Servetus and Calvin A Study of an Important Epoch in the Early History of the Reformation

Among writers nearer our own time there are few who openly and unreservedly uphold Calvin in his conduct to Servetus, none who now advocate persecution unto death for divergence...

We have seen that Servetus could never recover his MS. of the Restoration of Christianity from the hands of Calvin. But he had not sent his work for the review of the Reformer w...

The Pagnini Bible out of hand, Villanovanus’s time would seem not yet to have been so fully occupied by his profession as to debar him from continuing to engage in a good deal o...

The letter of Œcolampadius, as we have it, is without date, but must have been written from Basle at the close of 1530, or the beginning of 1531, and so before the book on Trini...

It fell out, unfortunately for Servetus, that the decree of the Council against the Consistory was the immediate prelude to the resumption of his trial. The decision come to had...

If Calvin, then, as we apprehend, had every reason to anticipate an answer in his favour from the Churches, so do we find Servetus possessed by the assured hope that he would be...

In the course of this extraordinary trial there seems never to have been the slightest difficulty made about shifting the grounds of the Accusation. The particulars on which the...

Dissatisfaction with what had been done appears to have become general immediately after the execution of Servetus. It extended beyond the walls of the Council chamber and found...

Calvin’s mind must have been immediately made up after perusing the ‘Restoration of Christianity.’ He would denounce its author as a heretic and blasphemer to the ecclesiastical...

Formally installed in the Court of Criminal Judicature, Nicolas de la Fontaine and Michael Servetus were ordered to be brought before them by the Judges; and the prosecutor decl...

Arrived at this stage, all the documents on which it was proposed to proceed being before the Court, and something more than a presumption of the prisoner’s heretical opinions h...

Servetus must have got through a very considerable amount of literary work during the earlier years of his residence at Vienne. His time not being then fully occupied by profess...

April 4. After the receipt of Trie’s third epistle, a solemn council was convened within the Archiepiscopal Château of Roussillon, at which were present the Cardinal Tournon, th...

‘The year 1553,’ says Beza, in his life of Calvin, ‘by the impatience and fury of the factious, was a year so full of trouble that not only was the Church, but the Republic of G...

When the Court assembled, on August 23, a series of articles, embodying what may be characterised as a new Act of Impeachment, was presented to it by M. Rigot the Attorney-Gener...

Michael Serveto, or as we know him best by his name with the Latin termination, Servetus, appears, from the most trustworthy information we possess, to have been born either at...

Calvin, unlike Servetus, was never remiss. Sedulous to leave as little as might be to accident, and nothing, if he could guard against it, to independent conclusion, he did not...

Theology, however, after which we see Servetus still hankering--_hæret lateri letalis arundo!_--and even the study of the mathematics on which he was now engaged, had to be aban...

Even whilst the trial was proceeding, we have seen that Calvin was not without opposition in his pursuit of Servetus. Amied Perrin, his great political rival, had striven for me...

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...

The remainder of the month of April was spent in making a renewed and more particular examination of the books, papers, and letters of Villeneuve, and in having copies made of t...

An hour before noon of October 27, 1553, the ‘Lieutenant Criminel,’ Tissot, accompanied by other officials and a guard, entered the gaol, and ordered the prisoner to come with t...

School and college days come naturally to an end, or are cut short by one intervening incident or another; and the studies of Michael Servetus at Toulouse were interrupted by an...

Even before the trial of Servetus had come to an end we have seen it attracting the attention of some of the freer minds of Geneva--such as were not over-awed by the dominant sp...

Servetus’s fate on starting in life was opposition; and how should it have been otherwise?--he found himself through superior endowment and higher culture antagonistic to almost...

It was while resident at Charlieu that Villeneuve again met with Pierre Paumier, now Archbishop of Vienne, Dauphiny, whom he had known in Paris, who indeed had been among the nu...

Failing to make any impression on the Swiss and German Reformers whose countenance he had been so anxious to gain, we have seen Servetus in his letter to Œcolampadius declaring...

Villeneuve, we must presume, had reached Lyons poor enough in pocket if rich in lore; but so diligently had he laboured and so liberally had he been paid by the princely publish...

His indifferent reception by the German and Swiss Reformers must have satisfied Servetus that there was no abiding place for him among them. He was doubtless disappointed and no...

Informed of the decree of the Court, Calvin tells us that he bestirred himself to have the sentence carried out in the way usual in criminal cases, by beheading with the sword,...

Escaped from the Dauphinal prison of Vienne, Servetus must, in all likelihood, have found hiding at first with friends in Lyons. But there, as indeed anywhere else in France, hi...

This decree and interdict of the Parliament of Paris could not have been satisfactory to Servetus. We need not question his belief in the reality of judicial astrology, nor doub...

On returning to his dungeon after his examination on September 15, Servetus addressed his prosecutor in the following characteristic epistle, which the reply to Art. XXI. appear...

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 Co...

The Churches were to be appealed to, then, and Calvin applied himself immediately to make the best he could of the case as it stood. With the diligence that distinguished him, w...

We have seen symptoms of something like a leaning of the Court towards the prisoner. They had requested Calvin and others of the Clergy to visit and confer with him, and do thei...

It was whilst engaged in the revision of such works as the Ptolemy and others on the natural sciences, anatomy, medicine, pharmacy, &c., in the service of the Trechsels, that Se...

The medical world in the early part of the sixteenth century was divided into two great hostile camps, respectively designated Galenists, or followers of the Greeks, and Averrho...

It is greatly to be regretted that we have nothing from Servetus on the other impressions he received, during the term of his service with Quintana, beside those connected with...

From the duel as heretofore carried on between Calvin, backed by the Ministers of Geneva, and Servetus, seconded by Christ alone, as he said, the process was now to be widened i...

Frelon, the publisher of Lyons, whom we already know as the medium of communication between Villeneuve and Calvin in their correspondence, was probably by this time in the secre...

It would appear that Œcolampadius, Bucer, Bullinger, Zwingli and others, their friends, had had a sort of ‘clerical meeting’ for talking over the theological questions of the da...

It was at this time and on the suggestion of Servetus--as Calvin affirms, of the Council, according to its own minutes--that a resolution was come to, by which the Church of Gen...