Having finished their interrogatory and seen the bales, the Inquisitor and Vicar made no scruple about seizing them in the name of the public authorities. Carrying them off at once, they were taken to Vienne and deposited in a room of the Archiepiscopal palace.
The priest Charmier was of course the next person visited and questioned. He persistently denied all knowledge of the contents of the bales which he, as he was proceeding to Lyons, recommended to the care of Merrin, at the request of M. Villeneuve. The mere act of the poor priest, however, and his known intimacy with Villeneuve, were held to have compromised him to such an extent that he was put on his trial some time afterwards, and sentenced to imprisonment for three years!
The bales once safe in the Archiepiscopal palace of Vienne, were speedily undone, and there, sure enough, as Straton had said, five hundred copies of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ complete, were displayed to the eager eyes of the lookers-on. A single copy was abstracted and given to Ory, to enable him at his leisure to extract and take exception to such passages as he might deem heretical; the rest were left in safe custody under the palace roof.
Every information up to June 17—for so long had it taken to get at the facts as they have been stated—having now been acquired, and the proofs in the process being held complete, the Vibailly of Vienne, in a session of the Court duly summoned, and in the absence of Michel de Villeneuve, proceeded to pass sentence on him, finding him attainted and convicted of the crimes and misdemeanours laid to his charge, viz., Scandalous Heresy and Dogmatisation; Invention of New Doctrines; Writing heretical books; Disturbance of the public peace; Rebellion against the King; Disobedience of the ordinances touching heresy, and Breach of the Royal Prison of Vienne. ‘For reparation of the crimes and misdeeds set forth,’ said the Judge, ‘we condemn him, and he is hereby condemned, to pay a fine of 1000 livres Tournois to the King of Dauphiny; and further, as soon as he can be apprehended, to be taken, together with his books, on a tumbril or dust-cart to the place of public execution, and there burned alive by a slow fire until his body is reduced to ashes.’ The sentence now delivered, moreover, is ordered to be carried out forthwith on an effigy of the incriminated Villeneuve, which is to be publicly burned along with the five bales of the book in question, the fugitive being further condemned to pay the charges of justice, his goods and chattels being seized and confiscated, to the advantage of anyone showing just claims to the proceeds, the fine and expenses of the trial, as aforesaid, having been first duly discharged.
On the same day about noon the effigy of Villeneuve, made by the executioner of the High Court of Justice, having been put upon a tumbril along with the bales of the book, was paraded through the streets of Vienne, brought to the place of public execution, hanged upon a gibbet erected for the purpose, and finally set fire to, and with the five bales burned to ashes.
The matter, however, did not rest here; it was not yet concluded in all its parts. The secular arm had done what was required of it, having burned the criminal in effigy, failing his person, along with his heretical book; but the ecclesiastical authorities must also have their say in the case. When the utterance came, and it came not until six months after the civil trial and sham execution, it was in every particular confirmatory of the sentence already delivered, the grounds of the decision however being gone into with greater minuteness than before. Among other matters particularly mentioned now, are the marginal notes in the handwriting of the culprit on two printed leaves, cut out of a copy of Calvin’s ‘Institutions;’ Seventeen letters addressed to John Calvin and acknowledged by Villeneuve to be from him; his answers to the Inquisitor Ory, the Vibailly, and the rest, and the minutes which had been made of his escape from the prison; finally, his books, one entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ and another in two parts: ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus, Libri septem,’ and ‘De Trinitate, Dialogi duo.’ ‘From all that has been brought to light,’ the judgment proceeds, ‘it is made manifest that the said Villeneuve is a most egregious heretic, and as such is hereby adjudged, convicted and condemned, his body to be burned, and his goods to be confiscated, the judicial expenses incurred and yet to be incurred to be defrayed out of the proceeds of the sale.’ All the books written by Villeneuve are further ordered to be diligently searched for, and wherever found, to be seized and burned.
It is not unimportant to notice that Arnoullet, the publisher and printer, is associated with Servetus in this ecclesiastical judgment. ‘The said Villeneuve and Balthazar Arnoullet are attainted and to be held conjoined in the sentence because of their complicity and connection.’ Arnoullet however was more mercifully dealt with than Villeneuve; he was not condemned to be burned alive; neither did he suffer imprisonment for any great length of time, but was by and by set at liberty on giving security for his good behaviour in future. If Charmier, the priest, was sentenced to incarceration for three years, having, as far as we know, done nothing more than deliver a message from Villeneuve to Merrin the type-founder, we might have imagined that Arnoullet would scarcely have escaped with so little scath; for to have aided and abetted in the printing of such a book as that entitled the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ which impugned the system that placed the whole of his judges—Cardinal Tournon, Archbishop Paumier, Ory, Arzelier, and the rest—in positions of affluence and influence, could only have been looked upon as a crime little less heinous than that of which the author of the book himself had been guilty. But Charmier was known to have been on friendly terms with Villeneuve; and Paumier may have guessed what that implied; for let us not forget that all we speak of came to pass shortly after Giovanni de Medici, under the title of Leo X., had been Pope; and that if the Reformation had more well-wishers in France than dared to proclaim themselves, Scepticism too, and of the deepest dye, was at the same time rife in high places. The poor priest Charmier, however, being of the rank and file only, must pay for having meddled; but let us hope that Archbishop Paumier interfered in due season and succeeded in greatly abridging the term of his imprisonment.
BOOK II.
SERVETUS IN GENEVA, FACE TO FACE WITH CALVIN.
Ioanis Calvinus