The prosecutor reverting to the book lately printed and asking the prisoner if he did not think it was calculated, through the doctrine it taught, to bring great troubles on Christendom? he replied that he did not think his book calculated to introduce dispute or difference among Christians; on the contrary, he thought it would be found profitable, and give occasion to the better spirits among men to speak better things; and the truth, once admitted and proclaimed by the few, would by and by spread to the many.
Challenged with having come to Geneva to disseminate his doctrines and sow dissension among the Churches, he gave sufficient reason for his presence among them when he said that he had only come on his way to Italy, having been turned from his first intention of trying to reach his native country, after his escape from the prison of Vienne, through fear of arrest by the police of France.
It is but fair to infer, as M. Albert Rilliet observes, that the present bearing of Servetus, and the moderation and pertinence of his replies to all the questions put to him, must have made a favourable impression on the Court. He was not now confronted with Calvin, in whose presence he seemed to lose all self-control, neither was he pressed upon questions of speculative theology, upon which he either dared not declare himself openly, or, if he did, was at once in opposition to all his Judges knew of religion. In Rigot as his questioner he had nothing more than an officer discharging a public duty, not the hostile partisan he had encountered in Colladon who, as agent of Calvin, may have thought it incumbent on him to give the most unfavourable turn to everything capable of being construed to the advantage of the prisoner. The good impression presumed could hardly fail to be strengthened by the petition of the prisoner addressed to the Court and read on the next day of the trial, August 24, to this effect:
To the most honourable my Lords, the Syndics and Councillors of Geneva.
The Petition of Michael Servetus, now lying under a criminal charge, humbly showeth—That it is a thing new and unknown to the Apostles, Disciples, and ancient Churches, to make the interpretation of the Scriptures, and questions thence arising, grounds of criminal accusation. This is clearly seen from Chapters xviii. and xix. of the Acts of the Apostles, where accusers are referred to the Churches, when the matters in question bear upon Religion only. So too in the time of Constantine, when the Arian heresy was broached, and accusations were brought on the part both of Athanasius and Arius, the great Emperor, by his Council and the Councils of the Churches, decided that, according to the old doctrine, suits of the kind could not be entertained by civil tribunals—not even in the case of such notorious heresy as that of Arius,—but were to be taken into consideration and decided by the Church. Further, that heretics were either to be brought to reason by argument, or were to be punished by banishment, when they proved refractory and refused to amend. Now that banishment was the award of the ancient Churches against heretics can be proved by a thousand histories and authorities. Wherefore, my Lords, in consonance with Apostolic teaching and the practice of the ancient Church, your petitioner prays that the Criminal Charge under which he lies may be discharged.
Secondly, my Lords, I entreat you to consider that I have committed no offence within your territory; neither, indeed, have I been guilty of any elsewhere: I have never been seditious, and am no disturber of the peace. The questions I discuss in my works are of an abstruse kind, and within the scope and ken of men of learning only. During all the time I passed in Germany, I never spoke on such subjects save with Œcolampadius, Bucer, and Capito; neither in France did I ever enter on them with anyone. I have always disavowed the opinions of the Anabaptists, seditious against the magistrate, and preaching community of goods. Wherefore, as I have been guilty of no sort of sedition, but have only brought up for discussion certain ancient doctrines of the Church, I think I ought not to be detained a prisoner and made the subject of a criminal prosecution.
In conclusion, my Lords, inasmuch as I am a stranger, ignorant of the customs of this country, not knowing either how to speak or comport myself in the circumstances under which I am placed, I humbly beseech you to assign me an Advocate to speak for me in my defence. Doing thus, you will assuredly do well, and our Lord will prosper your Republic.
In the City of Geneva, the 22nd day of August, 1553.
Michael Servetus,
In his own cause.
This well-worded, and in its demands most reasonable address, strange to say, received no notice beyond an order to the clerk of the Court to enter it on the minutes; the prisoner being at the same time curtly admonished to go on answering the questions addressed to him. But how hardly the poor man was being used by his self-constituted Judges we shall see by the tenor of the next petition he addressed to them. He had been thrown into one of the foul cells or dungeons appropriated to criminals of the vilest class, accused of crimes against person and property; and there, in addition to mental anguish, he had to suffer all the bodily miseries that filth, foul air, cold and vermin inflict.
The feeling evinced of late by the Court, in the prisoner’s favour, appears now to have extended to the town; the liberal party, the native Genevese, opposed to Calvin, making of his prosecution of the solitary stranger a handle against him; his friends on the contrary speaking of it as proclaiming him the undaunted defender of the cause of God and religion! The trial we therefore see had become the occasion of alarm to one political party in the state, of hope to another, and of peculiar significance to both. Under present circumstances, matters proceeding in nowise to his satisfaction, Calvin must come again to the front; and we have it on unquestionable authority that it was at this, the very crisis in the fate of Servetus, that the Reformer was guilty of the crying injustice of availing himself of his pulpit, and in the face of numerous congregations denouncing and vilifying his opponent in no measured terms, exposing his unorthodox opinions in their most glaring and repulsive aspects, proclaiming what he characterised as their impious, blasphemous, demoralising nature, and thundering reproaches on the mistaken sympathy that had lately begun to be entertained for the author of such infamies. By right or by wrong Calvin was resolved that his old theological enemy, now turned, as he believed, into their tool for his humiliation by his political opponents, should not escape him.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TRIAL CONTINUED—THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL RECEIVES FRESH INSTRUCTIONS FOR ITS CONDUCT.
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 prisoner was interrogated were scarcely the same in all respects on any two successive days, and often wide as the poles asunder of the proper articles of impeachment produced against him. The petition just presented by the prisoner was thus, without scruple as without challenge, now made the ground of a series of questions and harangues by the prosecutor, studiously calculated to prejudice him in the eyes of his Judges.
Rigot had in fact made a great mistake in his own articles of inculpation. The prisoner, as it seemed, was even likely to escape through his mismanagement; but, otherwise advised, and as if to make amends for the line he had taken at first, he now showed himself either indisposed or afraid to follow further the dictates of his own more equitable nature. He had been in conclave with Calvin and received fresh instructions from him, as Servetus affirmed without being contradicted. Rigot, in truth, was no longer free, but cowed by the stern resolve of the man of mind and iron will.[85]