60 ΚΝ ORIENTATION,
The fatal encounter of the champion of orthodoxy and the champion of heresy, men of equal age, rare genius, and fervent zeal for the restoration of Christianity, but direct antipodes in doctrine, spirit and aim, forms the most thrilling tragedy in the history of the Reformation. The contrast between the two is almost as great as that between Simon Peter and Simon Magus.! Their contest will never lose its interest. The fires of the funeral pile which were kindled at Champel on the 27th of October, 1553, are still burning and cast their lurid sparks into the nineteenth century.
Leaving the historical details and the doctrinal aspect for another chapter,” we confine ourselves here to the bearing of the case on the question of toleration.
Impartial history must condemn alike the intolerance of the victor and the error of the victim, but honor in both the strength of conviction. Calvin should have contented himself with banish- | ing his fugitive rival from the territory of Geneva, or allowing him quietly to proceed on his contemplated journey to Italy, where he might have resumed his practice of medicine in which he excelled. But he sacrificed his future reputation to a mistaken sense of duty to the truth and the cause of the Reformation in Switzerland and his beloved France, where his followers were denounced and persecuted as heretics. He is responsible, on his own frank confession, for the arrest and trial of Servetus, and he fully assented to his condemnation and death “for heresy and blasphemy,” except that he counselled the magistrate, though in vain, to mitigate the legal penalty by substituting the sword for the fire.5
1 Servetus probably imagined himself to represent the Apostle when he called Calvin “Simon Magus.” He did identify himself with the archangel Michael fighting against the dragon, i.e. the Pope of Rome, Apoc. 12: 7.
2 Together with the extensive literature.
3 Servetus appeared on a Sunday morning, August 13th, 1558, 1 in one of the churches at Geneva and was recognized by one of the worshippers, who at once informed Calvin of the fact, whereupon he was thrown into prison. “ Nec sane dissimulo,” says Calvin (Opera, vol. VIIL., col. 461, ed. Baum, Reuss, etc.), “mea opera consilioque jure in carcerem fuisse conjectum.” Beza, in his Vita Calv., reports
§ 11. PROTESTANTISM AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 67
But the punishment was in accordance with the medizval laws and wellnigh universal sentiment of Catholic and Protestant Christendom; it was unconditionally counselled by four Swiss magistrates which had been consulted before the execution (Zurich, Berne, Basel, and Schaffhausen), and was expressly approved by all the surviving reformers : Bullinger, Farel, Beza, Peter Martyr, and (as we have already seen) even by the mild and gentle Melanchthon. And strange to say, Servetus himself held, in part at least, the theory under which he suffered : for he admitted that incorrigible obstinacy and malice deserved death,’ referring to the case of Ananias and Sapphira; while schism and heresy should be punished only by excommunication and exile.
Nor should we overlook the peculiar aggravation of the case. We may now put a more favorable construction on Servetus’ mystic and pantheistic or panchristic Unitarianism than his contemporaries, who seemed to have misunderstood him, friends as well as foes; but he was certainly a furious fanatic and radical heretic, and in the opinion of all the churches of his age a reckless blasphemer, aiming at the destruction of historic Christianity. He was thus judged from his first book (1531),’ as well as his
the fact as providential that Servetus, “a quodam agnitus, Calvino Magistratum admonente,” was arrested. Servetus had previously applied for a safe-conduct from Vienne to Geneva, but Calvin refused it, and wrote to Farel, February 13th, 1546: “Si venerit, modo valeat mea auctoritas, vivum exire numquam patiar.” During the process, he expressed the hope, in a letter to Farel (August 20th, 1553), that Servetus might be condemned to death, but that the sentence be executed in a milder form (Opera XIV., col. 590): “Spero capitale saltem fore judicium, penae vero atrocitatem [ignem] remitti cupio.”’ In the same letter he gives a sketch of the system of Servetus as teaching a pantheistic diffusion of the deity in wood, stone, and even in devils.
1“ Hoc erimen,” he says in the 27th of his letters to Calvin (Opera VIII, 708), “est morte simpliciter dignum.” Calvin refers to this admission of Servetus (VIII., 462) and charges him with inconsistency.
? De Trinitatis Erroribus Labri septem. Per Michaelem Serveto, alias Reves ab Aragonia Hispanum. Anno M.D.XXXI. No place of publication is given in the copy before me, but it was printed at Hagenau in the Alsace, as appears from the trial at Geneva. The book excited the greatest indignation in Oecolampadius and Bucer. Luther called it an awfully wicked book (ein gréulich bés Buch). Bucer thought the author ought to be torn to pieces,