Out of the Flames

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Although Calvin wanted public recognition for leading the moral crusade against Servetus, he had no intention of taking himself out of circulation by going to jail. Instead, he had his cook, Nicolas de la Fontaine, act as accuser in his place. (Calvin's supporters later insisted that Fontaine was a secretary, but Fontaine had been a cook before he fled France. In any event, Calvin referred to him as Nicolaus meus—“my man Nicolas.”)

  Also according to the law, a formal charge had to be presented within twenty-four hours of arrest or the accused would be set free. The very next morning, Servetus was brought before the lieutenant-criminel, Pierre Tissot, for arraignment. Fontaine formally declared himself Servetus's accuser and presented a list of thirty-eight charges. He said that he had brought the charges because he felt he must defend Calvin and the church at Geneva. A few days later Calvin would admit that he had drawn up all thirty-eight specifications himself.

  In order to meet the deadline, Calvin had been forced to work through the night, and, as a result, the charges were hastily written and very general. They ranged from publishing heretical literature to the accused's blasphemous beliefs to his lack of respect for church doctrine. Perhaps the most questionable charge was that which accused Servetus of violating the law by escaping from the Catholic Inquisition in Vi-enne. Most of the French population of Geneva had committed this same crime. Then there was count thirty-seven, one on which a good deal of time was spent. It read, “Likewise, that in the person of Mr. Calvin, minister of the word of God in this church of Geneva, he had defamed in a printed book, the doctrine that is preached, uttering all the injurious and blasphemous words that can be invented.” In other words, he had insulted Calvin.

  If there was ever a man temperamentally unsuited to navigate treacherous political waters, it was Servetus. Still, here he was on comfortable ground. He answered the theological arguments one by one, in each case bringing his vast biblical knowledge to the fore. No one in the room was any match for him. He insisted that the Trinity had been invented at Nicaea and that it was extrabiblical, and he defied his accusers to produce a single passage in the Scriptures to refute his position. This challenge he was to maintain against all comers for the remainder of the trial.

  As to the charge that he had escaped from Vienne, Servetus freely admitted that he had done so but was careful to point out that he had been a prisoner only because he had been denounced to the authorities there by Calvin and Trie, and that the Catholics would have burned him at the stake if he stayed. When he got to count thirty-seven, that he had been abusive to Calvin, Servetus countered that it was Calvin who had been abusive to him, referring to him as “a dog” and “a beast” and worse, and he had merely “responded in a like manner.”

  After the interrogation, Fontaine presented copies of the 1535 Ptolemy, the Pagnini Bible, and both a printed and manuscript copy of Christianismi Restitutio to the court. The manuscript copy was the one that Servetus had sent to Calvin for comment seven years earlier. The printed copy had sixteen handwritten pages replacing those that had been sent to Lyon by Trie. The sixteen pages were in the handwriting of one of Calvin's servants. The secretary had used the manuscript copy as his source.

  At the end of the day, Tissot agreed that there were sufficient grounds to proceed further.

  The next morning, Servetus was brought before the Little Council, now empanelled as a criminal tribunal. He was again asked to respond to the charges one by one, which he did, this time being even more forceful about Calvin's betrayal of him to the Catholics and the abuse that he had endured at the Reformer's hand. Fontaine moved that the prisoner be tried for heresy, since his responses to the charges had been only “frivolous songs.” After Fontaine's one night in jail, he also asked to be released from custody. The court agreed on both counts. The trial was ordered to commence the next day, and Fontaine would go free on bail. That bail was immediately posted in the form of Calvin's brother, Antoine, who served as Fontaine's guarantor. Now officially a defendant, Servetus was remanded to his cell and relieved of his possessions, which included ninety-seven pieces of gold, a gold chain, gold coins, a diamond, a ruby, and some other jewels.

  On the third day, the next phase of the proceedings began, a kind of extended pretrial hearing. If Fontaine could make a strong enough case to the Council, he would be released entirely with his bail vacated, and the public prosecutor would take over the case. Two new players were present in court. One was an attorney, Germain Colladon, there to speak for Fontaine. Pious and austere, Colladon was another French expatriate and one of Calvin's closest associates in Geneva. He was sufficiently intimate with the Reformer to later write of Calvin's home life and his day-to-day routine. The other newcomer was a member of the Council, none other than the excommunicate leader of the Libertines, Philibert Berthelier.

  Colladon had come prepared to confront the accused with the precise theological arguments of which Fontaine was incapable. Instead, he and Berthelier immediately went at each other. The subject was Calvin; it was as if the defendant wasn't even there. There is no record of their exchange, but the arguments became so heated that court was adjourned early.

  The first two and a half days of the trial had not gone well for Calvin. Fontaine had been no match for Servetus's scholarship, and Colladon was not sufficiently feared to control the courtroom. Servetus was showing no contrition and had demonstrated that he was quite capable of using the trial as a forum to air his views. Worst of all, his very lack of political skills seemed to be working in his favor. There were indications that some members of the court were beginning to look favorably on this solitary Spaniard who was so obviously pious and passionate in his beliefs.

  So on the afternoon of August 16, John Calvin personally presented himself before the Council and demanded to be heard.

  He came in, this mere twig of a man, thin, bent over, almost cadaverous, with the long Frankish nose, the wisp of a beard, and the smoldering stare that itself was enough to break most men. He walked slowly to a place at the front of the room, trailed by his ministers.

  Calvin faced Berthelier and the others and told them that Servetus had more than demonstrated the repugnance of his opinions and there was no doubt whatever that these opinions had already infected many and would continue to do so if left unchecked. He demanded an immediate guilty verdict from the Council. In that moment, wrote Robert Willis in Servetus and Calvin, “the issue, though continuing to be debated on the ground of speculative theology, was… transferred to the domain of politics, on which there was only one practical issue involved, as to who or which party that divided the state of Geneva should have the upper hand.”

  Berthelier and the others on the Council refused Calvin's demand. The trial would continue.

  The next morning, Calvin was seated at the prosecutor's bench next to Colladon, with a number of other ministers close at hand. Once again, Colladon began the questioning of the prisoner, trying to shake the foundations of his arguments. Once again, Servetus was more than equal to any line of questioning. The frustration at the prosecutors' bench was apparent.

  Calvin stood up.

  There would be no surrogates now. It was to be Calvin and Servetus. After almost twenty years, they would finally have their debate. If the stakes had been high for Calvin on that day in Paris in 1534, they were all that much higher for Servetus now.

  The exchanges were sharp, fast, and erudite. There was perhaps no other person in Europe who could have matched up to either of them. The subjects of these exchanges were often so esoteric than no one in the courtroom save the participants could follow them. One of these, recorded by Calvin, turned on the differences between Divine substance and the substance of living beings and other material things.

  Servetus: All things, all creatures are portions of the substance of God.

  Calvin (annoyed, he claimed, by so palpable an absurdity): What, poor man, if one stamped his foot on this floor and said he trod on God, would you not be horrified in having subjected th
e majesty of God to such unworthy usage?

  Servetus: I have not a doubt but that this bench, this table, and all you can point to around us is the substance of God.

  Calvin: Then must also not the Devil be substantially of God's substance?

  Servetus (smiling impudently, according to Calvin): Do you doubt it? For my part, 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 let it drop there. As they both knew, he himself had often claimed that God was present everywhere, and Luther had said, “God is present in all created things, and so in the smallest leaflet and tiniest poppy seed.”

  At every turn, Calvin attacked and Servetus countered. As to the charge that in the Geography he had slandered Moses with his remarks about the Holy Land, Servetus noted that he had not written the passage and besides, it was difficult to slander Moses with observations about contemporary Palestine. Servetus also held fast to his critique of the Trinity. Prior to the Council of Nicaea, he maintained, no doctor of the Church had used the word Trinity: “if the Fathers did acknowledge a distinction in the Divine Essence, it was not realbut formal’… the persons were nothing more in truth than dispensations or modes, not distinct entities or persons in the accepted meaning of that word.”

  Other than the Trinity, the most contentious point on which Servetus was accused was his denunciation of infant baptism. This debate cut deeper than theological esoterica or even a question of man's relationship with God. By denying that children under twenty were capable of mortal sins, Servetus not only recognized that childish indiscretion was not the equal of adult criminality, but he left room for both improvement by man and forgiveness by God. To Calvin, on the other hand, God's law was God's law, and no one was immune. Exempting those under twenty would only encourage them to commit adultery, theft, and murder. “[Servetus] is worthy that the little chickens, all sweet and innocent as he makes them, should dig out his eyes a hundred thousand times,” he wrote. No, children who committed indiscretions must be damned right along with their elders.

  As his final piece of evidence, Calvin produced the copy of the Institutes that he had sent to Servetus, minus the samples he had sent to France. He showed the Council the scabrous notations in the margins. “There is not a page of this book that is not befouled with vomit,” he repeated.

  The Council ruled that the trial should proceed to the next phase.

  CLAUDE RIGOT, ATTORNEY GENERAL for the city of Geneva and tit-ularly a Libertine, took over the prosecution. In order to allow Rigot time to prepare, a four-day adjournment was ordered. Calvin used this time well. He denounced Servetus from the pulpit and lobbied furiously among members of the Council who either supported him or were not firmly allied with his opponents. With the protection of God's word once more the cause, the old fire-breathing Calvin was back.

  He used the full range of his magnificent intellect to argue against the heretic. It mattered little that the issues seemed purely speculative, involving matters that the members of the Council did not pretend to understand, he said. Servetus was the enemy of religion itself and thus threatened the very cornerstone of civilized society. The Catholics at Vienne had already tried and convicted him—should the Council of Geneva show itself less zealous than the papists of France in protecting the name of God and their own true faith? Simply put, by holding to opinions that ran counter to those generally accepted by Christians everywhere, Servetus was proclaiming his own heresy.

  When Calvin heard that after all of this, members of the Council were still wavering, he made it known that he was contacting reformers in other cantons to enlist their support. If Servetus went unpunished, Geneva would stand alone in its godlessness.

  Servetus was no longer denying authorship of his works, only that they were heretical or that they had caused any harm among the faithful. When questioned about Christianismi Restitutio, he admitted that copies of the book had been shipped to Frankfurt. Calvin, while continuing to insist that Servetus had slandered him, wrote the following in a letter to the reform ministers:

  I doubt not that 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 in Vienne, not far from Lyons. Of this book we learn that many copies have been sent to Frankfurt. 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 that 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 he will soon be condemned and punished. But you are to aid us against the further spread of this pestiferous poison. 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.

  When the trial reconvened on August 21, Rigot was still not ready, so Fontaine and Colladon sat at the prosecutor's bench. A motion by members of the Council to abandon further prosecution of Servetus was defeated. Colladon questioned Servetus on the printing of Chris-tianismi Restitutio, trying to find out if Arnoullet was as ignorant of the contents as he claimed. During the session, Calvin suddenly burst into the room. He took his place at the bench, placing a stack of biblical texts in front of him. He pointed to the sources that he claimed demonstrated that the word “Trinity” had been used before Nicaea and assailed Servetus for corrupting the meaning of the essence of God. The two argued through most of the session, once more to a stalemate. During the afternoon, Calvin abruptly left, leaving the books for Servetus to see for himself.

  Just before the day's adjournment, Servetus asked for writing materials in order to prepare a rebuttal. The Council allowed him a pen and a single sheet of paper.

  The Council also decided to contact the other cantons on its own to ask informally for opinions, and even, astoundingly, to contact the Catholic authorities at Vienne. The first of these moves was welcomed by the defendant. Two years earlier, in a similar case, Jerome Bolsec, whom Calvin wanted to execute for questioning predestination, had been spared after reformers in other cities proclaimed the sentence too harsh. Bolsec, however, was a far less formidable intellectual force and, further, had agreed to keep his mouth shut afterward and discontinue any public pronouncements about Calvinist doctrine.

  When Servetus returned to court on August 23, Rigot took over. Fontaine, Colladon, and Calvin were gone. Servetus submitted his single sheet of paper to the Council. Rather than take notes on the arguments, he had used the paper to draft a motion. “Michael Servetus,” he wrote, “humbly showeth that the prosecution of a man for the doctrine of the Scripture, or for any question arising from it, is a new invention, unknown to the apostles and their disciples and to the ancient church. As it appears, first from the Acts of the Apostles, chap. xvii and xix, where such accusers are cast off, and referred to the churches when there is no crime in the case, and 'tis only a matter relating to religion.” He then cited the case of Arius himself, who had merely been banished by Constantine after the First Council of Nicaea.

  This was two arguments in one. In addition to the historic precedent that banishment was the appropriate punishment for Scriptural deviation, Servetus was also pointing out that since he had committed no crime in Geneva, the law clearly stated that he could not be prosecuted in the city, only thrown out.

  Lastly, he wrote, “In conclusion, my Lords, insomuch
as I am a stranger, ignorant of the customs of this country, not knowing either how to speak or comport myself in the circumstances under which I am placed, I humbly beseech you to assign me an Advocate to speak for me in my defense. Doing thus, you will assuredly do well, and our Lord will prosper your Republic.”

  The folly of the Libertine strategy was now apparent. Banishing Servetus would accomplish nothing other than leaving a known heretic on the loose in Switzerland under the Libertine aegis. Granting him an advocate was even worse. Under Genevan law, had Rigot granted Servetus the right to an attorney, he could no longer seek the death penalty, leaving banishment as the only option.

  Instead, Rigot claimed that Servetus's argument against the death penalty was a confession of guilt, that he would not argue against the application of such a penalty unless he knew he deserved it. As for a lawyer, Servetus was known to be a liar and a seducer, and people such as that did not deserve attorneys, who would merely aid them in lying and seducing more effectively.

  Rigot then presented a revised list of thirty charges. These were not theological at all—Rigot was no theologian—but aimed at proving that as a disreputable character, Servetus was a menace to society. Had Servetus not communicated with Jews? Was he not a Jew himself? Had he not read the Koran and become friendly with infidel Turks? While in Basel, had he not caused public disruption? Had he not also been discommodious with Bucer and Oecolampadius? Had he not come to Geneva solely to disseminate his blasphemous ideas? Had he not lived a besotted and dissolute life? Had he not fled the lawful authorities of France? While in France, had he not attended Mass as a loyal Catholic? Had he not lived a life of sexual profligacy while avoiding the holy institution of marriage?