762 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
the morning, he dressed himself, threw a night-gown over his clothes, and put a velvet cap upon his head, and, pretending a call of nature, he secured from the unsuspecting jailer the key to the garden. He leaped from the roof of the outhouse and made his escape through the court and over the bridge across the Rhone. He carried with him his golden chain around his neck, valued at twenty crowns, six gold rings on his fingers, and plenty of money in his pockets.
Two hours elapsed before his escape became known. An alarm was given, the gates were closed, and the neighboring houses searched ; but all in vain.
Nevertheless the prosecution went on. Sufficient evidence was found that the " Restitution " had been printed in Vienne ; extracts were made from it to prove the heresies contained therein. The civil court, without waiting for the judgment of the spiritual tribunal (which was not given until six months afterwards), sentenced Servetus on the 17th of June, for heretical doctriiies, for violation of the royal ordinances, and for escape from the royal prison, to pay a fine of one thousand livres tournois to the Dauphin, to be carried in a cart, together with his books, on a market-day through the principal streets to the place of execution, and to be burnt alive by a slow fire.^
On the same day he was burnt in effigy, together with the five bales of his book, which had been consigned to Merrin at Lyons and brought back to Vienne.
The goods and chattels of the fugitive were seized and confiscated. The property he had acquired from his medical practice and literary labors amounted to four thousand crowns. The king bestowed them on the son of Monsieur
1 " Estre hrusle tout vif a petit-fen, teUement que son corps soit mis en cendre." The whole sentence of the tribunal is printed in Calvin's Opera, VIII. 784-787. It was communicated to the Council of Geneva, as a ground for demanding the prisoner.
§ 149. SEEVETUS FLEES TO (lEXEVA. 763
de Montgiron, lieutenant-general of Daupliind and presiding judge of the court.^
Arnoullet was discharged on proving that he had been deceived by Gu^roult, who seems to have escaped by flight. He took care that the remaining copies of the heretical book in France should be destroyed. Stephens, the famous publisher, who had come to Geneva in 1552, sacrificed the copies in liis hands. Those that had been sent to Frankfort were burnt at the instance of Calvin.
On the 23d of December, two months after the execution of Servetus, the ecclesiastical tribunal of Vienne pronounced a sentence of condemnation on him.^
§ 149. Servetus flees to G-eneva and is arrested.
E.1LLIET : delation du proces, etc., quoted above, p. 684. (Tweedie's translation in his Calvin and Servetus, pp. 62 sqq.) Opera, VIII. 725-856.
Escaped from one danger of death, Servetus, as by " a fatal madness," as Calvin says, rushed into another.^ Did he aspire to the glory of martyrdom in Geneva, as he seemed to intimate in his letter to Poupin ? But he had just escaped martyrdom in France. Or did he wish to have a personal interview with Calvin, which he had sought in Paris in 1534, and again in Vienne in 1546 ? But after publishing his abusive letters and suspecting him for denunciation, he could hardly entertain such a wish. Or did he merely intend to pass through the place on his way to Italy? But in this case he need not tarry there for weeks, and he might have taken another route through Savoy, or by the sea. Or did
1 See Montgiron's letter to the Council of Geneva in Opera, VIII. 791, and in Rilliet-Tweedie, p. 156.
2 Calvin's Opera, VIII. 851-856 (copied from d'Artigny, II. 12.3, and Mosheim, Neue Nachrichten, etc., p. 100 sq.). Villanovanus is therein condemned as " maximus kcereticus," and his scripta as " erronea, nefanda, impia, sacrilega, et plusquam hatretica."
3 " Nescio quid dicam, nisi fatal i vesania fuisse correptum ut se prcEcipitem jaceret." Calvin. See Henry, III. 151.