SERVETUS SENDS A LETTER AND A SECOND REMONSTRANCE AND PETITION TO HIS
JUDGES.
Smarting under a sense of the unjustifiable treatment to which he was
so relentlessly subjected, and weary of the delays that had taken place
through the disputes between the Consistory represented by Calvin, and
the Council, Servetus now gave vent to the pent-up storm within him in
the following characteristic remonstrance. Alluding to the backing his
persecutor received from the clergy, and the number of names attached
to the Refutation of his Replies, he exclaims:
Thus far we have had clamour enough and a great crowd of
subscribers! But what places in Scripture do they adduce
as their authority for the Invisible Individual Son they
acknowledge? They refer to none; nor, indeed, will they ever be
able to point to any. Is this becoming in these great ministers
of the Divine Word, who everywhere boast that they teach
nothing that is not confirmed by distinct passages of Holy
Writ? But no such places are now forthcoming; and my doctrine,
consequently, is impugned by mere clamour, without a shadow of
reason, and without the citation of a single authority against
it.
MICHAEL SERVETUS,
who signs alone, but has Christ for his sure protector!
Engaged with more immediate and interesting business in the political
and administrative sphere of their duties, the Council had, in fact,
left that in which their prisoner Michael Servetus was so particularly
concerned unnoticed for something like fourteen days. This long delay
gave him reasonable cause for complaint, and furnished him with grounds
not only for the outburst given above, but for a further petition and
remonstrance to the following effect:
_To the Syndics and Council of Geneva._
My most honoured Lords!--I humbly entreat of you to put an
end to these great delays, or to exonerate me of the criminal
charge. You must see that Calvin is at his wit’s end and knows
not what more to say, but for his pleasure would have me rot
here in prison. The lice eat me up alive; my breeches are in
rags, and I have no change--no doublet, and but a single shirt
in tatters.
I made another request to you, which was for God’s sake; but to
prevent your granting it, Calvin alleged Justinian against me.
It is surely unfortunate for him that he brings against me that
which he does not himself believe. He neither believes nor does
he agree with what Justinian says of the Church, of Bishops, of
the Clergy, nor of many things besides connected with religion.
He knows well enough that [in Justinian’s day] the Church was
already corrupted. This is disgraceful in him--all the more
disgraceful as he keeps me here for the last five weeks in
close confinement, and has not yet adduced a single passage [of
Scripture] against me.
I have also demanded to have counsel assigned me. This would
have been granted me in my native country; and here I am a
stranger and ignorant of the laws and customs of the land. Yet
you have given counsel to my accuser, whilst refusing it to
me, and have further set him at large before having taken any
true cognisance of my cause. I now demand that my cause may be
referred to the Council of Two Hundred. If I am permitted to
appeal to it, I hereby appeal; declaring, as I do, that I will
take on me all the expenses, damages, and interests, and abide
by the award of the Lex Talionis as well in respect of my first
accuser [De la Fontaine] as of Calvin his master, who has now
taken the prosecution into his own hands.
From your prison of Geneva, this 15th of Septr. 1553.
MICHAEL SERVETUS,
in his own cause.
The Council appear to have been nowise moved by this very reasonable
petition. The request for counsel, here reiterated, was not noticed--it
had already been disposed of, and could not be granted; but the
petition to have his case referred to the Council of the Two Hundred
was discussed and rejected: the tribunal before which he was on his
trial was competent in every respect by the laws of the State. Orders,
however, were given that the articles of clothing he required should
be procured for him at his proper cost; but as it seems to have been
the business of no one to see the order carried into effect, or because
the Council and custodians of the gaol of Geneva were accustomed to see
their prisoners in rags and devoured by vermin, it was unheeded at the
time, although attended to at a somewhat later period in this eventful
history.
Had there been no resolution to take the opinion of the Councils and
Churches of the confederate Reformed Cantons, everything necessary
to a decision was again before the Court. The term had indeed been
exceeded within which by the law of Geneva the proceedings ought to
have ended--the law positively forbidding the protraction of a criminal
suit beyond the term of a calendar month. The law had, therefore, been
violated; but there was no one to urge the point in behalf of the
prisoner, any more than there had been to expose Calvin’s disobedience
of the Council’s orders to present his Articles of Incrimination
without note or comment. Neither the Clerical nor the Libertine party,
however, had yet done with the unfortunate Servetus, although it was
not before their meeting of September 21 that the Council found itself
at leisure to take up the tangled skein of the Servetus-prosecution
again, and to order the necessary documents to be prepared for
submission to the Councils and Churches they had determined to consult.
Before despatching these when ready, they seem to have thought it would
be well to show Calvin the short demurrers of Servetus to his elaborate
Refutation; expecting, probably, that he would have something to say to
them, but not meaning to let Servetus see anything Calvin might think
proper to add. There was no occasion however, as it fell out, to act
on this rather partial reservation. The Reformer did not think fit to
notice even one of the unhappy annotations of his enemy, in which the
lie direct is given him something like fifty times; and the epithet
_nebulo_--knave--is not the most offensive that is applied to him. He
did not add a word to what he had already written. A mere glance at the
unhappy jottings sufficed, as it seemed, to make him feel sure of his
suit; Servetus, he saw, stood self-condemned in his neglect to adduce
Scripture authority for his peculiar views, or to show that they had
either been misinterpreted or misunderstood by his pursuer. The abusive
epithets so plentifully heaped on Calvin only recoiled upon himself.