SERVETUS SENDS A LETTER AND A SECOND REMONSTRANCE AND PETITION TO HIS JUDGES.

Smarting under a sense of the unjustifiable treatment to which he was so relentlessly subjected, and weary of the delays that had taken place through the disputes between the Consistory represented by Calvin, and the Council, Servetus now gave vent to the pent-up storm within him in the following characteristic remonstrance. Alluding to the backing his persecutor received from the clergy, and the number of names attached to the Refutation of his Replies, he exclaims:

Thus far we have had clamour enough and a great crowd of subscribers! But what places in Scripture do they adduce as their authority for the Invisible Individual Son they acknowledge? They refer to none; nor, indeed, will they ever be able to point to any. Is this becoming in these great ministers of the Divine Word, who everywhere boast that they teach nothing that is not confirmed by distinct passages of Holy Writ? But no such places are now forthcoming; and my doctrine, consequently, is impugned by mere clamour, without a shadow of reason, and without the citation of a single authority against it.

Michael Servetus,
who signs alone, but has Christ for his sure protector!

Engaged with more immediate and interesting business in the political and administrative sphere of their duties, the Council had, in fact, left that in which their prisoner Michael Servetus was so particularly concerned unnoticed for something like fourteen days. This long delay gave him reasonable cause for complaint, and furnished him with grounds not only for the outburst given above, but for a further petition and remonstrance to the following effect:

To the Syndics and Council of Geneva.

My most honoured Lords!—I humbly entreat of you to put an end to these great delays, or to exonerate me of the criminal charge. You must see that Calvin is at his wit’s end and knows not what more to say, but for his pleasure would have me rot here in prison. The lice eat me up alive; my breeches are in rags, and I have no change—no doublet, and but a single shirt in tatters.

I made another request to you, which was for God’s sake; but to prevent your granting it, Calvin alleged Justinian against me. It is surely unfortunate for him that he brings against me that which he does not himself believe. He neither believes nor does he agree with what Justinian says of the Church, of Bishops, of the Clergy, nor of many things besides connected with religion. He knows well enough that [in Justinian’s day] the Church was already corrupted. This is disgraceful in him—all the more disgraceful as he keeps me here for the last five weeks in close confinement, and has not yet adduced a single passage [of Scripture] against me.

I have also demanded to have counsel assigned me. This would have been granted me in my native country; and here I am a stranger and ignorant of the laws and customs of the land. Yet you have given counsel to my accuser, whilst refusing it to me, and have further set him at large before having taken any true cognisance of my cause. I now demand that my cause may be referred to the Council of Two Hundred. If I am permitted to appeal to it, I hereby appeal; declaring, as I do, that I will take on me all the expenses, damages, and interests, and abide by the award of the Lex Talionis as well in respect of my first accuser [De la Fontaine] as of Calvin his master, who has now taken the prosecution into his own hands.

From your prison of Geneva, this 15th of Septr. 1553.

Michael Servetus,
in his own cause.

The Council appear to have been nowise moved by this very reasonable petition. The request for counsel, here reiterated, was not noticed—it had already been disposed of, and could not be granted; but the petition to have his case referred to the Council of the Two Hundred was discussed and rejected: the tribunal before which he was on his trial was competent in every respect by the laws of the State. Orders, however, were given that the articles of clothing he required should be procured for him at his proper cost; but as it seems to have been the business of no one to see the order carried into effect, or because the Council and custodians of the gaol of Geneva were accustomed to see their prisoners in rags and devoured by vermin, it was unheeded at the time, although attended to at a somewhat later period in this eventful history.

Had there been no resolution to take the opinion of the Councils and Churches of the confederate Reformed Cantons, everything necessary to a decision was again before the Court. The term had indeed been exceeded within which by the law of Geneva the proceedings ought to have ended—the law positively forbidding the protraction of a criminal suit beyond the term of a calendar month. The law had, therefore, been violated; but there was no one to urge the point in behalf of the prisoner, any more than there had been to expose Calvin’s disobedience of the Council’s orders to present his Articles of Incrimination without note or comment. Neither the Clerical nor the Libertine party, however, had yet done with the unfortunate Servetus, although it was not before their meeting of September 21 that the Council found itself at leisure to take up the tangled skein of the Servetus-prosecution again, and to order the necessary documents to be prepared for submission to the Councils and Churches they had determined to consult. Before despatching these when ready, they seem to have thought it would be well to show Calvin the short demurrers of Servetus to his elaborate Refutation; expecting, probably, that he would have something to say to them, but not meaning to let Servetus see anything Calvin might think proper to add. There was no occasion however, as it fell out, to act on this rather partial reservation. The Reformer did not think fit to notice even one of the unhappy annotations of his enemy, in which the lie direct is given him something like fifty times; and the epithet nebulo—knave—is not the most offensive that is applied to him. He did not add a word to what he had already written. A mere glance at the unhappy jottings sufficed, as it seemed, to make him feel sure of his suit; Servetus, he saw, stood self-condemned in his neglect to adduce Scripture authority for his peculiar views, or to show that they had either been misinterpreted or misunderstood by his pursuer. The abusive epithets so plentifully heaped on Calvin only recoiled upon himself.