‘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.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIAL IN ITS FIRST PHASE.
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 declaring that he persisted in his allegations, and the prisoner being put on his oath to speak the truth under penalties to the extent of 60 sols, the Trial commenced.
To the question as to his name and condition, the prisoner replied that his name was Michael Serveto, of Villanova, in the kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, and that by profession he was a physician. The articles of impeachment already produced were then restated seriatim, and to each he was required to answer categorically. This he did, and generally in the terms he had used in his preliminary examination, but accusing Calvin, and Calvin alone, more imperatively than before, of having provoked his arrest and prosecution at Vienne, adding that had Calvin had his way, he—the prisoner—would assuredly have been burned alive. To all that had reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Nature of Christ, the relations between God and created things, he spoke as he had already done. He again and pointedly denied that he had ever said the soul was mortal; but admitted having written that he thinks man commits no mortal sin before the age of twenty years, adding that ‘under the Law God had so ordered it.’ The Baptism of Infants he acknowledged to be in his eyes a diabolical invention, and calculated to corrupt the whole of Christianity; declaring however, as formerly, that if it were shown he erred in this opinion he was ready to retract and amend.
As to the alleged attacks on the Church of Geneva through the person of Calvin, he answered as before, and now added that all he had written against Calvin was with no view or desire to calumniate or injure him, but only to show him his errors; and he now offers in open congregation to make good his words by a variety of reasons, and the authority of the Scriptures.
This was to throw down the gauntlet to Calvin and offer him battle on ground he could not decline, since he too acknowledged no authority but holy writ, and we need not doubt of his readiness to take up the pledge: there was nothing indeed, as he declared, for he was present in Court watching the proceedings, that he desired more than to show himself in such a cause before all the world.[74] The Court may be excused for having imagined that in agreeing to such a wordy duel between Calvin and Servetus they would be letting the question slip out of their proper hands; or, as M. Albert Rilliet[75] suggests, the friends whom Servetus had among its members, measuring the mental calibre of the two men, may have feared to see him they favoured worsted by his redoubtable opponent, whose dialectical skill and theological lore were so well known to all. Deciding against the proposal of the prisoner, therefore, the tribunal determined that the trial should proceed in the usual way.
So far as they had gone we can readily conceive that the answers of Servetus must have seemed little satisfactory to the Court. On even a large proportion of the allegations made, they may have felt their incompetency to form an opinion; but upon a few they believed themselves fully able to come to a conclusion. What he had said on Infant Baptism in particular was greatly calculated to prejudice him in the minds of his Judges; the doctrine he held being one among the dangerous moral, social, and political principles of the Anabaptists, though the whole of these were emphatically disavowed and condemned by Servetus, who really appears to have had nothing in common with the dreaded sect but the opinion that Baptism should not be performed until years of discretion were attained, and that the rite should be solemnised by immersion or affusion, not by merely sprinkling the face with water.
The decision of the Court at the end of the day’s proceedings was to the effect that, as the answers of the prisoner Michael Servetus implied criminality, the trial should go on; but that the prosecutor, Nicolas de la Fontaine, whilst bound over to continue the suit, might be released on the production of sufficient bail; and this being immediately forthcoming in the person of Monsieur Antoine Calvin, brother of the Reformer, Calvin’s substitute and Chef de Cuisine was discharged from custody, whilst Servetus was remanded to gaol. Thus formally constituted prisoner on a criminal charge, Servetus now delivered to the gaoler all the money and valuables he possessed, the coin amounting to ninety-seven gold crowns, the valuables being a gold chain of the value of twenty crowns, and as many as seven gold rings set with a table diamond, a ruby and other stones of price.