vesalius, repudiating the authority of Galen, became the restorer--the

_Creator_ of Modern Anatomy. Servetus, breaking with scholasticism

in theology, and freeing himself from the shackles of Greeks and

Arabians in practical medicine, inaugurated Rational Physiology when

he proclaimed the course of the blood from the right to the left

side of the heart through the lungs. Working together as friends and

fellow students for the Professor of Anatomy, Vesalius and Servetus,

through diversity of mental constitution, yet saw things diversely.

Vesalius, the observer, abiding by the _concrete_, described with rare

felicity and truthfulness what he witnessed; Servetus, gifted with

genius, aspiring to the _ideal_ and inferring consequences, deduced the

pulmonary circulation from the structure of the heart and lungs!

Nor were the two men associates only in their studies; they were

fellows also in the untoward fate that befel them both in after life;

for both may be said to have fallen victims to their zeal. Somewhat

precipitate, we may presume, in his eagerness for information, the

heart of a young nobleman who had died under his care and whose body

Vesalius was inspecting, was either seen to palpitate, or was thought

to have palpitated, when touched by the knife of the anatomist.

Accused forthwith of murder, it was only by the interference of Philip

II. of Spain, whose physician Vesalius was, that a formal trial for

manslaughter was commuted for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with confession

and absolution at the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre. The penance was

undergone, but the pilgrim, homeward bound, suffered shipwreck on the

island of Crete, and perished miserably there. Servetus again, as we

shall see, in his eagerness to proclaim what he believed to be the

truth, and given no chance for his life, had to abide the still more

cruel death of the faggot and stake.

Joannes Guinterus, it is interesting to know, bears honourable

testimony to the merits of his two assistants. In the preface to

his ‘Anatomical Institutions’ he informs us that ‘he had been most

effectually aided in the preparation of the work, first by Andrea

Vesalius, a young man, by Hercules! singularly proficient in anatomy;

and after him by Michael Villanovanus, distinguished by his literary

acquirements of every kind, and scarcely second to any in his knowledge

of Galenical doctrine. Under the supervision and with the aid of these

two,’ he continues, ‘I have myself examined in the Subject and have

shown to the students the whole of the muscles, veins, arteries, and

nerves, both of the extremities and internal parts of the body.’[43]

From this we learn whence Servetus had the anatomical knowledge that

enabled him as inductive reasoner--true forerunner here of our own

immortal Harvey--to proclaim the pulmonary circulation.

The practice of dissecting the human subject had therefore, by this

time, extended to France--the bodies of one or more malefactors being

now publicly anatomised in the course of each winter session.[44] Had

we no other evidence of the genius with which Michael Servetus was

endowed, beyond the use he made of what he saw in these anatomical

demonstrations, we should still feel entitled to speak of him as the

most far-sighted physiologist of his age; for he alone of all his

contemporaries, though fettered by the prevalent metaphysical theories

of life, the soul and the spirits, from which we ourselves have not

yet escaped, not only divined, but positively proclaimed the passage

of the blood, by way of the lungs, from the right to the left side of

the heart, and thence--but stopping short of the whole truth, first

proclaimed by Harvey--from the left ventricle of the heart to the body

at large. But the book in which his important Induction is contained,

though printed in his lifetime, _was never published_. Seen by none

but a few theologians, who took no note of its physiological contents,

it remained unknown to the world for nearly a century and a half,

after its author had fallen a victim to the hate of Calvin and the

intolerance of his age.

With the stimulus of necessity upon him, for he was poor, and the

excitement of vanity, with which he was largely endowed, as he could

not live on the learning he imbibed from his teachers, Servetus

by-and-by appeared before the world as a teacher in his turn. Having

by diligence and superior natural capacity, in a singularly short space

of time, achieved the degrees of M.A. and M.D., which were required

before he could present himself either as Professor or Physician within

the domain of the University of Paris, Servetus now came forward as a

Lecturer on the Geography of Ptolemy and the science of Astrology--a

term which then included the true doctrine of the heavenly bodies as

well as the false doctrine of their presumed influence on the life

of man and the current of events in the world. In this bold step we

have another glimpse of the self-reliant, and it may be, somewhat

presumptuous, character of the man; for even as the emancipated novice

of the monk’s school and Saragossan professors, when little more than

of age, showed himself as Theologian in the ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis,’

so did the newly becapped Magister Artium now come forward as Lecturer

on Geography and Astrology, and the scarce fledged doctor in physic, as

a teacher of his fellows and the world at large, in the art and mystery

of treating Disease.

The course of Lectures on Geography and Astrology was a happy

thought, and proved highly successful. It was delivered to a large

and distinguished audience, and besides supplying the professor with

funds for all his wants, became a means of introducing him to friends,

influential for good on his future life. Amongst the number of his

auditors there was a young ecclesiastic, a scholar and man of talent,

Pierre Paumier, who after employment in various offices of trust by

his king, Francis the First, was transferred to a position of no less

dignity and emolument than that of Archbishop of Vienne in Dauphiny.

Under the auspices of the Archbishop, and as we believe on his

invitation, it was that Servetus found a final resting place by his

side. Fresh from editing Ptolemy, with the old stores of classic lore

he had at command, and of anecdote and general information he had

amassed in reading up for his editorial duties, aided by the natural

fluency with which we venture to credit him, it is easy to imagine

how interesting these Lectures must have been in days when the world

was eager for information on the discoveries of the great voyagers

and travellers of the age, and when books were still both scarce and

costly, and little read by the many.

But Servetus was a Physician as well as Geographer and Astrologer, and

not the man to hide any light he had under a bushel. He must appear

in connection with his profession, as well as in the accessory field

of general knowledge, by writing a book upon some properly medical

subject, a business which he set about forthwith under the immediate

inspiration of all he had learned from Dr. Champier of Lyons, as well

as his professors of Paris.

CHAPTER XI.

THE TREATISE ON SYRUPS AND THEIR USE IN MEDICINE.[45]

The medical world in the early part of the sixteenth century was

divided into two great hostile camps, respectively designated

Galenists, or followers of the Greeks, and Averrhoists, or disciples of

the Arabians; the former swearing by Hippocrates and Galen, the latter

by Averrhoes and Avicenna. Servetus’s initiator into matters medical,

Champier, was a fervent admirer of the Greeks; and his pupil, led by

his classical training as well as his master’s example, naturally

attached himself to the same school. Here, nevertheless, as ever, he

showed the independence of his nature by having open eyes for any truth

the Arabian writers might present; so that we find nothing of servility

or one-sidedness in what he has to say.

The treatise in which Villanovanus came before the public in his

new capacity of physician was on the practical use of the class of

medicines known in those days by the title of Syrups--sweetened

decoctions or infusions of different kinds, still in vogue among the

French under the name of Tisanes. These syrups appear to have been one

of the bones of contention between the two parties, though neither was

perfectly agreed in itself as to the indications for their use or of

the principles on which they were to be prescribed. This question does

not interest us here, and so we leave it; but we turn to the work of

Michael Villanovanus for intimations in its style of the intellectual

and moral nature of its author.

In his address to the reader he says, ‘I should not have proposed, most

learned reader, to take on my weak shoulders this weighty and so much

disputed province of the healing art, had I not felt me forced, against

my will as it were, to lend my aid in furthering medical studies by a

fair defence of Galenical doctrine, and more especially still by my

love of truth.... I think it will be found that I have conciliated

Galen so far with my own views as to dispel any doubts I may have

had of a favourable award, if I have only an equitable judge in my

reader. Of this, at all events, I feel well assured that no studious

person who carefully weighs what is here set forth will repent him of

his reading.’ This is not amiss from a Doctor of a year’s standing!

But it is in his Preface to the work that Michael Villanovanus, as we

apprehend him, comes still more particularly before us. Aware, as he

says, of the fate that so often befals the meddler in a quarrel not

his own, and displaying a commendable amount of caution, not without a

spice of mock modesty, our author is here considerate enough to tell us

that ‘he does not intend to offer himself as censor in the controversy,

between the Galenists and Averrhoists, and by finding something to

object to in the conclusions of each, to have them both fall foul of

him as an enemy;’ after which he proceeds, characteristically still,

to say, ‘but that I may not withhold from others that which I possess

myself and gratefully acknowledge, which may be of use to my fellow

men, I throw aside fear and proclaim what I believe to be the truth.’

The ‘Syruporum Universa Ratio,’ or general Rationale of Syrups, is in

truth a very learned little book, extremely well written; much of it,

as becomes the young practitioner, having reference to the writings of

predecessors of the highest authority in medical science. Hippocrates

and Galen, above all others, are freely quoted, and their views

discussed, for Servetus was ‘nothing if not critical,’ and a variorum

reading or two to show his scholarship is proposed. But he also refers

to Avicenna, not thinking it amiss to learn of the enemy, and to Paul

of Aegina, Monardus and others, by which he proclaims the extent of his

reading, and his readiness to imbibe knowledge at every source.

I looked with interest for some physiological hint or statement in

this book, on Syrups or Diet drinks, that might have heralded the

brilliant exposition contained in the latest product of his genius--the

Christianismi Restitutio or Restoration of Christianity--concerning the

way in which the blood from the right reaches the left ventricle of the

heart through the lungs, but in vain. We must presume nevertheless that

he was already possessed of the anatomical facts on which his later

induction is founded. The only physiological reference I discovered

in the book on Syrups was to the Mesentery as giving origin to the

veins--a step in advance of his predecessors, with whom the liver was

the source as it was also the laboratory of the blood, as the veins

were the channels for its distribution to the body.

It is not uninteresting, however, to observe the same tendency towards

unity or oneness here, in the domain of positive knowledge, which we

discover pervading Servetus’s other works that lose themselves in the

realm of metaphysical abstraction. He will not acknowledge two or any

greater number of concoctions or digestions, whether in health or

disease, such as were generally admitted in his day. The processes that

take place in disease he declares to be of the same nature, though they

are perverted, as those that occur in the healthy body. Diseases are

therefore nothing more than perversions of natural functions, not new

entities introduced into the body; a conclusion which, on physiological

grounds, he sums up in these words: ‘The rationale in the maturation of

disease and in the digestion of the food is one and the same.’[46]

CHAPTER XII.

THE MEDICAL FACULTY OF PARIS SUE VILLANOVANUS FOR LECTURING ON JUDICIAL

ASTROLOGY.

Servetus’s fate on starting in life was opposition; and how should it

have been otherwise?--he found himself through superior endowment and

higher culture antagonistic to almost all he saw around him in the

world. We have already had him met as a trespasser on their domain

by the Reformers of Basle and Strasburg, and we have now to find him

looked on as an intruder by the Medical Faculty of Paris. The lecturer

on Geography and Astrology had attracted a large amount of public

attention, and the author of the book on Syrups began to get into

vogue as a practitioner of medicine. The book had in fact been as well

received as the lectures; it was extensively read, much commended at

the time, and reprinted oftener than once in after years. No wonder,

therefore, that Michel Villeneuve M.D. had now as many eyes upon him in

Paris as Michael Servetus had had in other days in Switzerland. Before

he could well look about him, the whole faculty of Physicians and the

heads of the University of Paris were in array against him.

It seems that he had gone out of his way in his lectures to say

something disrespectful of the doctors, his contemporaries, accusing

them of ignorance of many things necessary to the successful practice

of their profession, particularly of Astronomy, or more properly

Astrology, a science in which Villeneuve plumed himself as being a

master. The doctors naturally enough complained of such impropriety,

and had him cited before their council. There he was told that

something more of respectful bearing was due from him to men who

had been his masters; and above all that he was transgressing the

boundaries of true science and common sense in making so much of

Astrology. The Dean of the Faculty is even said to have had him several

times privately before him, and warned him of the difficulties he

would inevitably fall into, if he continued casting nativities and

prescribing for the ailments of his patients from the aspects of

the stars; for this, it appears, was the principal element in his

medical practice. Servetus, unhappily for himself, was not one of

those who could take even friendly advice in good part. As credulous

as he was sceptical, and believing implicitly in himself and in

stellar influences, he not only made no submission, but said that his

ill-wishers should rue their opposition.

The doctors on their part not only gave no heed to his threats, but

publicly denounced him from their chairs as an impostor and wind-bag;

with the consequence of arousing him to self-defence, and with his

ready pen setting him to work upon a pamphlet, in which he did not fail

to lay bare some of the sore places in the persons of his adversaries,

characterising them as mannerless and unlettered, and even holding

them up in their ignorance as very pests of society. Once in the hands

of the printer, Villeneuve’s purpose to expose his detractors through

the dreaded press became known; and such alarm does his meditated

attack appear to have excited that the Faculty of Physicians, calling

the Senate of the University to their side, petitioned the Parliament

of Paris to forbid the publication of the pamphlet, as well as to

interdict its author from continuing to lecture on Astrology, which

they now characterised as Divination.

The Parliament, with becoming judicial impartiality, would take no

step in the matter until they had heard Villeneuve in his defence and

had something tangible, such as the pamphlet which it was sought to

suppress, before them. Nothing more was done, consequently, than the

issuing of a summons to Villeneuve to appear at the bar of the house

on a certain day and give an account of himself. This gave him all he

required: time to have his pamphlet printed. Keeping the compositors

at work, with a promise of higher pay if they used despatch, it was

not only ready before the day of citation came round, but had been

distributed gratis in numbers to the public as well as to the members

of the medical profession. They reckoned without their host who

thought that Michel Villeneuve was to be cowed by opposition, however

imposingly headed.

The doctors were naturally excessively wroth with this daring move

on the part of the man they desired to crush. He had not awaited

the decision of the Parliament; and neither now did they pause; for

believing they had a hold upon him on the score of heresy, implied

in the practice of judicial astrology or divination, they had him

summoned before the Inquisitor of the king as an enemy to the Church,

and contemner of its statutes. There was no regularly established

Inquisition at this time in France; but papal inquisitors, often

Italians by birth, were commonly enough found accredited by the Holy

See, with the sanction of the Sovereign, to the large towns of the

country. There they held courts before which cases of imputed heresy

were tried and adjudged--the decisions come to, however, being always

made subject to revision by the civil tribunals of the realm. Nay,

there was a right of demurrage to the jurisdiction of the inquisitor,

at the option of the party incriminated, were he minded to be tried by

the ordinary civil, rather than the extraordinary ecclesiastical, court.

We might have imagined that Michael Servetus, with the experience he

had had of ecclesiastical incapacity to hear reason and ‘true judgment

give,’ as he interpreted it, would have paused before venturing to

appear before the inquisitor of the king; but so safe must Michel

Villeneuve have felt against a charge of heresy at this time, and so

secure in his new designation, that he did not hesitate to obey the

summons; although we learn that had he been so minded, he might as a

member of the Faculty of Physicians have even disregarded it entirely.

He appeared accordingly at the proper moment; and so well did he play

his part, so thoroughly did he satisfy the inquisitor of the king that

he was a good Christian, that he left the court with flying colours,

absolved of all suspicion of heresy, to the utter discomfiture of his

accusers, who had now nothing for it but patiently to wait the award of

the Parliament.

Before this tribunal, acting it would seem as a court of justice, a

suit was regularly instituted, with the Rector of the University of

Paris and the Dean and Faculty of Physic of the same as pursuers, on

the one part, and Michael Villanovanus as defendant, on the other. For

the University and Faculty, it was alleged that judicial astrology,

otherwise to be styled divination, is forbidden by various statutes,

as well canonical and divine as civil, the penalty for practising the

same being death by fire, and that the defendant, a man of learning,

and so incapacitated from pleading ignorance of these statutes, had

notoriously lectured both in public and private on certain books of

divination, among others, on the works entitled ‘De Aleabiticis’ and

‘De Divificationibus,’ both of which are full of divination.

It was alleged further, that he had been known to make forecasts for

various persons in respect of their fortunes from their nativities,

on the assumption that according to the day and the hour of a man’s

birth, and the aspect of the heavens at the time, would fortune of

a favourable or adverse kind befal him; all of which by the Faculty

of Theology is held highly reprehensible. That for his lectures and

lessons, moreover, he takes money and attracts numerous auditors,

who, seduced by the pleasantness of the poison he sells, have been

debauched and led to forsake the true philosophy of Pico de Mirandola,

who declares divination to be the most pestilent of frauds, degrading

philosophy, invalidating religion, strengthening superstition,

corrupting morals, and making men miserable slaves instead of free men.

Not stopping short at such public and private misdeeds, continue the

pursuers, he has written and had printed a certain apology or defence

of divination,[47] with his name attached, which is of a highly

objectionable character in every respect; the Theological Faculty

declaring in addition that the concluding sentence of this apology has

an extremely suspicious appearance, couched as it is in these words:

‘On the following night Mars is eclipsed by the moon, near the star

called the King, in the constellation of Leo; whence I predict that in

the course of this year the hearts of the Lions, i.e. the princes, will

be greatly moved; that with Mars in the ascendant war will prevail,

and much havoc be done by fire and sword; that the Church will suffer

tribulation, several princes die, and pestilence and other evils

abound. To languish, to mourn, to die--all of good or ill that comes to

man proceeds from heaven.’

The petition of the pursuers on the above showing therefore is, that

the defendant, Villanovanus, be interdicted for the future from

professing and practising judicial astrology, whether in public or

private; that he be forbidden further to circulate his pamphlet against

the Faculty, and commanded to call in all unsold copies; that for what

has passed he own himself to blame, and be enjoined for the future to

bear himself respectfully towards the Faculty of Physic, to which he

belongs.

In his address to the court on behalf of his client, Villanovanus’s

counsel opined that the Faculty of Physic had descended somewhat

from the dignity that became so great a body in taking steps against

one, a stranger, who had been attracted to Paris by the science that

distinguished it, of which he had heard so much. The cause of the

hostility of the Faculty against his client, he said, was owing to his

having insisted on the necessity of a knowledge of astronomy to the

Physician. This had been turned into a knowledge of judicial astrology

by his enemies; but there were many of his hearers who were ready to

testify that he had never even mentioned judicial astrology. As to the

paragraph about the Lions, he had only given it as illustrating the

rules of astrological science, and the knowledge he has of the possible

influence of the stars; but he would by no means insist that events

of the kind named must happen as matter of necessity. In all this,

however, he is ready to submit himself to the judgment of the court,

and on his words being pronounced objectionable, he is willing to be

set right. With regard to what he says in his apology about physicians

being the plagues of society, he of course only aims at the ignorant

and unskilful among them; the saying, indeed, is none of his, but

Galen’s, who speaks of the ignorant practitioners of medicine of his

day in precisely the same words.

The judgment of the court is nearly in the terms of the counsel’s

address for the prosecution. His statements appear to have been

taken as trustworthy without further evidence adduced. Villanovanus

is ordered to call in his pamphlet and deposit the copies with the

proper officer of the court; to pay all honour and respect to the

Faculty of Physic in its collective and individual capacity, saying

and writing nothing unbecoming of it, but conducting himself at all

times peacefully and reverently towards its members; the doctors, on

their part, being enjoined to treat Villanovanus gently and amiably, as

parents treat their children. Villanovanus is then expressly inhibited

and forbidden to appear in public, or in any other way, as a professor

or practitioner of judicial astrology, otherwise called divination; he

is to confine himself in his discussions of astrological subjects to

the influence of the heavenly bodies on the course of the seasons and

other natural phenomena, and not to meddle with questions or judgments

of stellar influences on individuals or events, under pain of being

deprived of the privileges he enjoys as a graduate of the University of

Paris.

Done this 18th of March, 1538.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHARLIEU--ATTAINMENT OF HIS THIRTIETH YEAR--HIS VIEWS OF BAPTISM.

This decree and interdict of the Parliament of Paris could not have

been satisfactory to Servetus. We need not question his belief in the

reality of judicial astrology, nor doubt of the application of its

presumed principles having been found profitable by him; for a longing

to pry into futurity is among the infirmities of human nature, and a

belief in the influence of the stars on the fortunes of men was all

but universal in the age of Servetus. Nor is it even now entirely

extinct in the world; for the ‘Vox Stellarum’ is still regularly

printed in England, and finds a sale by thousands every year among

the superstitious and the ill-educated of our population. Hardly,

moreover, does a child come into the world among us now without a

great fuss being made as to the precise moment of the birth; though

the particulars obtained may never be thought of afterwards, nor the

end for which they were sought be even surmised. But when we look on

the cornelian and clay cylinders dug up in such numbers from the ruins

of Babylon and Nineveh, engraved with the accredited figures of the

Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the emblematical representations of the

constellations, such as Cassiopæia, Hercules Ingeniculus, Ursa Major,

Leo, Auriga, Cepheus, and others, still depicted on our celestial

globes, we learn how old was the belief that every man and woman who

came into the world was influenced in after life by the star under

which he or she was born.[48]

Villeneuve might possibly have continued lecturing on astrology,

composing horoscopes, and casting nativities, as others did in his

day, had he but had the prudence to control his tongue, and not hold

up his brethren of the Faculty of Physic to contempt by proclaiming

their ignorance of a science in which he himself excelled and held

necessary to treat disease in the most effectual manner; but he had

been indiscreet, and they had won the day. He could no longer go on

making forecasts for a credulous public from the aspect of the heavens

at the moment of their birth, and he must show himself forward to call

in the unsold copies of his pamphlet which had been found so offensive,

perhaps because so well directed and so true. It would have interested

us in the present day to have known precisely wherein the sting of this

apology lay; but like others among the host of ephemeral publications,

hurriedly produced to serve a purpose of the hour, it has perished.

There were few collectors of ballads, broadsides, and tracts, three

hundred and fifty years ago; and all the searches for a copy of the

philippic against the Parisian Faculty have proved in vain.[49]

From the estimate we are led to form of the self-sufficing and defiant

character of Michael Servetus, as displayed in his after life, we are

disposed to wonder that he did not continue to dispute the field of

Paris with his opponents. He had published his clever and scholarly

treatise on Syrups, and through it achieved a title to consideration

as a learned practitioner of medicine in the regular way. Such a man

as he would soon have lived down the stigma his fellows had fastened

upon him as a fortune-teller from the stars, and he must by and by have

taken his place in the front rank of his profession. But the physician

comes slowly into practice when public confidence is courted through

the gate of science. Horoscope-making was probably the main source of

Villeneuve’s income; and this forbidden, and the golden stream it fed,

arrested, the cold shoulder shown him by his professional brethren, and

the averted looks of the public at the man condemned by the Parliament

of Paris,--all was against him; his malignant star had culminated, and

he seems to have thought it best to yield to fate, and give way.

It must have been immediately after the conclusion of the suit against

him that Servetus left Paris; for we have news of him in the course

of the same year (1538) as a practitioner of medicine in the town of

Charlieu, distant about twelve French miles from the city of Lyons.

He may have been led to this retreat through knowledge gained in the

course of his former residence in Lyons; but he did not continue long

there--certainly for not more than a year and a half, or so. Could

we trust the report of one who speaks of him as ‘a most arrogant and

insolent person,’ he must have embroiled himself with some of the more

influential people of Charlieu, who, as said, made his position so

uncomfortable that he was forced to quit and go farther afield.[50] But

Villeneuve had earned for himself an ill name by his dispute with the

University and Medical Faculty of Paris; and coming from the quarter

it does, we give no credit to the tale, led as we are by what we know

to find a much better reason for the remove than any fresh personal

dispute, though there does seem to have been something of the kind

complicating matters, as well as certain ‘love passages,’ which, as

they came to nothing, may have rendered longer residence in the place

unpleasant.

The residence of Villeneuve in Charlieu, however, is not without

interest, as giving us a further insight into the character and

predominant pious nature of the man. In the course of the year 1539,

which he passed at Charlieu, Michael Servetus attained the thirtieth

year of his age, the year according to his religious tenets in which

only baptism could be rightly received. ‘He who would follow the

example of Christ,’ says he in his latest work, ‘ought now to betake

him to this Laver of Regeneration--_Lavacrum Regenerationis_;’ and

from the particular account he gives of the manner in which they who

think with him on the subject of baptism perform the rite, we can

scarcely doubt of his having found occasion to have himself privately

baptized by some Anabaptist acquaintance he had made. Servetus was

unquestionably a man of so pious a nature, so sincere a believer in

the divinity of Christ, according to his way of interpreting it, and

so firmly persuaded that the closest possible imitation of him was

necessary to salvation, that we may feel assured he found means to

have a rite he held so indispensable properly performed at the proper

moment. It must have been in the consciousness of having himself

done what he thought right in this particular, that we find him by

and by urgently exhorting Calvin, with whom he had entered into

correspondence, and probably knew to be of his own age, to have himself

baptized anew. ‘Christ,’ he says, ‘as an infant, was circumcised, but

not baptized; and this is a great mystery; in his thirtieth year,

however, he received baptism; thereby setting us the example, and

teaching us that before this age no one is a fit recipient of the rite

that gives the kingdom of heaven to man. It were fit and proper in you,

therefore, would you show true faith in Christ, to submit yourself to

baptism, and so receive the gift of the Holy Spirit promised through

this means.’ (Epist. xv. ad Jo. Calvinum, Christ. Restit., p. 615.)

CHAPTER XIV.

SETTLEMENT AT VIENNE UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE ARCHBISHOP--RENEWAL OF

INTERCOURSE WITH THE PUBLISHERS OF LYONS--SECOND EDITION OF PTOLEMY.

It was while resident at Charlieu that Villeneuve again met with Pierre

Paumier, now Archbishop of Vienne, Dauphiny, whom he had known in

Paris, who indeed had been among the number of his auditors when he

lectured on geography and the science of the stars. Paumier had the

reputation, well deserved as it appears, of being a lover of learning

for its own sake, and fond of the society of men learned like himself.

Thinking, we may presume, that one with the accomplishments of his old

professor would be an addition to the society of the archiepiscopal

city of Vienne, when he heard of Villeneuve’s presence in Charlieu as

a practising physician, he sought him out, and pressed him to quit the

narrower for the wider field. This, under such auspices, we can well

imagine Doctor Villeneuve was nowise loth to do; so that we next hear

of him installed at Vienne, with apartments found him in the precincts

of the Palace, and so under the immediate patronage of the Archbishop.

Not overburthened with professional work at first, Villeneuve appears

to have renewed, if he had not kept up, his connection with the

publishers of Lyons; and, as a means of income, continued his literary

labours in various directions for more than one of the fraternity.

Among other works, the edition of ‘Ptolemy’ he had supervised for the

Trechsels, when in their service in 1535, being exhausted, a second was

required; and their old editor having already proved himself abundantly

competent, overtures were made to him to undertake the work anew. A

proposal of the kind we need not doubt was gladly received, and the

Trechsels having set up a branch establishment at Vienne, and the

Archbishop consenting to accept the dedication of the new ‘Ptolemy,’

our editor had an opportunity of saying something pleasant to his

patron, and of showing himself advantageously to the public around him

in connection with a handsome volume from a press of their own city.

The work accordingly was entered on with alacrity; and as the editor

was not only countenanced, but assisted by the Archbishop, himself no

mean geographer, the new edition made its appearance in the course of

1541, amended and improved.[51]

If the first ‘Ptolemy’ of Michael Villanovanus had been seen as an

improvement on its predecessors, his second was a marked advance upon

it, and is interesting to us on many accounts. Though much lauded

and commercially successful, the first edition, in a literary point

of view, was still far from what it was capable of being made. The

ornamentation of the volume, though profuse, was not highly artistic,

and the wood-cuts had already done duty in various other publishing

ventures. There was ample room for improvement both in the direction

of greater accuracy of text and of better taste. In the re-issue,

consequently, we find various alterations, and two or three omissions

that are highly significant. It is printed on better paper, too, and

new maps are added; the coarse wood-cuts are left out, and the text

in various parts is amended. Altogether the volume is a very handsome

one, and was obviously produced with every care to secure accuracy and

elegance.

In his Dedication to the Archbishop, we have an assurance that life

among the polished circles of Vienne had already had a mollifying

influence on the hot-headed Michel Villeneuve of Parisian days. The

polite terms in which, beside the Archbishop, all and sundry of mark

and name in the city are spoken of, are particularly notable. We know

how little there was of compliment in the words with which he took

leave of his Swiss opponents, and imagine the sting there must be in

the paper with which he bade the Parisian Faculty farewell. But now,

beneath the wing of the great church dignitary, and referring to the

time when as professor of geography and astrology he had had him among

the number of his auditors, Villanovanus tells us that he is especially

encouraged in his purpose to produce a more correct edition of the

great geographer’s work, by the permission he has received to dedicate

it to his patron, as well as by the assistance he has had from him in

the amendment of numerous faulty passages.

‘For you,’ continues our Editor, addressing the Archbishop, ‘are the

one among our church dignitaries I have known who, loving letters and

favouring learned men, have given particular attention to geographical

science. I am also incited to my work by the many favours I have

received at your hand. Under what patronage but yours, indeed, could

this work, amended, and printed at Vienne, appear, student as you are

of ‘Ptolemy,’ and head of our Viennese society? Nor, sooth to say,

will our ‘Ptolemy’ want a welcome from others about us interested in

geography; among the foremost of whom I may name your relation John

Paumier, prior of St. Marcel, and Claude de Rochefort, your vicar, both

of them highly accomplished men, commended of all, and to whom I may

say that I myself owe as much in my sphere as students of geography

owe to ‘Ptolemy.’ I must do no more than mention Joannes Albus, prior

of St. Peter and St. Simeon; for I am forbidden to speak of his

virtues. Neither must I make other than a passing allusion to the noble

triad, your officials; for words would fail me to speak worthily of

their great qualities; and of Doctor John Perell, your physician, my

old fellow-student in Paris, so learned in philosophy and skilled in

the languages--I can only say that one more apt than I were required

fitly to speak his praise.’

From this we learn that Michael Villanovanus, all in laying on flattery

somewhat thickly, could still show himself the grateful man; as ready

to acknowledge kindness as we have known him apt to take fire at

opposition and ready to resent what he held to be unworthy usage. But

the matter is even more interesting to us, as giving us to know the

kind of society Servetus frequented in Vienne, and the consequent

esteem in which he must have been held. The ‘noble triad’ referred to,

we imagine, may have consisted of M. Maugiron, the Lieutenant-General

of Dauphiny; M. de la Cour, the Vibailly; and M. Arzelier, the

Vicar-General.

Among the alterations and omissions to be observed in the new edition

of the ‘Ptolemy,’ the most notable occur under the heads of Germany,

France, and Judæa. The edition of 1535 was set about and produced

shortly after he had been so unhandsomely received, as he thought,

by the Swiss and German Reformers; and we are therefore sorry, though

not surprised, to find that disappointment and pique had left him

with little inclination to say much in praise either of themselves or

their respective countries. Hence the generally evil report he makes

of Germany, and the notice of Switzerland as remarkable for nothing

but the production of butchers! All this is either suppressed or toned

down in the edition of 1541. The editor had had time for reflection;

and under the soothing influences of the archiepiscopal city and

professional success, he now makes a more favourable report of the

countries and peoples he had formerly gone out of his way to decry

and defame. Instead of the forest-encumbered and swampy land with its

inclement sky of the former edition, Germany is now a _regio amœna_,

with a _cœlum satis clemens_--a pleasant country with quite a temperate

climate, and all the damaging statements in regard to its several

divisions and their peoples are omitted.

The graphic account we had formerly of the boastful, ignorant, and

superstitious people of Spain is also left out in the reprint; but we

have an added notice of the people of France which shows us how little

nations change in the course of three hundred and fifty years. ‘Not

only in the cities and country places,’ says our editor, ‘but even in

single families, every Frenchman seems to think he has a right to rule

over everybody else. The assertion of individual superiority is so

universal that every one among them would have every one else to do

his bidding, he himself feeling bound to do the bidding of none.’

The Church and her favoured sons, the hierarchs thereof, having still

thriven in the shadow of the throne, as Villeneuve was now living amid

the clerical society of an archiepiscopal city, it was thought that the

few words in the former edition, which seemed to question the efficacy

of the ‘Royal Touch’ in curing scrofula, would be out of place. They

are, therefore, now found modified. For the ‘I did not see that any

were cured,’ we find ‘I have heard say that many were cured!’ The

new edition, moreover, being dedicated to the Archbishop of Vienne,

it was felt that any word in dispraise of the Holy Land would seem

disrespectful and improper. All that is said in connection with the

map of Palestine contradictory to the Bible account of Judæa as a land

flowing with milk and honey, or as of signal beauty and fertility, is

accordingly entirely expunged from the new impression.

These changes have been said to be due to warnings given by friends

to Servetus, on the presumption, probably, that he could hardly have

been living on terms of intimacy with many persons of note, both lay

and clerical, without betraying something of the sceptical element

that distinguished him at the outset of his career, and that got the

mastery of him with such disastrous consequences at last. But we have

no positive intimation that Servetus ever failed to keep his counsel,

or that he was known to a soul in Vienne, save as M. Michel Villeneuve,

the physician. Calvin certainly knew him by no other name in Paris

when they met there in 1534, a date at which we have surmised he had

not yet read the ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis,’ and so escaped having his

suspicions aroused through the sameness of the views propounded in that

work, and those expressed by his acquaintance, Villeneuve, that he had

its author, Michael Serveto, alias Revés, bodily before him.

That this was really the case is confirmed by the statement which he

makes on his trial at Vienne, to the effect, that he had only been

challenged by Calvin in the course of their correspondence, begun

as many as fourteen years after the publication of his first book,

with being no other than Servetus. Having read the ‘De Erroribus’

subsequently, Calvin did not fail to discover Michael Serveto under the

cloak of Michael Villanovanus, his correspondent of Vienne, and may

consequently, some time after the year 1546, have written to Cardinal

Tournon, as said by Bolsec,[52] or hinted to a friend in Lyons, that

they had an egregious heretic, the writer of the work on Trinitarian

Error, living among them under an assumed name. But of so much as this

we have no reliable assurance, and even if we had, it could have no

reference to the year 1541, the date of publication of the second

edition of Villanovanus’s ‘Ptolemy.’[53]

CHAPTER XV.

EDITION OF SANTES PAGNINI’S LATIN BIBLE, WITH COMMENTARY.

Servetus must have got through a very considerable amount of literary

work during the earlier years of his residence at Vienne. His time not

being then fully occupied by professional duties, he had leisure and

certainly no lack of inclination for other work, so that he seems to

have been kept well employed by the publishers of Lyons. Hardly had the

second ‘Ptolemy’ seen the light, than we find another handsome volume

in folio not only taking shape under his hands, but actually launched

in the course of the following year, 1542. This was a new and elegant

edition of the Latin Bible of the learned Santes Pagnini.[54]

Appreciating the naturally pious bent of Servetus’s mind, as we do,

to edit the Bible, we imagine, must to him have been like rest to the

weary, and we think of the delight with which he received the proposal

of Hugo de la Porte, the publisher of Lyons, to undertake a task of the

kind. In his own earliest work we have seen him speaking of the Bible

as a ‘book fallen down from heaven, to be read a thousand times over,

the source of all his philosophy and of all his science.’ But this is

from the pen of the younger man; for study and after thought, with

the privilege he possessed through his self-reliant spirit of reading

without a foregone conclusion, enabled him by and by to discover that

the accredited traditional interpretation of holy writ could not at

all times be maintained without violence, not only to reason and

experience, but to history and the plain meaning of the text. He came

to the conclusion, in fact, that whilst the usual prophetical bearing

ascribed to the Old Testament was ever to be kept in view, the text had

a primary, literal, and immediate reference to the age in which it was

composed, and to the personages, the events, and the circumstances amid

which its writers lived.

In the Preface to his edition, consequently, we see that, having

undertaken the responsible duty of editor, Villanovanus means to be no

mere follower in the beaten track, but to take an independent course of

his own. ‘They,’ he says, ‘who are ignorant of the Hebrew language and

history are only too apt to overlook the historical and literal sense

of the sacred Scriptures; the consequence of which is that they vainly

and foolishly expend themselves in hunting after recondite and mystical

meanings in the text where nothing of the kind exists.’ Before reading

the prophets, in particular, he would therefore ‘have every one make

himself acquainted not only with the Hebrew tongue, but with Hebrew

history; for the prophets, without exception, followed history to the

letter, although they also prefigured future events in their writings,

led as they were by inspiration to conclusions having reference to

the mystery of Christ. The power of the Scriptures, indeed, is of

a fertilizing or prolific kind. Under a waning literal sense, they

possess a vivifying spirit of renovation. It were, therefore, well

that their meaning, apprehended as pointing in one direction, should

not be overlooked as also pointing in another; and this the rather,

seeing that the historical sense comes out ever the more clearly when

the prospective bearing, which has Christ for its object, is kept in

view--veiled under types and figures, indeed, and so not seen of the

Jews, blinded by their prejudices, but now revealed to us in such wise

that we seem to see the very face of our God.’

‘In our Commentaries,’ concludes the Expositor, ‘it will consequently

be found that we have made it our particular study to elicit and

present the old historical, but hitherto neglected, sense of the

Scriptures. In this view, and to make available the author’s

annotations, of which he has left a great many, we have taken no small

amount of pains--_non parum est nobis desudatum_. Nor, indeed, had we

to do with his annotations only; for the text of the copy we followed

is corrected in numberless places by the hand of the author himself.

I may, therefore, venture to affirm that Pagnini’s translation, as it

now appears, approximates more closely to the meaning and spirit of the

Hebrew than any former version. But the Church, and those learned in

the Hebrew tongue, must be the judges here--any others are incompetent.’

From what he says, Villanovanus would therefore lead us to believe

that he had had the privilege of working from a copy corrected and

annotated by Pagnini himself, the author of the translation. But on a

somewhat careful collation of the Villanovanus edition of 1542 with

that of Lyons of 1527-28 (the _editio princeps_, we apprehend), and

the reprint from this by Melchior Novesianus of Cologne, of 1541,

we are forced on the conviction that Villanovanus followed no copy

corrected and annotated by Pagnini, but the fine edition of Novesianus,

admirably edited by the learned publisher himself. The text of this is

in fact identical with that of Villanovanus, and the headings to the

chapters and references to corresponding and corroborative texts are

all but uniformly alike in the two. There are no variorum readings, if

we recollect aright, in the Novesianus; but neither are there any of

the slightest significance in the Villanovanus--unless perchance the

reader should think that the text is improved by Noah being directed in

building the Ark to ‘pitch it with pitch’--_picabis eam pice_, instead

of bitumen--_bituminabis eam bitumine_!

That Villanovanus followed Novesianus, and not any copy corrected

and annotated by Pagnini, is, as it were, demonstrated by this, that

each page of the Address to the Reader, with the single exception

of the first, begins and ends with the very same word in the two

editions--which could not have been accidental: the compositor followed

the copy he worked from page for page, line for line, word for word.

We are sorry, therefore, to find our editor taking credit to himself

in directions where none was due, and seeking, as it might seem, to

shelter himself under the pious cowl of the orthodox Pagnini for the

new and daring interpretation he himself puts upon so many passages of

the Psalms and Prophets. Pagnini, one of the most learned hebraists

and classical scholars of his country, was also a thoroughly orthodox

monk, and would assuredly have been not a little astonished, and hardly

pleased, we imagine, could he have seen himself in the guise in which

he is presented by Michael Villanovanus. Had we but a single note from

the hand of the learned Italian--and to the best of our belief we have

not one--it could not have failed to be of the most rigidly orthodox

kind, his own edition having the _imprimatur_ of no fewer than two

Popes, and a laudatory epistle from Jo. Franciscus Picus, nephew of

the celebrated Joannes Picus de Mirandola, distinguished alike as a

philosopher and theologian.

Villanovanus’s procedure in respect of the Pagnini Bible, on the face

of the matter, is much to be regretted, and indeed is hardly to be

understood. He may possibly have had an annotated copy of his author

supplied him by his publisher; but if he had, in so far as we can

see, he has followed Novesianus to the letter in his text and has

given no comments but his own. The times in which Servetus lived,

though different from ours in so many respects, were, as it seems,

somewhat like them in so far as the _meum_ and _tuum_ in literature are

concerned. Did we judge from the instance before us, we should say that

they were still less respected three hundred years ago than they are

in the present day. Calvin refers to Villanovanus’s ‘Pagnini’ in the

course of the Geneva trial, and subsequently also in his ‘Déclaration

pour maintenir la vraye foye.’ But he seems not to have known of the

Novesianus edition, or he would certainly have challenged more than

the comments, and had better grounds possibly than any he adduces for

saying that the editor had dexterously filched--_avait grippé beau et

belle_--five hundred livres from the publisher for his labour.

But all this, though illustrative of one element in the character

of the subject of our study, and not to be passed over by us, is of

less moment than the insight we gain through the comments--assuredly

referable to him alone--into the intellectual side of his nature. In

so far as we know, Servetus is nowhere even named as a biblical critic

and expositor; yet did he precede by more than a century Spinoza,

Astruc, Simon, Eichhorn, and others, founders of the modern school of

Scriptural exegesis. The Old Testament texts referred by the writers of

the New Testament to events still in the womb of time--to the coming

especially of a liberator from their misery for the people of Israel in

the shape of an anointed King, the conception of a late epoch in Jewish

history--Servetus maintained had individuals in view who were alive

and influential when the words were written, although he also admitted

that they had a further prophetical or prospective sense of the kind

commonly ascribed to them.

But he who believed in judicial astrology was not likely to have freed

himself from that other still accredited form of superstitious belief

which leads mankind, without so much as the aspects of the heavens to

guide them, to fancy they can see into futurity. He had not divined,

as we have now come to know, that even the oldest portions of the

Hebrew Scriptures, in the shape in which they have reached us, date

from no more remote an age than that which followed the Babylonian

Captivity; that we have the work of two different writers under the

name of Isaiah, the second of whom lived during or after the reign of

Cyrus; and that the Apocalyptic Book of Daniel was written long after

the personages there darkly shadowed forth had lived and died, and the

events referred to had come and gone.

The narratives of the Pentateuch appear to have been accepted as

properly historical by our editor. He did not, any more than the

commentators who came after him almost to our own day, see them as

mythical tales about individuals who lived, if they lived at all,

and events that occurred, if they ever did occur, thousands--tens of

thousands of years before any account of them could possibly have

assumed the shape of legend, much less have been committed to writing.

He has little, however, to say on the five books ascribed to Moses,

and those of the quasi-historical complexion that follow them. Still

his note on the words put into the mouth of Balaam, which tell of _a

star to come out of Jacob and a sceptre to arise out of Israel_, is

important. The prediction, as he interprets it, applies immediately to

King David, though it has a farther prospective reference to Christ,

with whose advent, as we know, it has long been all but exclusively

connected. Our editor, however, was not helped by his superior

knowledge of the stars to surmise that the writing was of a date long

posterior to the reputed days of Balaam, the soothsayer of Mesopotamia,

and Balak, king of Moab; that the predictions put into the mouth of

the seer were all made after the events they pretend to foretell, and

that King David had lived and died long before a word of the text was

written; neither did he see that the writer who had King David in his

eye could not have been thinking of an anointed king or captain who was

only to appear some six or seven hundred years after Israel’s second

sovereign had been gathered to his fathers.

Villanovanus is much more copious when he comes to the Psalms. The

words in the second of our collection of these sacred lyrics, so much

made of in dogmatic lore, _Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of

Zion.... Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee_--he explains

thus: ‘On the day when David had escaped from his enemy (Saul) he said,

This day do I begin to live; at length I am king.’

The words in the fifth verse of that fine Psalm, the eighth, _For thou

hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with

honour and glory_, he also refers immediately to King David, who, in

times of persecution, abased himself; but, subsequently victorious, was

crowned at last.

The passages, _In Jehovah I put my trust_, and _How say ye to my soul,

flee as a bird to your mountain_, of Psalm xi., he refers to the time

when David in fear of Saul escaped from the land of Judah.

The comment on the sixteenth verse of Psalm xxii., _They pierced my

hands and my feet_, is again applied to David, when, flying from his

enemies, and scrambling like a four-footed beast over rugged and

thorny places, his hands and feet were lacerated--_fugiente David per

abrupta, instar quadrupedis, manus ejus et pedes lacerabantur_.

_Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire_--Psalm xl. 6, signifies,

says our commentator, that David, when a fugitive in the wilderness,

offered no sacrifices.

In the verse, _Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever_, Psalm xlv. 6,

the word _God_, says our exponent, refers to Solomon, who, like Moses

and Cyrus, is here styled _Divus_--God.

_They gave me gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar

as drink_, of Psalm xlix. 22, says Villanovanus, is a passage referring

to Nabal’s refusal and churlishness when David asked him for meat and

drink.

_The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make

thine enemies thy footstool_, Psalm cx. 1. ‘This refers to David and

Solomon, types alike of Christ, when David, having set his son on the

throne beside him, addressed him as My Lord, and styled him a priest

after the order of Melchizedek.’

Whilst thus in these and in many other instances referring the

statements met with in the Psalms to individuals living or dead at

the time they were written, and to events then in progress or past,

Villanovanus still imagines that everything said, besides its literal

and immediate signification, is also typical of personages and events

to come--a system of exposition that has been pushed beyond all

reasonable lengths by ignorance and superstition since his day. We may

indeed be well assured that the writers of the Hebrew Psalms knew no

more of what would happen five or six centuries after they were dust

than we know of what will be going on in the world five or six hundred

years after we are no more. Prophets, Seers, Diviners, Fortune-tellers

and the like are ignored by the science of our age, although under

the first of these designations they are still acknowledged by pious

persons in the history of the past, and in its bearing on the religion

of the present. The excuse for this is that the Prophets of Israel

were _inspired_, or exceptionally gifted, with the power of seeing

into futurity. But God, as we now conceive God, makes no exceptions to

his laws. As they are, so have they ever been, and so will they ever

continue to be. Said not Servetus himself aright when he declared that

out of man there was no Holy Spirit, or Spirit of Inspiration?

But it is not on the Psalms that Villanovanus’s exposition, remarkable

as it is, appears the most noteworthy. It is when he comes to the

writings of the Prophets, as they are styled, that he puts forth his

strength and shows his learning. _And it shall come to pass in the

last days that Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top of the

mountain, and all nations shall flow unto it_, says Isaiah (ii. 2 _et

seq._). These words, according to our expositor, refer to the reign

of Hezekiah. Literally seen, they speak of the accession of Hezekiah,

and the return of the captive Israelites to Jerusalem, the Assyrians

having suffered a signal defeat without a battle fought.

In like manner, commenting on the second verse of the fourth chapter

of Isaiah, where it is said, _In that day shall the branch of Jehovah

be beautiful and glorious_, he says it is still Hezekiah and events

transpiring in his reign that are alluded to, the king nevertheless

being to be seen as a type of Christ.

The remarkable fourteenth verse of chapter vii. of the same writer, of

which so much has been made, Villanovanus refers immediately to the

times in which it was written. Syria and Ephraim confederate, under

their kings Rezin and Pekah, are at war with Judah and threatening

Jerusalem, whose king, Ahaz, the Prophet comforts with the assurance

that the invasion, however formidable it looks, will come to nothing,

and bids him ask for a sign from Jehovah that such will be the case.

But Ahaz declining to do so, the Prophet volunteers a forecast of what

he declares will come to pass, saying, _Behold, a virgin_ (Almah--a

young marriageable woman) _shall conceive and bear a son, and shall

call his name Immanuel; and before the child shall know good from

evil_ [arrive at years of discretion] _the land will be freed from its

enemies_. ‘The Aramæans,’ says Villanovanus, ‘have come up in battle

array against Jerusalem, and the prophet speaks of a young woman who

shall conceive and bear a son, the young woman being no other than

Abijah, about to become the mother of Hezekiah--strength or fortitude

of God--and Immanuel--God with us--before whose reign the two kings,

the enemies of Judah, will have been discomfited.’

The _For unto us a child is born_, &c., of chapter ix., he further

refers to Hezekiah, for it was in his reign that Sennacherib and

the Assyrians suffered such a signal defeat, the angel of Jehovah,

according to the account, having slain in one night an hundred and four

score and five thousand of them.

_For they shall cry unto the Lord of Hosts in the land of Egypt, and he

will send them a Saviour and he shall deliver them_ (Ib. xix. 20). ‘The

Saviour,’ says Villanovanus, ‘is still no other than Hezekiah. Egypt as

well as Judah, oppressed by the Assyrians, is relieved when the great

army of Sennacherib is wrecked by the angel of Jehovah.’

_Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf

be unstopped_ (Ib. xxxv. 5), _i.e._ ‘Liberation from the yoke of the

Assyrians will do much towards giving the Jewish people clearer and

better ideas of God.’

_Comfort ye my people.... The voice of one crying in the wilderness,

Prepare ye the way of the Lord_, &c. (Ib. xl. 1-3). ‘These are words

addressed to Cyrus, praying him to open a way through the desert for

Israel, returning from the captivity of Babylon;’ and the ninth verse,

_O Zion, that bringest good tidings ... say unto the cities of Judah,

Behold your God_, he says, ‘refers literally to Cyrus, who is here

styled God; as does also the eighteenth verse, _To whom will ye liken

God_ (_i.e._ Cyrus), _or what likeness will ye compare unto him_? ‘In

many striking ways,’ adds our expositor, ‘the prophet would lead the

rude Jews, on their redemption from the Babylonian captivity, to cease

from idolatry and to believe in God, the Creator of the world.’

_He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted

with grief. Surely he hath borne our griefs ... he was wounded for

our transgressions_, &c. (Ib. liii.). ‘In these passages, which also

involve a great mystery referable to Christ,’ says Villanovanus,

‘the Prophet laments over Cyrus, slain, as it were, for the sins of

the people, who, however, will suffer still more under Cambyses,

his successor, when the building of the Temple, now begun, will be

interrupted.’

_Arise, shine, for thy light is come.... They from Sheba shall come,

and shall bring gold and incense_, &c., (Ib. lx.), _i.e._ ‘taken

literally, and as it stands, these words refer to the great days of the

Second Temple, when Jerusalem was again in its glory.’

_Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah_ (Ib.

lxiii.), _i.e._ ‘Cyrus has inflicted severe chastisement on Edom, and

brought back those who had been carried thither from Jerusalem into

captivity, as we read in the fifteenth chapter, where it is said, _The

redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion._’

_Behold the days will come, saith the Lord, when I shall raise unto

David a righteous branch_ (Jerem. xxiii. 5). The individual here

referred to our exponent believes to be Zerubabel.

_Know, therefore, that from the going forth of the commandment to

restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah, the Prince, is seven

weeks, and three-score and two weeks ... and after three-score and two

weeks shall Messiah be cut off and be no more_ (Daniel, ix. 25). ‘The

times specified,’ says Villanovanus, ‘refer to those of the exile and

the return of the captives by favour of Cyrus, who is the Messiah or

Anointed One of God, that is here spoken of. Sixty-two weeks having

passed from the great event, Cyrus will have been cut off, and all have

gone to wreck again.’

_Then shall Judah and Israel be gathered together, and appoint

themselves one head_, &c., _i.e._ ‘Judah and Israel will have become

united for a season, as they were under Hezekiah.’

The words of the second verse of chapter vi., _After two days will

he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up_, ‘refer to the

extraordinary discomfiture of the Assyrians in the reign of Hezekiah.’

_For behold, in those days when I shall bring again the captivity of

Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all the nations_, &c. (Joel,

iii. 1). ‘These words have a literal application to the defeat of

the Assyrians and the glories of Hezekiah’s reign. Disasters many

have befallen the chosen seed; but their oppressors will in turn be

desolated, and Judah, restored, shall dwell for ever in Jerusalem.’

The texts in MICAH generally spoken of as exclusively prophetical

of Christ, our commentator thinks refer literally to Hezekiah

and times subsequent to the defeat of the Assyrians. _But thou,

Bethlehem-Ephratah, out of thee shall he come forth to be a ruler

in Israel_, viz., ‘Hezekiah, who will deliver the people from the

Assyrian.’

_Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion; shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem;

behold, thy King cometh unto thee lowly, and riding upon an ass, even

on a colt, the foal of an ass._ This text, which is referred to Christ

in Matthew (chapter xxii.), is connected by Villanovanus with the

compassionate Zerubabel and his entrance into Jerusalem.

No one will be surprised to learn that these comments of the learned

Villanovanus did not escape the notice of the great ecclesiastical

centres of his day. That of Lyons is by-and-by found condemning

outright both them and the book they pretend to illustrate. That of

Madrid is content to order by far the greater number of the glosses to

be expunged, but leaves the Bible itself available to the privileged;

whilst that of Rome, less tolerant, not only condemns the expositions,

but puts the book upon the _Index prohibitorius_. The perusal of such

comments, preparatory to drawing the pen through them, it was surmised

by the far-sighted ecclesiastics of Rome might lead to independent

thought, and this is precisely what the Church they represent would

have every man, woman, and child in the land most carefully to eschew.

Calvin, we may imagine, was not likely to think any better of

Villanovanus’s annotations than the heads of the Church of Rome; on

the contrary, pinning his faith on its text as prophetical in the

very strictest sense of the word, any attack on its sufficiency as a

ground for dogmatic conclusion was felt by him to be a matter much

more serious than by the Church of Rome, which sets its own traditions

as equipollent to, where not even of higher authority than, that of

the Bible on all matters of faith. To see the Scriptures of the Jews

otherwise than as Calvin and the Reformers saw them was, in their eyes,

to question the infallible book they had substituted for the infallible

Pope so lately abandoned by them. We should therefore expect to meet

Calvin, with occasion serving, making a point against our expositor

on the ground of the Pagnini; and accordingly we find Servetus’s

comments brought up against him in the most marked manner during his

Geneva Trial, whilst in the Déclaration pour maintenir la vraye Foye,

and the Defensio orthodoxæ Fidei, they are spoken of as impertinences

and impieties, the Publisher being said at the same time to have been

nothing less than cheated out of the money he paid the editor for

his work. ‘Who,’ says Calvin, ‘shall venture to say that it was not

thievish in the editor when he took five hundred livres in payment for

the vain trifles and impious follies with which he encumbered almost

every page of the book?’ (‘Opusc. Theol. Om.’ p. 703).

Notwithstanding the great Reformer’s denunciations, however, though we

may not agree with Villanovanus in all his conclusions, nor approve

of his passing without mention Melchior Novesianus, to whom he was

indebted for his text, when we look on the beautiful volume he aided

in producing, and think of him as the one man of his age who had

independent opinions on the real or possible meaning of the poetical

writings of the Hebrew people, consonant as these are in so many

respects with the views entertained by the most advanced biblical

critics of the present day, we are not disposed to think that he was

overpaid. Had the Church dignitaries of Vienne seen the Pagnini Bible

of Michael Villanovanus with the same eyes as the hierarchs of Rome,

Madrid, and Lyons, the matter he added must needs have seriously

compromised him with them. His numerous, excessively free, and highly

heterodox interpretations of the Psalms and Prophets, nevertheless, in

so far as we have been able to discover, appear to have lost Villeneuve

neither countenance nor favour at Vienne, which is not a little

extraordinary.

CHAPTER XVI.

ENGAGEMENT AS EDITOR BY JO. FRELON OF LYONS--CORRESPONDENCE WITH CALVIN.

The Pagnini Bible out of hand, Villanovanus’s time would seem not yet

to have been so fully occupied by his profession as to debar him from

continuing to engage in a good deal of miscellaneous literary work for

his friends the publishers of Lyons, among the number of whom we have

now particularly to notice John Frelon, a man of learning, like so many

of the old publishers, entertaining tolerant or more liberal views of

the religious question, inclined towards, if not openly professing, the

Reformed Faith, and the personal friend of Calvin.

For Frelon Villeneuve edited a variety of works, mostly, as it seems,

of an educational kind, such as grammars, accidences, and the like;

translating several of these from Latin into Spanish, for the laity;

and, as the priesthood of the Peninsula appear not to have cultivated

the classical languages of Greece and Rome to the same extent as

those of France and Germany, also turning the _Summa Theologiæ_ of

St. Thomas Aquinas, a work entitled _Desiderius peregrinus_, and

another, the _Thesaurus animæ Christianæ_, into their vernacular for

them.[55] Brought into somewhat intimate relationship with Villeneuve,

whom Frelon at this time could not have known as Michael Servetus,

the Reformation, its principles, its objects, and the views of its

more distinguished leaders, would hardly fail to come up as topics

of conversation between him and his learned editor. Frelon must soon

have seen how much better than common Villeneuve was informed in this

direction; and it has been said, not without every show of truth, that

at his suggestion Servetus, under his assumed name of Villeneuve or

Villanovanus, was led to enter on the correspondence with Calvin which

we believe had so momentous an influence on his future fate. Frelon

saw Villeneuve full of unusual ideas on many of the accredited dogmas

of the Christian faith; and, not indisposed, though indifferently

prepared, to discuss these himself, he very probably suggested the

great Reformer of Geneva as the man of all others the most likely to

feel an interest in them, as well as the most competent to give an

opinion on their merits. Hence the correspondence which, begun in 1546,

went on into 1547, and may even have extended into the following year.

That Frelon was the medium of communication between Villeneuve and

Calvin is satisfactorily shown by the publisher’s letter to the

Spaniard, inclosing one for him just received from the Reformer. The

correspondence, however, must have already been started and Villeneuve

been complaining to Frelon that he had been long without an answer to

the last of his letters. Frelon, in turn, would seem to have written to

Calvin, reminding him that his friend Villeneuve had for some time past

been expecting to hear from him. Writing at length under his well-known

pseudonym of Charles Despeville, in reply to Frelon, Calvin says:--

‘Seigneur Jehan, Your last letter found me on the eve of my

departure from home, and I had not time then to reply to the

inclosure it contained. I take advantage of the first moment I

have to spare since my return, to comply with your wishes; not

indeed that I have any great hope of proving serviceable to

such a man, seeing him disposed as I do. But I will try once

more if there be any means left of bringing him to reason, and

this will happen when God shall have so worked in him that he

become altogether other than he is. I have been led to write

to him more sharply than is my wont, being minded to take him

down a little in his presumption; and I assure you there is no

lesson he needs so much to learn as humility. This may perhaps

come to him through the grace of God, not otherwise, as it

seems. But we too ought to lend a helping hand. If God give him

and us such grace as to have the letter I now forward turn to

profit, I shall have cause to rejoice. If he goes on writing

to me in the style he has hitherto seen fit to use, however,

you will only lose your time in soliciting me farther in his

behalf; for I have other business that concerns me more nearly,

and I shall make it matter of conscience to devote myself to

it, not doubting that he is a Satan who would divert me from

studies more profitable. Let me beg of you therefore to be

content with what I have already done, unless you see most

pressing occasion for acting differently.

‘Recommending myself to you and praying God to have you in his

keeping, I am your servant and friend--

‘CHARLES DESPEVILLE.

[Geneva] ‘this 13 of February, 1546.’

This is surely neither an indifferent nor an unreasonable letter;

yet does it give us to know that the epistle it enclosed, both in

manner and matter, was likely to give offence to one with the haughty

and self-sufficing nature of Michael Servetus. He had addressed the

Reformer on transcendental dogmatic subjects, and probably urged

his views with the warmth that strong conviction lends to language,

and without anything like the deferential tone to which Calvin was

accustomed. This proved particularly distasteful to the head of

the Church of Geneva, who had certainly thought as deeply, and may

even have entertained as serious misgivings, on some of the topics

propounded, as his correspondent. Hence the unwonted _sharpness_ of the

reply; hence, also, the fire which Villeneuve caught at being lectured

like a schoolboy; and hence, in fine, the irritating, disrespectful,

and regrettable character on either side of the correspondence that

followed.

In transmitting Calvin’s letter to Villeneuve, Frelon addresses him

thus:--

‘Dear Brother and Friend! You will see by the enclosed why you

had not sooner an answer to your letter. Had I had anything

to communicate at an earlier date, I should not have failed

to send to you immediately, as I promised. Be assured that I

wrote to the personage in question, and that there was no want

of punctuality on my part. I think, however, that with what

you have now, you will be as well content as if you had had it

sooner. I send my own man express with this, having no other

messenger at command. If I can be of use to you in anything

else, I beg to assure you, you will always find me ready to

serve you. Your good brother and friend, Jehan Frelon.

‘To my good brother and friend, master Michael Villanovanus,

Doctor in medicine, Vienne.’

It is matter of deep regret that with the exception of the first

communication of Calvin to Villeneuve, which is in the form of an essay

rather than a familiar epistle, and was written some time before the

stinging missive sent through Frelon, we have nothing from him that

would have enabled us to judge of the general style and character

of his letters, though of this we may form an estimate from his

subsequent writings. Calvin was far too much engaged to make copies

of his letters, and we may feel certain that Villeneuve, on the first

intimation of danger threatening him from the authorities of Vienne,

destroyed every scrap of writing he had ever had from the Reformer,

calculated as it was to compromise him in the eyes of Roman Catholics.

Forced, for the sake of his French correspondents, to resort to a

pseudonym, Calvin had probably addressed Villeneuve in his proper

name. The letter to Frelon and the one from Frelon to Villeneuve must

have been overlooked, or thought to contain nothing that could be

adversely interpreted, and so found their way to the Judicial Archives

of Vienne, whence they were recovered and published by Mosheim.[56]

The letters of Villeneuve to Calvin, or a certain number of them, at

all events, have been transmitted to us by their writer in a section

of his work on the Restoration of Christianity; and we turned to them

with the interest of expectation, thinking we might there find a key

to the singular and persistent hostility with which Calvin shows

himself to have been animated towards his correspondent. Nor were we

disappointed. The style of address indulged in by Villeneuve, as the

correspondence proceeds, is as if purposely calculated to wound, if

not even to insult, a man in the position of John Calvin, conscious of

his own superiority, jealous of his authority, and become so sensitive

to everything like disrespectful bearing on the part of those who

approached him. But of deference or respect, save at the outset, there

is not a trace in any of the letters of Villeneuve. On the contrary,

they have often an air of something like familiarity that must have

been extremely disagreeable to Calvin. Add to this the unseemly and

disparaging epithets with which he pelts the irritable Reformer, and

we have warrant enough for our assumption that, mainly out of this

unfortunate epistolary encounter, was the enmity engendered which took

such hold of Calvin’s mind as led him to see in a mere theological

dissident a dangerous innovator and deadly personal foe.

The correspondence at the outset, however, had nothing of the unseemly

character it acquired as it proceeded. Villeneuve approached the

Reformer at first as one seeking aid and information from another

presumed most capable of giving both; and this was precisely the style

of address that suited Calvin. The subjects on which he desired the

Reformer’s opinion were theological, of course, and of great gravity,

involving topics of no less moment than the sense in which the Divinity

and Sonship of Christ, the Doctrine of Regeneration, and the Sacraments

of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, were to be understood.

In a letter to a friend of a later date Calvin speaks as if he believed

that these questions had been proposed in mockery, or to get him

into difficulty; but this was an afterthought, and when he had come

to persuade himself that Servetus was a man devoid of all religious

principle. Nothing of any suspicion of the kind he hints at appears

in his reply to the first communication he received, for it is sober,

earnest, and to the point, each subject being taken up in succession

and discussed, now in conformity with his own particular views, and

then with the interpretation of the Churches.

Servetus’s questions to Calvin, three in number, were propounded

categorically, and in the following order:--

1st.--Was the man Jesus, who was crucified, the Son of God; and what is

the rationale of the Sonship (filiatio)?

2nd.--Is the Kingdom of heaven in man; when is it entered; and when is

regeneration effected?

3rd.--Is Baptism to be received in faith, like the Supper; and in what

sense are these institutions to be held as the New Covenant?

To the first, Calvin replies: ‘We believe and confess that Jesus

Christ, the man who was crucified, was the Son of God, and say that

the Wisdom of God, born of the Eternal Father before all time, having

become incarnate, was now manifested in the flesh. Therefore do we

acknowledge Christ to be the Son of God by his humanity; therefore,

also, do we say that he is God--_sed ideo quod Deus_. As by his human

nature, he is engendered of the seed of David, and so is said to be the

Son of David; by parity of reason, and because of his divine nature, is

he the Son of God. Christ, however, is One, not Two-fold; he is at once

the Son of God and the Son of Man. You own him as the Son of God, but

do not admit the oneness, save in a confused way. We, who say that the

Son of God is our Brother, as well as the true Immanuel, nevertheless

acknowledge in the One Christ the Majesty of God and the Humility of

man. But you, confounding these, destroy both; for, acknowledging God

manifest in the flesh, you say the divinity is the flesh itself, the

humanity God Himself.’

To the second he answers: ‘The Kingdom of God, we say, begins in men

when they are regenerated; and we are said to be regenerated when,

enlightened by faith in Christ, we yield entire obedience to God. I

deny, however, that regeneration takes place in a moment; it is enough

if progress be made therein even to the hour of death.’

To the third he says: ‘We do not deny that Baptism requires faith; but

not such as is required in the communion of the Supper; and in respect

of Baptism we see it as nugatory until the promise of God involved in

the rite is apprehended in faith.’ He concludes by assimilating the

sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the Circumcision and

Passover of the olden time.

Calvin, we thus see, addressed himself not only to the questions sent,

but also in answer to the letter which doubtless accompanied them, in

which the writer must have given some intimation of his own views.

That Calvin’s communication, couched in rigidly orthodox terms, though

unobjectionable in style, was not calculated to satisfy Villeneuve, we

cannot doubt. His mind was already as thoroughly made up--even more

thoroughly made up, we apprehend, on some of the points advanced--than

Calvin’s. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the Genevese

Reformer’s expositions were repudiated as little satisfactory by the

physician of Vienne, or to discover that the correspondence on his part

was not suffered to drop. He appears to have replied immediately, and

must have written in sequence no fewer than thirty letters to Calvin

on his favourite theological subjects, so many being printed in the

‘Christianismi Restitutio.’ In answer to these Calvin must also have

sent him more than one or two, though certainly many fewer than thirty;

for by the letter to Frelon, written evidently at an early period of

the correspondence, we see him already weary of it.

With his hands more than full in administering the affairs of the

Genevese Church, holding his political opponents the Libertines

in check at home, and corresponding with friends and the heads of

all the other Reformed Churches abroad, it is not wonderful that,

besides feeling disquieted by the matter and offended with the manner

of Villeneuve’s addresses, he had soon made up his mind to have

nothing more to do with the writer. He saw, moreover, that he made no

impression on him, each new epistle being, as he says to a friend, but

‘a wearisome iteration of the same cuckoo note.’ Calvin’s vocation,

however, was to be helpful in what he believed to be God’s work, and to

preach the Gospel as he apprehended it. True to his trust, therefore,

and by way of meeting his troublesome correspondent’s further

importunities,--as a balsam competent to heal the wounds and strengthen

the weak places in the soul of the distempered man, he seems to have

thought he might escape further molestation by referring him to his own

‘Institutions of the Christian Religion,’ his master work, the canon of

the Church of which he was the founder and acknowledged head. In this

view, as we venture to presume, Calvin sent Villeneuve a copy of his

‘Institutions,’ and referred him to its pages for satisfactory replies

to all his propositions.

It is impossible to imagine that Servetus had continued until this time

unacquainted with Calvin’s writings; he had doubtless read them all;

but he may not have made the ‘INSTITUTIONES RELIGIONIS CHRISTIANÆ’ the

subject of the particular study on which he was now forced, as it were,

by its author, and with the result that might have been foreseen: there

was hardly a proposition in the text that was not taken to pieces by

him, and found untenable, on the ground both of Scripture and Patristic

authority.

In the course of the correspondence hitherto, Calvin had stood on the

vantage ground, as critic of his correspondent’s views; but matters

were now reversed, for Villeneuve became the critic of the Reformer. He

by and by returned the copy of the ‘Institutions,’ copiously annotated

on the margins, not only in no terms of assent, but generally with the

unhappy freedom of expression in which he habitually indulged, and so

little complimentary to the author himself, as it seems, that Calvin,

in writing to a friend and in language not over-savoury, says:--‘There

is hardly a page that is not defiled by his vomit.’ The liberties

taken with the ‘Institutions,’ we may well imagine, were looked on as

a crowning personal insult by Calvin; and, reading the nature of the

man as we do, they may have been that, super-added to the letters,

which put such rancour into his soul as made him think of the life of

his critic, turned by him into his calumniator, as no more than a fair

forfeit for the offence done.

It was at this time precisely, as it appears, that Calvin wrote that

terribly compromising letter to Farel, so long contested by his

apologists, but now admitted on all hands--as indeed how could it be

longer denied, seeing that it is still in existence?--in which he says:

‘Servetus wrote to me lately, and beside his letter sent me a great

volume full of his ravings, telling me with audacious arrogance that I

should there find things stupendous and unheard of until now. He offers

to come hither if I approve; but I will not pledge my faith to him; for

did he come, if I have any authority here, I should never suffer him to

go away alive.’[57]

Nor is this the only letter written at this time by Calvin which

shows with what despite he regarded Servetus. Jerome Bolsec, a quondam

monk, now a physician, opposed to the Papacy and but little less

hostilely inclined to Calvin, speaking of the Reformer’s persecution

of Servetus--‘an arrogant and insolent man, forsooth,’--and of

Servetus having addressed a number of letters to him along with the

MS. of a work he had written, and a copy of the ‘Institutions of the

Christian Religion,’ full of annotations little complimentary to the

author,--goes on to say: ‘Since which time Calvin, greatly incensed,

conceived a mortal antipathy to the man, and meditated with himself

to have him put to death. This purpose he proclaimed in a letter to

Pierre Viret of Lausanne, dated the Ides of February (1546). Among

other things in this letter, he says: “Servetus desires to come hither,

on my invitation; but I will not plight my faith to him; for I have

determined, did he come, that I would never suffer him to go away

alive.” This letter of Calvin fell into my hands by the providence of

God, and I showed it to many worthy persons--I know, indeed, where

it is still to be found.’ Bolsec says further that Calvin wrote to

Cardinal Tournon denouncing Servetus of heresy, some time before making

use of William Trie in the same view to the authorities of Lyons and

Vienne, and that the Cardinal laughed heartily at the idea of one

heretic accusing another. ‘This letter of Calvin to Cardinal Tournon,’

says Bolsec in continuation, ‘was shown to me by M. du Gabre, the

Cardinal’s secretary. William Trie also wrote several letters to Lyons

and Vienne at the instigation of Calvin, which led to the arrest of

Servetus; but he escaped from prison.’

These statements of Bolsec, like the letter to Farel, have been called

in question and their truth denied by Calvin’s apologists; but they

tally in every respect with what else we know, and explain some things

that would have remained obscure without them. If Calvin wrote to Farel

in the terms he certainly did, we have no difficulty in believing

that he addressed his _alter ego_, Viret, in the same way. What is

said of the letter to Cardinal Tournon, also, has every appearance of

truth. The Cardinal took no notice of the heresy proclaimed from such

a quarter as Geneva; or if he hinted at the matter to his friend the

Archbishop of Vienne, Paumier’s good report of Doctor Villeneuve put a

stop to further inquiry.[58]

More has probably been made of the letter to Farel, by the enemies of

Calvin, than is altogether fair. Grotius, who was the first to notice

it, says: ‘It shows that Antichrist had not appeared by Tiber only, but

by Lake Leman also.’ When Calvin wrote to Farel, however, he did not

contemplate the likelihood of Servetus ever falling into his hands.

Neither, indeed, though grievously offending, had the Spaniard yet

shown himself utterly incorrigible, a lost creature, fore-ordained of

God, as it seemed, to perdition. At the time Calvin wrote the letter of

February, 1546, to Farel

His murder yet was but fantastical,

It was at a later period, when the guilt as he held it of the man he

persistently regarded as the enemy of God and all religion as well as

of himself, was full-blown, and the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ appeared

in print, that the threat of bygone years took the shape of present

stern resolve.

Had we but Calvin’s letter to Villeneuve, ‘written more sharply

than was his wont,’ we should, beyond question, find matter little

calculated to flatter the somewhat presumptuous self-confident man,

and may be fully as certain that the terms in which any future missive

was couched, were not more soothing or conciliatory. But Servetus

had come to look on himself as commissioned in some sort by God to

proclaim a purer form of Christianity to the world; and any assumption

of superiority on the part of Calvin, was met by a four-fold show of

independence from himself. Yet does Servetus, once embarked in the

correspondence, satisfy us that he had fallen under the spell of the

great Reformer; fascinated as it seems by him and, far from being

repelled by either his coldness or his harshness, finding it impossible

to forbear making ever new attempts upon his patience for recognition,

were it even of a little complimentary kind.

The ‘great volume full of ravings,’ spoken of in the letter to Farel,

must have been a MS. copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ already

written, but not perhaps finally revised. Upon this work it does

not appear that Calvin ever condescended to offer any strictures;

although it was doubtless accompanied by a letter--not printed among

the thirty--requesting an opinion on its merits. But even as he never

had anything of the kind, neither, although repeatedly asked for, both

directly and through others, as we learn, could Servetus ever get back

his manuscript. Whether retained in mere contempt, or as evidence

against the writer, with occasion presenting, as has been surmised, we

do not know; but certain it is that Calvin remained persistently deaf

to all the writer’s entreaties to have his work returned to him. If

not purposely retained in view of the contingency hinted at, it was

eventually used in such wise; for it was among the Documents furnished

by Calvin through Trie to the authorities of Vienne with the immediate

effect of bringing about the arrest of its writer and imperilling his

life.

Turn we to the letters to Calvin, less in view of their theological

import--the point from which alone they have hitherto been regarded

by the biographers of Servetus--than as calculated to let us into

the secret of the misunderstanding and enmity that took such entire

possession of the mind of the Genevese Reformer. In Servetus’s style

of address, as we have said, we at once note an entire absence of the

obsequiousness to which Calvin was accustomed. Far from approaching

the Reformer as a Gamaliel at whose feet he was to kneel and take

lessons, Servetus assumes the part, not merely of the equal, but

often of the superior, and is by no means nice in the terms in which

he challenges the points he holds erroneous in the doctrines of the

great man he is addressing. In the very first of the thirty epistles

he wrote, whilst stating an opinion which he knew Calvin must think

heretical or even blasphemous, he ‘desires him to remember--_memineris

quæso_, &c.--that the Man, Jesus Christ, was truly begotten of the

substance of God;’ and in the second of the series informs him quite

bluntly that he is mistaken in his interpretation of Paul’s Epistle to

the Romans. He even attempts to fix him on the horns of a dilemma by

showing that Calvin’s view, if accepted, would lead to the assumption

not of one Son of God, but of three Sons of God. ‘But all such

tritheistic notions,’ he continues, ‘are illusions of Satan, and they

who acknowledge the Trinity of the Beast (i.e. of Papal Christianity)

are possessed by three spirits of demons. False are all the invisible

Gods of the Trinitarians, as false as the gods of the Babylonians.

Farewell!’ This at the outset is certainly not very respectful from the

physician of Vienne to the Spiritual Dictator of Geneva!

The third epistle commences in the same easy style: ‘_Sæpius te

monui_--I have repeatedly admonished you.’ It is on the way in which

he imagines Christ to have been engendered by God, and so to be truly

and naturally His Son; adding that he has always taught the eternity

of the Divine Reason, styled The Word, as prefiguring Christ, in whose

face at the Incarnation, he says, Man first verily saw the face of

God. ‘You are offended with me,’ he proceeds, ‘for speaking as I do of

the human form of Christ; but have patience and I shall lead you up to

my conclusion--_te manducam_,’ etc. Fancy John Calvin feeling himself

taken in hand by Michael Servetus!

The fourth, sixth, and seventh epistles are remarkable for their

pantheistic views. ‘God,’ says Servetus, ‘is only known through

manifestation, or communication, in one shape or another. In Creation

God opened the gates of His Treasury of Eternity,’ says he very

grandly. ‘Containing the Essence of the Universe in Himself, God is

everywhere, and in every thing, and in such wise that he shows himself

to us as fire, as a flower, as a stone.’ Existence, in a word, of

every kind is in, and of, God, and in itself is always good; it is

act or direction that at any time is bad. But evil as well as good he

thinks is also comprised in the essence of God. This is indicated,

he conceives, by the Hebrew word, ‘π’ (ihei); and he illustrates

his position by the text: ‘I form light and create darkness.’ All

accidents, further, are in God; whatever befals is not apart from God.

Without beginning and without end, God is always becoming--_Semper est

Deus in fieri_.

In the eighth and ninth letters he informs Calvin that he ‘would have

him know how the _Logos_ and _Sapientia_, the Divine Word, the Divine

Reason, were to be understood, in order that he should not go on

abusing these sacred words;’ and it is here that we meet with various

expressions which only acquire significance when the pantheistic

ideas with which he is full are borne in mind. Here, too, we find the

reason why he would not concede that Calvin and the Reformers held the

true belief in Christ as the Son of God:--_Ille est vere filius Dei

quem in muliere genuit Deus, non ille quem tu somniasti!_ Neither did

the Reformers, in his eyes, rightly apprehend JUSTIFICATION, which,

according to him, only comes through belief in the Sonship of Christ as

he conceives it.

In the eleventh epistle he says he thinks it will be labour well

spent if he exposes the error into which his correspondent falls in

his interpretation of the Doctrine of James. Calvin and his sect, we

know, set little store by works of charity and mercy. ‘All that men

do,’ proceeds our letter-writer, ‘you say is done in sin and is mixed

with dregs that stink before God, and merit nothing but eternal death.

But therein you blaspheme. Stripping us of all possible goodness you

do violence to the teaching of Christ and his Apostles, who ascribe

perfection or the power of being perfect to us: “Be ye therefore

perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. v. 48.)

You scout this celestial perfection because you have never tasted

perfection of the kind yourself. In the works of the Saintly, I say,

there is nothing of the corruption you feign. The works of the Spirit

shine before God and before men, and in themselves are good and proper.

Thou reprobate and blasphemer, who calumniatest the works of the

Spirit--_Tu improbus et blasphemus qui opera Spiritus calumniaris!_’

Can we wonder at Calvin’s rage with the man who dared to address him in

such language as this? On his trial at Geneva Servetus tells his judges

that the correspondence between him and the Reformer degenerated by

degrees on both sides into mutual recrimination and abuse. In the above

objectionable passage we see, if not the beginning, yet a significant

sample of this unhappy style, which continues even to the end. Had we

Calvin’s letters, we should certainly find them not more guarded in

expression--for Calvin was a master of invective, with a superabundant

vocabulary of epithets at command, and never choice in the use of

those he applied to opponents--rascal, dog, ass, and swine being found

of constant occurrence among them--had there been any stronger than

scoundrel and blasphemer, they would assuredly have been hurled at

Servetus.

Referring to the subject of Justification, Calvin, as we presume, must

have said, in one of his letters, that Justification is _imputed_ by

God, and that no change takes place in him who is justified. To this

Servetus, in his thirteenth epistle, exclaims: ‘What do I hear? The

spirit of man suffers no change through sin! But if sin cause change,

then must there also be change when sin is taken away. He, forsooth,

who sits in darkness differs in nothing from him who sits in light!

Your justification is Satanic merely if the conscience within you

remains as it was before, and your new life of faith differs in nothing

from the old death. God grant, O Calvin, that, ridding you of your

magical fascinations, you may abound to overflowing in all good things;

but Peter’s disputation against Simon Magus refutes you, teaching, as

it does, the excellence of works even in the heathen. The justification

you preach, therefore, is mere magical fascination and folly.’

In another of his letters Calvin must have asked Servetus where the

Apostle John teaches that we in this world are such as was Christ?

Which his correspondent answers by referring him to the fourth chapter

of the Epistle general, where he would find these words: ‘Because as

he is, so are we in this world.’ We can fancy how vexed Calvin must

have been with himself for the slip he had made, as well as angry with

the triumph of his opponent, who continues: ‘But you neither rightly

understand Faith in Christ, nor good works, nor the Celestial Kingdom.

In the New Covenant a new and living way was inaugurated; but you, true

Jew--_tu vero Judaico_--would shame me by a show of zeal and whelm me

with contumely because I say with Christ, “He who is least shall in

this Kingdom be greater than Abraham.”’

If Calvin neither understands the nature of Faith, nor of

Justification, we shall not wonder when we find that no more is he

credited with comprehending Regeneration, ‘You have not understood

true Regeneration, nor the Celestial Kingdom, whereof Faith is the

gate. Regeneration, I maintain, comes through baptism; you say that

Christ thought nothing of the water. But is it not written that we

are born anew by water? and is it not of water that Paul speaks when

he designates baptism the Laver of Regeneration, saying, “We are

cleansed from sin by washing with water?” Men, you say, are regenerate

when they are enlightened; you must therefore concede that they who

are baptized in their infancy, being without understanding and so

unenlightened, cannot be regenerated. Yet do you contend that they

are properly baptized. Dissevering regeneration from baptism you make

baptism a sign of adoption; but you deceive yourself in this, the

Scriptures declaring that adoption is effected when to the believer is

given the spirit of the divine Sonship--πνεύμα Ὑωοθεσίος. On your own

showing, then, infants, being unregenerate, can enter the Kingdom of

Heaven neither by faith nor by hope; and thou, thief and robber--_tu

Fur et Latro_(!)--keepest them from the gate. As a prelude to Baptism

Peter required repentance. Let your infants repent, then; and do you

yourself repent and come to baptism, having true faith in Jesus

Christ--_pœniteat te igitur, et vere Jesu Christi fide ad baptismum

accede_--to the end that you may receive the gift of the Holy Spirit

promised therein. But you satisfy yourself with illusions, and say that

the infants who die [unbaptized?] were predestined, impudently misusing

sacred speech as is your wont; for in the Scriptures predestination is

not spoken of save in connection with belief and believers. God, I say,

sees no one justified from eternity unless he believes.’ Let us think

of Calvin, spiritual dictator to one half of reformed Christendom,

schooled in this style by the poor body-curer of Vienne! called thief

and robber to his face, and all the more irate with his teacher from

feeling, as we fancy he must have felt, that he had not always the best

of the argument. Servetus’s dialectic is at least a match for his own.

But our restorer of Christianity has not yet done with his

pædo-baptism: the subject is continued in the next letter, which closes

with a prayer in the very finest spirit of piety, but to Calvin may

possibly have seemed profane, he having made up his mind that Servetus

was not only without religion himself, but bent on effacing religion

from the heart of man. Here is the prayer:--

‘O thou, most merciful Jesus, who with such signs of love and blessing

didst take the little ones into thine arms, bless them now and ever,

and with Thy guiding hand so lead them that in faith they may become

partakers of Thy Heavenly Kingdom. Amen!’

Calvin, we believe, treats the ‘Descent into Hell’ as legendary.

Servetus thinks the Hebrew word _Scheol_ signifies the _grave_ as well

as the traditional _hell_, and seems to make it a kind of resting-place

for the unregenerate until the resurrection. Adam, he says, by his

transgression fell both soul and body into the power of the Serpent.

But where can the soul of him be after death who is the slave of such

a master? Are not the gates of Paradise closed against him?--is not

the whole man given over to the power of the mighty tyrant? ‘Who shall

set him free? No one, assuredly, but Christ’--and so on, in terms

entirely unobjectionable, and in complete conformity with accredited

opinion; but tending, we imagine, to what is called _Universalism_,

Servetus believing, as we read him, that all men would be saved in

the end, though ordinary sinners would have to wait until the day of

Judgment. He nowhere speaks of any lake of burning brimstone, fanned

by the Devil, in which the wicked are tortured throughout eternity.

Annihilation, with him, is the penalty of unpardonable sin.

The Twentieth Epistle is especially interesting as showing us the

very heart of the writer; letting us into his secret, as it were,

and showing us the ideas that led him to his scheme of restoring the

lapsed faith of mankind in Christ as the naturally begotten Son of

God, and of reconstituting his Church, long vanished from the face of

the earth. The true Church, however, is not to be thought of as an

institution made by man, but as a foundation originated by Christ.

And the question as to where this true Church exists, is not difficult

of determination if the authority of the Scriptures be admitted as

paramount in matters of belief. But the authority of the Scriptures,

and of the true Church represented by those purified by the water of

baptism and governed by the Holy Spirit, he says, is equal ‘_The true

Church of Christ, indeed, is independent of the Scriptures. There was

a Church of Christ before there was any writing of the Apostles._ But

where is now the Church? Ever present in celestial spirits and the

souls of the blest, it fled from earth as many as 1260 years ago. It

is in heaven, and typified by the woman adorned with the sun and the

twelve stars (Revelation). Invisible among us now, it will again be

seen before long. We with ours, the congregation of Christ, will be

the Church. Towards the restoration of this Church it is that I labour

incessantly; and it is because I mix myself up with that battle of

Michael and the Angels, and seek to have all the pious on my side,

that you are displeased with me. As the good angels did battle in

heaven against the Dragon, so do other angels now contend against the

Papacy on earth. Do you not believe that the angels will prevail? But

as the Dragon could not, so neither can the Papacy, be worsted without

the angels. The celestial regeneration by baptism it is that makes us

equals of the angels in our war with spiritual iniquity. See you not,

then, that the question is the restoration of the Church driven from

among us? The words of John show us that a battle was in prospect:

seduction was to precede, the battle was to follow; and the time is now

at hand. Who, think you, are they who shall gain the victory over the

Beast? They, assuredly, who have not received his mark. Grant, O God,

to thy soldier that with thy might he may manfully bear him against the

Dragon, who gave such power to the Beast. Amen!’

In the above we have the whole mystical being of the man laid bare

before us, and the nature of the cause in which he was engaged made

known. Servetus certainly believed that he was an instrument in the

hand of God for proclaiming a better saving faith to the world. It was

by a certain Divine impulse, he says himself, that he was led to his

subject, and woe to him did he not evangelise! He seems even to have

thought that he had his vocation shadowed out to him in his name. The

angel Michael led the embattled hosts of heaven to war against the

Dragon; and he, Michael Servetus, had been chosen to lead the angels

on earth against Antichrist! The Roman interpretation of Christianity,

with its Pope and hierarchy, its assumed sovereignty, its pompous

ceremonial and ritualistic apparatus, had failed to make the world

either wiser or better; the entire system was rotten to the core; hence

the revolt of such scholarly monks as Erasmus and Luther, and of such

learned priests as Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon, Bullinger, Bucer, and

the rest. But they, too, still showed more or less of the ‘mark of the

Beast.’ They had rid themselves of the Mass and Transubstantiation, of

compromises for sin by payments in money, of monkeries, nunneries, the

invocation of saints, prayers to the Virgin, and so on; but they had

retained much that was objectionable--particularly a Trinity of persons

in the Godhead (tantamount, said Servetus, to the recognition of three

Gods instead of one God), and infant baptism.

By their strenuous insistance on the effects of Adam’s transgression

as compromising mankind at large, and Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice

his only son, they had moreover interspersed the religion of Christ

with such an amount of Judaism that their Christianity was in many

respects a relapse into the bonds of the Law, from which Christ had set

us free. A reformation of the Church had been commenced, therefore,

but was by no means completed; much still remained to be done; the

world was waiting, in fact, for a better interpretation of Christ’s

life and doctrine as contained in the Gospels, and this the studies

and meditations of Michael Servetus, he believed, qualified him in no

mean measure to supply. Hence the books on Trinitarian Error and the

Restoration of Christianity; and hence, also, the hostility of Calvin

and his followers, who were minded that they had already reformed and

restored, and verily represented, or were in fact, the true Church.

Like the leaders of other bands of enthusiasts of which the world

has seen so many, Servetus, relying on the New Testament record,

thought that the day was at hand when Christ should appear in the

clouds to judge the world and consummate all things. He overlooked

the fact that Paul, whom he resembled in so many respects, had had

the same fancy fifteen hundred years before him, and that matters had

nevertheless gone on much as they had always done, without the day of

judgment having dawned. Calvin with his educated understanding and

his experience of the world, ought to have seen Servetus as the pious

enthusiast he was in fact, and not as the enemy of God and Religion,

as well as of himself. Failing to cure him of his extravagant fancies,

he might safely have left him to indulge them, as being little likely

to compromise his own or any other system of Christianity, the Papacy

perhaps excepted, to which the would-be Restorer was truly much more

violently opposed than the Reformer. But hate had blinded Calvin;

considerations personal to himself had complicated and in some sort

superseded such as were associated with religion.

On the subject of Faith, to which Calvin’s system gave much less free

play than Luther’s, we find Servetus siding with him of the North

rather than him of the South. Neither of them, however, as we have

seen, had any conception of faith in the way Servetus understood

it. Faith, says he, consists in a certain compliant state of mind,

proclaimed by unquestioning assent. This, the true saving faith, is

of the kind avowed by Peter when he declared Jesus to be the Christ,

the Son of the living God. Yet faith even of this kind, distinctly as

it has the lead in Servetus’s Christology, is not yet all in all: to

become efficient or saving, it must be conjoined with Charity. ‘If

faith be not clothed with charity,’ says he, ‘it dies in nakedness;

and as habit is strengthened by action, the body by exercise, and

the understanding by study, so is faith strengthened by good works.’

The subject-will and fatalism, asserted by Calvin in his doctrine of

predestination and election, have therefore no real foundation in

Scripture; nay more, there is unreason in the assumption of such a

principle, and in the admonition given to mankind to do that which it

must be known beforehand they cannot do. ‘You speak,’ says our writer,

‘of free acts, yet really say that there is no such thing as free

action. But who so devoid of understanding as to prescribe free choice

to one incapable of choosing freely! It is mere fatuity besides to

derive subject-will from this: that it is God who acts in us. Truly God

does act in us; but in such wise that we act freely. He acts in us so

that we understand and will, choose, determine, and pursue. Even as all

things consist essentially in God, so do all things proceed essentially

from him. The Spirit of God is innate in man, and as the power to do is

one thing, so is the necessity to do another. Although God elects us as

the potter does his clay, it by no means follows that we are nothing

more than clay. Paul’s simile deceives you; it is not universally

applicable.’

The Law of Moses, Calvin has said, is still in force and to be observed

by us as truly as it was by the Jews; violating it, he says, we

violate the Law of God. Servetus’s reply to this is the burden of the

Twenty-third and three following Letters. ‘I fancy I hear some Jew or

Mussulman speaking here,’ says our respondent. ‘But to what is violence

done--is it to a stone, or to certain letters cut in a stone? Christ,

I say, accomplished the Law and then it was abrogated; in him we have

the New Covenant, the Old superseded; in him are we made free. The law

of Moses was unbearable; it slew the soul, it increased sin, it begat

anger; virtue itself through it became at times transgression, and

in compassion for our frailty it was annulled. You make God exercise

a rude and miserable people in a mill-round. What would you say were

some tyrant to require mountains of gold or the stars of heaven from

your Genevese, and threaten them with death for non-compliance with

his demands? But the Old Law bound men to impossibilities. Art thou

not then ashamed of slavery and tyrannical violence? Insisting on the

observance of this law, you yet go on dreaming with your Luther, and

saying that no one ever entirely fulfilled the commandment which says

“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and soul.”

David and others, then, who said that they sought God with all their

heart and strove with all their might to keep his commandments,

are but liars to you. _And what, after all, are the laws of Moses?

If conformable to Nature then are they the laws of God, the author

of Nature, older than Moses, and to be observed of Christians

independently of Moses._ But God never required obedience of the kind

you imagined; he but asks of each according to his strength. Cease

then, O Calvin, to torture us with the law of Moses, and to insist on

its observance. It looks as if you had a mind to be pitied of God in

your impotency--of God who may be said so often to have had to take

pity on the Jews when they were under the law.’ Who shall say that

Michael Servetus was not in advance of John Calvin?

The twenty-seventh, eighth, and ninth epistles are only significant

as expositions of doctrinal views in their bearing on social life.

Is it lawful, he asks, for a Christian to assume the magistracy? to

administer the laws of the land and to take the lives of evil-doers? Of

course it is. The order of the world is maintained by law and justice.

But then to take life? Where there is hope of amendment, as in the case

of the woman taken in adultery, we see the penalty of death remitted:

Go, said Jesus to her, and sin no more. But even where there is malice

and unyielding obstinacy, recourse is to be had to chastisement of

other kinds than taking life. Among these, banishment, approved by

Christ, and excommunication, practised by the Church, are to be

commended. Schism and heresy were punished in this way whilst traces

of apostolic tradition remained. Criminals, in matters not pertaining

to the faith, are variously punished by the laws of every country; and

this is in conformity with natural law. They bear the sword aright and

lawfully who bear it in the cause of justice and to the repression of

crime; and it is not against gospel precepts that we serve as soldiers

in defence of our lives and possessions.

Servetus, we find, accords rather extensive powers to Bishops, whom,

in opposition to Calvin, he recognises, and to Ministers of the Church

generally. Bishops, like good shepherds, are to know their flocks, and

to take care that no infection gets in among them; ministers again--he

does not use the word priests--are privileged to reconcile sinners to

God, and to punish unbelievers by excommunicating them and delivering

them over to Satan and spiritual death. Their authority, however, is

only to be exercised under the guidance of the Spirit--what spirit he

does not say. Confession, too, he approves of, but the minister is not

to be consulted save in case of some grave doubt or difficulty arising.

Our writer is greatly displeased with Calvin’s interpretation of the

parable of the labourers in the vineyard, in which like wages are given

to those hired at every hour of the day; from which the Reformer infers

that there is no difference or distinction in glory, in faith, or in

works. ‘To you truly,’ says Servetus, ‘there needs no distinction as

to less or more; for with you these are all alike of non-avail, some

as you maintain being saved with, as some are saved without, merit of

their own. But it is faith that of the impious makes the pious, of the

dead the living. Ignorant of all gospel truth is he who does not attach

supreme significance to faith in Christ as the Son of God.’

The concluding epistle of the series must have given great offence to

Calvin, the writer reproaching him with setting the Christian on no

higher level than the vulgar Jew. ‘They are alike to you, indeed, alike

carnal, because to you are the benefits of Christ’s coming unknown;

to you who in the Supper partake of nothing more than a trope or

figure, and who treat baptism as the equivalent of a Levitical rite,

the sign of a thing that is not. But in the Supper we, nourished by

immortal food, for a terrestrial have a new celestial life imparted

to us, and how should he perish who has once partaken of Christ? May

God give you to receive all these things with a true understanding,

led by the spirit of truth, by Jesus Christ and the Father. Amen.’

Scouting the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, as he did, we

here find Servetus speaking as if he believed that it was the body of

Christ indeed that was partaken of in the Supper! To understand this

in him his pantheistic notions must again be taken into account. But

pantheism, when not detached from the idea of _personality_, in the

usual acceptation of the word, leads inevitably to such absurdity.

Speaking as he does now, Servetus forgets his philosophy and yields

himself up to his mysticism. With as much justice might he have said

that Cannibals partake of God when they eat one another, as that the

Christian communicant partakes of Christ when he joins the simple,

solemn, commemorative feast.

CHAPTER XVII.

‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO’--THE RESTORATION OF CHRISTIANITY--DISCOVERY

OF THE PULMONARY CIRCULATION.

We have seen that Servetus could never recover his MS. of the

Restoration of Christianity from the hands of Calvin. But he had not

sent his work for the review of the Reformer without retaining a copy

for himself, and this he determined now to have printed and sent

abroad into the world. With this view he forwarded the Manuscript to

a publisher of Basle, Marrinus by name, with whom--if we may infer so

much from the address of the publisher’s letter to him declining the

work--he must have been on terms of intimacy. Marrinus’s letter is

short, to the point, and in the following terms:--

‘Gratia et pax a Deo, Michael carissime!--the grace and peace of God be

with you, dearest Michael! I have received your letter and your book;

but I fancy that on reflection you will see why it cannot be published

at Basle at this present time. When I have perused it [more carefully]

I shall therefore return it to you by the accredited messenger you

may send for it. But I beg you not to question my friendly feelings

towards you. To what you say besides I shall reply at greater length

and more particularly on another occasion. Farewell! Thy

MARRINUS.

‘Basle, April 9, 1552.’

The MS., even on a cursory perusal, had evidently frightened the worthy

publisher of Basle: he would have nothing to do with it; but this did

not put our author from his purpose of publication. Not going so far

afield as Basle, he took Balthasar Arnoullet, bookseller and publisher,

and William Geroult, manager of his printing establishment, both of

Vienne, into his confidence, giving them to understand that though the

book he wished to have printed was against the doctrines of Luther,

Calvin, Melanchthon, and other heretics, there were many reasons why

neither his name as the author, nor Vienne as the place of publication,

should appear on the title-page.

Arnoullet, like Marrinus, must have had misgivings about the reception

the book was likely to meet with from the clergy of France, and, aware

of the danger he incurred who printed and published aught out of

conformity with the doctrines of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic

Church, he too must have declined in the first instance to undertake

the work. But Michel Villeneuve had been prosperous; he had money in

his purse, and engaging not only to take the whole of the expenses on

himself, but to add a gratuity of 100 crowns to the cost, Arnoullet

consented at last to run the risk of publication, meaning, however,

that the world at large should know nothing of him as instrumental in

the business. No one then knew that Secerius of Hagenau had printed

the ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ or that its author, Michael Servetus,

was Doctor Villeneuve. Why should it ever transpire that Balthasar

Arnoullet of Vienne had printed the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ or

that Monsieur Michel Villeneuve the physician was its writer? To keep

the secret within their own circle, therefore, the work must not

be composed in the usual place of business, and none but the most

indispensable hands be employed upon it. A small house, away from the

known printing establishment, was accordingly taken; type cases and

a press were there set up, and the work once entered on proceeded

regularly without interruption during a period of between three and

four months, when the impression, consisting of 1,000 copies, was

successfully worked off.

Arnoullet, although we shall by and by find him declaring his entire

ignorance of the burden of the book, and charging his manager, Geroult,

with having deceived him on this head and by misrepresentations induced

him to meddle with the publication at all, must nevertheless have been

well aware of its nature. The measures taken to keep the outside world

in ignorance of what was going on, the arrangement with the author to

be his own reader for press, and the premium paid, give the lie to

all his asseverations. Servetus, too, in his determination to keep

his name from the title-page, and leave this blank of the place of

publication, shows that neither was he blind to the danger that waited

on the production of such a book as the Restoration of Christianity

in Roman Catholic France. The printing press, though eagerly welcomed

on all hands at first, soon fell out of favour with the Church of

Rome, and so continues with that conspiracy against the rights, the

liberties, and the progress of mankind. But Michael Servetus was too

vain, too thoroughly persuaded of his own apostolic mission to the

world, to leave his book, the crowning labour of his life, without some

sufficient mark of its paternity. On the last page, accordingly, we

find the initials of his name and designation in capital letters, thus,

M.S.V., immediately over the date MDLIII., the year of the intended

publication. But even so much was not wanted to proclaim the author.

Innocently or inadvertently he says in his Preface that he had formerly

treated briefly of the subjects he is now about to discuss at greater

length; and in the body of the work he may even be said to make his

appearance in person, and in his proper name; for we there have Michael

and Peter as interlocutors, precisely as in the old ‘Dialogi ij de

Trinitate’ of the year 1532.

Printed with every precaution to secure secrecy, with nothing

intentionally about it to lead the uninitiated to suspect what was

meant by the M.S.V. at the end, or a hint, even had it been divined

that Michael Servetus Villanovanus was thereby indicated, to show that

he and Michel Villeneuve of Vienne were one and the same personage, it

is obvious that the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was not intended for

publication or sale either in Vienne or France--probably not even in

Basle or Geneva, in the first instance. Villeneuve would keep the place

where he lived, and the country that sheltered him, as well as the

nearest neighbouring land, out of the storm which he plainly foresaw

would be raised by his daring innovations on accredited Christian

doctrine, and his more than Luther-like denunciations of the Papacy.

The whole impression was therefore made up into bales of 100 copies in

each, of which five were confided to the safe keeping of Pierre Merrin,

typefounder of Lyons--a brother in all likelihood of the Marrinus of

Basle, with whose name we are already acquainted--in view of their

being forwarded by water to Genoa and Venice. A bale or two we know

were sent by Arnoullet to his agent at Frankfort; and as Frelon was now

in the secret of Servetus, we can hardly doubt of his having taken some

share in the venture and despatched at least a bale to the same great

emporium of the book trade. It must have been from Frelon, indeed, that

Calvin by and by obtained the couple of copies of the ‘Restitutio’ he

required for the purposes of the prosecution he had instituted against

its author; and it is almost certainly to him, not to Robert Etienne,

the bookseller of Geneva, as has been said, that Calvin refers in

his letter to the Frankfort Clergy ‘as a well-disposed person who

will put no obstacle in the way of the seizure and destruction of the

obnoxious book which he has learned had been sent for exposition and

sale among them.’ The remainder of the impression--and there could now

have been little of it left on hand--for safe stowage away from the

Archiepiscopal city of Vienne, was confided by Arnoullet to the custody

of a friend, Bertet by name, resident at Chatillon.[59]

The book on the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’[60] often spoken

of, though so rare as seldom to be seen, comprises a series of

disquisitions on the speculative and practical principles of

Christianity, as apprehended by the author; thirty letters to John

Calvin; a disquisition on as many as sixty signs of the reign of

Antichrist, and an apologetic address to Philip Melanchthon and his

followers.

‘The task we have set ourselves here,’ says the Author in his Preface

or Introduction, ‘is truly sublime; for it is no less than to make

God known in his substantial manifestation by The Word and his divine

communication by the Spirit, both comprised in Christ, through whom

alone do we learn how the divineness of the Word and the Spirit may

be apprehended in Man. Hidden from human sight in former times, God

is now both manifested and communicated to the world, manifestation

taking place by the Word, communication by the Spirit, to the end

that we may see him face to face as it were in Creation, and feel him

intuitively but lucidly declared in ourselves. It is high time that

the door leading to knowledge of this kind were opened; for otherwise

no one can either know God truly, read the Scriptures aright, or be a

Christian.’

How much the writer is in earnest is farther proclaimed by the

Invocation to Christ and the Address to the Reader with which he

concludes his Introduction: ‘O Christ Jesus, Son of God, Thou Who

wast given to us from heaven, Thou Who in Thyself makest Deity

visibly manifest, I, Thy servant, now proclaim Thee, that so great a

manifestation may be made known to all. Grant then to Thy petitioner

Thy good Spirit and Thy effectual Speech; guide Thou his mind and his

pen that he may worthily declare the glory of Thy Divinity, and give

pious utterance to the true faith concerning Thee. The cause indeed is

Thine, for by a certain Divine impulse it is that I am led to speak of

Thy Glory from the Father. In former days did I begin to treat of this,

and again do I enter upon it; for now am I to be made known to all the

pious; now truly are the days complete, as appears from the certainty

of the thing itself and the visible signs of the times. The Light Thou

hast said is not to be hidden; so woe to me do I not evangelise!

‘It rests with thee, then, O Reader, that thou show thyself well

disposed towards Christ, even to the End, and that thou hear our

subject discussed at length in words of truth without disguise.’

After a somewhat careful perusal of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’

we know not how it could be better or more briefly characterised,

in its theoretical portion at least, than as a paraphrase and

new interpretation of the Gospel according to John, in which the

Neo-platonic doctrine of the Logos is particularly discussed, and

copiously interfused with pantheistic ideas, whilst the dogmatic

teaching of the Church of Rome and its practical application is

repudiated _in toto_, and the chief doctrines of Lutheran and

Calvinistic Christianity are controverted.

Assuming the leading positions of the writer as guides, we should say

that in his philosophy he regards the world as a manifestation and

communication of God in time and space, manifestation taking place,

as he says, through the Word, communication through the agency called

Spirit. The first of things in which God showed Himself, he says, was

Light, which he speaks of as uncreated--_lux increata_, essence or

first principle of things--all existence, all generation being effected

by the energising power of light. In, and of, and first manifested

by light, God, however, is not identified therewith, any more than

with the things of creation, in all of which he is still held to be

immanent. God indeed in himself is supersensuous and incomprehensible,

for he transcends all things--mind as well as matter. When not sought

to be defined by negatives, God is to be thought of as Absolute Being,

and all existence, as deriving from him, is to be accounted divine,

although in diverse degrees.

The manifold manifestations which God makes of himself in nature are

referred to a single dispensation or mode, the mode of the Plenitude of

Substance, which comprises all other modes or dispensations in their

endless diversity, patterns or types of all things that be having

been present in the mind of God before they were in themselves. An

architypal universe is therefore assumed as having existed before the

actual world came into being, and this, says Servetus, is the Logos

of Scripture and Philosophy--the Divine Reason, wherein reflected

all things showed themselves visibly. _Ea ipsa erat λὀγος erat ratio

mirifica in qua omnia visibiliter relucebat._ The Logos--Divine

Word, Divine Wisdom, God himself, in fact--it is that is revealed

or manifested in Creation, as in the fulness of time it also became

incarnate in Christ; for, even as before Creation the world existed

ideally in God, so before the incarnation was Christ potentially

present in the Divine mind as the Divine word, in the same way as the

future plant is extant in the seed. From the beginning, therefore, it

was a virtual or potential Son, not any actual co-eternal Son, who

existed beside the Father, the Son first acquiring form and substance

in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and being made participant of the

Holy Spirit at the moment of his birth when he began to breathe; for

Servetus assimilated the abstraction entitled Spirit to breath or wind:

God, say the Scriptures, breathed into the nostrils of man and he

became a living soul.

Possessed, as he was, by the principles of the Neo-platonic and

other more ancient philosophies, Servetus assimilates Christ to

the Demiurgos, and makes of him the architect and fashioner of the

world--_ille mundi Architectus Christus_--Creator even of the elements

from which, intermingled, are educed the substantial forms of things.

How this was brought about if Christ only became a reality at his

birth, he does not say. But it is not a little interesting to note how

nearly our own Great King of transcendental song approaches some of

these fancies of our author, for Milton too speaks of Light as

Offspring of heaven firstborn,

Or of the eternal coeternal beam;

Since God is light,

And never but in unapproached light,

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

A little further on he also has the Son as Agent in Creation:--

And thou, my Word, begotten Son, by thee

This I perform: speak thou and be it done.

Creation ended, he continues:--

The filial Son arrived and sat him down

With his great Father!

Into what labyrinths are men led when they give the rein to

imagination, and the demon of speculation divorced from science is

suffered to have his uncontrolled way!

* * * * *

Coming to a more particular analysis of the ‘Restitutio,’ we find the

first book treating of the man Jesus, in which he is shown to be, 1st,

Man; 2nd, Son of God; and 3rd, God.

I. The name Jesus [Joshua, Hebraice], says Servetus, is the name of a

man and was given on the day of the Circumcision; the cognomen Christ

[Χρίστος, Græce, the anointed], was bestowed by the Disciples, but

never admitted by the Jews, who only knew Jesus as the son of Joseph.

There was indeed frequent discussion among the disciples themselves,

whether Jesus was the Messiah or not; and we know that kings, in virtue

of the anointing at their coronation, were entitled Christs--Cyrus, for

instance, is called Masach by the Prophet, the word Christ being no

more than the Hebrew title translated into Greek.

II. It is as a Son of God,--υἵος Θεοῦ--that Jesus is spoken of in the

Scriptures. But if so, then is he to be thought of as engendered by

God as thou by thy father. God, it is true, is in a certain sense the

Father of all men as he is of Jesus; but we are his sons by adoption

as Jesus is his Son by nature. Jesus, indeed, was believed to be

the son of Joseph, but he was truly the Son of God, having, without

any sophistry, been engendered of his substance: the Word of God

overshadowed the Virgin like a cloud, and acted in her as generative

dew, comparable to the shower from heaven that causes the earth to

bring forth flowers and fruit. It follows, therefore, that the son of

the Virgin is also truly, naturally, the Son of God.

III. Christ is God, and is so called because in him is God

substantially, corporeally present; for he is God by his geniture as

by his flesh he is man (p. 15), God and man being truly conjoined in

one substance and made one body, one new man. As the Father is true

God, so, in bestowing his divineness (_Deitas_) on his only Son, did he

cause it to be that the Son should be true God.

* * * * *

Having spoken of God and Christ, he treats next of the Trinity. In the

beginning, it is said, was the word, Ὁ λὀγος, an expression whereby

inward Reason and outward Speech are implied. Some, says the writer,

have held that God can be defined no otherwise than by negations: ears

have not heard God speak, save by the voice of man; hands have not

touched Him, for He is incorporeal; place holds Him not, for He cannot

be circumscribed; and time gives no measure of Him, for, infinite, He

is without beginning and without end. But all this only speaks of what

God is not; it does not teach what God is. Now, no one knows God who

is ignorant of the mode in which He has willed to manifest Himself to

us, plainly exposed though it be in the sacred oracles. These, however,

the Sophists do not believe, because they will not see God in Christ

(p. 111). In the Word made flesh, in the face of Jesus Christ it is

that we see the Light--God Himself--shining upon us. In thinking of the

engenderment of Christ, and his appearance on earth, the veil of any

intervening time is to be rejected; Christ being to be conceived of as

having been eternally engendered in the mind of God, but only begotten

of his substance in time in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The man Christ

is therefore, and because of this, fitly spoken of as the first-born

Son of God, begotten before all worlds (pp. 56, 57), substantially

visible before creation, and possessed of eternal substance--_visibilem

cum_ (_Christum_) _substantialiter ante omnia fuisse et substantiam

æternam habere_ (p. 57)--the meaning of which we imagine to be this:

that the idea of Christ, present in the mind of God from eternity, took

form by his immediate agency in the womb of Mary, the wife of Joseph,

whose son the man Jesus was believed by his contemporaries to be,

though he was indeed the Son of God.

One of the items of transcendental belief, therefore, in which Servetus

differed wholly from the Reformers, had reference to the coeternity

of the Father and the Son. On this head he says particularly, ‘If

there were in eternity two incorporeal beings alike and equal, then

were these Twins rather than a Father and Son; and were a third Entity

added, like and equal to the other two, then were there a threefold

Geryon produced.’ These words, and others of corresponding import, were

found highly objectionable or blasphemous by the Reformers, as we have

already had occasion to say.

In connection with this part of his subject the writer adds several of

the comments he had appended to the Pagnini Bible, particularly the one

in which he discusses the verse of Isaiah, beginning: ‘A virgin shall

conceive and bear a son,’ &c., in which he maintains that the Almah,

the marriageable woman mentioned, refers immediately to Abija, the

youthful wife of Ahaz, then pregnant with Hezekiah.

* * * * *

Thus far advanced, it is now that we find the pantheistic conceptions

of our author most fully enunciated. Referring to the words quoted by

St. Paul, ‘In God we live, and move, and have our being,’ Servetus

maintains that God is in all things, and all things are in God; in his

own words, ‘It is God who gives its ESSE or essential being to every

existing thing--to inanimate creation, to living creatures in general,

and to man in especial.’

* * * * *

The fifth book treats of the Holy Spirit. ‘As the essence of God is

the Word,’ says our author, ‘in so far as manifestation is made in

the world, so, and in so far as communication is made, it is Spirit;

manifestation and communication, however, being ever co-ordinate and

conjoined. It is spirit that is the architype, eternally present in

God, from whom it proceeds’ (p. 163). And it is in this place that our

author explains or illustrates some of his metaphysical positions by

a reference to Anatomy, with which in various interesting particulars

he shows himself more satisfactorily intelligible than in his

transcendental speculations.

‘There is commonly said to be a threefold spirit in the body of man,

derived from the substance of the three superior elements--a natural,

a vital, and an animal spirit; there are, however, not really three,

but only two distinct spirits. One of these, the first, characterised

as _natural_, is communicated from the arteries to the veins by

their anastomoses, and is primarily associated with the blood, the

proper seat or home of which is the liver and veins. The second is

the _vital_ spirit, whose seat or dwelling-place is the heart and

arteries. The third, the _animal_ spirit, comparable to a ray of light,

has its home in the brain and nerves. In each and all of these is the

force--_energeia_--of the one spirit and light of God comprised. Now,

that the natural spirit is imparted from the heart to the liver, and

not from the liver to the heart, is proclaimed by the formation of man

in the womb; for we see an artery associate with a vein sent from the

mother through the navel of the fœtus; and in the adult body we always

find an artery and a vein conjoined. But it was truly into the heart of

Adam that God breathed the breath of life or the soul. From the heart,

therefore, it is that life is communicated to the liver; for by the

breathing into the mouth and nostrils it was that the soul was first

truly imparted, the breath tending directly to the heart.

‘The heart is the first organ that lives, and, situate in the middle of

the body, is the source of its heat. From the liver the heart receives

the liquor, the material as it were of life, and in turn gives life

to the source of the supply. The material of life is therefore derived

from the liver; but, elaborated as you shall hear, by a most admirable

process, it comes to pass that the life itself is in the blood--yea

that the blood is the life, as God himself declares (Genes. ix.; Levit.

xvii.; Deut. xii.).

‘Rightly to understand the question here, the first thing to be

considered is the substantial generation of the vital spirit--a

compound of the inspired air with the most subtle portion of the blood.

The vital spirit has, therefore, its source in the left ventricle

of the heart, the lungs aiding most essentially in its production.

It is a fine attenuated spirit, elaborated by the power of heat, of

a crimson colour and fiery potency--the lucid vapour as it were of

the blood, substantially composed of water, air, and fire; for it is

engendered, as said, by the mingling of the inspired air with the

more subtle portion of the blood which the right ventricle of the

heart communicates to the left. This communication, however, does not

take place through the septum, partition or midwall of the heart, as

commonly believed, but by another admirable contrivance, the blood

being transmitted from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein, by

a lengthened passage through the lungs, in the course of which it is

elaborated and becomes of a crimson colour. Mingled with the inspired

air in this passage, and freed from fuliginous vapours by the act of

expiration, the mixture being now complete in every respect, and the

blood become fit dwelling-place of the vital spirit, it is finally

attracted by the diastole, and reaches the left ventricle of the heart.

‘Now that the communication and elaboration take place in the lungs

in the manner described, we are assured by the conjunctions and

communications of the pulmonary artery with the pulmonary vein. The

great size of the pulmonary artery seems of itself to declare how the

matter stands; for this vessel would neither have been of such a size

as it is, nor would such a force of the purest blood have been sent

through it to the lungs for their nutrition only; neither would the

heart have supplied the lungs in such fashion, seeing as we do that the

lungs in the fœtus are nourished from another source--those membranes

or valves of the heart not coming into play until the hour of birth,

as Galen teaches. The blood must consequently be poured in such large

measure at the moment of birth from the heart to the lungs for another

purpose than the nourishment of these organs. Moreover, it is not

simply air, but air mingled with blood that is returned from the lungs

to the heart by the pulmonary vein.

‘It is in the lungs, consequently, that the mixture [of the inspired

air with the blood] takes place, and it is in the lungs also, not in

the heart, that the crimson colour of the blood is acquired. There

is not indeed capacity or room enough in the left ventricle of the

heart for so great and important an elaboration, neither does it

seem competent to produce the crimson colour. To conclude, the septum

or middle partition of the heart, seeing that it is without vessels

and special properties, is not fitted to permit and accomplish the

communication and elaboration in question, although it may be that some

transudation takes place through it. It is by a mechanism similar to

that by which the transfusion from the _vena portæ_ to the _vena cava_

takes place in the liver, in respect of the blood, that the transfusion

from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein takes place in the

lungs, in respect of the spirit.

‘The vital spirit (elaborated in the manner described) is at length

transfused from the left ventricle of the heart to the arteries of the

body at large, and in such a way that the more attenuated portion tends

upwards, and undergoes further elaboration in the retiform plexus of

vessels situated at the base of the brain, in which the _vital_ begins

to be changed into the _animal_ spirit, reaching as it now does the

proper seat of the rational soul. Here, still further sublimated and

elaborated by the igneous power of the soul, the blood is distributed

to those extremely minute vessels or capillary arteries composing the

choroid plexus, which contain or are the seat of the soul itself.

The arterial plexus penetrates even the most intimate part of the

brain, its constituent vessels, interwoven in highly complex fashion,

being distributed over the ventricles, and sent to the origins of the

nerves which subserve the faculties of sensation and motion. Most

wonderfully and delicately interwoven, these vessels, although spoken

of as arteries, are really the terminations of arteries proceeding to

the origins of nerves in the meninges. They are in truth a new kind

of vessels; for, as in the transfusion from arteries to veins within

the lungs we find a new kind of vessels proceeding from the arteries

and veins, so, in the transfusion from arteries to nerves, is there a

new kind of vessels produced from the arterial coats and the cerebral

meninges.’ ‘Chr. Rest.’ p. 170.

There can be no question as to the fact that, in the above quotation,

the passage of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart

through the lungs by the pulmonary artery and vein, is proclaimed,

and a farther transmission of its more subtle part at least from the

left ventricle of the heart to the arteries of the body is indicated.

After so much said, however, the account halts. There is no notice of

any transfusion from the arteries to the veins of the body, and so

of a _return_ of the blood by their means to the right side of the

heart--nor do we believe that anything of the kind was present to the

mind of the writer. The truth is that Servetus was not thinking of

a circulation of the blood in the sense in which we understand the

term, but of a means of engendering the vital and animal spirits. ‘The

blood,’ he says happily and well, ‘is not sent to the lungs in such

large quantity for their nourishment only. As in the fœtus, so in the

adult are they nourished from another quarter.’ To Servetus as to his

age the liver was the fountain of the blood, and the venous system

connected with it the channel by which materials for the growth and

nourishment of the body were supplied. The heart again was the source

of the heat of the body, and, with the concurrence of the lungs, the

elaboratory of the vital spirits; the arterial system in connexion with

it being the channel by which the spirit that gives life and special

endowment to the bodily organs is distributed.

Though Servetus saw that the black blood which is attracted, as he

says, by the diastole of the heart from the vena cava acquires the

florid colour in its passage through the lungs, he never hints at

the black blood of the systemic veins having been the florid blood

of the arteries. We are not, however, to overlook his remark, though

it is only by the way, of ‘the natural spirits being communicated

from the arteries to the veins by their _anastomoses_.’ Servetus may

consequently have had an _intimation_ of the systemic circulation; but

he did not think out his thought. He does not speak of an intermediate

system of vessels between the arteries and veins of the body as of

certain other corresponding vessels of the lungs; and when we find

him making the arteries of the brain terminate in the nerves or

meninges--the source of the nerves to the old physiologists, we can

only conclude that he believed the arteries of the body to end in like

manner in the several tissues to which they are distributed. From what

he says further concerning the life of the fœtus in utero, we learn

positively that Servetus had not divined the systemic circulation. ‘The

embryo lives through the soul of the mother,’ says he, ‘it is as it

were a part of the mother, the vital spirit being communicated to it by

the umbilical arteries.’ Instead of _afferent_ canals of the blood from

the heart of the fœtus to the placenta of the mother, consequently,

Servetus believed the umbilical arteries to be _efferent_ channels of

the vital spirit of the mother to the heart of the fœtus. He at the

same time, doubtless, saw the umbilical veins as the channels by which

material for its growth and nutrition was brought from the mother to

be distributed by the venous system proceeding from the liver and vena

cava, in conformity with the physiological views of his age. Servetus

did not think of the fœtal heart save as the passive recipient of life.

He never heard its rapid tick tack, nor dreamt of it any more than he

did of the heart of the adult as the agent in the general distribution

of the blood in a great circle from arteries to veins, from veins to

arteries, unbroken in the embryo, but complicated when independent life

is assumed by the necessary passage through the lungs.

Imperfectly, incompletely, therefore, as the great function of the

circulation is conceived by Servetus, his account of so much of it as

belongs to the pulmonary system is all his own and an immense advance

on aught that had been imagined before. Had his ‘Restoration of

Christianity’ been suffered to get abroad in the world and into the

hands of anatomists, we can hardly imagine that the immortality which

now attaches so truly and deservedly to the great name of Harvey would

have been reserved for him. But save to a few theologians, who gave

no heed to his physiological speculations, Servetus’s book remained

unknown in the republic of letters, for more than a century after it

had fallen from the press--no naturalist had seen it during all that

time. So effectually had it been hunted out and made away with, that

of the thousand copies printed, two only, as we have seen, are now

known to survive. The ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ of Michael Servetus,

consequently, never influenced either speculation or discovery in

connection with the circulation of the blood. But reading the book

as we are now suffered to do, let us not overlook in its author the

Physiological Genius of his age. Who shall say what amount of influence

the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ might have had upon both Science

and Religion had it been suffered to see the light! For it is not the

possession only, but the pursuit of truth that truly ennobles man; and

in Servetus’s incomplete induction in the sphere of physics we see

the path fairly entered on that has given to modern science all its

triumphs. Nor pause we here: in the domain of letters and criticism,

he is nowise less in advance of his age than in physiology. Who

among biblical scholars before Servetus had seen the applicability

of so much that is said in the Psalms and prophetical books of the

Jewish Scriptures to men and events contemporaneous with, when they

had not preceded, the times in which their authors lived? Servetus’s

contemporaries among the Reformers without exception set out from the

_letter_ of the New Testament as the source of their faith, the warrant

for the conclusions they built upon its text. But he declared that

_there was a Christian Doctrine before there was any New Testament_;

and we now know that this came not into existence until thirty, forty,

sixty, and in parts as many as 150, years had passed after the great

moral teacher of Nazareth had expiated his superiority to the shows and

superstitions and errors of his day by the cruel death of the cross.

Had biblical criticism become a science a century sooner than it did,

the world might now by possibility be nearer the goal of truth as

regards the Religious Idea than it is, and grave doubts have sooner

arisen as to the competency of the barbarous Jews to solve the mystery

of the ‘Something not ourselves’ which we are led by our nature to

conceive and think of as _Cause_, and to imagine as over and above this

‘bank and shoal of Time,’ whereon we pass our lives.

Quitting physiological discussion for his proper subject, our author

approaches the practical part of his theory of Christianity. Faith

is the first element, and is spoken of as an emotion rather than a

cognition--a spontaneous movement of the heart, not an act of the

understanding, its essence being belief in the man Jesus Christ as

the Son of God (pp. 297-300). The end and object of the whole New

Testament teaching, he says, is to lead men to a belief of this kind

(p. 293), whereby they are reconciled and made acceptable to God,

conceive a detestation for sin and become exemplars and exponents of

the Christian virtues--Love, Hope, and Charity. ‘Faith of this kind,’

he continues, ‘makes us aware of our poverty, of our misery. For if we

believe that the man Jesus is the Son of God, the Saviour of the world,

we already admit that the world lies in sin and so needs saving.’

Unlike the other Reformers of the Church, Servetus, in this his latest

work as in his first, makes much less of the Fall of Man and the wrath

of God as consequences of Adam’s transgression. Original sin can hardly

be said to have a place in his system. Sin, he even says, was not

brought forth on earth, but arose in heaven, through a revolt of the

angels under Satan, who, utterly opposed to God in all things, seduced

man from his allegiance and so obtained the empire which it was the

purpose of Christ’s coming to regain. Instead of holding the heart of

man as utterly evil and corrupt, he says, ‘that good works are proper

and spontaneous to the individual. By the death of a sinless being on

whom, as sinless, Satan had no hold, he was thrown out of the law,

forfeited the rights he had acquired, through the disobedience of man,

and God recovered the empire he had lost.’ Satan, therefore, performs

a highly important part in the Christology of Servetus; but it differs

notably from that both of the Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches, in

this: that Christ does not suffer death to satisfy divine justice and

reconcile God to mankind, but to traverse the Devil in the rights he

had acquired by guile. But all such speculations belong to a former age

of the world. They are the fossils of the speculative stratum in the

nature of man, and only of interest now to reasonable people as records

of the chimæras and incongruities that are engendered by imagination

dissevered from science, when the understanding, instead of leading, is

led, and the unknowable is assumed as foundation adequate to support

conclusions affecting the lives of men in this world and their fate in

Eternity.

Servetus then makes little or nothing of the ‘Corruption of human

nature’ as consequence of Adam’s transgression, so much insisted on by

the Reformed Clergy, and he entirely rejects their assumption of man’s

incompetence of himself to do anything good. Satan, however, is still

seen as the opponent of God in the Restored as in the Reformed system.

‘The Devil intruded himself into all flesh,’ says our ‘Restorer.’

‘_Satan is Sin dwelling within us_, and to us is disease and death (p.

385); these being the consequences of Adam’s transgression (p. 358).’

So much our author felt himself bound to accept in a literal sense,

for so he finds it written; but he proceeds forthwith to interpret

the text in his own way, and declares that _Adam’s transgression

brought no real guiltiness on mankind; for such can never be incurred

through another’s, but only through each man’s own deed_, a previous

knowledge of what is good and evil being the indispensable condition to

responsibility. But as a knowledge of good and evil is only attained

when men arrive at years of discretion, so did Servetus think that

mortal sin was not committed, nor even guilt incurred, before the

twentieth year (pp. 363 and 387). Though made subject to corporal death

and _scheol_ by Adam’s fault, men do not for this die spiritually;

they will be restored at the last day when Christ comes to judge the

world: ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1

Corinth. xv.), say the Scriptures [of the apostle Paul]; and these

words, according to our author, mean that men will not be condemned to

the second or spiritual death because of Adam’s disobedience, but only

when, knowing good and evil, they have done much amiss of themselves.

Servetus, therefore, speaks of that as a punishment for sin to which

teeming nations of the East look forward as reward for the ills of

life--Nirwana, a state of unconscious, everlasting rest! Servetus

himself has no special place,--no hell either of temporary or eternal

torture for wrong-doing.

We do not remember to have met with the word _atonement_ in Servetus’s

writings. He had evidently passed beyond the idea of the vengeful

Hebrew God and the shedding of blood as a propitiatory means believed

in by the Christians of his day, and still so commonly accepted in our

own; Servetus’s religion was as comprehensive as that of his great

Master. ‘Turks,’ says he, ‘pray aright when they address themselves

to God, though they neither know nor believe that God ever promised

anything to the patriarchs.’

* * * * *

JUSTIFICATION is the dogma that is next entered on, and is said to be

by _grace_: ‘We are justified,’ says Servetus, following Paul, ‘when we

believe in Christ as the Son of God,’--in the way he apprehended the

sonship, being of course to be understood. But, escaping from leading

strings, we find him elsewhere declaring, and still in advance of his

day, that all who of their own natural motion lead good lives, be

they Jews or Pagans, are justified before God, and that the good life

suffices to have men resuscitated in glory. ‘God,’ says he, ‘does not

repute us just of his own good grace only, but also by the merits of

our works; in other words, of our lives.’

* * * * *

In the book on the perdition of the world and its restoration

by Christ, which follows, our author has much on the subject of

baptism--the means or preliminary, in his eyes, to REGENERATION. He

will not, however, allow that unbaptized infants can possibly be

looked on as lost souls. ‘The little children whom Christ blessed,’

says he, ‘were not baptized. How should the most clement and merciful

Lord condemn those who had never sinned? Did he ever say to the little

ones unbaptized: Go ye accursed into everlasting fire? How should

he curse those he blessed? They seem to me to attempt to befool me

who say that the salvation of an unconscious infant depends on my

will to baptize or to leave it unbaptized.’ Opposed to the baptism of

infants as a meaningless and inefficient ceremony, Servetus was all the

more emphatic in his insistence on the indispensableness of the rite

performed later in life. ‘Jesus was circumcised indeed as an infant,’

says he, ‘but only baptized when he was thirty years of age. We ought

not, therefore, to approach the LAVER OF REGENERATION before this age

if we would imitate Christ.’ ‘Pædobaptism,’ says he, ‘is a detestable

abomination, an extinction of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man, a

dissolution of the Church of Christ, a confusion of the whole Christian

faith, an innovation whereby Christ is set aside and his kingdom

trodden under foot. Woe to you, ye baptizers of infancy, for ye close

the kingdom of heaven against mankind--the kingdom of heaven into which

ye neither enter yourselves, nor suffer others to enter--woe! woe!’ He

who is baptized in his infancy, consequently, who believes that he is

properly baptized and so neglects the regenerative rite in years of

discretion, according to Servetus, loses his chance of instant entrance

into Christ’s kingdom on his death. In his comprehensive charity,

however, we fancy Servetus must have a salvo for such neglect, though

we have missed it. If he has failed to set it forth in words, we feel

assured that it was nevertheless alive in his heart.

In the book on the Power of Satan and Antichrist, Servetus attacks

the Papacy in terms of measureless reprobation, likening the Pope to

the Antichrist of the Apocalypse, calling him the son of perdition,

and speaking of his dominion as the reign of God’s opposite on earth

(p. 393). In exalting himself above his fellow-men and requiring them

to look on him as a god, the Pope has usurped the forbidden kingdom.

The imposition of a spiritual papacy, he maintains, has brought more

mischief on the spiritual world than the carnal Adam brought on the

world of flesh. For his sin was Adam condemned to the pain of corporeal

death, and for theirs are the beast and his ministers (the pope and his

council) doomed in the Apocalypse to the pains of everlasting fire (p.

394).

Against monastic vows of all kinds, Servetus is here most vehemently

outspoken. According to him, they are mere sacrileges of tradition.

He does not object to the celibate life, however, which he says he

has chosen for himself; but Peter, he thinks, would be amazed did he

see the shaven, cowled, and bedizened priests engaged in their mimic

play, whereby they lead the people to the most open idolatry. But it

is the mendicant monk that he has in more especial abhorrence. Him he

compares to the locust, which, eating up everything it encounters,

leaves desolation behind. ‘The locust,’ he says, ‘has by nature a sort

of monk’s cowl; add to this a wallet, and you have a begging friar

complete; in other words, a hooded devil.’

In the book on the Lord’s Supper, our author speaks of course of the

papistical transubstantiation, the annihilation of the _bread_ as bread

and its transmutation into mere _whiteness_. ‘I rather wonder,’ says

he, ‘whether Satan was the circumcisor of common sense from the brains

of those who of _bread_ make _not-bread_, and in its stead produce a

vendible whiteness; for these puny sacrificators, for a mouthful of

whiteness given without wine, make us count out our money (p. 510).

To such degradation of mind are these men brought that they call that

the true body of Christ, which, in the whiteness they imagine, rats

and dogs might devour. Never was there any such blindness as this

among the Jews--blindness the more notable as the Papists say they are

infallible (p. 511). But as circumcision of the foreskin makes the Jew,

and circumcision of the heart the Christian, so does circumcision of

the scalp make the sham Jew, the papal sacrificial priest and slave of

Antichrist.’

He is scarcely more complimentary when he speaks of the views of

the Reformers on the subject of the Supper, styling the Lutherans

_Impanators_, and the Calvinists _Tropists_, the Roman Catholics being

of course _Transubstantiators_. If we understand him aright, he looks

on the Supper as something more than a simple commemorative feast,

to be first partaken of immediately after adult baptism, to which it

is the necessary complement; but we are startled after what, as we

interpret it, he has just said in this sense, when we by and by find

him speaking as if he believed that the body and blood of Christ were

really partaken of in the Christian Communion (p. 281 and Letter xxx.

to Calvin). The contradictory statements met with in the writings of

Servetus, however, as we have had occasion oftener than once already to

say, can only be harmonised by taking note of his pantheistic views. In

the instance before us, for example, on the pantheistic principle, as

God is in and of the substance of all things, so was He in Christ, or

Christ, in so far, was God. In consonance with the _letter_, therefore

the bread and wine of the solemn rite are flesh and blood. The language

of mysticism, however, is often little intelligible to the naturalist,

who in his incapacity here may be likened to those who, with ears

otherwise acute, cannot distinguish certain extremely acute or grave

sounds, or who, with eyes otherwise excellent, see no difference

between such opposite colours as red and green. Like the Reformers of

all denominations, Servetus maintained the CUP to be an indispensable

element in the celebration of the Supper. In the Papal Mass, he says,

there is no true Communion. The bread is not broken in common, and

the wine is appropriated by the Sacrificator, even as the Babylonian

Priests of old appropriated the oblations of the altar: ‘Quorban,’ says

the Popish Priest as he drinks, to the lookers on, ‘it will do you

good, too.’ (p. 522).

Singularly enough, when we think of what he has to say in disparagement

of the Roman Catholic priesthood, we find him recognising in

_ministers_ a power to absolve men from their sins and reconcile them

to God--_potestas ministris est remittendi peccata et reconciliandi

homines Deo_ (p. 516). This, we can only conclude, is said because of

what he found in the Sacred Text;[61] no word of which, as we know,

would he gainsay. But that Michael Servetus, mystic though he was,

believed in his soul that one man can absolve another of his sin, we

do not think possible. He did not surmise that the fourth gospel was

only written a hundred and fifty years after the death of Jesus, and by

a Neo-platonic philosopher, presumably of Alexandria, fashioner, like

Paul of Tarsus, of a Christology and Christianity of his own.

In illustration of the character of the man, the study of whose

life engages us, the prayer with which he concludes the book on the

‘Restoration of Christianity’--for here the work does end in fact, all

that follows being but by way of appendix--ought not to be overlooked.

It is in immediate sequence to a renewed phillipic against the

baptizers of infants, and to the following effect:--

‘Almighty Father! Father of all mercy, free us miserable men from

this darkness of death, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ Our

Lord. O Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, who died for us, help us, lest

we perish! We, thy suppliants, pray to thee as thou hast taught us,

saying, Hallowed be thy Name; thy kingdom come; and do thou, Lord,

come! thy bride the Church, praying in the Apocalypse, says, Come! The

spirits of thy children, praying here, say, Come! Let all who hear this

pray and cry aloud, and with John exclaim, Come! Thou Who hast said, I

come quickly (Apocalypse xxii.) wilt surely come, and with thy coming

put an end to Antichrist. So be it. Amen!’

* * * * *

The first of the additions to the system of ‘Restored Christianity’ are

the thirty letters to Calvin, which we have already analysed, in what

seemed the appropriate place.

The book or chapter on the ‘Sixty signs of the reign of Antichrist, and

of his presence among us,’ which follows, need not detain us. The signs

are for the most part arbitrarily assumed by the writer, on the ground

that his own views are the truth, those of the Papists and Reformers

mistaken, false, or short of the truth. Having shown to his own

satisfaction that every evil-doer, in the shape of an exalted personage

who has ever appeared in the world, even from Satan, Nimrod, and

Nebuchadnezzar, prefigured the Pope, and that the Pope is Antichrist,

he then very logically concludes that all the dogmas and doctrines

sanctioned by the Papacy are of the Devil. Under this category he

places the doctrine of the Trinity in the foremost rank, then the

Baptism of Infants, the Mass, Transubstantiation, all but everything,

in short, characteristic of Roman Catholic Christianity. As in so many

other places, he is here also ready with a prayer, which we quote as

ever-recurring testimony to the sincerely, but misunderstood, pious

nature of the man:--

‘O Christ Jesus, Son of God, most merciful Liberator, who hast so often

freed thy people from their straits, free us too from this Babylonian

Captivity of Antichrist, from his hypocrisy, his tyranny, his idolatry!

Amen.’

The concluding part of the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ is an address

to Melanchthon and his colleagues on the Mystery of the Trinity and

the discipline of the ancient Church. We have seen that Melanchthon

of all the Reformers was the one who seemed to be most taken by the

theological speculations of the seven books on Trinitarian error. ‘I

read Servetus a great deal,’ says he to his friend Camerarius; and

if he found the work objectionable in many respects, as he says, it

yet contained matter that would not be put aside, but that forced

itself on his attention, and may be presumed to have influenced his

final conclusions on some of the highest and most difficult doctrines

of orthodox Christianity. Certain it is that the first and earlier

editions of his highly popular work, the ‘Loci Theologici,’ differ

notably from those that appeared subsequently to the publication

of Servetus’s ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis.’ In the first and earlier

editions there is nothing said of God, whether as One or Triune,

of Creation, the Incarnation, and other purely speculative matters.

‘These subjects,’ he says, ‘are wholly incomprehensible, and we more

properly adore than attempt to investigate the mystery of Deity. What,

I ask you,’ he continues, ‘has been the outcome of the scholastic

and theological discussions that have gone on for all these ages?’

But the metaphysics of Christianity were not passed over in any such

way by Servetus. His earliest work even meets us in some sort as a

complementary criticism of the ‘Loci’ of Melanchthon, and that it was

so held by the Reformer seems to be demonstrated by the many changes

and additions to be noticed in the revised edition of the work of the

year 1535, the first that was published after the appearance of the ‘De

Erroribus Trinitatis’ and ‘Dialogi duo de Trinitate.’[62]

Finding himself very freely handled in the revised editions of the

‘Loci,’ his _errors_, as they are designated as matter of course, being

assimilated to those of Paul of Samosata and others, and his references

to Tertullian and the ante-Nicæan Fathers proclaimed irrelevant,

Servetus retorts, and, throwing moderation to the winds, proceeds

in the diatribe we have before us to pour out the vials of his

displeasure on the head of the great Wittemberg scholar and theologian.

Our Restorer of Christianity does, it is true, see Melanchthon as

somewhat nearer the mark than Luther, Calvin, and Œcolampadius; but the

references made to Athanasius, Augustin, and the Fathers who came after

the Council of Nicæa, are all put out of court--their conclusions are

of non-avail; for they had all bowed the knee to the Beast, and bore

his mark. The true Church of Christ had already forsaken the earth in

their day, and their teaching on the Trinity, Baptism, the Supper, &c.,

was nought. Strange to say, as proceeding from a scholar, himself no

indifferent master of the Latin tongue, he reproaches Melanchthon with

the elegance of his Latinity. The Holy Ghost, says he, never spoke in

fine phrases! (P. 674.)

* * * * *

It is difficult to conceive a man not utterly bereft of reason and

common sense, living among Roman Catholics and in times of deadly

persecution for heresy, writing in the style of Servetus on the Papacy

and the most accredited tenets of Christianity. Yet is it impossible

to imagine that he was blind to the danger he incurred in doing so;

neither do we believe that he knowingly and advisedly staked his life

against the cause he certainly had so much at heart. He may have said,

indeed, that he believed he should die for his opinions; but we see him

taking what he must have meant as sufficient precautions against such

a contingency; and when first brought face to face with the prospect

of accomplishing the destiny he foreshadowed, we find him showing

anything but the recklessness of the true martyr. We presume that the

security in which he had dwelt so long under his assumed name, the

immunity from suspicion of heresy he had enjoyed since the publication

of his first work, and the latitude allowed him by his clerical friends

of Vienne in discussing the heresies of the Reformers--and it may be

also some of a minor sort of their own--misled him. His seven books on

erroneous conceptions of the Trinity appear to have been little, if at

all, known to the ecclesiastics of France; and he probably imagined

that in appealing to the press again and keeping his work from the

booksellers’ shops of the country of his adoption, he would continue

to be overlooked. Anything of a heretical nature he should publish now

might possibly be challenged by the German and Swiss Reformers; but

they were heretics in the eyes of the Viennese, and, provided he did

not openly proclaim himself the author, their ill report, if perchance

it ever reached France, would do the author of the ‘Restoration of

Christianity’ no harm, if it did not even tend to exalt him among

orthodox adherents of the Church of Rome.

Every reasonable precaution therefore taken that the new book on the

Restoration of Christianity should not get abroad in France, Servetus

seems to have thought himself safe against detection and pursuit. He

was in fact altogether unknown, as we have said, in the place of his

residence as Michael Serveto, alias Revés, of Aragon, in Spain. He

was M. Michel Villeneuve, Physician of Vienne, and living under the

patronage of its Archbishop. There was, however, so strong a family

likeness between the ‘Seven Books and Two Dialogues on Trinitarian

Error’ and the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ or the views therein

contained, that the most cursory comparison of the two works would

have disclosed their common parentage, even if the writer of the

‘Restoration’ had not himself hinted plainly enough at the fact. He

must have thought himself perfectly safe in his incognito at Vienne,

and seems not to have dreamt of danger from abroad. There could be no

reason, therefore, why Calvin, and through him the other Reformers

of Switzerland, should not be made aware of what he had been about.

He would in truth take his place beside or above them all as the

real Restorer of Christianity, proclaimer, as he believed himself to

be, of the true doctrine concerning Christ as the naturally begotten

Son of God; of the Salvation to be secured by faith in him as such;

of the Regeneration to be effected by baptism performed in years of

discretion, and of the absurdity implied in imagining division in the

essence of God, and instead of the One great Creator of heaven and

earth, having a Three-headed chimæra for a Deity! In this view, as we

conclude, he sent a copy of his book to Calvin; and with consequences

which it will now be our business to follow to their disastrous

conclusion; for all that remains of the life of Michael Servetus, cut

short in the flower of his age, is entirely subordinated to influences

brought to bear on it through the printing of this work and the

interference of the Reformer of Geneva.[63]

CHAPTER XVIII.

CALVIN RECEIVES A COPY OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO.’

Frelon, the publisher of Lyons, whom we already know as the medium of

communication between Villeneuve and Calvin in their correspondence,

was probably by this time in the secret of the Spaniard. The friend of

Calvin as well as intimate with Villeneuve, had he not already been

confided in by the subject of our study, he must have been informed by

Calvin who Michel Villeneuve really was. The correspondence had long

ceased, but the intercourse between the Bookseller and the Reformer

continued, and the ‘monthly parcel’ was still the vehicle for new books

and literary gossip between Lyons and Geneva. By Frelon’s February

dispatch of the year 1553, we therefore conclude that there went a

copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ hot from the press, specially

addressed to Monsieur Jehann Calvin, Minister of Geneva. That it was

accompanied by a letter from Frelon we may also presume, giving in all

innocency and confidence--little recking what use would be made of the

information--those particulars connected with the printing of the work

which Frelon must have had from Villeneuve, and which Calvin by and by

imparted to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne.

Frelon may be supposed not yet to have read the ‘Christianismi

Restitutio;’ but aware of Villeneuve’s appreciation of the Church

of Rome, and trusting to the author’s own account of his work as

especially hostile to the papacy, he may have thought that it would not

be otherwise than well received by Calvin. It is only with Frelon as

go-between that we can account for the book having reached Calvin at

the early date it did, and for the particular information he possessed

concerning Arnoullet as the printer, and the precautions that had been

taken to keep the world ignorant of what had been done. That there was

no intention of betraying trust on Frelon’s part, we need not doubt;

and still less, as we believe, need we question the fact that it was

not only with the author’s consent, but by his express desire, that the

first copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ sent abroad went to the

Reformer.

Servetus himself could at this time have had as little idea, as Frelon,

of the deadly hate with which Calvin was animated towards him. They

had corresponded and differed, had quarrelled and called each other

opprobrious names; but controversialists did so habitually, when they

got heated; and the epithets then so freely bandied about were scarcely

seriously meant, and hardly ever seriously taken: they were but the

seasoning to the matter, nothing more. Servetus was in truth far too

vain, and at the same time too much under the spell of Calvin, to

leave him of all men else in ignorance of the important work of which

he had just been happily delivered. With the earliest opportunity

therefore that occurred, and before the book had been seen by another,

as we believe, he sent a copy to Calvin, meaning it doubtless as

a compliment--a return perhaps for the copy of the ‘Institutiones

Religionis Christianæ’ we credit him with having received from its

author.

It is not difficult to imagine the alarm that must at once have taken

possession of Calvin’s mind when he saw the errors, the heresies, the

blasphemies, as he regarded them, which in bygone years he had vainly

sought to combat, now confided to the printed page and ready to be

thrown broadcast on the world. And more than this: if his ire had been

already roused by the strictly confidential correspondence to the

extent of leading him to threaten the life of the writer, did occasion

offer, what additional anger must now have entered into his heart,

when, besides the offensive heretical matter of the book, he found

himself taken to task, publicly schooled, declared to be in error, and

his most cherished doctrines not only controverted, but proclaimed

derogatory to God, and some of them even as barring the gates of heaven

against all who adopted them! What, too, on second thoughts, may have

been his exultation when, in perusing the book, he found his enemy

committing himself so egregiously in abusing the Papacy, and supplying

evidence that would convict him at once of blasphemy against God and

the Church, and, in sending him to the stake--as he foresaw it must in

a Roman Catholic country--would rid the world at once of an agent of

Satan, and a personal enemy!

CHAPTER XIX.

CALVIN DENOUNCES SERVETUS THROUGH WILLIAM TRIE TO THE ECCLESIASTICAL

AUTHORITIES OF LYONS.

Calvin’s mind must have been immediately made up after perusing the

‘Restoration of Christianity.’ He would denounce its author as a

heretic and blasphemer to the ecclesiastical authorities of France,

and--_Deus ex machina_--an instrument was at hand to further his

purpose. There lived at this time in Geneva a certain William Trie,

a native of Lyons, a convert from the Romish to the Reformed faith,

and, as proselyte, well known to Calvin. Trie, it would appear, had

not been left altogether at peace in his new profession of faith. He

had a relation, Arneys by name, resident in Lyons, who did not cease

from reproaching him by letter as a renegade, and exhorting him to

think better of it, and return to the faith he had forsaken. Trie would

seem to have been in the habit of showing his letters to Calvin, and

of having aid and advice from him in answering them; Calvin, it was

said, upon occasion even dictating the epistles in reply. But now he

could use the neophyte in his own as well as the general behalf, and

set about the business forthwith under cover of a letter from the

convertite Trie to his relation Arneys:--

Monsieur mon Cousin,--I have to thank you much for your fine

remonstrances, and make no question of your friendly purpose

in seeking to bring me back to the point from which I started.

As I am not a man of letters like you, I do not enter on the

points and articles you bring up against me. Not, indeed, but

that with such knowledge as God has given me, I could find

plenty to say in the way of reply; for, God be praised, I am

not so ill-grounded as not to know that the true Church has

Jesus Christ for its head, from whom it cannot be dissevered,

and that there is neither life nor salvation apart from Holy

Scripture. All you say to me of the Church, I therefore hold

for phantasm, unless Christ, as having supreme authority,

presides therein, and the Word of God is made the foundation of

its teaching. Without this, all your formulas are nothing....

As to what you say about there being so much more of freedom,

or latitude of opinion, with us here than with you, still we

should never suffer the name of God to be blasphemed, nor

evil doctrines and opinions to be spread abroad among us,

without let or hinderance. And I can give you an instance

which, I must say, I think tends to your confusion. It is

this: that a certain heretic is countenanced among you, who

ought to be burned alive, wherever he might be found. And

when I say a heretic, I refer to a man who deserves to be

as summarily condemned by the Papists, as he is by us. For

though differing in many things, we agree in believing that in

the sole essence of God there be three persons, and that his

Son, who is his Eternal Wisdom, was engendered by the Father

before all time, and has had [imparted to him] his Eternal

virtue, which is the Holy Spirit. But when a man appears who

calls the Trinity we all believe in, a Cerberus and Monster

of Hell, who disgorges all the villainies it is possible to

imagine, against everything Scripture teaches of the Eternal

generation of the Son of God, and mocks besides open-mouthed

at all that the ancient doctors of the Church have said--I ask

you in what regard you would have such a man?... I must speak

freely: What shame is it not that they are put to death among

you who say that one God only is to be invoked in the name

of Christ; that there is no service acceptable to God other

than that which He has approved by His word; and that all the

pictures and images which men make are but so many idols which

profane His majesty?... What shame, say I, is it not, that

such persons are not only put to death in no easy and simple

way, but are cruelly burned alive? Nevertheless, there is one

living among you who calls Jesus Christ an idol; who would

destroy the foundations of the faith; who condemns the baptism

of little children, and calls the rite a diabolical invention.

Where, I pray you, is the zeal to which you make pretence;

where are your guardians and that fine hierarchy of which you

boast so much? The man I refer to has been condemned in all

the Churches you hold in such dislike, but is suffered to live

unmolested among you, to the extent of even being permitted to

print books full of such blasphemies as I must not speak of

further. He is a Spanish-Portuguese, Michael Servetus by name,

though he now calls himself Villeneuve, and practises as a

physician. He lived for some time at Lyons, and now resides at

Vienne, where the book I speak of was printed by one Balthasar

Arnoullet. That you may not think I speak of mere hearsay I

send you the first few leaves as a sample, for your assurance.

You say that our books, which contain nothing but the purity

and simplicity of Holy Scripture, infect the world; yet you

brew poisons among you which go to destroy the Scriptures

and all you hold as Christianity. I have been longer than I

thought; but the enormity of the case causes me to exceed I

need not, I imagine, go into particulars; I only pray you to

put it somewhat seriously to your conscience, and conclude for

yourself, to the end that when you appear before the Great

Judge you may not be condemned. For, to say it in a word, we

have here no subject of difference or debate, and ask but this:

That God himself may be heard. Concluding for the present, I

pray that He may give you ears to hear, and a heart to obey,

having you at all times in His holy keeping.

(Signed) GUILLAUME TRIE.

Geneva, this 26th of February [1553].

This on the face of it is no letter from one young man to another.

It is the artful production of the zealot and bigot in one, well

informed of the antecedents of the man he is denouncing, and but poorly

disguised by the name under which he is writing. The letter from first

to last is Calvin’s, and was accompanied by the two first leaves of

the newly printed book, the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ containing the

title and table of contents, sufficient, as Calvin knew full well, to

alarm the hierarchs of Papal Christianity, which in their estimation

needed no restoration, and was indeed susceptible of none; whilst any

discussion of such transcendental topics as the Trinity, Faith in

Christ, Regeneration, Baptism, and the Reign of Antichrist, smacked at

best of schism when undertaken by a layman even of orthodox views, but

became flat blasphemy when treated by such a one in any adverse sense.

Cardinal Tournon, at this time Archbishop of Lyons, was the implacable

enemy of all innovators, and in his zeal for what he believed to be

the truth well disposed to resort to the severest measures against

the spread of heresy, which to him and his co-religionists, then as

now, was most especially embodied in the principles of Luther and

Calvin’s Reformation. Exposed as were the south and east of France from

their contiguity with Switzerland to infection of the kind, Tournon

had not relied exclusively on himself and his own subordinate clergy

as watchers over the faith of the district under his charge. He had

further summoned to his aid one of the regularly trained inquisitors

from Rome, Matthew Ory by name, who designated himself: _Pénitencier du

Saint Siége Apostolique, et Inquisiteur général du Royaume de France et

dans toutes les Gaules_. This man, as we may imagine, had a real relish

for his calling and was watchfulness itself in ferreting out heresy,

as, with all of his kind, he was relentless in pursuing it to the death.

The notable letter of Trie to Arneys was immediately brought under the

notice of the clergy of Lyons, as Calvin intended and foresaw that it

would be; and by one of them, was communicated to Ory, the Inquisitor,

and to Bautier, Vicar-General, and Canon of the Cathedral Church of

Lyons. Here was work of more than common interest to the Inquisitor,

who proceeded forthwith, under date of March 12, 1553, to write to

Villars, Auditor of Cardinal Tournon, absent at the moment from Lyons,

but no farther away than his Château of Roussillon, a few miles distant

from Vienne.

The letter of Ory is highly characteristic of the jesuitical, stealthy,

and underhand style of dealing with all that belongs to free thought

and open speech. Premising a few sentences on indifferent and private

matters, he comes anon to the real gist of his letter and says: ‘I

would advise you in all secrecy of some books that are now being

imprinted at Vienne, containing execrable blasphemies against the

divinity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity, the author and printer

of which are both living among you. The Vicar-General and I have seen

one of the chapters of this publication, and are of like mind about

the propriety of your taking an early opportunity of conferring with

Monseigneur (the Cardinal) and making him more particularly acquainted

with the business; so that on your return home the necessary orders may

be given by Monseigneur to M. Maugiron, the Vibailly of Vienne, and

the police. So much at this time M. the Vicar-General desires that you

should know through me; but you are to proceed so secretly that your

left hand shall not know what your right is about--_mais si secrètement

que vostre main senextre n’entend point ce que c’est_. Only whisper

in the ear of Monseigneur and inform us if he has any knowledge of a

certain Villeneufve, a physician, and one Arnoullet, a bookseller, both

of Vienne, for it is to them that I refer.’

On the following day the Vicar Bautier left Lyons for Roussillon and

saw the Cardinal, who immediately sent a letter to Louis Arzelier,

Grand Vicar of the See of Vienne, summoning him to Roussillon.

After a long conference, Arzelier was ordered to return to Vienne

and deliver an autograph letter from the Cardinal to M. de Maugiron,

Lieutenant-General of Dauphiny, in which however there is nothing

said of the affair he has at heart (for this he will only trust to be

communicated by word of mouth by M. the Vicar to M. the Lieutenant);

but appealing to the known zeal of his correspondent for the honour of

God and his church, and adding, in anticipation of what he knew would

follow, a request that he should immediately summon the Vibailly to his

assistance, in order that he, on his part, might undertake what M. the

Vicar might see necessary to be done. Two things only are especially

to be required of the Vibailly: the one that he use extreme dispatch,

the other that the business be kept as secret as possible. Roussillon,

March 15, 1553.

Acting at once on the advice of the Cardinal, Maugiron sent to

the Vibailly, bidding him hold himself ready to act in a certain

unspecified contingency. Next day, March 16, the two Vicars in company

with the Vibailly proceeded to the office of the Sieur Peyrolles, Lay

official of the Primate, before whom Bautier, as the party immediately

interested in virtue of his office, made a deposition to the effect

that within the last few days letters had been received from Geneva

addressed to a personage resident in Lyons, in which great surprise

was expressed that a certain Michael Servetus, otherwise called

Villanovanus, should be then living unmolested at Vienne; that four

printed leaves of a book written by the said Villanovanus had also been

forwarded from Geneva and examined by brother Ory, Inquisitor of the

Faith, by whom they had been found heretical; and, to conclude, that

the Cardinal Archbishop, having been made acquainted with the matter,

had written to M. de Maugiron requesting him to take cognizance of the

business with all secrecy and dispatch. Bautier, at the same time, put

in the Geneva letter of Trie, and the four leaves of the printed book

entitled ‘_Christianismi Restitutio_,’ in support of his allegations;

the letter of the Inquisitor and that of the Cardinal to Maugiron being

added as further documents on which the Procurator of the King and the

Justiciary were to proceed.

The judicial authorities of Vienne lost no time in obeying their

instructions. On the same day they met at the house of M. Maugiron,

and having consulted with him, they sent to M. Michel de Villeneuve,

desiring his presence and saying they had something to communicate to

him. Being from home when the message arrived, and not appearing for a

couple of hours, the authorities were fearful that he had been somehow

warned of the danger which threatened him and so had fled; but their

fears were unfounded: he came at length, and with a perfectly confident

air, it is said. The authorities informed him that they had certain

informations against him which would make it necessary for them to

visit and search his lodgings for books or papers of a heretical

tendency. Villeneuve replied that he had lived long at Vienne on good

terms with the clergy and professors of theology, and had never until

now been suspected of heresy; but he was quite ready to open his rooms

to them or those they might delegate, to make what search they pleased.

The Grand Vicar and the Vibailly, accompanied by the Secretary of the

Cardinal Governor of Dauphiny, then proceeded with Villeneuve to his

apartments, which adjoined and were among the dependencies of the

archiepiscopal palace, and made a particular examination of his papers;

but they found nothing more compromising than a couple of copies of his

apology or pamphlet against the Parisian Doctors, of which they took

possession.

Next day, the 17th, the Judges made a perquisition in the house of

Arnoullet, the publisher and printer, in his absence, he being away

at the time on business at Toulouse; and there also they had Geroult,

the superintendent of the printing establishment, brought before them.

After a lengthened interrogatory of the foreman, in which nothing was

elicited, they proceeded to search the house and printing office,

examining Arnoullet’s papers minutely, but without finding a word

to compromise him in any way. The workmen on the establishment were

then severally examined. They were shown the printed leaves of the

‘Christianismi Restitutio’ and asked if they knew anything of the

book of which the leaves were a part; or if they recognised the type,

or could give any information as to the books they had had a hand in

composing or printing during the last eighteen months or so. But they

all agreed in saying that the four leaves shown them had not been

printed in the office; and among all the books that had issued from

their presses during the last two years, a list of which was supplied,

there was not one in the octavo form. The search and inquiry over, the

officials had the entire staff of the printing establishment brought

into their presence, and cautioned them against saying a word of all

they had been asked about, on pain of being declared suspected or even

convicted of heresy and punished accordingly.

On the 18th, Arnoullet, having but just returned from Toulouse, was

visited and examined; but all the papers about him being found in

order and his replies in complete conformity with those of his manager

Geroult, he too was dismissed. The authorities found themselves at

fault, but by no means satisfied that the information they had had

from Geneva was groundless. An adjournment was therefore resolved

on, an informal consultation being, however, held meantime at the

archiepiscopal palace of Vienne. And it is not perhaps without

significance that it is only now that we find the archbishop of

Vienne, Pierre Paumier, named in connection with the proceedings, and

his palace spoken of as the place of assembly. It was at this moment

in fact that Paumier had the first intimation of what was going

on. At the meeting it was decided that nothing had been discovered

sufficiently positive to warrant the arrest of anyone.

The archbishop of Vienne, once made a party to the proceedings, appears

to have taken up the case warmly. The known protector and frequent

associate of Villeneuve the physician, he seems to have thought it

incumbent on him to show the world that he had no sympathy with heresy,

and nothing in common with a suspected heretic. He accordingly wrote

immediately to Brother Ory, the Inquisitor, begging him to come to

Vienne and have some conversation with him on matters touching the

Faith. In the course of the interview which followed, Ory suggested

that, in order to have further or more satisfactory information against

Villeneuve, Arneys should be made to write again to his relation Trie

at Geneva, and ask him to send the whole of the printed book from which

the leaves already forwarded had been cut. Returning to Lyons, Ory

himself, we must presume, dictated the letter which Arneys was required

to write to his cousin Trie. This epistle unhappily has not reached

us. It would have been both curious and interesting to have had the

Inquisitor of three centuries and a half ago brought so immediately

before us, as we should there have had him. But as Ory doubtless led

the pen at Lyons, so did Calvin assuredly guide it again at Geneva

in reply; and as his letter has been preserved, we come face to face

with one who is still more interesting to us than brother Matthew

Ory, Inquisitor of the kingdom of France and all the Gauls--with the

great head of the Reformed Churches of France and Switzerland, at the

zenith of his power, though not without misgivings as to its stability,

zealous as brother Ory could have been in upholding the Faith as he

apprehended it, and as ruthless as Cardinal Tournon in dealing with all

who called it in question. The letter is to the following effect:--

Monsieur mon Cousin!--When I wrote the letter you have thought

fit to impart to those who are taxed therein with indifference

and neglect, I thought not that the matter would be taken up

so seriously as it seems to be. My sole purpose was to show

you the fine zeal and devotion of those who call themselves

pillars of the Church, suffering as they do such disorder

among themselves, yet persecuting so cruelly poor Christians

who only desire to obey God in simplicity. As the instance was

so notable, however, and I was advised of it, an opportunity

presented itself, as I thought, of touching on it, the matter

falling, as it seemed, fairly within the scope of my writing.

But as you have shown to others the letter I meant for yourself

alone, God grant that it tend to purge Christianity of such

filth, of pestilence so mortal to man! If your people are

really so anxious to look into the matter as you say, there

will be no difficulty in furnishing you, besides the printed

book you ask for, with documents enough to carry conviction to

their minds. For I shall put into your hands some two dozen

pieces written by him who is in question, in which some of his

heresies are set prominently forth. Did you rely on the printed

book by itself, he might deny it as his; but this he could not

do if his own handwriting were brought against him. In this

way, the parties you speak of, having the thing completely

proven, will be without excuse if they hesitate further, or

put off taking the steps required. All the pieces I send you

now--the great volume as well as the letters in the handwriting

of the author--were produced before the printed work; but I

have to own to you that I had great difficulty in getting these

documents from Mons. Calvin. Not that he would not have such

execrable blasphemies put down; but that, as he does not wield

the sword of justice himself, he thinks it his duty rather to

repress heresy by sound teaching, than to pursue it by force.

I importuned him, however, so much, showing him the reproaches

I might incur did he not come to my aid, that he consented at

length to entrust me with the contents of my parcel to you.

For the rest, I hope, when the case shall have been somewhat

farther advanced, to obtain from him something like a whole

ream of paper, which the fine fellow--_le Galand_--has had

printed. At the moment, I fancy you are furnished with evidence

enough, and that there need be no more beating about the bush,

before seizing on his person and putting him on his trial. For

my own part, I pray God to open the eyes of those who speak of

us so evilly, to the end that they may more truly judge of the

motives by which we are actuated.

As I learn by your letter that you will not trouble me further

with the old proposals, I, on my side, will do nothing to

displease you; hoping nevertheless, that God will lead you to

see that I have not, without due consideration, taken the step

you disapprove. Recommending myself to your favour, and praying

God to give you his, &c., I remain,

(Signed) GUILLAUME TRIE.

Geneva, this 26th of March.

The art and purpose so plainly to be seen in the foregoing letter need

not be dwelt on. Anxious to escape appearing in the odious light of

informer, Calvin was still eager to furnish the zealots of the Church

he had quitted himself, and by the heads of which he was looked on

as standing in the foremost ranks of heresy, with evidence which he

believed would assuredly bring the man he held in despite to a cruel

death by fire. But Ory, whose special business was the prosecution

of heretics, and who knew much better than Calvin what constituted

evidence against them, was aware that the MS. book and the two dozen

pieces, written as said by Michael Servetus, were not adequate to

convict Michel Villeneuve of the charge against him. Handwriting,

it seems, could be put out of court as evidence in cases of heresy,

through simple denial on oath by the party accused. The point upon

which evidence was particularly required, by Ory and his coadjutors,

was in fact the _printing_ of the book entitled the ‘Restoration of

Christianity;’ and none of the pieces furnished gave any assurance

either that Michel Villeneuve was the writer, or Arnoullet and Geroult

the printers of this. Arneys must therefore be desired to write to

Cousin Trie once more, and ask him to do his best with M. Calvin to

furnish evidence of the kind required. So anxious indeed were Ory and

his friends for this, that they despatched this, the third letter of

Arneys to Trie, by a special messenger, who was ordered to wait and

bring back the answer with all speed.

The answer came in due course, hardly, however, so soon as we can

fancy it was looked for, but to the following effect:--

Monsieur mon Cousin!--I had hoped I should satisfy your

demands, in essentials at least, by sending you, as I did, the

handwriting of the author of the book. With my last letter,

indeed, you will find an acknowledgement by the man himself

of his real name, which he had disguised, and the excuse he

makes for calling himself Villeneuve, when his proper name is

Servetus or Revés. For the rest, I promise you, God willing,

to furnish you, if need be, not only with the entire book he

has just had printed, but with another in his handwriting, in

addition to the letters [already forwarded]. I should indeed

have already sent the book [in MS.] which I refer to, had it

been in this city; but it has been at Lausanne these two years

past. Had M. Calvin kept it by him, I believe he would long

ago, for all it is worth, have returned it to the writer; but

having lent it for perusal to another, it was, as it seems,

retained by him. I have formerly heard Monsieur [Calvin] say

that, having given answers sufficient to satisfy any reasonable

man, to no purpose, he had at length left off reading more of

the babble and foolish reveries, of which he soon had had more

than enough, there being nothing but reiteration of the same

song over and over again. And that you may understand that

it is not of yesterday that this unhappy person persists in

troubling the Church, striving ever to lead the ignorant into

the same confusion as himself, it is now more than twenty-four

years since he was rejected and expelled by the chief Churches

of Germany; had he remained in that country, indeed, he would

never have left it alive. Among the letters of Œcolampadius,

you will see that the first and second are addressed to him

under his proper name and designation: _Serveto Hispano

neganti Christum esse Dei Filium, consubstantialem Patri_--To

Servetus the Spaniard, denying that Christ is the Son of God,

consubstantial with the Father. Melanchthon also speaks of

him in some passages of his writings. But methinks you have

really warrant enough in what is already sent you to dive

deeper into the matter, and to put him on his trial. As to the

printers of the book, I did not send you the table of contents

as any proof that Balthasar Arnoullet and William Geroult, his

brother-in-law, were the parties; but of the fact that they

were so we are well assured, nor indeed will it be possible for

them to deny it. The printing was probably done at the author’s

expense, and he may have taken the impression into his own

keeping; he must have done so, indeed, if you find it has left

the premises of the persons named. I rather think I omitted to

say that when you have done with the epistles, I beg you will

be good enough to return them to me. And now, commending myself

to your good grace, and praying God so to guide you that you

may do all that is agreeable in his sight,

I am yours, &c.,

GUILLAUME TRIE.

Geneva, this last day of March, 1553.

It must still be needless to say that neither is this any letter of

young Trie. What could he have known of the printed works of Michael

Serveto, alias Revés, or of his being condemned by the Churches of

Germany--which by the way he never was--or of his expulsion from that

country--which is also against the fact? What intimation could he have

had that Œcolampadius had written to Servetus, the Spaniard, combating

his heresies and that Melanchthon had mentioned him in sundry passages

of his work, the ‘Loci communes’? Calvin, on the other hand, was not

only well informed of much that had happened to Michael Servetus from

the date of their meeting in Paris in 1534, even to the hour in which

he was now writing by the hand of William Trie, but was himself the

author of some of the statements put into the mouth of that worthy.[64]

CHAPTER XX.

ARREST OF SERVETUS AND ARNOULLET, THE PUBLISHER.--THE TRIAL FOR HERESY

AT VIENNE--SERVETUS IS SUFFERED TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON.

April 4. After the receipt of Trie’s third epistle, a solemn council

was convened within the Archiepiscopal Château of Roussillon, at which

were present the Cardinal Tournon, the Archbishop of Vienne, the two

Grand Vicars, the Inquisitor Ory, and many Ecclesiastics and Doctors

in Divinity. There and then the letters of Trie, the printed leaves of

the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ and more than twenty epistles addressed

to John Calvin, were examined with every care and attention, all being

reported the work of Michael Servetus, alias Revés, living at Vienne

under the assumed name of Michel Villeneuve. The documents being held

of the most seriously compromising character, the Cardinal Archbishop

of Lyons and the Archbishop of Vienne, with the concurrence of the

whole assembly, now gave orders for the arrest of Michel Villeneuve,

Physician, and Balthasar Arnoullet, bookseller, to answer for their

faith on certain charges and informations to be laid against them.

The Archbishop of Vienne returned home in the afternoon in company

with his Grand Vicar, Arzelier, and having summoned the Vibailly de la

Cour to the Palace, informed him of the resolutions come to and the

pleasure of the Cardinal. In order that nothing might transpire, and no

understanding be come to between the parties incriminated, the Vicar

and Vibailly agreed so to arrange matters that Villeneuve and Arnoullet

should be arrested at the same moment, but imprisoned separately. The

Vibailly accordingly proceeded to the house of Arnoullet, and having

sent in a message desiring him to bring a copy of the New Testament

but just printed, Arnoullet was arrested on the spot, and carried off

to the Archiepiscopal prison. Proceeding next to the house of M. de

Maugiron, the Lieutenant-Governor of Dauphiny, then indisposed, and

on whom it was known that Doctor Villeneuve was in attendance, the

Vibailly informed the Doctor that there were several prisoners sick

and some wounded in the hospital of the royal prison who required

his services, as was indeed the case. Doctor Villeneuve replied that

independently of his profession making it imperative on him immediately

to obey such a summons, he still took pleasure in being so usefully

employed. He therefore went at once; and whilst engaged in his visit,

the Vibailly sent requesting the presence of the Grand Vicar. On his

arrival Villeneuve was informed that certain charges having been made

and informations laid against him, he must consent to hold himself a

prisoner until he had given satisfactory answers to the questions that

would be put to him. The gaoler, Anton Bonin, was then summoned and

enjoined to guard the prisoner strictly, but to treat him respectfully,

according to his quality. He was to be allowed his personal attendant

or valet, Benoît Perrin, a lad fifteen years of age, to wait on him;

and his friends were to have free access to him.

April 5. Archbishop Paumier now hastened to inform Brother Ory, the

inquisitor, that they had Villeneuve in custody, and begged him to come

immediately to Vienne. Ory, like a vulture swooping on the carcass,

is said to have made such haste--_pressa tellement sa monture_--that

he arrived in an incredibly short space of time at Vienne. As it was

then about the hour of the midday meal, however, the Archbishop and

he, thinking it well to recruit the inward man before entering on

the serious business they had on hand, sate themselves quietly down

to table and dined. The cravings of nature satisfied, Arzelier the

Vicar-General, and De la Cour the Vibailly of Vienne, were summoned

to the Palace--the secular in aid of the spiritual arm--and the party

proceeded to the prison.

Having had Michel Villeneuve, sworn physician, and now prisoner at

their instance, brought before them in the Criminal Court of the

Palace, they proceeded to question him on matters of which they at the

moment knew more than he, though we may well believe his fears pointed

in the true direction. Informing the prisoner, as a preliminary, that

he was bound to answer truthfully to the interrogatories put to him,

which he promised to do, he was then sworn on the Gospels and asked his

name, his age, his place of birth, and his profession.

His name, he replied, was Michel Villeneuve, doctor in medicine,

forty-four years of age, and a native of Tudela, in the kingdom of

Navarre, residing for the present, as he had done during the last

twelve years or thereabouts, at Vienne.

Asked where and in what places he had lived since he left his native

country; he said that some seven or eight and twenty years ago, before

the Emperor Charles V. left Spain for Italy, in view of his coronation,

he had entered the service of brother John Quintana, the Confessor of

the Emperor, being then no more than fifteen or sixteen years old; that

he had gone to Italy in the suite of the Emperor, and been present

at his coronation at Bologna. That he then accompanied Quintana to

Germany, in which country he resided for about a year, when his patron

died; since which time he had lived without a master, first at Paris,

having had lodgings in the Collége de Calvi, and then in the Collége

des Lombards, engaged in the study of Mathematics. From Paris he had

gone to Lyons, and spent some time between that city and Avignon, but

had finally settled at Charlieu, where, having lived practising his

profession, for about three years, he had finally been induced by

Messeigneurs the Archbishop of Vienne and the Archbishop of Maurice,

to quit Charlieu and establish himself at Vienne, in which city, as

said, he had lived since then to the present time.

Asked whether he had not had several books printed for him? he replied

that at Paris he had a book printed, the title of which was: _Syruporum

universa ratio ad Galeni censuram disposita_--a treatise on Syrups

according to the principles of Galen; and a pamphlet entitled: _In

Leonartum Fussinum, Apologia pro Symphoriano Campeggio_--an apologetic

address to Leonard Fuchs for Symphorian Campeccius. He had further

edited and annotated the ‘Geography of Ptolemy.’ Other than these,

the works now named, he had written none, nor had he had any others

printed for him; but he admitted that he had corrected the text of many

more, without adding to them anything of his own, or taking from them

anything of their writers.

Being now shown two sheets of paper, printed on both sides and having

marginal annotations in writing, and admonished that the matter of the

writing might bring him into trouble, he was informed, further, that

he, if he were the writer, might be able to explain or to say in what

sense he understood what was there set down. One of the propositions in

the writing was particularly pointed out to this effect: _Justificantur

ergo Parvuli sine Christi fide, prodigium, monstrum dæmonum!_--Infants

therefore are justified without faith in Christ, a prodigy, a portent

of devils! and he was informed that if he understood the words to

say that infants had not by their regeneration [through baptism,

understood] received the perfect grace of Christ and so were acquitted

of Adam’s sin, this would be to contemn Christ. He was therefore

required to declare how he understood the words. He replied that he

firmly believed that the grace of Christ, imparted by baptism, overcame

the sin of Adam, as St. Paul declares (Rom. v.): ‘Where sin abounds

there doth grace more abound;’ and that infants are saved without faith

acquired, but through faith then infused by the Holy Ghost.

Having shown him how necessary it was that he should alter several

words in the written matter, he promised to do so, saying however that

he was not prepared at a moment’s notice to say whether the writing was

his or not. It was very long, indeed, since he had written anything.

On examining the character particularly, however, he now thinks it

must be his. In all that concerns the faith he yet begs to say that

he submits himself entirely to his holy mother the Church, from whose

teachings he has never wished to swerve. If there be some things in

the papers before the Court open to objection, he believes he must

have written them inconsiderately, or only advanced them as subjects

for discussion. He then goes on to say that, having now looked closely

at the writing on the two leaves, he acknowledges it as his, having

the opportunity at the same time of explaining the sense in which he

would have it understood. If there were anything else, he concluded,

that was found objectionable or that savoured of false doctrine, he

was ready on having it pointed out to him to alter and amend it. The

two leaves paged from 421 to 424, and treating of baptism,[65] were

then ordered to be marked by the clerk of the Court, and with the other

papers produced, to be taken under his charge; after which the sitting

was suspended.

April 6. Sworn as before upon the Gospels to speak the truth (and from

what we know and have just seen feeling assured how indifferently he

had hitherto kept his word), Villeneuve was further interrogated as

follows: 1st. How he understands a proposition in an epistle numbered

xv., wherein the Living Faith and the Dead Faith are treated of in

terms that seem perfectly Catholic, and wholly opposed to the errors

of Geneva, the words being these, _Mori autem sensim dicitur in nobis

Fides quando tolluntur vestimenta_--now faith dies perceptibly in us

when its vestments are thrown off? To this he answered that he believed

the vestments of faith to be works of charity and mercy. 2nd. Shown

another epistle, numbered xvi., on Free will, in opposition to those

who hold that the will is not free, he is asked how he understands

what is there said? With tears in his eyes he replies, ‘Sirs, these

letters were written when I was in Germany, now some five and twenty

years ago, when there was printed in that country a book by a certain

Servetus, a Spaniard; but from what part of Spain I know not, neither

do I know in what part of Germany he dwelt, though I have heard say

that it was at Agnon (Hagenau in Elsass), four leagues from Strasburg,

that the book in question was printed. Having read it when I was very

young--not more than fifteen or sixteen--I thought that the writer said

many things that were good, that were better treated by him, indeed,

than by others.’ Quitting Germany for France, without taking any books

with him, Villeneuve went on to say, that he had gone to Paris with a

view to study mathematics and medicine, and had lived there, as already

said, for some years. Whilst residing there, having heard Monsieur

Calvin spoken of as a learned man, he had, out of curiosity, and

without knowing him personally, entered into correspondence with him,

but begged him to hold his letters as private and confidential--_sub

sigillo secreti_. ‘I, on my part,’ he proceeds, ‘seeking brotherly

correction, as it were, but saying that if he could not wean me from

my opinions or I wean him from his, I should not feel myself bound to

accept his conclusions. On which I proposed certain weighty questions

for discussion. He replied to me shortly after, and seeing that my

questions were to the same effect as those discussed by Servetus,

he said that I must myself be Servetus. To this I answered that,

though I was not Servetus, nevertheless, and that I might continue

the discussion, I was content for the time to personate Servetus, and

should reply, as I believed he would have done, not caring for what he

might please to think of me, but only that we might debate our views

and opinions with freedom. With this understanding we interchanged

many letters, but finally fell out, got angry, and began to abuse each

other. Matters having come to this pass, I ceased writing, and for ten

years or so I have neither heard from him nor he from me. And here,

gentlemen, I protest before God and before you all, that I had no

will to dogmatise, or to substitute aught of mine that might be found

adverse to the Church or the Christian Religion.’

The prisoner being shown a third epistle numbered xvii., on the Baptism

of Infants, in which he says, ‘_Parvuli carnis non sunt capaces doni

Spiritus_--Infants as mere carnal beings are incapable of receiving the

gift of the Spirit,’--was desired to say in what sense he meant these

words to be taken. He answered that he had formerly been of opinion

that infants were incompetent in the matter, as stated; but that he had

long given up such an opinion and now desired to range himself with the

teaching of the Church. Shown a fourth epistle, numbered xviii., its

heading or argument being, ‘Of the Trinity, and the Generation of the

Son of God, according to Servetus,’ he acknowledged it as having been

written by him in the course of his discussion with Calvin, when he was

assuming the part of Servetus; but as he had said of the former letter,

No. xvii., so he says of this, that he does not now believe what is

there set down, everything in the letter having only been propounded

to learn what Calvin might have to advance in opposition to the views

set forth. A fifth letter, the burden of which is, ‘Of the glorified

flesh of Christ absorbed in the Glory of the Deity more fully than it

was at the Transfiguration,’ being handed to him, he said that when he

addressed his correspondent on this subject, he felt at greater liberty

than usual to say all he thought of it individually, and was now ready

to answer any question put to him bearing upon it. None, however, were

asked.

But the letters to Calvin were not yet done with. A whole bundle of

them, fourteen in number, was exhibited, and the prisoner informed

that the judges found much matter there for which very particular

answers would be required. Having looked at the letters, the prisoner

said he saw that they were all addressed to Calvin long ago, and with

a view to learn from him what he thought of the questions raised, as

already said. But he added that he was by no means now disposed to

abide by all he had written of old, save and except in respect of

such views as might be approved by the Church and his Judges. He was

therefore ready to answer to each particular head on which he might be

interrogated. This the Judges proposed to do at their next meeting,

and meantime having ordered a schedule of the principal points upon

which there appeared to be error against the faith to be drawn up from

the writings, all the documents being duly labelled and signed, the

session was suspended until the morrow.

Immediately after the second interrogatory to which he was subjected,

Servetus on his return to prison sent his servant Perrin to the

Monastery of St. Pierre to ask the Grand Prior if he had received the

300 crowns owing to him--Villeneuve by M. St. André. The money having

been received, was remitted by the hands of Perrin to his master. Had

Servetus put off his message to the Prior but for an hour, he would

have lost his money, the Inquisitor Ory having given fresh orders to

the gaoler to guard M. Villeneuve very strictly, and to suffer him to

see and have speech of no one without his--the Inquisitor’s express

permission. Ory, we may presume, had not only no favour for Servetus,

but, with so much against him as already appeared, could have had

little doubt of bringing conviction home to him and so having him sent

in smoke as an acceptable sacrifice to heaven. But Villeneuve had

friends among his other judges who were every way disposed to aid him,

if it were possible. Matters certainly looked very black indeed: Michel

Villeneuve was plainly Michael Servetus of evil theological reputation;

flagrant heresy was already manifest in the documents produced, and

his answers to the interrogatories were so little satisfactory that

acquittal from the charges laid against him, even at the outset of

the process, seemed out of the question. The judges, however, were

not all Brother Orys nor Cardinal Tournons, though most of them

were churchmen, and, to their honour, both tolerant and merciful in

circumstances where their creed prescribed intolerance and deadening of

the heart to pity. Servetus had however to be sent back to his prison;

but the door of the cage might be left open and the bird allowed to

fly. And everything leads to the conclusion that this was exactly what

was done.

Connected with the prison there was a garden having a raised terrace

looking on to the court of the palace of justice; and, abutting on the

garden wall, a shed, by the roof of which and a projecting buttress

on the other side a descent into the court-yard of the palace could

easily be made. The garden as a rule was kept shut, but prisoners

above the common in station were permitted to use it for exercise and

also for occasions of nature. Having enjoyed this privilege from the

first, Servetus appears to have scrutinised everything in the afternoon

of April 6, after the conclusion of his second examination. On the

morning of the seventh he rose at four o’clock and asked the gaoler,

whom he found afoot and going out to tend his vines, for the key of the

garden. The man, seeing his prisoner in velvet cap and dressing-gown,

not aware that he was completely dressed and had his hat under his

robe de chambre, gave him the key and went out shortly afterwards to

his work. Servetus, on his part, when he thought the coast must be

clear, left his black velvet cap and furred dressing-gown at the foot

of a tree, leaped from the terrace on to the roof of the outhouse and

from that, without breaking any bones, gained the open court of the

Palais de Justice Dauphinal. Thence he made for the gate of the Pont

du Rhône, which was at no great distance from the prison and passed

into the Lyonnais--these latter facts being by and by deposed to by a

peasant woman who had met him. Two hours or more elapsed before his

escape became known in the prison, the gaoler’s wife having been the

first to discover it. She in her zeal and alarm committed a hundred

extravagances; and in her vexation tore her hair, beat her children,

her servants, and some of the prisoners who chanced to come in her

way. Her rage that anyone should have had the audacity to break the

dauphinal prison of Vienne, of which her husband was custodier, was

such, that she even ran the risk of her life by clambering to the

roof of a neighbouring house, in her eagerness to find traces of the

fugitive.

The authorities, informed of what had happened, did all that became

them, ordering the gates of the town to be shut and more carefully

guarded than usual through the next few days and nights. Proclamation

was made by sound of trumpet and beat of drum, and almost every house

not only of the town, but of the neighbouring villages, was visited.

The magistrates of Lyons and other towns, in which it was thought

probable their late prisoner might have taken refuge, were written to

by the Vienne authorities and inquiries made whether or not he had

money in the bank, or had drawn out any he might have had there.

His apartments were again visited, and all his papers, furniture and

effects inventoried and put under the seal of justice.

In the town of Vienne it was generally thought that the Vibailly De la

Cour had been the active party in favouring the evasion of Villeneuve.

He was known to be intimate with the doctor, who had lately carried

his daughter successfully through a long and dangerous illness, and

had been loud in praise of the skill and devotion that had been shown

with so happy a result. Chorier,[66] the historian of Dauphiny, hints

guardedly at something of the kind when he speaks of the imprisonment

of M. Villeneuve on religious grounds. ‘It fell out,’ says Chorier,

‘that by his own ingenuity and the assistance of his friends, M.

Villeneuve escaped from confinement.’

In the record of proceedings after the flight the only thing mentioned

is the fact of the gaoler having given the prisoner the key of the

garden; on all else there is absolute silence; whence, as D’Artigny

says, we may infer that there is mystery of some sort connected with

the escape. We, for our part, should have no difficulty in finding a

key to the mystery, had there been fewer grounds for the presumption of

friendly connivance than there undoubtedly were in the business. John

Calvin, arch-heretic in the eyes of the Gallic Church and its heads,

could not, we must presume, have been held in the highest possible

esteem by the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, to say nothing of brother

Mathias Ory, Inquisitor of the king of France and all the Gauls. But

the arrest of Villeneuve and the proceedings against him thus far, had

depended entirely on information supplied by the Reformer of Geneva.

The managers of the process against Servetus were men much too astute,

much too clear-sighted not to see that it was John Calvin who was

writing under the mask of William Trie; and one among them at least may

have known that the state of feeling between the Reformer of Geneva

and the Physician of Vienne had long been such that he of Geneva might

not be indisposed to make use of them to wreak his vengeance against a

personal enemy under the guise of a common heretic. The Judges indeed

must all have seen from the letters of Villeneuve to Calvin that the

two men were at daggers-drawn, and that the provocation on either part

was neither new nor slight, but of long standing, and, judging by his

present attitude, on Calvin’s side deadly. We can fancy brother Mathias

Ory chuckling over the sweet simplicity of the Viennese mediciner’s

sorry subterfuge in pretending to enact the part of ‘Servetus the

Spaniard, though he was no such personage, and knew nothing of the

place in Spain where he was born!’

The authorities of Vienne, however, had no desire to have their friend

Villeneuve burned alive for heresy on testimony gratuitously supplied

by the arch-heretic of Geneva, and thereby give him, whom they hated

and feared far more than a thousand lay schismatics, a triumph not only

over an enemy, but over themselves, for their lack of insight and zeal

as guardians of the only saving faith. And then, and in addition to all

this, there was Monseigneur Paumier to be considered--Paumier, under

whose patronage Villeneuve had settled at Vienne and lived so long in

the very shadow of the archiepiscopal palace, on terms of intimacy with

its distinguished occupant. How should the great man escape suspicion

of heresy himself if it were known that he had been living as a friend

with one who held all the most holy mysteries of the Roman Religion

as mere vanities or inventions of the Devil! The man had lived, it is

true, long and peaceably among them, respected in his life and trusted

in his calling; and if Calvin found heresy and to spare in his writings

against the tenets which he as well as they held in common, they

discovered outpourings enough there against Predestination and Election

by the Grace of God, Effectual calling, Justification by Faith, and the

rest, that formed the groundwork of the objectionable doctrines both of

Luther and Calvin. If M. the Vibailly De la Cour connived at the escape

of Villeneuve, and that he did there can hardly be a doubt, we may be

well assured that he acted with the concurrence of his more immediate

associates in the administration of justice--lay and clerical. The

Vibailly remained unchallenged in his office; the gaoler was not

dismissed, and Arnoullet the printer, for the present at least, was

set at liberty. Nothing of all this could have happened had Justice

not consented to be hoodwinked. The gaoler’s wife, in fact, seems to

have been the only person in downright earnest in the business of the

escape.

CHAPTER XXI.

DISCOVERY OF ARNOULLET’S PRIVATE PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT--SEIZURE AND

BURNING OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO’ ALONG WITH THE EFFIGY OF ITS

AUTHOR.

The remainder of the month of April was spent in making a renewed

and more particular examination of the books, papers, and letters of

Villeneuve, and in having copies made of the letters addressed to

Calvin, the originals of which were placed for safe custody under the

official seals. And here, if our surmises be well founded: that the

authorities of Vienne had really no wish, on testimony supplied by

Calvin, to convict of heresy a man who had always comported himself as

a good Catholic and still professed himself a true son of the Church,

every way disposed to receive instruction and bow to the decisions

of those who must know so much better than himself what was the true

saving faith--the matter would probably have ended, in so far as those

of Vienne were concerned. But Ory, the Inquisitor, nowise anxious

like the others to hush up so promising an affair, had by some means

been informed in the beginning of the month of May that there had

been a couple of presses kept at work away from the proper printing

establishment of Arnoullet.

Of this significant fact, no mention had been made either by Villeneuve

or Arnoullet on their examination, and whence Ory had the intimation

we are left to conjecture. There seems hardly room for doubt, however,

that it reached him through the old channel, viz., Arneys; that Arneys

had the news he gave to Ory from Trie, and that Trie had the tale he

told from Calvin. Frelon, as we have seen, must have been in the secret

of Servetus, and Frelon was also the friend of Calvin; from Frelon

alone could Calvin have had the particular information he shows he

possessed concerning the terms on which the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’

was printed; and it was only from Calvin that Trie could have obtained

intelligence of the kind he communicates to his relative Arneys of

Lyons. The process against Servetus, as we know, began from Lyons; and

from Lyons was it now resuscitated. But who living there was so likely

to have heard of a printing press worked privately at Vienne, twelve

miles away, as he who had all he knew about the heretic Villeneuve from

Geneva, and had been the instrument in setting on foot the movement

that was now to proceed to more disastrous issues?

With the new and important hint but just received, Ory sped off to

Vienne from Lyons, his head-quarters; and he may possibly have used

even greater diligence on this occasion than he did before when he is

said to have spurred his steed so vigorously. Summoning the Vibailly

and Grand Vicar to his side, the three proceeded immediately to the

premises that had been indicated as the private printing place of

the publisher Arnoullet; and entering, sure enough, they found three

compositors at work, Straton, Du Bois, and Papillon by name. It is

not difficult to imagine the terror of these men at the sight of

such visitors. Before proceeding to interrogate them severally, the

Inquisitor took care to address them generally on the enormity of the

crime of which he assumed they had been guilty, and to say that they

deserved the severest punishment for having withheld the important

information they could have supplied. When proceedings were commenced

against their master and M. Villeneuve, he said, they must be aware

that it had been specially enjoined upon all and sundry, under pain of

being dealt with as heretics, to communicate whatever they knew about

the book, which he declared they must have known to be written by

Villeneuve and printed by their master Arnoullet. Stretching a point,

as we may imagine, he told the men further, that he had proofs in his

hands that they were the very parties who had worked at the composition

and printing of the book in question. He now, therefore, exhorted them

to speak the truth and to ask pardon if they had been guilty or hoped

for favour, the authorities he added, indeed, intending correction, not

punishment.

The workmen, terribly alarmed, fell as with one accord upon their

knees, and Straton, speaking for himself and the others, owned that

they had printed an octavo volume entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’

but were not aware that it contained heretical doctrines, being

ignorant of the Latin language in which it was written, and never

having heard that it did, until after the prosecution had been set on

foot. He informed his questioner further that he and his associates

had been steadily engaged on the book from the feast of St. Michael to

January 3 last--over three months--when the printing was completed;

yet more, that they had not dared to give information of their part

in the business for fear of being burned alive; and to conclude, they

now sought forgiveness, and threw themselves on the mercy of the

authorities. More particularly questioned, Straton said that Michel de

Villeneuve had had the book in question printed at his own expense,

and had corrected the proofs in person. To end the tale, and he may

have thought to make amends for his past silence, he said further that

on January 13 he had despatched five bales of the book to the care of

Pierre Merrin, typefounder, of Lyons.

Delighted with the great discovery just made, inasmuch as they would

now have grounds of their own to proceed upon, the three associates

hastened to communicate the information they had acquired to the

Archbishop of Vienne, who in turn imparted it to Cardinal Tournon.

Next day the Inquisitor Ory and the Grand Vicar Arzelier set off for

Lyons. Proceeding at once to the establishment of Pierre Merrin, they

questioned him as to what he knew of the business, and particularly

about certain bales, five in number, that had lately come into his

possession and were believed to contain heretical books. Merrin, having

no motive for concealment, informed his visitors that about four months

back he had received by the canal boat of Vienne five bales with the

following address: From M. Michel de Villeneuve, doctor in medicine,

these five bales, to be delivered to Pierre Merrin, typefounder, near

Notre Dame de Confort, Lyons. On the day the bales were received, he

added, a priest of Vienne, Jacques Charmier by name, had come to him

and requested him to keep the bales until called for, saying that they

contained nothing but printing-paper. From the time named, however, he

had heard nothing from the sender, neither had anyone called to enquire

after the bales or to take them away; and for his part he knew not

whether they contained white paper for printing as said, or printed

books as now alleged.

Having finished their interrogatory and seen the bales, the Inquisitor

and Vicar made no scruple about seizing them in the name of the public

authorities. Carrying them off at once, they were taken to Vienne and

deposited in a room of the Archiepiscopal palace.

The priest Charmier was of course the next person visited and

questioned. He persistently denied all knowledge of the contents of the

bales which he, as he was proceeding to Lyons, recommended to the care

of Merrin, at the request of M. Villeneuve. The mere act of the poor

priest, however, and his known intimacy with Villeneuve, were held to

have compromised him to such an extent that he was put on his trial

some time afterwards, and sentenced to imprisonment for three years!

The bales once safe in the Archiepiscopal palace of Vienne, were

speedily undone, and there, sure enough, as Straton had said, five

hundred copies of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ complete, were

displayed to the eager eyes of the lookers-on. A single copy was

abstracted and given to Ory, to enable him at his leisure to extract

and take exception to such passages as he might deem heretical; the

rest were left in safe custody under the palace roof.

Every information up to June 17--for so long had it taken to get at

the facts as they have been stated--having now been acquired, and the

proofs in the process being held complete, the Vibailly of Vienne, in

a session of the Court duly summoned, and in the absence of Michel de

Villeneuve, proceeded to pass sentence on him, finding him attainted

and convicted of the crimes and misdemeanours laid to his charge,

viz., Scandalous Heresy and Dogmatisation; Invention of New Doctrines;

Writing heretical books; Disturbance of the public peace; Rebellion

against the King; Disobedience of the ordinances touching heresy, and

Breach of the Royal Prison of Vienne. ‘For reparation of the crimes

and misdeeds set forth,’ said the Judge, ‘we condemn him, and he is

hereby condemned, to pay a fine of 1000 livres Tournois to the King

of Dauphiny; and further, as soon as he can be apprehended, to be

taken, together with his books, on a tumbril or dust-cart to the place

of public execution, and there burned alive by a slow fire until his

body is reduced to ashes.’ The sentence now delivered, moreover, is

ordered to be carried out forthwith on an effigy of the incriminated

Villeneuve, which is to be publicly burned along with the five bales

of the book in question, the fugitive being further condemned to

pay the charges of justice, his goods and chattels being seized and

confiscated, to the advantage of anyone showing just claims to the

proceeds, the fine and expenses of the trial, as aforesaid, having been

first duly discharged.

On the same day about noon the effigy of Villeneuve, made by the

executioner of the High Court of Justice, having been put upon a

tumbril along with the bales of the book, was paraded through the

streets of Vienne, brought to the place of public execution, hanged

upon a gibbet erected for the purpose, and finally set fire to, and

with the five bales burned to ashes.

The matter, however, did not rest here; it was not yet concluded in

all its parts. The secular arm had done what was required of it,

having burned the criminal in effigy, failing his person, along with

his heretical book; but the ecclesiastical authorities must also

have their say in the case. When the utterance came, and it came not

until six months after the civil trial and sham execution, it was in

every particular confirmatory of the sentence already delivered, the

grounds of the decision however being gone into with greater minuteness

than before. Among other matters particularly mentioned now, are

the marginal notes in the handwriting of the culprit on two printed

leaves, cut out of a copy of Calvin’s ‘Institutions;’ Seventeen letters

addressed to John Calvin and acknowledged by Villeneuve to be from

him; his answers to the Inquisitor Ory, the Vibailly, and the rest,

and the minutes which had been made of his escape from the prison;

finally, his books, one entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ and

another in two parts: ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus, Libri septem,’ and ‘De

Trinitate, Dialogi duo.’ ‘From all that has been brought to light,’ the

judgment proceeds, ‘it is made manifest that the said Villeneuve is a

most egregious heretic, and as such is hereby adjudged, convicted and

condemned, his body to be burned, and his goods to be confiscated, the

judicial expenses incurred and yet to be incurred to be defrayed out

of the proceeds of the sale.’ All the books written by Villeneuve are

further ordered to be diligently searched for, and wherever found, to

be seized and burned.

It is not unimportant to notice that Arnoullet, the publisher and

printer, is associated with Servetus in this ecclesiastical judgment.

‘The said Villeneuve and Balthazar Arnoullet are attainted and to

be held conjoined in the sentence because of their complicity and

connection.’ Arnoullet however was more mercifully dealt with than

Villeneuve; he was not condemned to be burned alive; neither did he

suffer imprisonment for any great length of time, but was by and by

set at liberty on giving security for his good behaviour in future. If

Charmier, the priest, was sentenced to incarceration for three years,

having, as far as we know, done nothing more than deliver a message

from Villeneuve to Merrin the type-founder, we might have imagined that

Arnoullet would scarcely have escaped with so little scath; for to have

aided and abetted in the printing of such a book as that entitled the

‘Restoration of Christianity,’ which impugned the system that placed

the whole of his judges--Cardinal Tournon, Archbishop Paumier, Ory,

Arzelier, and the rest--in positions of affluence and influence, could

only have been looked upon as a crime little less heinous than that

of which the author of the book himself had been guilty. But Charmier

was known to have been on friendly terms with Villeneuve; and Paumier

may have guessed what that implied; for let us not forget that all

we speak of came to pass shortly after Giovanni de Medici, under the

title of Leo X., had been Pope; and that if the Reformation had more

well-wishers in France than dared to proclaim themselves, Scepticism

too, and of the deepest dye, was at the same time rife in high places.

The poor priest Charmier, however, being of the rank and file only,

must pay for having meddled; but let us hope that Archbishop Paumier

interfered in due season and succeeded in greatly abridging the term of

his imprisonment.

BOOK II.

SERVETUS IN GENEVA, FACE TO FACE WITH CALVIN.

[Illustration: Ioanis Calvinus]

CHAPTER I.

SERVETUS REACHES GENEVA--DETAINED THERE, HE IS ARRESTED AT THE INSTANCE

OF CALVIN.

Escaped from the Dauphinal prison of Vienne, Servetus must, in all

likelihood, have found hiding at first with friends in Lyons. But

there, as indeed anywhere else in France, his life was in imminent

danger; so that for his own sake, as well as that of his friends,

terribly compromised by his presence, he had to seek safety at a

distance--even in another country. Nor was it present safety only that

was in question: the means of living in time to come had further to be

thought of. But master of a profession that is welcome everywhere, he

may have had little anxiety on that score; and he who had lived so long

unmolested as Villeneuve or Villanovanus, after compromising himself as

Serveto, alias Revés, would have been at no loss to find another name

to shield him from recognition. His first thoughts carried him in the

direction of Spain, but he found so many difficulties from the French

gendarmerie, that he turned back; believing then that the best course

he could follow would be to betake himself to Naples, where he knew

there was a large settled population of his own countrymen, among whom

he would find a sufficient field for the exercise of his calling.

Calvin--erroneously beyond question--speaks of Servetus having wandered

for four months in Italy after his escape from the prison of Vienne.

Had he reached Italian ground at this time, he would not have returned

upon Geneva, and then--presuming that he escaped Calvin’s further

pursuit--he might have lived, usefully engaged, to a good old age, and

died quietly in his bed. Servetus arrived in Switzerland from the side

of France, and must have been in hiding in that country, or wandering

about in disguise from place to place between April 7, the date of his

evasion from Vienne, and the middle of July when he reached Geneva. The

hue and cry from Vienne was probably not of a kind to be heard afar;

they who left the prison door open may have seen to that--Servetus

indeed says himself that they did. It was not such, at all events,

as to prevent his baffling pursuit and escaping recognition: for he

entered Geneva in safety; and feeling the soil of a state beneath his

feet where other than Roman Catholic views of religion prevailed, he

could hardly have thought that he would suffer molestation did he but

keep quiet during the day or two he meant to remain in order to rest

and recruit.

The experience Servetus had had so lately must have satisfied him

that he could hope for nothing from the forbearance of Calvin; but he

did not mean to put this to the test: his business was to make no

noise, and to be gone as quickly as possible. Though he had made the

latter part of his journey on horseback, the usual mode of locomotion

in those days, he even deemed it prudent, as less likely to attract

attention, to enter Geneva on foot. He therefore discharged his steed

at Louyset, a village a few miles distant, where he passed the night,

and reached the city in the early morning of some day after the middle

of July, 1553. Putting up at a small hostelry on the banks of the lake,

having the sign of the Rose, he appears to have lain there privily and

unchallenged for nearly a month.

What could have induced Servetus to linger in a place where we see,

from the precautions he took both in arriving and subsequently, that he

could not have thought himself safe, long remained a mystery; but is

cleared up in a great measure by the information we obtain through the

particulars of the trial to which he was immediately subjected, and of

which it is only of late years that a full and entirely satisfactory

account has been obtained. We were disposed, at one time, to ascribe

the delay in setting out for Italy to the fascination which the strong

have over the weak, and to imagine that our wanderer was still anxious

for the personal interview with Calvin he had formerly sought, but

been forced to forego, in Paris, and for which, as we learn by the

letter of Calvin to his friend Farel, he had made fresh proposals at a

later date.[67] He was now aware, however, that it was by Calvin he

had been denounced to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne, arrested in

consequence, put upon his trial, and only saved his life by escaping

from prison. He could not possibly, therefore, have flattered himself

that the man who was so disposed towards him would receive him in any

friendly mood; though it probably never came into his mind to imagine

that the Reformer would be disposed to take the knife in hand himself.

As we now read the tale, we perceive that Servetus’s presence in Geneva

could not have been unknown to all in the city, even from the day of

his arrival; and our persuasion is, that for some time at least he

was kept there against his will. On his trial we find him stating,

incidentally, that the windows of the room he occupied at the Rose _had

been nailed up!_ What interpretation can possibly be put on this? The

nailing up could not have been done to keep anyone _out_ of a place of

public entertainment. It was therefore to keep someone _in_. Servetus

must in fact have been anxious from the first to be gone; but he was

detained by certain parties in Geneva, not among the number of Calvin’s

friends, who thought to make political capital out of his presence

among them.

Nor were it hard to imagine that he, smarting as he then was under the

sense of all that had but just befallen him through the interference of

the Reformer, and listening for the moment to the influential persons

who promised him support, and possibly redress, was not altogether

indisposed to pay his enemy back for the irreparable injury he had

suffered at his hands. But there is nothing in all we know of Michael

Servetus that leads us for a moment to think of him as a revengeful

man; and though he may have lent an ear for a while to the suggestions

of his new friends, he must soon have come to conceive misgivings as to

the real meaning of their attentions.

Even whilst lying hidden in his inn he could hardly have failed, after

a while, to learn something of the state of political partisanship

prevalent in the theocratic republican city of Geneva, and so have been

more than ever anxious to be gone. Hence the nailing up of his chamber

windows. On Sunday, August 13, he had even spoken to the landlord of

the ‘Rose’ to procure him a boat for the morrow, to take him by the

Lake as far as possible on his way to Zürich. But his resolution to

delay his departure no longer was taken too late. Weary of confinement,

and always piously disposed, he ventured imprudently to show himself

at the evening service of a neighbouring church; and being there

recognised, intimation of his presence in Geneva was conveyed to

Calvin, who, without loss of a moment, and in spite of the sacredness

of the day, denounced him to one of the Syndics, and demanded his

immediate arrest.

To effect this in the city of Geneva of the year of grace 1553 was no

matter of difficulty, little being made in those days of seizing on

the person, and not much of taking the life. The accredited officer,

armed with a warrant, found Servetus in his inn; informed him he was

to consider himself a prisoner; led him away, and threw him into the

common jail of the town.