Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564
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Basel, and Bern were solicited, they proved disconcerting: Bern
recommended caution in dealing with problems beyond human ken- a new
note in the literature of the age; and Bullinger warned Calvin that
"many are displeased with what you say in your Institutes about
predestination, and draw the same conclusions as Bolsec." `062154
The Council compromised on banishment (1551). Bolsec returned to
France and Catholicism.
More important in result was Calvin's controversy with Joachim
Westphal. This Lutheran minister of Hamburg denounced as "Satanic
blasphemies" the view of Zwingli and Calvin that Christ was only
spiritually present in the Eucharist, and thought the Swiss
Reformers should be refuted not by the pens of theologians but by
the rods of magistrates (1552). Calvin answered him in terms so severe
that his fellow Reformers at Zurich, Basel, and Bern refused to sign
his remonstrance. He issued it nevertheless; Westphal and other
Lutherans returned to the attack; Calvin branded them as "apes of
Luther," and argued so effectively that several regions hitherto
Lutheran- Brandenburg, the Palatinate, and parts of Hesse, Brenien,
Anhalt, and Baden- were won to the Swiss view and the Reformed Church;
only the silence of Melanchthon (who secretly agreed with Calvin), and
the post-mortem echo of Luther's thunderbolts saved the rest of
northern Germany for the Lutheran creed.
Turning from these assaults on the right, Calvin faced on the left a
group of radicals recently arrived in Switzerland from Counter
Reformation Italy. Caelius Secundus Curio, teaching in Lausanne and
Basel, shocked Calvin by announcing that the saved- including many
heathen- would far outnumber the damned. Laelius Socinus, son of a
leading Italian jurist, settled in Zurich, studied Greek, Arabic,
and Hebrew in order to understand the Bible better, learned too
much, and lost his faith in the Trinity, predestination, original sin,
and the atonement. He expressed his skepticism to Calvin, who answered
as well as possible. Socinus agreed to refrain from public utterance
of his doubts; but later he spoke out against the execution of
Servetus, and was among the few who, in that fevered age, stood up for
religious toleration.
In a state where religion and government were fused in an
intoxicating mixture, it was natural that Calvin's most persistent
conflicts should be with the Patriotes and Libertins who had
once expelled him and now deplored his return. The Patriots resented
his French origin and supporters, abhorred his theology, nicknamed him
Cain and called their dogs Calvin; they insulted him in the streets,
and probably it was they who one night fired fifty shots outside his
home. The Libertins preached a pantheistic creed without devils,
angels, Eden, atonement, Bible, or pope. Queen Margaret of Navarre
received and supported them at her court in Nerac, and reproved Calvin
for his severity with them.
On June 27, 1547, Calvin found attached to his pulpit a placard
reading:
-
Gross hypocrite! You and your companions will gain little by your
pains. If you do not save yourselves by flight, nobody shall prevent
your overthrow, and you will curse the hour when you left your
monkery.... After people have suffered long they avenge themselves....
Take care that you are not served like M. Verle [who had been
killed].... We will not have so many masters.... `062155
-
Jacques Gruet, a leading Libertin, was arrested on suspicion of
having written the placard; no proof was adduced. It was claimed
that he had, some days previously, uttered threats against Calvin.
In his room were found papers, allegedly in his handwriting, calling
Calvin a haughty and ambitious hypocrite, and ridiculing the
inspiration of the Scriptures and the immortality of the soul. He
was tortured twice daily for thirty days until he confessed- we do not
know how truthfully- that he had affixed the placard and conspired
with French agents against Calvin and Geneva. On July 26, half dead,
he was tied to a stake, his feet were nailed to it, and his head was
cut off. `062156
Tension mounted until, on December 16, 1547, the Patriotes and
Libertins came armed to a meeting of the Great Council, and demanded
an end to the power of the Consistory over the citizens. At the height
of a violent tumult Calvin entered the room, faced the hostile
leaders, and said, striking his breast: "If you want blood, there
are still a few drops here; strike, then!" Swords were drawn, but no
one ventured to be the first assassin. Calvin addressed the
gathering with rare moderation, and finally persuaded all parties to a
truce. Nevertheless his confidence in himself was shaken. On
December 17 he wrote to Viret: "I hardly hope that the Church can be
upheld much longer, at least by my ministry. Believe me, my power is
broken, unless God stretch forth His hand." But the opposition divided
into factions, and subsided till the trial of Servetus offered another
opportunity.
VI. MICHAEL SERVETUS: 1511-53
-
Miguel Serveto was born at Villanova (some sixty miles north of
Saragossa), son of a notary of good family. He grew up at a time
when the writings of Erasmus were enjoying a transitory tolerance in
Spain. He was in some measure influenced by the literature of the Jews
and the Moslems; he read the Koran, made his way through rabbinical
commentaries, and was impressed by the Semitic criticism of
Christianity (with its prayers to a Trinity, to Mary, and to saints)
as polytheistic. Luther called him "the Moor." At Toulouse, where he
studied law, he saw for the first time a complete Bible, vowed to read
it "a thousand times," and was deeply moved by the visions of the
Apocalypse. He won the patronage of Juan de Quintana, confessor to
Charles V, and was taken by Juan to Bologna and Augsburg (1530).
Michael discovered Protestantism, and liked it; he visited
Oecolampadius at Basel, and Capito and Bucer at Strasbourg; soon he
was too heretical for their taste, and was invited to graze in other
fields.
In 1531 and 1532 he published the first and second edition of his
basic work, De Trinitatis erroribus. It was rather confused, and
in a crude Latin that must have made Calvin smile if ever; but in
wealth of Biblical erudition it was an astonishing performance for a
lad of twenty. Jesus, in Servetus's view, was a man into whom God
the Father had breathed the Logos, the Divine Wisdom; in this sense
Jesus became the Son of God; but he was not equal or co-eternal with
the Father, Who might communicate the same spirit of wisdom to other
men; "the Son was sent from the Father in no other way than as one
of the Prophets." `062157 This was pretty close to Mohammed's
conception of Christ. Servetus proceeded to take the Semitic view of
Trinitarianism. "All those who believe in a Trinity in the essence
of God are tritheists"; and, he added, they are "true atheists" as
deniers of the One God. `062158 This was youthfully extreme, but
Servetus tried to soften his heresy by inditing rhapsodies on Christ
as the Light of the World; most of his readers, however, felt that
he had extinguished the light. As if to leave no stone unhurled, he
concurred with the Anabaptists that baptism should be given only to
adults. Oecolampadius and Bucer repudiated him, and Servetus,
reversing Calvin's itinerary, fled from Switzerland to France (1532).
On July 17 the Inquisition at Toulouse issued a warrant for his
arrest. He thought of going to America, but found Paris more
agreeable. There, disguising himself as Michel de Villeneuve (the
family name), he studied mathematics, geography, astronomy, and
medicine, and flirted with astrology. The great Vesalius was his
fellow student in dissection, and their teachers praised them equally.
He quarreled with the dean of the medical faculty, and seems in
general to have given offense by his impetuosity, passion, and
pride. He challenged Calvin to a debate, but did not appear at the
appointed place and time (1534). In the furore over Cop's address
and the heretical placards, Servetus, like Calvin, left Paris. At
Lyons he edited a scholarly edition of Ptolemy's Geography. In
1540 he moved to Vienne (sixteen miles south of Lyons), and there he
lived till his last year, practicing medicine and scholarship. Out
of so many scholars available to the Lyons publishers-printers, he was
chosen to edit a Latin translation of the Bible by Santes Pagnini. The
work took him three years, and ran to six volumes. In a note on Isaiah
7:14, which Jerome had rendered "a virgin shall conceive," Servetus
explained that the Hebrew word meant not virgin but young woman, and
he suggested that it referred not prophetically to Mary but simply
to Hezekiah's wife. In the same spirit he indicated that other
seemingly prophetic passages in the Old Testament referred only to
contemporary figures or events. This proved disconcerting to
Protestants and Catholics alike.
We do not know when Servetus discovered the pulmonary circulation of
the blood- the passage of the blood from the right chamber of the
heart along the pulmonary artery to and through the lungs, its
purification there by aeration, and its return via the pulmonary
vein to the left chamber of the heart. So far as is now known, he
did not publish his finding till 1553, when he included it in his
final work, The Restitution of Christianity. He brought the theory
into a theological treatise because he thought of the blood as the
vital spirit in man, and therefore- more probably than the heart or
the brain- the real seat of the soul. Deferring for a while the
problem of Servetus's priority in this discovery, we merely note
that he had apparently completed the Christianismi restitutio by
1546, for in that year he sent the manuscript to Calvin.
The very title was a challenge to the man who had written the
Christianae religionis institutio; but further, the book sharply
rejected, as blasphemy, the notion that God had predestined souls to
hell regardless of their merits or guilt. God, said Servetus, condemns
no one who does not condemn himself. Faith is good, but love is
better, and God Himself is love. Calvin thought it sufficient
refutation of all this to send Servetus a copy of the Institutes.
Servetus returned it with insulting annotations, `062159 and
followed up with a series of letters so contemptuous that Calvin wrote
to Farel (February 13, 1546): "Servetus has just sent me a long volume
of his ravings. If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my
word, for should he come, if my authority is of any avail, I will
not suffer him to get out alive." `062160 Servetus, angry at
Calvin's refusal to continue the correspondence, wrote to Abel Poupin,
one of the Genevese ministers (1547):
-
Your gospel is without God, without true faith, without good
works. Instead of a God you have a three-headed Cerberus [the
predestinating Trinity?]. For faith you have a deterministic dream....
Man is with you an inert trunk, and God is a chimera of the enslaved
will.... You close the Kingdom of Heaven before men.... Woe! woe! woe!
This is the third letter that I have written to warn you, that you may
know better. I will not warn you again. In this fight of Michael I
know that I shall certainly die... but I do not falter.... Christ will
come. He will not tarry. `062161
-
Obviously Servetus was a bit more insane than the average of his
time. He announced that the end of the world was at hand, that the
Archangel Michael would lead a holy war against both the papal and the
Genevese Antichrists, and that he, who had been named after the
Archangel, would fight and die in that war. `062162 The Restitutio
was a call to that war. No wonder it had difficulty finding a
publisher. The Basel printers shied away from it. Finally (January
3, 1553) it was clandestinely printed in Vienne by Balthasar
Arnouillet and Guillaume Gueroult. Their names, and the place of
publication, were omitted, and the author signed himself only as
MSV. He paid all the expenses, corrected the proofs, and then
destroyed the manuscript. The volume ran to 734 pages, for it included
a revised form of De Trinitatis erroribus, and Servetus's thirty
letters to Calvin.
Of the thousand copies printed some were sent to a bookseller in
Geneva. There one came into the hands of Guillaume Trie, a friend of
Calvin's. The thirty letters made plain to Calvin that MSV stood for
Michael Servetus of Villanova. On February 26, 1553, Trie wrote to a
Catholic cousin in Lyons, Antoine Arneys, expressing surprise that
Cardinal Francois de Tournon should allow such a book to be printed in
his diocese. How did Trie know the place of publication? Calvin knew
that Servetus was living in Lyons or Vienne.
Arneys brought the matter to Matthias Ory, inquisitor at Lyons.
Ory notified the Cardinal, who ordered Maugiron, Lieutenant-Governor
of Vienne, to investigate. On March 16 Servetus was summoned to
Maugiron's house. Before obeying he destroyed all papers that might
incriminate him. He denied having written the book. Arneys
dispatched to Trie a request for more evidence of Servetus's
authorship. Trie obtained from Calvin some of Servetus's letters,
and sent them to Lyons. They tallied with several letters in the book.
On April 4 Servetus was arrested. Three days later he escaped by
leaping over a garden wall. On June 17 the civil court of Vienne
condemned him, if found, to be burned alive by a slow fire.
Servetus wandered about France for three months. He decided to
seek refuge in Naples, and to go via Geneva. For reasons unknown he
remained in Geneva a month, under an assumed name; and meanwhile he
arranged for transportation to Zurich. On Sunday, August 13, he
attended church, perhaps to avoid investigation by the authorities. He
was recognized. Calvin was informed, and ordered his arrest. Calvin
explained this action in a later letter (September 9, 1553): "When the
papists are so harsh and violent in defense of their superstitions
that they rage cruelly to shed innocent blood, are not Christian
magistrates shamed to show themselves less ardent in defense of the
sure truth?" The Small Council followed Calvin's lead, and outran
his ferocity. Since Servetus was only a transient, and not a citizen
subject to the laws of Geneva, the Council could not legally do more
than banish him.
He was confined in the former episcopal palace, now a prison. He was
not tortured, except by the lice that infested his cell. He was
allowed paper and ink, and whatever books he cared to buy, and
Calvin lent him several volumes of the early Fathers. The trial was
carefully conducted, lasting over two months. The indictment was drawn
up by Calvin in thirty-eight articles, supported by quotations from
the writings of Servetus. One charge was that he had accepted Strabo's
description of Judea as a barren country, whereas the Bible called
it a land flowing with milk and honey. `062163 The basic accusations
were that Servetus had rejected the Trinity and infant baptism; he was
also accused of having, "in the person of M. Calvin, defamed the
doctrines of the Gospel of the Church of Geneva." `062164 On August 17
and 21 Calvin appeared in person as the accuser. Servetus defended his
views boldly, even to pantheism. By an unusual co-operation of hostile
faiths, the Protestant Council of Geneva asked the Catholic judges
at Vienne for particulars of the charges that had been brought against
Servetus there. One new count was sexual immorality; Servetus
replied that rupture had long since made him impotent, and had kept
him from marriage. `062165 He was further accused of having attended
Mass at Vienne; he pleaded fear of death as exculpation. He challenged
the jurisdiction of a civil court over cases of heresy; he assured the
court that he had engaged in no sedition, and had not violated the
laws of Geneva; and he asked for an attorney, better acquainted than
himself with these laws, to help him in his defense. These pleas
were refused. The French Inquisition sent an agent to Geneva to demand
that Servetus be sent back to France for the execution of the sentence
that had been pronounced against him; Servetus, in tears, begged the
Council to reject this demand; it did; but the demand may have
stimulated the Council to equal the Inquisition in severity.
On September 1 two enemies of Calvin- Ami Perrin and Philibert
Berthelier- were allowed to join the judges in the trial. They engaged
Calvin in disputes, to no result; but they persuaded the Council to
consult the other churches of Protestant Switzerland on how Servetus
should be treated. On September 2 Calvin's leadership in the city
was again challenged in the Council by Patriotes and Libertins; he
survived the storm, but the evident desire of the opposition to rescue
Servetus may have hardened Calvin to pursue the heretic to the
death. However, we should note that the chief prosecutor in the
trial was Claude Rigot, a Libertin. `062166
On September 3 Servetus presented to the Council a written reply
to the thirty-eight charges adduced by Calvin. He met each point
with keen argument and Scriptural or patristic citations; he
questioned Calvin's right to interfere in the trial, and called him
a disciple of Simon Magus, a criminal, and a homicide. `062167
Calvin answered in twenty-three pages; these were submitted to
Servetus, who returned them to the Council with such marginal comments
as "liar," "impostor," "hypocrite," "miserable wretch"; `062168
probably the strain of a month's imprisonment and mental torment had
broken Servetus's self-control. Calvin's reports of the trial are
themselves in the manner of the time; he writes of Servetus that
"the dirty dog wiped his snout"; "the perfidious scamp" soils each
page with "impious ravings." `062169 Servetus petitioned the Council
to indict Calvin as a "repressor of the truth of Jesus Christ," to
"exterminate" him, confiscate his goods, and, with the proceeds,
reimburse Servetus for the losses he had sustained by Calvin's
actions. The suggestion was not favorably received.
On October 18 the replies came in from the Swiss churches whose
counsel had been asked; all advised the condemnation of Servetus, none
his execution. On October 25 Perrin made a last effort to save him
by moving for a retrial before the Council of Two Hundred; he was
overruled. On the twenty-sixth the Small Council, with no member
dissenting, passed sentence of death on two counts of heresy-
Unitarianism and the rejection of infant baptism. When Servetus
heard the sentence, says Calvin, "he moaned like a madman, and... beat
his breast, and bellowed in Spanish, Misericordia! Misericordia! " He
asked to talk with Calvin; he pleaded with him for mercy; Calvin
offered no more than to give him the final consolations of the true
religion if he would retract his heresies. Servetus would not. He
asked to be beheaded rather than burned; Calvin was inclined to
support this plea, but the aged Farel, in at the death, reproved him
for such tolerance; and the Council voted that Servetus should be
burned alive. `062170
The sentence was carried out the next morning, October 27, 1553,
on the hill of Champel, just south of Geneva. On the way Farel
importuned Servetus to earn divine mercy by confessing the crime of
heresy; according to Farel the condemned man replied, "I am not
guilty, I have not merited death"; and he besought God to pardon his
accusers. `062171 He was fastened to a stake by iron chains, and his
last book was bound to his side. When the flames reached his face he
shrieked with agony. After half an hour of burning he died. *06048
VII. AN APPEAL FOR TOLERATION
-
Catholics and Protestants united in approving the sentence. The
Inquisition at Vienne, cheated of its living prey, burned Servetus
in effigy. Melanchthon, in a letter to Calvin and Bullinger, gave
"thanks to the Son of God" for the "punishment of this blasphemous
man," and called the burning "a pious and memorable example to all
posterity." `062173 Bucer declared from his pulpit in Strasbourg
that Servetus had deserved to be disemboweled and torn to
pieces. `062174 Bullinger, generally humane, agreed that civil
magistrates must punish blasphemy with death. `062175
Yet even in Calvin's day some voices spoke for Servetus. A
Sicilian wrote a long poem, De iniusto Serveti incendio. David Joris
of Basel, an Anabaptist, published a protest against the execution,
but under a pseudonymn; after his death his authorship was discovered;
his body was exhumed and publicly burned (1566). The political
opponents of Calvin naturally condemned his treatment of Servetus, and
some of his friends deprecated the severity of the sentence as
encouraging the Catholics of France to apply the death penalty to
Huguenots. Such criticism must have been widespread, for in February
1554, Calvin issued a Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate
contra prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti. If, he argued, we
believe in the inspiration of the Bible, then we know the truth, and
all who oppose it are enemies and blasphemers of God. Since their
offense is immeasurably greater than any other crime, the civil
authority must punish heretics as worse than murderers; for murder
merely kills the body, while heresy accepted damns the soul to
everlasting hell. (This was precisely the Catholic position.)
Moreover, God Himself has explicitly instructed us to kill heretics,
to smite with the sword any city that abandons the worship of the true
faith revealed by Him. Calvin quoted the ferocious decrees of Deut.
13:5-15, 17:2-5; Exodus 22:20; and Lev. 24:16, and argued from them
with truly burning eloquence:
-
Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and
blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their
crime.... There is no question here of man's authority; it is God
Who speaks, and it is clear what law He would have kept in the
Church even to the end of the world. Wherefore does He demand of us so
extreme severity if not to show us that due honor is not paid Him so
long as we set not His service above every human consideration, so
that we spare not kin nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when
the matter is to combat for His glory? `062176
-
Calvin moderated his conclusions by counseling mercy to those
whose heresies were not fundamental, or were clearly due to
ignorance or feebleness of mind. But whereas in general he accepted
St. Paul as his guide, he refused to use the Pauline expedient of
declaring the old law superseded by the new. In truth the theocracy
that he had apparently established would have crumbled into disorder
if differences of creed had been allowed public voice.
What, meanwhile, had become of the Erasmian spirit of tolerance?
Erasmus had been tolerant because he had not been certain; Luther
and Melanchthon had abandoned tolerance as they progressed in
certainty; Calvin, with lethal precocity, had been certain almost from
his twentieth year. A few humanists who had studied classic thought,
and had not been frightened back into the Roman fold by distaste for
the violence of theological strife, remained to suggest,
diffidently, that certainty in religion and philosophy is