SERVETUS IS ARRAIGNED ON THE CAPITAL CHARGE BY CALVIN.

In ordering the summary arrest of Servetus at the instance of Calvin, as we have seen, the Syndic only conformed with usage. But by the law of Geneva grounds for an arrest on a criminal charge must be delivered to an officer styled Le Lieutenant Criminel, or the Lieutenant of Criminal Process—a personage evidently holding a responsible position in the city—within twenty-four hours thereafter, failing which the party attached was set at liberty. To prepare the articles of impeachment required, Calvin must have spent the greater part of the night, turning over the leaves of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ for the matter of his charges. These bear very obvious marks of the haste in which they were put together, several of them being repetitions of others that had gone before, and scarcely anything like order being observed in the arrangement of the particulars adduced. Within the legal time, however, the prosecutor was ready with his articles, no fewer than thirty-eight in number, upon which, as a preliminary to further proceedings, it was the duty of the ‘Lieutenant Criminel’ to interrogate the prisoner, and from his replies to determine whether or not there were grounds to found what we should call a True Bill against him.

Nor was this all. Criminal charges must be made at the instance of some one who should avow himself aggrieved, and not only bind himself over to prosecute the suit he sought to institute to a conclusion, but be content to go to prison with the party he accused, and, in conformity with the requirements of the Lex Talionis, or law of retaliation, engage, in case his charges were not made good, to undergo the penalty that would befall the incriminated party if they were substantiated.

It would of course have been not only inconvenient, but unbecoming for Calvin, the real prosecutor in the case, to go into durance vile, his presence in the outer world being so much required. He had therefore to procure a substitute; and we might have expected to find William Trie again brought forward, and made to figure in setting on foot the trial for life or death at Geneva, as he had already lent himself to figure in that of Vienne. But Trie was not produced; it was a certain Nicolas de la Fontaine, a French refugee in the service of Calvin, in what capacity report speaks variously, some designating him cook, whilst others, to enhance his dignity, call him the Reformer’s Secretary. Calvin himself speaks of him familiarly as Nicolaus meus, my man Nicolas. That Fontaine was really the Reformer’s cook seems now to have been satisfactorily ascertained; but he may have been a man of parts and education for all that; refugees for conscience sake could not always choose their calling in their new abodes.72

On the morning of August 14th, accordingly, Nicolas de la Fontaine presented himself before the Lieutenant Criminel, Tissot, and the prisoner having been produced, De la Fontaine declared himself formally the Prosecutor of Michael Servetus of Villanova on certain criminal charges, demanding at the same time that the prisoner should, under penalties, be required to answer truthfully to each of the articles now to be alleged against him.

These articles, thirty-eight in number, are taken exclusively from Servetus’s work entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ which is assumed as having been published and found detrimental to the public peace (although it had as yet been seen by no one in Geneva but Calvin himself), not any of them from the earlier work entitled ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ the printing of which and its presumed influence in troubling the Churches of Germany, infecting the world with heresy and causing many to lose their souls, being nevertheless, as we see, the first item in the list of its author’s delinquencies. Calvin must have seen the propriety of producing the treatise on Trinitarian Error, published two and twenty years ago; but he had not a copy himself, neither could he hear of one either in Geneva or Lausanne; for he had written to his friend Viret for aid in the matter. But Viret could not help him—he had no copy himself; his friend Sonnerius, however, he thinks, has one; ‘were he at home he would not assuredly refuse us the use of it.’ Obtaining it on Sonnerius’s return, he will send it with the least possible delay to Geneva.73

The articles of impeachment, classified and summarised, with the answers of Servetus, are as follows:

I. and II. That about twenty-four years ago he began to trouble the Churches of Germany with his errors and heresies, and published an execrably heretical book by which he infected many, and for which he had been condemned and forced to fly the country that he might escape punishment.

To this Servetus replies: That he is not conscious of having troubled any of the Churches of Germany; and though he owns that he had published a little book at Hagenau, he is not aware that he had infected anyone, and certainly was never either tried or condemned for anything he had done in Germany, neither had he been forced to fly from that country to escape punishment.

III. and IV. Item: That he has not ceased since then from spreading abroad his poison, in annotations to the Bible and to the Geography of Ptolemy, and more recently in a second book, clandestinely printed, containing an infinity of blasphemies, &c.

Replies: That it is true he wrote notes to the Bible and to Ptolemy; but thinks he said nothing in them that is not good; and in the book lately printed, he does not believe that he blasphemes; but if it be shown him that he says anything amiss he is ready to amend it.

V. Item: That having been imprisoned at Vienne, when he saw that the authorities there would not accept of his retractations, he had found means to escape from prison.

Replies: That he was indeed prisoner at Vienne, having been denounced to the authorities there by Monsieur Calvin and Guillaume Trie, and had made his escape from prison, because the Priests would have burned him alive had he stayed; the prison, however, having been so kept that it seemed as though the authorities meant him to save himself.

VI., VII., VIII. Item: That he had written, published, and said that to believe there were three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the single essence of God was to forge or feign so many phantoms; to have a God parted into three, like the three-headed Cerberus of the heathen poets; all this being said in the face of such doctors of the Church as Ambrose, Augustin, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and the rest, as well as of many holy men of the present day—Melanchthon among the number, whom he had called a Belial and Satan.

Replies: That in the book he wrote on the Trinity, he had followed the teaching of the Doctors who lived immediately after Christ and the Apostles; that he believes in a Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—but owns that he does not attach the same meaning to the word person as do modern writers; and though he admits that he spoke of Melanchthon in the terms stated, it was not in any printed book or in public, but in a private letter; whilst Melanchthon, on his part, and in a printed book, had used language of the same kind towards him.

IX. to XX. and XXVI. The whole of these articles, with wearisome prolixity and iteration, refer to the transcendental theological dogmas that touch on the way and manner in which Christ is to be regarded as the Son of God; the relationship in which He stands to the ‘Word’ of the Gospel according to John, and how the Word was made Flesh; in what respect Christ is God, and in what respect he is Man, and how, as the Son of God, he could have died like a man. To these recondite propositions Servetus replies in a way that has a sufficient look of orthodoxy, and was evidently intended by him so to appear. He avows his belief in the items generally on which he is challenged with unbelief; and it may be that he could do so with a clear conscience, he putting his own interpretation on the language he used. Christ he acknowledged as the Son of God, but this was because of his having been begotten in some mysterious way by the Deity in the womb of the Virgin Mary, He not having existed actually but only potentially in the mind of God before the epoch of his incarnation. Christ, however, he says, was prefigured by the angels who make their appearance from time to time in the Hebrew Scriptures. When persons are spoken of, further, they are to be thought of as images, formalities, not real entities or individuals; so that the three persons he acknowledges in the Godhead are but so many dispensations, modes, or manifestations which the Invisible God makes of himself in creation.

XXIV., XXV. and XXXV. These articles bear upon Servetus’s conceptions of the Deity, in whose Oneness of Being he declares that he yet acknowledges not merely three hypostases, as generally said, but a hundred thousand dispositions or dispensations, so that God is part of ourselves, we part of His Spirit; the ideas or patterns of all creatures and of all things having been eternally present in the Divine Mind, though they only acquired form and substance in Creation.

XXVII. and XXIX. Item: That he had said that the soul of man was mortal; that there was nothing immortal in fact, but an elementary breath, the soul having become mortal after Adam’s transgression.

He replies by denying the allegations, and declares that he never thought the soul of man to be mortal; all he has said in his writings in connection with the subject of immortality being to the effect that the soul was clothed in corruptible elements which perished, not that the soul itself was mortal or died in its essence.

XXX., XXXI., and XXXIII. Item: That he had spoken of Infant Baptism as a diabolical invention, competent to destroy the whole of Christianity.

He admits that he has said so, and is still of this opinion; believing as he does that none should be baptized until they had attained to years of discretion. But he adds, that if it be shown him he is mistaken in this, he is ready to submit to correction.

XXXVII. Item: That in his printed book he has made use of scurrilous and blasphemous terms of reproach in speaking of M. Calvin and the Doctrines of the Church of Geneva.

Replies: That he himself had had abusive language applied to him by Calvin in public; Calvin having said that he, Servetus, was intoxicated with his opinions; a reproach which had led him to reply in similar terms to his opponent, and to show at the same time from his writings that he was mistaken in many things.

XXXVIII. Item: That knowing his last book would not be suffered, even among the Papists, he had concealed his views from Geroult, the superintendent of the office where it was printed.

Replies: That he corrected the press at Vienne, but did not conceal his views from Geroult, who knew well enough what his opinions were.

August 15. The information taken by the Lieutenant in conformity with the course of procedure required having been communicated to the Syndics and Council now constituted Judges in a criminal case, and, the Court of Judicature solemnly inaugurated, the prosecutor and prisoner were produced; when Nicolas de la Fontaine made a formal demand that Michael Servetus of Villanova, whom he charged with heresy, should be put upon his trial. He presented an address or petition, at the same time, in which the heads of the charges he proposed to prove against the prisoner were briefly enumerated, namely, the grave scandals and troubles he had caused among Christians for twenty-four years or thereabout; the heresies and blasphemies he had spoken and written against God with which he had infected the world; the wicked calumnies and defamations he had published against the true servants of God, more especially against Monsieur Calvin, whose honour as his Pastor, he—the prosecutor—felt bound to uphold if he himself would be accounted a Christian, and also because of the discredit that would attach to the Church of Geneva, did the prisoner go at large, condemning, as he does, and in an especial manner, the doctrine that is there preached. ‘In as much, therefore,’ continues Calvin through the mouth of Fontaine, ‘as the prisoner on his examination yesterday replied in nowise satisfactorily and simply by yea or nay to the questions put to him, as you must have perceived, the greater number of his answers being mere frivolous songs, may it please your Lordships to compel him to answer formally, without divergence or circumlocution, to each of the articles proposed; to the end that he be not suffered to go on mocking God and your Excellencies, and that the proponent be not frustrated in his rights.

‘Now the proponent having prima facie made good his allegations and satisfied you that the prisoner has been guilty of writing heresy and dogmatising in the manner alleged, he begs you humbly to recognise the prisoner Michael Servetus as a criminal deserving of prosecution by your attorney-general; and that he, the proponent, be now declared free of all charge, damage, and interest in the business. Not that he shuns or declines to follow up a cause of the kind, which every child of God ought indeed to pursue to the death, but in compliance with the usages of your city, and because it is not for him to undertake duties that belong to another.’

Having taken this petition into consideration, and determined that there was prima facie evidence of criminality on the part of the prisoner, the Council proceeded in the afternoon of the same day to the old Episcopal Palace, now turned into the Court in which criminal causes were tried, and commenced proceedings according to the forms in such cases used and provided.