These ideas of intolerance were so fixed in the public mind at the close of the Middle Ages, that even those who protested against the procedure of the Inquisition thought that in principle it was just. Farel wrote to Calvin, September 8, 1533: "Some people do not wish us to prosecute heretics. But because the Pope condemns the faithful (i.e., the Huguenots) for the crime of heresy, and because unjust judges punish the innocent, it is absurd to conclude that we must not put heretics to death, in order to strengthen the faithful. I myself have often said that I was ready to suffer death, if I ever taught anything contrary to sound doctrine, and that I would deserve the most frightful torments, if I tried to rob any one of the true faith in Christ. I cannot, therefore, lay down a different law to others."[1]
[1] OEuvres complètes de Calvin, Brunswick, 1863-1909, vol. xiv, p. 612.
Calvin held the same views. His inquisitorial spirit was manifest in his bitter prosecution and condemnation of the Spaniard Michael Servetus.[1] When any one found fault with him he answered: "The executioners of the Pope taught that their foolish inventions were doctrines of Christ, and were excessively cruel, while I have always judged heretics in all kindness and in the fear of God; I merely put to death a confessed heretic."[2] Michael Servetus assuredly did not gain much by the substitution of Calvin for the Inquisition.
[1] Servetus was condemned October 26, 1553, to be burned alive, and was executed the next day. As early as 1545, Calvin had written: "If he (Servetus) comes to Geneva, I will never allow him to depart alive, as long as I have authority in this city: Vivum exire numquam patiar. OEuvres complètes, vol. xii, p. 283." Calvin, however, wished the death penalty of fire to be commuted into some other kind of death.
[2] To justify this execution, Calvin published his Defensio orthodoxæ fidei de sacra Trinitate, contra prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti Hispani, ubi ostenditur hæreticos jure gladii coercendos esse, Geneva, 1554.
Bullinger of Zurich, speaking of the death of Servetus, thus wrote Lelius Socinus: "If, Lelius, you cannot now admit the right of a magistrate to punish heretics, you will undoubtedly admit it some day. St. Augustine himself at first deemed it wicked to use violence towards heretics, and tried to win them back by the mere word of God. But finally, learning wisdom by experience, he began to use force with good effect. In the beginning the Lutherans did not believe that heretics ought to be punished; but after the excesses of the Anabaptists, they declared that the magistrate ought not merely to reprimand the unruly, but to punish them severely as an example to thousands."
Theodore of Beza, who had seen several of his co-religionists burned in France for their faith, likewise wrote in 1554, in Calvinistic Geneva: "What crime can be greater or more heinous than heresy, which sets at nought the word of God and all ecclesiastic discipline? Christian magistrates, do your duty to God, Who has put the sword into your hands for the honor of His majesty; strike valiantly these monsters in the guise of men." Theodore of Beza considered the error of those who demanded freedom of conscience "worse than the tyranny of the Pope. It is better to have a tyrant, no matter how cruel he may be, than to let everyone do as he pleases." He maintained that the sword of the civil authority should punish not only heretics, but also those who wished heresy to go unpunished.[1] In brief, before the Renaissance there were very few who taught with Huss[2] that a heretics ought not to be abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death.[3]
[1] De hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis, Geneva, 1554; translated into French by Colladon in 1559.
[2] In his treatise De Ecclesia. This was the eighteenth article of the heresies attributed to him.
[3] In general, the Protestant leaders of the day were glad of the execution of Servetus. Melancthon wrote to Bullinger: "I am astonished that some persons denounce the severity that was so justly used in that case." Among those who did denounce it was Nicolas Zurkinden of Berne. Cf. his letter in the OEuvres complètes de Calvin, vol. xv, p. 19. Sébastien Castellio published in March, 1554, his Traité des hérétiques, a savoir s'il faut les persécuter, the oldest and one of the most eloquent pamphlets against intolerance. Cf. F. Buisson, op. cit., ch. xi. This is the pamphlet that Theodore of Beza tried to refute. Castellio then attacked Calvin directly in a new work, Contra libellum Calvini in quo ostendere conatur hæreticos jure gladii coercendos esse, which was not published until 1612, in Holland.