THE TRIAL IN ITS SECOND PHASE, WITH THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF GENEVA AS
PROSECUTOR.
Arrived at this stage, all the documents on which it was proposed to
proceed being before the Court, and something more than a presumption
of the prisoner’s heretical opinions having already been made to
appear, Nicolas de la Fontaine, on his petition to that effect, and
his bail, Anthony Calvin, were formally discharged as parties to the
suit, its further prosecution being handed over to Claude Rigot, the
Attorney-General of the city of Geneva.
Before breaking up, however, and as if to occupy the time until the
usual hour of rising, a number of questions irrelevant to the main
plea, but tending to gratify the curiosity of the Court, were put to
the prisoner. Among the number of these he was asked particularly how
he had contrived to escape from the prison of Vienne. He informed the
Judges, that he had only passed two nights there; that the Vibailly, De
la Cour, was well disposed towards him, he having been of great service
to M. Maugiron, an intimate friend of the Vibailly, who had ordered
the gaoler to use him well, and allow him the freedom of the garden.
Taking advantage of this, he had scaled the wall and got away in the
manner already described, the Vibailly having taken care that he should
not be pursued and recaptured.
He added that he had intended and even tried in the first instance to
get to Spain, his native country; but finding the obstacles so many,
and fearing arrest at every moment, he retraced his steps and made his
way to Geneva, purposing to proceed to Italy.
Questioned further about the printing of the ‘Restitutio
Christianismi,’ he said it had been thrown off to the extent of
1,000 copies, of which the publisher had sent a bale to Frankfort in
anticipation of the Easter book-fair of that great mart. This was
a piece of information that was not lost on Calvin. He wrote a few
days after, having meantime gained further information, to one of the
Frankfort members, giving him intimation of what had been done, telling
him where the packet was bestowed, and recommending its immediate
seizure and destruction, for which he seems also to have furnished some
sort of warrant or authority, how obtained we are not informed, though
it was probably from Frelon.
Interrogated as to the money he had about him when imprisoned at
Vienne, he replied that his cash and valuables had not been taken from
him on his arrest there, but were still in his possession when he
reached Geneva.
The result of the unwarranted and eventful prosecution of which he was
the subject had thus far been anything but favourable to the prisoner.
The intervention of Berthelier, above all, may be said to have been
highly prejudicial by bringing Calvin into the field in person, and
supplying him with an additional motive for urging the suit to the
issue that could alone prove satisfactory to him--the condemnation
capitally of his insolent, personal, and dreaded theological opponent,
now associated with his political enemies. Calvin was in truth much
too formidable a personage to be gainsaid on trifling grounds. More
than one member of the Court who might have been disposed to favour
the prisoner, could it have been done without open defiance of the
Reformer, quailed under his glance, and shrank from the responsibility
of opposing him, when the direction the prosecution had taken came to
be understood. It was even said to be more dangerous to offend John
Calvin in Geneva than the King of France on his throne! The prisoner
whose life was in debate was a stranger, unknown to the majority of
the Councillors; and it was doubtless thought better by the timid to
leave him to his fate, than to compromise themselves by taking part
with one who on his own admission entertained opinions adverse not only
to the doctrine of the Church of Geneva, but to all they had ever had
presented to them as characteristic of the Christian faith. There could
be no doubt that the man was a schismatic, a heretic; and heretic in
Geneva meant an opponent of the head of its Church and the form of
Christianity it represented.
Having by this time arrived at a better knowledge of the state of
affairs around him, and more than ever aware of the possible danger
in which he stood; beginning moreover to feel less confidence in the
support which we may be certain had been privately promised him, face
to face in fact with the man who had already sought his life and so
nearly succeeded in bringing him to a fiery death, Servetus seems now
to have seen the necessity of changing the somewhat confident tone he
had hitherto maintained in defending his opinions: reticence takes the
place of open assertion, and instead of any clear avowal or defence of
the views he held, he is now found fencing with the obvious meaning
of the language he has used, and the conclusions to which it leads,
prevaricating too at times; in a word, doing all in his power to appear
not to have written in the way the charges brought against him show
from his works that he had.
The trial from this time may be said to have acquired new significance.
The private prosecutor and his bail discharged, and the further conduct
of the suit handed over to the public prosecutor of the city, gave
it additional importance in the eyes of the community at large, and
heightened the interest felt in the issues involved.
Thrown into fresh hands, proceedings were necessarily stayed for a few
days to give the State Attorney time to get ready his case, so that
there was no meeting of the Court until the 21st. Between this date
and that of the suspension on the 17th, Calvin is said to have been
busy among those of the Council he reckoned either as friends or not
as avowed antagonists, satisfying their doubts or strengthening their
presumptions of the prisoner’s guilt; showing them the importance
to the cause of religion and society that he should be convicted;
picturing him as perhaps even less dangerous, if that were possible,
on account of the particular theological grounds set forth, than as
the enemy of all religion, sole foundation, as he said, of the entire
social fabric. The man had been already tried, convicted, and condemned
to death by the Roman Catholics of Vienne. Would they, the Senators
of Geneva, show themselves less zealous than the Papists of France in
the cause of God and their own true faith? Surely they would not, but
doing their duty and finding on the evidence, which Calvin relied on as
overwhelming, declare the prisoner guilty of the heresies laid to his
charge.
Whether seen from a Popish or Protestant point of view, though the
matters in debate had no more to do with real piety, with morality,
or the foundations of society than with the course of the seasons,
Servetus certainly entertained opinions on various topics of
transcendental theology different from those commonly received, and
in so far was a heretic. Of this much Calvin had no difficulty in
satisfying his supporters, who consequently felt themselves absolved
of any scruples they might have entertained about condemning one to
death on purely speculative grounds which they did not even pretend to
understand.[78]
Although what is said above about Calvin’s private interference
with the course of justice has been questioned, when we know that
he denounced his opponent from the pulpit in no measured terms, and
tampered with the ministers of the Swiss Churches when they were
consulted on the case, we need not be too scrupulous in accepting the
statement as true. He may have been alarmed by reports of something
like wavering on the part of certain members of the Court, and even of
questions raised as to the propriety of continuing a suit involving
matters so much out of the usual course of criminal procedure as known
at Geneva, and the competence of laymen to take such subjects into
consideration at all. Rumours to this effect reaching his ears may
have led him into a course the impropriety of which in calmer moments
he might possibly have understood. But Calvin was wholly without that
freedom from passion and that sense of relative equity which go to the
constitution of the judicial mind. He lived in a perpetual imbroglio
of quasi-criminal proceedings, mostly begotten by his own arbitrary
legislation; and he was in the constant habit of interfering in suits
before the Courts of Geneva, less as jurisconsult than as judge--as
judge, too, in causes so commonly his own. Clerical writers who have
lauded his comments on the criminal proceedings of Geneva have not seen
these in their true bearings, or they would have expressed themselves
more guardedly than they have done.[79]
That proposals had really been made at the meeting of the 21st to
abandon further proceedings against the prisoner, though overruled
by the majority, seems to be proclaimed by the resolution then come
to, viz., ‘Inasmuch as the heresies charged against Michael Servetus
appear to be of great importance to Christianity, resolved to continue
the prosecution.’ Such a resolution, though we have no intimation of
that which led up to it, coupled with Calvin’s activity out of doors,
suffices to show that Servetus had really had a chance of escape from
the grip of his pursuer at this particular moment. But the occasion
passed; and by way of strengthening themselves in their determination
to go on with the questionable business in which they were engaged,
we now find the Councillors of the Protestant city of Geneva actually
writing to the Popish authorities of Vienne, and making inquiry of them
as to the grounds on which Michael Servetus of Villanova, physician,
had been imprisoned and prosecuted by them, and how he had escaped from
confinement.
To confirm themselves still further in their purpose to proceed, it
was moreover resolved that the Councils of Berne, Basle, Zürich, and
Schaffhausen, together with the ministers of their Churches, should be
written to and informed of what had thus far been done and was still
in progress. In yielding to the instigations of Calvin, the Court in
these last acts is plainly enough seen to hesitate, and be indisposed
to trust entirely to his guidance. They would have the authorities of
the other Protestant cantons of Switzerland informed of what was going
on, and feel the pulse of their confederates as to the propriety of
proceeding farther, they, under all the circumstances, being likely
to be more impartially disposed than the Church of Geneva and its
distinguished head.
The Council of Geneva had in fact already had occasion to know that
where simple justice, whether in the interest of the General or the
Individual, was concerned, Calvin’s lead should not always be too
blindly followed. In the case of Jerome Bolsec, whom Calvin had
arraigned for heresy two years before, against whom he had used all his
influence to secure a conviction, and in which he would have succeeded
(and the man, almost as much a personal enemy as Servetus, would
have been beheaded) had he not been foiled by the recommendations of
the Swiss Churches and Councils, which were unanimous in counselling
moderation, the minor Council of Berne even went so far as to express a
distinct opinion against the enforcement of pains or penalties of any
kind in cases of imputed heresy.
But Calvin in his prosecution of those who opposed him always shows
himself both vindictive and pitiless. Speaking of the way in which
he would have had Bolsec disposed of he says: ‘It is our wish that
our Church should be so purged of this pestilence that it may not,
by being driven hence, become injurious to our neighbours.’ These
words will bear one interpretation only--Calvin would have had Bolsec
put to death. But he was withstood in his design, and mainly so by
the Church of Berne, the language of which must have been highly
displeasing to him; for the Reporter, in counselling moderation, says:
‘How much easier is it to win a man by gentleness than to compel
him by severity;’ and still more displeasing perhaps was that which
follows: ‘It cannot be said of God that He blinds, hardens, and gives
to perdition any man, without at the same time assuming that it is God
who is the Author of human blindness and reprobation, and therefore the
cause of the sin committed.’ Now Bolsec’s offence had been in saying
that men are not saved because elect, but are elect because of their
faith. ‘None are reprobate,’ continues the Reporter from Berne, ‘by the
eternal decrees of God, save those who of their own choice refuse the
election freely offered to all. How shall we believe that God ordains
the fate of men before their birth; foredooming some to sin and death,
others to virtue and eternal life? Would you make of God an arbitrary
tyrant, strip virtue of its goodness, vice of its shame, and the
wicked of the reproaches of their conscience?’ But this is to cut the
ground from under the feet of Calvin. No wonder, therefore, that as
the proud man would not, and the self-satisfied man could not, bring
himself to admit his error, he would have had him who exposed and led
to such an exposition of it put out of the way.[80]
It was whilst expecting replies from Vienne, and waiting the
convenience of M. Rigot, the Attorney-General, that the Court proceeded
to make inquiries of the prisoner concerning his relations with
Arnoullet, the printer of the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ a letter
of his to a friend of the name of Bertet having now been put in and
read to the Court. In this letter, dated July 14, 1553, Arnoullet
informs his friend Bertet that he is still in prison, but is promised
his liberty next week, having got six substantial sureties for his good
behaviour in time to come. He had been villainously deceived, he says,
by his manager Geroult, who corrected the rough proofs of the book, but
never said a word of the heresies it contained.
‘I asked him,’ the letter proceeds, ‘whether it was all
according to God? And he replied that it was; and further,
that it contained a number of Epistles addressed to Mons.
Calvin, which he was minded to translate into French. But this
I forbade--without the permission of the author, which was
refused. When last in Geneva, Geroult saw and informed M.
Calvin that I had lately been there, without having waited on
him. The truth is, that I did not think he would have me in
such friendship now as in times past--by reason of my having
had anything to do with such a monster, whom God look after!
Geroult was in fact in league with the writer, and never let
fall a syllable to me until after your departure for Frankfort
[in charge of the Bale of the “Christianismi Restoratio” among
other book merchandise]. This, as you know, gave occasion to
your speaking to me so seriously as you did about the book in
question.
‘As to what you say about my sending someone else to
Frankfort,--understand me, that I will have no one go but
yourself, and that you are to see every copy of the book
destroyed, so that there shall be left of it neither a leaf nor
half a leaf. Understand, too, that this is to be done without
prejudice to anyone. I am only sorry that we have all been so
grossly deceived in the business; but if God, our Father, leave
us the other goods we possess--more by far than those we shall
destroy--it will be well. As to what you say of my having known
that Villanovanus had been rejected by the Christian Churches,
and that avarice had something to do with my having undertaken
the work, let it suffice that I deny this; and our long
intimacy must have made you so well acquainted with me, that
you will not doubt I now speak the truth. How the Inquisitor
came to have your name, I cannot tell. I can only assure you
that in all the interrogations to which I have been subjected
by him I never named a living soul; nor indeed was there ever
mention made of you in my hearing.... Be good enough to say
to Mons. Calvin that I shall not be in Geneva again without
seeing him; and that if I have not done my duty towards him in
all respects, beg him to find some excuse for me. He who is
the cause of this [meaning Geroult, doubtless] is now there;
and when Monsieur Calvin shall have spoken with me, he will
understand the reason of my saying nothing more at present.
Make my respects to him meantime, and forgive me if I do not
now write more particularly of our affairs.’
This letter we see by the date was written either shortly before or
about the time of Servetus’s arrival in Geneva, whither Geroult, who
was a native of the city, had betaken himself for safety on the arrest
of Servetus and Arnoullet. Bertet, fearing that Arnoullet might suffer
in the estimation of Calvin, seems to have thought that the best
means of exculpating his friend of complicity with the writer of the
heretical book was now to show the letter he had lately received from
Vienne to Calvin; and he, we must conclude, laid it forthwith before
the Court, with no purpose assuredly of aiding the prisoner in his
defence. Arnoullet’s letter in exculpation of himself goes far, as we
see, to compromise Geroult; and he being at this time in Geneva, his
liberty, perhaps even his life, was brought into danger.[81]
The letter to Bertet being shown to the prisoner, he averred that
he could not take it upon him to say whether it was from Arnoullet
or not, he never having seen any of the publisher’s handwriting; he
said, however, that it certainly was at Arnoullet’s establishment that
the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was printed, and that Arnoullet had
been arrested and imprisoned at the same time as himself. Arnoullet’s
disclaimer of having known anything of the burden of Servetus’s book
must certainly be untrue. Unless all else we know in connection with
the business be false, he must have had shrewd suspicions of its
nature, and the suppression of his name as publisher, and of Vienne as
the place of publication, shows that he was not without misgivings of
possible unpleasant consequences following the appearance of the work
were it known that he had had anything to do with it.
Arnoullet’s letter gave Calvin a hint which he did not fail to
improve upon; for he too wrote to Frankfort informing his friends,
the Protestant ministers there, of the bale of Servetus’s books that
had been sent to their city--by Frelon, as I believe, not by Robert
Etienne, the bookseller of Geneva, as has been said,[82]--recommending
its seizure and the destruction of its contents.
Calvin begins his letter thus:--
‘I doubt not you have heard of Servetus, the Spaniard, who
more than twenty years ago infected Germany with a villainous
book, full of sacrilegious error of every kind. The scoundrel
having fled from Germany and lain concealed in France under
a false name, has lately concocted a second book out of the
contents of the first, but replete with new figments, which
he has had printed clandestinely at Vienne, a town not far
from Lyons. Of this book we learn that many copies have been
sent to Frankfort, in prospect of the approaching Easter fair.
The printer, a pious and respectable person, when he came to
know that the book was a mere farrago of Errors, suppressed
the copies he had on hand. It were long did I enumerate the
many Errors, the prodigious blasphemies against God, that are
scattered over its pages. Imagine to yourselves a rhapsody made
up of the impious ravings of every age; for there is no kind of
impiety which this wild beast from hell has not appropriated.
You will assuredly find in every page matters that will horrify
you. The author is now in prison here at the instance of our
magistracy, and I hope will shortly be condemned and punished.
But you are to aid us against the further spread of such
pestiferous poison. The messenger [the bearer of this] will
tell you where the books are bestowed and their number; and the
bookseller to whom they are consigned will, I believe, make no
objections to their being given to the flames. Did he throw
any obstacle in the way of this, however, I venture to think
you are so well disposed, that you will take steps to have the
world purged of such noxious corruption. You shall not want
authority, indeed, for what you do in the business. If you
are allowed to have your way, it will not then be necessary
to seek the interference of your magistrates. But I have such
confidence in you, that I feel persuaded my hint will suffice
to guide your action. The matter, nevertheless, is of such
moment, that I entreat you, for Christ’s sake, not to allow the
occasion of showing yourselves zealous in your office to pass
unheeded.
‘Farewell, &c.
‘Geneva, 6 Calends of September, 1553.’
The session of the 21st, preliminaries ended, was occupied in the
beginning with a dispute between the prisoner and Calvin, who came into
Court on this occasion again accompanied by a number of ministers, his
colleagues, introduced, says the Record of proceedings, to maintain the
contrary of the prisoner’s allegations in respect of the authorities
he cites as favouring his views. Calvin thereupon, taking the lead,
proceeded to interpret the passages of the Fathers referred to by the
prisoner in a sense different from that put upon them by him, and
showed satisfactorily that the word Trias or Trinity had really been
used by writers before the date of the Nicæan Council.
It was on this occasion, as we learn from Calvin,[83] that on a copy
of Justin Martyr being produced by him in support of his statement,
Servetus expressed a wish to see a Latin translation as well as
the original Greek, a slip which Calvin did not fail to turn to
the prisoner’s disadvantage, for knowing that there was no Latin
translation of Justin, he immediately challenged the prisoner with
being ignorant of Greek. ‘Look’ee,’ says he in his _Déclaration pour
maintenir la vraie foy_, ‘this learned man, this Servetus, who plumes
himself on having the gift of tongues, is found to be about as much
able to read Greek as an infant to say the A. B. C. ‘Seeing himself
thus caught’ continues Calvin, ‘I took occasion to reproach him
with his impudence. What means this, said I? The book has not been
translated into Latin, and you cannot read Greek. Yet, you pretend you
are familiar with Justin. Tell me, I pray you, whence you have the
quotations you produce so freely as if you had Justin in your sleeve?
But he with his front of brass, as was his wont, though he had leapt
from the frying pan into the fire--_sauta du coq à l’ânc_--quite
unabashed, gave not the slightest sign of feeling shame.’ No one,
however, who has been at the pains to look into the works of Servetus
will doubt for a moment that he was not only a competent Greek scholar,
but well advanced in the Hebrew also, with both of which languages he
shows that he was even critically acquainted. Seeing himself beaten
on the occurrence of the word Trinity in the Greek of Justin, he may
have thought to find a makeweight in a Latin translation against the
original produced by Calvin. There is indeed an ample display both of
erudition and linguistic accomplishments even in Servetus’s first work,
the seven books on Trinitarian Error.
Another and still more significant discussion now arose between the
Reformer and the prisoner--and in these ever-recurring debates we
see the persistency with which Calvin stuck to his opponent--as to
the sense in which the expression Son of God was to be understood.
Servetus maintained that it was not properly applied to him who bore
it until the moment of his birth. Calvin, on the contrary, insisted
that in conformity with the usual interpretation of the first chapter
of the Gospel according to John, the authority of the Creeds and the
teaching of the Churches, the words must be held to refer to the Divine
Word which became incarnate in Jesus Christ, having until then been
a distinct subsistence in the essence of God from Eternity. In reply
to this, Servetus explained and said that the common interpretation
of the language of John was mistaken; the Son, as he declared, having
only existed _formally_ or as an idea, dispensation or mode in the
mind of God previous to the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, not as an
entity--a _person_, in the usual acceptation of the word, possessed of
distinct individual existence.
Speaking authoritatively now and as from himself, Calvin rejoined that
if the Word had not been a distinct _reality_ in the essence of God,
it could not have united itself as such with the humanity of Christ;
that the body of Christ must then have been wholly of the substance of
God; and being so--not being perfect man as well as perfect God--the
redemption of mankind could not have been effected by his death. Why
the impossibility, thus assumed, is not said. But let us pause an
instant and think of one pious man tried for his life by another pious
man, on grounds such as these!--grounds on which neither the one nor
the other could find footing for a moment.
Without opposing his prosecutor by urging his own views more
particularly at this stage, Servetus now requested that he might be
furnished with the books necessary to him in his defence, and have
pens, ink, and paper supplied to him, with which to write a petition
to the Council. Calvin on this agreed to leave the volumes he had
brought into Court in the hands of the prisoner, and the Judges ordered
that any others he required should be purchased for him at his proper
cost. The jailer finally was directed to supply him with writing
materials; the paper, however, being limited to a _single sheet_! and
to see particularly to his being kept secluded--indication in either
case, we must presume, that the prisoner was believed not to lack
friends or prompters from whom Calvin thought it would be well to keep
him apart.