Nor were the personal griefs of Calvin overlooked in the inculpation of the prisoner. Beside the thirty letters printed in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ addressed to the Reformer, a copy of his ‘Institutions’ was now laid before the Court. This, like the MS. of the ‘Restitutio,’ sent privately and confidentially to Calvin, was covered on the margins with numerous annotations, little in conformity, as may be supposed, with the accepted tenets of the Church of Geneva, and more rarely still complimentary to the author. At such insolent procedure we know that Calvin was greatly offended, as appears by the language he thought fit to use when writing to Viret and incidentally noticing the liberties that had been taken with him by the annotator: ‘There is not a page of the book,’ he says, ‘that is not befouled with his vomit.’
Neither was the tergiversation of the prisoner in what he had said about Geroult’s part in the printing of the ‘Restitutio’ unnoticed. He is now reproached with the variations in his replies on the subject to the Lieutenant on the 14th, and to the Court on the 15th. His first answer we believe was truthful—Geroult knew all about the book, as we shall find from a letter of Arnoullet to his friend Bertet; his second was untruthful, but uttered to shield the man who had aided him in his enterprise, compromised, as he had come to see, by what he had said before.
CHAPTER V.
THE TRIAL IN ITS SECOND PHASE, WITH THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF GENEVA AS PROSECUTOR.
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 having already been made to appear, Nicolas de la Fontaine, on his petition to that effect, and his bail, Anthony Calvin, were formally discharged as parties to the suit, its further prosecution being handed over to Claude Rigot, the Attorney-General of the city of Geneva.
Before breaking up, however, and as if to occupy the time until the usual hour of rising, a number of questions irrelevant to the main plea, but tending to gratify the curiosity of the Court, were put to the prisoner. Among the number of these he was asked particularly how he had contrived to escape from the prison of Vienne. He informed the Judges, that he had only passed two nights there; that the Vibailly, De la Cour, was well disposed towards him, he having been of great service to M. Maugiron, an intimate friend of the Vibailly, who had ordered the gaoler to use him well, and allow him the freedom of the garden. Taking advantage of this, he had scaled the wall and got away in the manner already described, the Vibailly having taken care that he should not be pursued and recaptured.
He added that he had intended and even tried in the first instance to get to Spain, his native country; but finding the obstacles so many, and fearing arrest at every moment, he retraced his steps and made his way to Geneva, purposing to proceed to Italy.
Questioned further about the printing of the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ he said it had been thrown off to the extent of 1,000 copies, of which the publisher had sent a bale to Frankfort in anticipation of the Easter book-fair of that great mart. This was a piece of information that was not lost on Calvin. He wrote a few days after, having meantime gained further information, to one of the Frankfort members, giving him intimation of what had been done, telling him where the packet was bestowed, and recommending its immediate seizure and destruction, for which he seems also to have furnished some sort of warrant or authority, how obtained we are not informed, though it was probably from Frelon.
Interrogated as to the money he had about him when imprisoned at Vienne, he replied that his cash and valuables had not been taken from him on his arrest there, but were still in his possession when he reached Geneva.
The result of the unwarranted and eventful prosecution of which he was the subject had thus far been anything but favourable to the prisoner. The intervention of Berthelier, above all, may be said to have been highly prejudicial by bringing Calvin into the field in person, and supplying him with an additional motive for urging the suit to the issue that could alone prove satisfactory to him—the condemnation capitally of his insolent, personal, and dreaded theological opponent, now associated with his political enemies. Calvin was in truth much too formidable a personage to be gainsaid on trifling grounds. More than one member of the Court who might have been disposed to favour the prisoner, could it have been done without open defiance of the Reformer, quailed under his glance, and shrank from the responsibility of opposing him, when the direction the prosecution had taken came to be understood. It was even said to be more dangerous to offend John Calvin in Geneva than the King of France on his throne! The prisoner whose life was in debate was a stranger, unknown to the majority of the Councillors; and it was doubtless thought better by the timid to leave him to his fate, than to compromise themselves by taking part with one who on his own admission entertained opinions adverse not only to the doctrine of the Church of Geneva, but to all they had ever had presented to them as characteristic of the Christian faith. There could be no doubt that the man was a schismatic, a heretic; and heretic in Geneva meant an opponent of the head of its Church and the form of Christianity it represented.