THE TRIAL IN ITS FIRST PHASE.
Formally installed in the Court of Criminal Judicature, Nicolas de la
Fontaine and Michael Servetus were ordered to be brought before them
by the Judges; and the prosecutor declaring that he persisted in his
allegations, and the prisoner being put on his oath to speak the truth
under penalties to the extent of 60 sols, the Trial commenced.
To the question as to his name and condition, the prisoner replied that
his name was Michael Serveto, of Villanova, in the kingdom of Aragon,
in Spain, and that by profession he was a physician. The articles of
impeachment already produced were then restated seriatim, and to each
he was required to answer categorically. This he did, and generally
in the terms he had used in his preliminary examination, but accusing
Calvin, and Calvin alone, more imperatively than before, of having
provoked his arrest and prosecution at Vienne, adding that had Calvin
had his way, he--the prisoner--would assuredly have been burned alive.
To all that had reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Nature
of Christ, the relations between God and created things, he spoke as
he had already done. He again and pointedly denied that he had ever
said the soul was mortal; but admitted having written that he thinks
man commits no mortal sin before the age of twenty years, adding that
‘under the Law God had so ordered it.’ The Baptism of Infants he
acknowledged to be in his eyes a diabolical invention, and calculated
to corrupt the whole of Christianity; declaring however, as formerly,
that if it were shown he erred in this opinion he was ready to retract
and amend.
As to the alleged attacks on the Church of Geneva through the person of
Calvin, he answered as before, and now added that all he had written
against Calvin was with no view or desire to calumniate or injure him,
but only to show him his errors; and he now offers in open congregation
to make good his words by a variety of reasons, and the authority of
the Scriptures.
This was to throw down the gauntlet to Calvin and offer him battle on
ground he could not decline, since he too acknowledged no authority
but holy writ, and we need not doubt of his readiness to take up the
pledge: there was nothing indeed, as he declared, for he was present
in Court watching the proceedings, that he desired more than to show
himself in such a cause before all the world.[74] The Court may be
excused for having imagined that in agreeing to such a wordy duel
between Calvin and Servetus they would be letting the question slip
out of their proper hands; or, as M. Albert Rilliet[75] suggests, the
friends whom Servetus had among its members, measuring the mental
calibre of the two men, may have feared to see him they favoured
worsted by his redoubtable opponent, whose dialectical skill and
theological lore were so well known to all. Deciding against the
proposal of the prisoner, therefore, the tribunal determined that the
trial should proceed in the usual way.
So far as they had gone we can readily conceive that the answers
of Servetus must have seemed little satisfactory to the Court. On
even a large proportion of the allegations made, they may have felt
their incompetency to form an opinion; but upon a few they believed
themselves fully able to come to a conclusion. What he had said on
Infant Baptism in particular was greatly calculated to prejudice him
in the minds of his Judges; the doctrine he held being one among the
dangerous moral, social, and political principles of the Anabaptists,
though the whole of these were emphatically disavowed and condemned
by Servetus, who really appears to have had nothing in common with
the dreaded sect but the opinion that Baptism should not be performed
until years of discretion were attained, and that the rite should be
solemnised by immersion or affusion, not by merely sprinkling the face
with water.
The decision of the Court at the end of the day’s proceedings was to
the effect that, as the answers of the prisoner Michael Servetus
implied criminality, the trial should go on; but that the prosecutor,
Nicolas de la Fontaine, whilst bound over to continue the suit, might
be released on the production of sufficient bail; and this being
immediately forthcoming in the person of Monsieur Antoine Calvin,
brother of the Reformer, Calvin’s substitute and _Chef de Cuisine_
was discharged from custody, whilst Servetus was remanded to gaol.
Thus formally constituted prisoner on a criminal charge, Servetus now
delivered to the gaoler all the money and valuables he possessed, the
coin amounting to ninety-seven gold crowns, the valuables being a gold
chain of the value of twenty crowns, and as many as seven gold rings
set with a table diamond, a ruby and other stones of price.
* * * * *
August 16, the Court, constituted as usual, was observed to be less
numerously attended than on the day before, but with two important
additions: Philibert Berthelier among the Councillors, by right,
and Germain Colladon, introduced as Counsel for De la Fontaine.
Between these two men, says M. Rilliet, more perhaps than between any
other notable members of the Republic of Geneva, the contrast was
striking and complete. They might even severally have been assumed as
representatives of the parties which divided the state and contended
for mastery. Berthelier was the acknowledged head of the patriotic
party, mostly native Genevese, the Libertines as they were called,
from their zealous defence of the immunities and privileges of the
citizens against the old tyranny of the Roman Catholic Bishops and the
recently introduced consistorial rules and regulations of the Reformer.
As son of one of the martyrs to the public liberties of Geneva, and
possessed of wealth and influence, Berthelier had long been opposed to
the authority of Calvin; his patriotism and his self-respect revolting
against the domineering character of the man and the stringency of his
religious and sumptuary regulations, so that the struggle in which he
and Colladon now engaged, with the unhappy Servetus as their subject of
contention, was but an interlude in the strife that had been carried on
between Berthelier and Calvin for years.
In Calvin’s arrest and prosecution of Servetus there can be no question
that Berthelier, making light of the theological grounds on which the
Spaniard was arraigned, and trusting to the strength of his party in
the Council, believed he saw a means and opportunity of worsting his
old irreconcilable enemy. He thought little, and it may be perhaps felt
somewhat indifferent as to the fate that would befal the individual
whose cause he espoused, did he fail in the purpose he proposed to
himself. Hate of Calvin blinded him to more remote contingencies.
Colladon, engaged of course by Calvin on behalf of Nicolas de la
Fontaine and the prosecution, was a man of a totally different
stamp from Berthelier. A refugee from France, his native country,
for conscience sake, and seeking in Geneva freedom to enjoy his
religious convictions; austere in disposition, rigid in morals and
punctilious in outward observance, he had been forced to fly from his
home in consequence of zeal too openly expressed for the cause of
the Reformation. Safe in Geneva, he gave himself heart and soul to
Calvin, and was found by him among the most useful of his auxiliaries
in formulating his discipline and enforcing its observance, Colladon’s
familiarity with business and his legal knowledge qualifying him in
every way for the part he was ambitious to play. The party of which he
was a distinguished member were now in the minority, but did not so
remain for long. Within two years of the time that engages us, they had
gained the ascendency, and were not slow to avenge themselves on the
legitimate sons of Geneva by forcing them in numbers into banishment,
and filling their places by naturalising the French and Italian
refugees, who continued pouring into Geneva in crowds, to escape the
persecution that then raged in their native countries.
The fiery dispute in which Berthelier and Colladon engaged at this
day’s sitting, seems to have concerned Calvin much more than Servetus,
its ostensible subject: the French _Reformer_ of Christianity far more
than its would-be Spanish _Restorer_, was the true object of the attack
and defence. The debate in the old episcopal palace, in a word, was
between the representatives of the two factions that contended for
supremacy in Geneva.
We have unfortunately no complete account of what transpired on this
the first encounter between Berthelier and Colladon. The Records of the
Criminal Court are significantly silent on the subject; but that it was
violent there can be no question, so violent that the morning sitting
had to be suspended before the usual hour of rising. Yet are we at no
loss to divine the ground on which the presumed altercation arose,
when we note the point where the blank in the proceedings occurs,
coming as it does in immediate connection with the articles having
reference to the subject of the Trinity. Servetus, in the course of the
interrogatory to which he was subjected, having replied equivocally
or unsatisfactorily as to the sense in which the word person is to
be understood in speaking of the Trinitarian Mystery, Colladon must
have contended that he could show by various passages of the printed
book before the Court, that the prisoner now spoke otherwise of the
Trinity than he really believed, and proceeded to handle him somewhat
sharply, in the way Counsel learned in the Law are still wont to treat
those they have under cross-examination; somewhat unfairly, too, as
Berthelier may have thought, so that he interposed, and must even have
said something not only in defence of the prisoner, but of the opinions
incriminated. And here it was, and in consequence of the warmth of the
debate, that the proceedings had to be suspended.
Before breaking up, a number of books, which had been produced by the
Counsel for the prosecution in support of his case, were directed to
be left with the clerk of the Court; and each party in the suit, having
noted its case, was ordered to be in readiness to go on at the next
sitting. The books in question were the works of Melanchthon and the
letters of Œcolampadius, the Geography of Ptolemy, and the Bible of
Pagnini; the two last of which the prisoner owned to having edited and
annotated. The most important of all, however, was the ‘Christianismi
Restitutio,’ upon the interpretation of some of the passages of which,
in contrast with the present replies of the prisoner, arose the
altercation that led to the momentary suspension of the proceedings.
From the Registers of the Grand Council we learn that on the morrow of
the stormy session of the sixteenth, Calvin presented himself before
the Council and demanded an audience. He had learned, he said, that
Philibert Berthelier had meddled in the suit against Michael Servetus,
and even spoken in defence of some of the incriminated passages of the
prisoner’s book--a mortal offence in Calvin’s eyes, and an indication,
not to be mistaken, of hostility to himself as virtual pursuer of the
obnoxious heretic. The time had come, in fact, when, throwing aside
disguise, Calvin must come from behind Nicolas de la Fontaine, avow
himself the prosecutor, and nip in the bud, if he could, the new growth
of rebellion against his rule for which Servetus, he saw, was now to be
made the pretext.
In the interference of Berthelier, which we see must have given
such umbrage to Calvin, we have the first open indication by the
Libertine party of their sympathy with the prisoner; sympathy, real
or pretended, that may be said to have sealed the fate of the unhappy
Servetus; for the issue, though continuing to be debated on the ground
of speculative theology, on which so many questions might be raised
and doubts entertained, was henceforth to a certain extent transferred
to the domain of politics, on which there was the one practical issue
involved, as to who or which party that divided the state of Geneva
should have the upper hand.
It may be fairly presumed that Calvin, with the great advantage he had
in natural talent and acquirements, had no difficulty in satisfying the
majority of the Judges of the culpability of Servetus on theological
grounds; his opinions differed too obviously from all they had ever
been led to believe concerning the Trinity and Infant Baptism,
especially, to leave them in any doubt as to this. Servetus differed,
in fact, on every point brought forward, from the doctrine familiar to
the mind of Geneva--enough of itself to lay him under suspicion; and,
accepting Calvin’s interpretation of the incriminated passages of his
book, which his Judges must have felt bound in some sort to do, they
could have had nothing for it, had the prosecution now insisted on
having made out their case, but to proceed to judgment, and pronounce
the prisoner guilty. But this was not done; the Judges appear not only
to have felt no kind of hostility towards the solitary stranger in the
singular and painful position in which he stood, but even to have been
moved to something like compassion in his behalf.
After the suspension of the early sitting of the 16th in consequence of
the stormy scene between Berthelier and Colladon, and a pause to permit
the minds of all to regain a state of calm befitting the circumstances,
proceedings of an informal kind only were taken later in the day.
These are interesting, nevertheless, because of the recommendation of
the Judges to Calvin in sequence to his avowal of himself as virtual
prosecutor, to use every fair endeavour to bring the prisoner to what
were thought to be better views, as well as to furnish the Court with
further and more satisfactory evidence of his heretical guiltiness.
To this end Calvin was requested by the Court to visit the prisoner,
‘the better to show him his errors--_affin que myeux luy puyssent
estre remonstrées ses erreurs_: to assist him, _à assister luy_, and
to do what he could with him in respect of the interrogatories put to
him, _et qu’il vouldra avec luy aux interrogatoires_. This surely is
both interesting and important. The Court would have spared the man,
and given him an opportunity of coming to an understanding with the
prosecutor on the difficult matters in debate between them. We shall
accordingly find by-and-by that Calvin, accompanied by a number of
ministers, in compliance with the benevolent intentions of the Court,
paid Servetus a visit in prison; but with results that might have been
foreseen--not only not advantageous to him, but damaging in the highest
degree to his interests.
On the resumption of proceedings next day, August 17, Calvin took his
seat on the Bench, and under him, in the area, were seen a number of
ministers, his colleagues, specially introduced, as said, to show the
prisoner his errors, but all, like their leader, we fear, rather bent
on convicting the dangerous heretic than hopeful of convincing and
winning over the mistaken theologian.
Colladon, as counsel for the prosecution, now went on with his
interrogatories as at the last meeting; and various particulars which
had hitherto remained in the shade were brought prominently forward.
Among others it was positively averred that the prisoner had been tried
and condemned in Germany, a point only hinted at before; and passages
from private letters by Melanchthon and Œcolampadius were quoted in
support of the allegation. In these the severest censure is certainly
passed on the views of the prisoner; but, as he observed, the adverse
opinions of the Reformers referred to by no means implied that he
had ever been the subject of any judicial trial or condemnation in
Germany; a remark for which Colladon had no better rejoinder than to
say that had he and his printer been apprehended and tried, they would
undoubtedly have been condemned.
Questioned as to who was the printer of his book on ‘Trinitarian
Error,’ he said it was Joannes Secerius of Hagenau. On this, Colladon
went on to say that the book was full of heretical poison, and that it
was impossible it should not have infected many persons. But there was
no evidence adduced to show that it had; and it is not unimportant to
observe that Colladon’s statements here are based on a document which
is not before the Court, a copy of the book on ‘Trinitarian Error,’
though eagerly sought after, as we have seen, not being anywhere to be
found.
On the note or scholium in the Ptolemy, calling in question the truth
of the Bible account of Judæa as a land flowing with milk and honey,
on which he was challenged, Servetus declared that it was not by him,
but quoted from another writer, adding incautiously, from himself,
however, that the note contained nothing reprehensible or that was not
true. This aroused the ire of Calvin, who now interposed, not certainly
in agreement with the recommendation of the Court to show the prisoner
that he had been led into error through false information, as he might
have done, but to declare that he who approved the words of another
characterising Judæa as no land flowing with milk and honey, but as
meagre, barren, and inhospitable, necessarily inculpated Moses; and
that to use such language was egregiously to outrage the Holy Ghost.
Servetus, however, would not agree to this, coolly denying any such
conclusion; insomuch so, as Calvin himself tells us, in no very choice
terms, that ‘the villainous cur--_ce vilain chien_--though put to
shame by the obvious reasons adduced, did but wipe his muzzle, _ne
fit que torcher son museau_, and say: Let us go on, there is no harm
here--_passons oultre, il n’y a poynt là de mal_’.[76]
Another important article of the impeachment brought into prominence
in this day’s proceedings was from among the prisoner’s annotations
to the reprint of Santes Pagnini’s Bible, which he supervised, as we
know, for Hugo de la Porte, the publisher of Lyons. This Bible was
said by the prosecution to be encumbered with many glosses or comments
totally opposed to the Faith; the one most notably so of all perhaps
being appended to the thirty-third chapter of Isaiah, where the servant
of God who took on himself the sins of the people is spoken of by the
Prophet. ‘This passage,’ said Calvin, ‘is referred by the prisoner to
Cyrus, whilst every Christian Church refers it to Jesus Christ.’ But
Servetus was again bold enough to maintain his position in so far as
to say that the interpretation he had given of the passage was borne
out in some sort by the opinions of the old Doctors of the Church,
who acknowledged, as he said, a twofold sense in the Scriptures--one,
literal and historical, applying to contemporaneous personages and
events; another, mystical and prophetic, bearing on Christ and the
future. ‘In speaking of the individual referred to, as he had done, and
calling him Cyrus, he said that he nevertheless held the prophetical
and most important bearing of the text to be on Christ.’ But this did
not satisfy Calvin. He would by no means accept such an explanation,
and far from attempting by reason and kindness to win the prisoner
to views which he himself believed to be more in conformity with the
truth, he launched out in passion, and declared that ‘the prisoner
would never have had the hardihood thus villainously to corrupt so
grand a passage had he not, abandoning all shame, taken he knew not
what diabolical pleasure in getting rid of the whole Christian faith.’
The cool way in which Servetus stood this outburst appears to have
irritated the Reformer extremely. Servetus was in truth far in advance
of Calvin and his age in his exegesis. He was not blind, like all about
him, to the true import of the Hebrew writings styled prophetical,
but divined their only possible bearing upon events and individuals
contemporaneous with their writers--in some cases even past and gone.
It was to escape doing violence to the idea of the inspiration under
which Servetus credited these ancient writings to have been composed,
that he acknowledged a prospective reference to incidents still in the
womb of far distant time.
The printing of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was next adduced and
made a principal topic of accusation against the prisoner. To the
question what object he had proposed to himself in having the book
printed, he replied that his main purpose was to ventilate his opinions
and have them controverted in case they were seen to be erroneous. But
Calvin rejoined that it was by no means necessary to print in order to
obtain correction of erroneous opinions, and this more especially in a
case such as his, where, as writer, he had already been admonished of
his errors.
The delicate, difficult, and most essential element in the impeachment,
that, namely, having reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity, was
now and again brought into the foreground. Particularly questioned on
this subject, Servetus maintained, that previous to the Council of
Nicæa no Doctor of the Church had used the word _Trinity_; and that
if the Fathers did acknowledge a distinction in the Divine Essence,
it was not _real_ but _formal_; that the _persons_ were nothing more
in truth than _dispensations_ or modes, not distinct entities or
_persons_ in the usual acceptation of that word. If he had called
the Doctrine of the Trinity, as commonly understood, a dream of St.
Augustine and an invention of the Devil, which he did not deny; if
he had further characterised the Trinity of modern theologians as a
three-headed monster, like the Cerberus of the poets, and styled
those who overlooked the true Trinity, which he himself recognised,
as Tritheists, it was solely because he believed the unity of God
to be denied or annulled by such a procedure. Colladon on this--and
prompted we may presume by Calvin--maintained that the views imputed
to the Fathers of the Church by the prisoner were false as well as
mischievous, and that he could adduce none but apocryphal writings full
of absurdities in support of what he said.
Most of the other views and opinions of the prisoner which were
quoted as heretical in the act of impeachment were either owned to
by him, interpreted in the way he understood them, or were taken as
proven by the Court; passages in support of this conclusion having
been referred to not only in the printed copy of the ‘Restoration of
Christianity,’ but in the manuscript sent privately six years before
to Calvin for his strictures. There is one particular, however, not
mentioned in the record of proceedings, but given by Calvin,[77] that
is not uninteresting, as showing the extreme pantheistic views to
which Servetus had attained, and may have prejudiced him not a little
in the eyes of his Judges, the air of offensive absurdity which the
pantheistic doctrine--adversely understood--assumes when pushed to
extremes, being made so prominently to appear. The question had turned
on the relations between the Divine substance and the substance of
creatures and things. ‘All things, all creatures,’ said Servetus,
‘are portions of the substance of God.’ Speaking in his own person,
and interposing at this point, Calvin says: ‘Annoyed as I was by so
palpable an absurdity, I answered: What, poor man, did one stamp on
this floor with his foot and say he trod on God, would not you be
horrified in having subjected the Majesty of God to such unworthy
usage?’ He, on this, replied: ‘I have not a doubt but that this bench,
this table, and all you can point to around us, is of the substance
of God.’ When it was then objected to him that on such showing the
Devil must be of God substantially; he, smiling impudently, said: ‘Do
you doubt it? For my part,’ continued he, ‘I hold it as a general
proposition that all things whatsoever are part and parcel of God,
and that nature at large is His substantial manifestation.’ Calvin,
we imagine, might have spared Servetus on this head when we call to
mind how he commits himself to pantheistic views in that passage of
his ‘Institutions’ we have already referred to, where he says he only
objects to call Nature God because of the harshness and impropriety of
the expression. He might further, with reference to the Devil, have
bethought him of the verse of Isaiah xlv. 7, where these words occur
as coming from Jehovah himself: ‘I form the Light and create Darkness;
I make peace and create evil.’ Or of this from Amos iii. 6: ‘Shall
there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?’ Or yet this of
Ezekiel xx. 25: ‘I gave them statutes that were not good,’ &c. The
Jews, through by far the greater part of their history, as a people
acknowledged no Dualism in their Deity, as, indeed, they only looked
on their God Jahveh as the greatest among the Gods. He was the good
and the evil principle in one. But it is easy to imagine the damaging
impression which Servetus’s logical but terribly unorthodox statement
must have made on the minds of his Judges, ill-informed presumably as
they were on such questions. Had Calvin been minded to help instead of
determined to crush Servetus, he might even have quoted Luther, who
speaks in this wise in his Table Talk: ‘God is present in all created
things, and so in the smallest leaflet and tiniest poppy-seed--Gott
also gegenwärtig ist in allen Creaturen; auch im geringsten Blättlein
und Mohnkörnlein.’
Nor were the personal griefs of Calvin overlooked in the inculpation of
the prisoner. Beside the thirty letters printed in the ‘Christianismi
Restitutio,’ addressed to the Reformer, a copy of his ‘Institutions’
was now laid before the Court. This, like the MS. of the ‘Restitutio,’
sent privately and confidentially to Calvin, was covered on the margins
with numerous annotations, little in conformity, as may be supposed,
with the accepted tenets of the Church of Geneva, and more rarely still
complimentary to the author. At such insolent procedure we know that
Calvin was greatly offended, as appears by the language he thought fit
to use when writing to Viret and incidentally noticing the liberties
that had been taken with him by the annotator: ‘There is not a page of
the book,’ he says, ‘that is not befouled with his vomit.’
Neither was the tergiversation of the prisoner in what he had said
about Geroult’s part in the printing of the ‘Restitutio’ unnoticed. He
is now reproached with the variations in his replies on the subject to
the Lieutenant on the 14th, and to the Court on the 15th. His first
answer we believe was truthful--Geroult knew all about the book, as we
shall find from a letter of Arnoullet to his friend Bertet; his second
was untruthful, but uttered to shield the man who had aided him in his
enterprise, compromised, as he had come to see, by what he had said
before.