The sentence once resolved on, appears to have been immediately communicated to Calvin, and he in the same hour proceeded to inform his most intimate friend Farel of the result. In anticipation of the event, he had, indeed, written to Farel some days before, begging him to come to Geneva. The clergy of the city having acted with Calvin to a man in the prosecution, it was thought more seemly that a stranger should attend the prisoner in his last moments, than one of themselves; hence Calvin’s first letter of October 14, in anticipation of the final sentence, and to the following effect:
I have no words, my dear Farel, adequately to express my thanks to you for your great solicitude in respect of ourself and our Church. I purposely abstained from writing to you for fear of inducing you to take horse so soon (Farel had been dangerously ill), and I would not be troublesome to you until time pressed. You say, indeed, that you do not thank me for sparing you; and I know how willing, nay, how eager you are at all times to labour for the Church of God, how ready ever to come to our aid.
As to the state of affairs with us, I imagine you are already well informed, through Viret, or rather through my letters to him, which, however, were really meant for you both in common. The enemy is now intent on the business that comes on for discussion before the General Council about the Ides of November, and I think it would be well were Viret to come to us then; but I would have you here somewhat sooner—about the time when the affair of Servetus will be drawing to a close; and this I hope will be before the end of the ensuing week.... I would not, however, incommode you, or have you stir, where no immediate necessity compels.
Farel had not arrived so soon as Calvin expected, so he writes again on the 26th, and informs his friend that answers had been received from the Churches unanimous in their condemnation of Servetus. Alluding to the proceedings during the last few days of the trial, when Perrin, the First Syndic, made vain attempts by delay and entreaty to save the prisoner’s life, Calvin speaks of the merciful man by the nickname under which he was wont to characterise his great Libertine opponent, and says:
Our comical Cæsar having feigned illness for three days, mounted the tribune at length with a view to aid the wicked scoundrel—istum sceleratum—to escape punishment. Nor did he blush to demand that the cause might be remitted to the Council of the Two Hundred. But in vain, all was refused, the prisoner was condemned, and to-morrow he will suffer death.
Self-centred, resolute as he was, we yet see in Calvin’s anxiety to have Farel beside him, that he felt the want of such support as an all-devoted friend alone can give in supreme moments of our lives. His last letter could not have reached Farel in such time as would have enabled him to be in Geneva on the day of the execution; but when it was despatched Farel was already on his way from Neuchatel, and reached Geneva in the evening of the 26th, so that he had the news of all that had taken place, and of the fate that awaited the unhappy Servetus on the morrow, from the mouth of Calvin himself.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ATTITUDE OF CALVIN—THE HOPES OF SERVETUS.
Informed of the decree of the Court, Calvin tells us that he bestirred himself to have the sentence carried out in the way usual in criminal cases, by beheading with the sword, instead of burning by slow fire. The heretic must be got rid of, he must die, but the Reformer would give a civil rather than an ecclesiastical complexion to the business, and escape imitation of the Roman Catholic cruel mode of putting God’s enemies, as heretics were called, to death. The Council, however, did not enter into his views. The Canon Law, still in force over Europe, condemned the convicted heretic to death by fire, and the majority of the Court determined to abide by the statute as it stood. Bigotry and intolerance, fanned to fever heat, were in the ascendant, and would forego none of their most terrible means of punishing the offender, and striking terror into the vulgar mind. The oblation in such cases provided, would even have appeared to lose its significance, had it been presented otherwise than as ‘a sacrifice of a sweet savour made by fire to the Lord’; for still influenced by the ritual of the old Hebrew Law, which, in earlier days, required the first-born of man and beast for the altar, and had criminals of all sorts ‘hung up before the sun,’ lives forfeited for theological errors, were, in reality, offerings to appease the wrath or win the favour of the Supreme!
Servetus, meanwhile, made aware that the trial was at an end, and that nothing more remained for him but to learn his fate, though he may have been alarmed by the additional measures taken for his safe custody, seems not yet, as we have said, to have abandoned the persuasion that he would either be acquitted or subjected to some minor or merely nominal penalty. He was not conscience-stricken; he knew himself guilty of no impiety or intentional blasphemy; his object from first to last had been to present what he thought were higher, truer views of the Revelation which he believed God had made of himself to mankind in the olden time in Judæa; and the proclaimed purpose of his latest work, as he said himself to his Judges, was the Restoration, not the destruction of Christianity. More than this: he was not now among Papists bound to intolerance by their creed, but among Protestants in Geneva—the stronghold of free thought and its necessary logical adjunct, toleration; among men who had studied, reasoned, and, like himself, put their own construction on writings which he as well as they believed to be the Word of God. And then, had he not all along been upheld by Perrin and Berthelier, in the belief of triumphing over his persecutor? How should hopes of longer life in view of further effort in the cause that was dear to him, and of freedom to shape out thoughts on matters high and holy, have forsaken him? True, Calvin had aimed at his life through the people of Vienne; and in his present bonds, and all the unworthy usage he suffered, he could not fail to realise the persistent hostility of the man who held him in such despite. Still he was in Geneva, though a prisoner, and Calvin was not all in all within that Republican city. There was a powerful party opposed to the tyranny and self-assertion of the ecclesiastic, the distinguished heads of which gave him their countenance and support—there seemed hardly room for doubt: he would not be found guilty of having blasphemed, but would be acquitted and set at liberty.
Cherishing such hopes and so supported, are we to wonder that the Sentence of Death took the unhappy Servetus entirely by surprise? Only imparted to him in the early morning of the day on which he was doomed to die, he was at first as if struck dumb by the intelligence. He did but groan aloud and sigh as if his heart would burst; and when he recovered speech at length, it was only to rave like one demented, to strike his breast, and cry in his native Spanish, Misericordia, Misericordia! By degrees, however, he recovered his self-possession and became more calm. Master of himself, and reverting in thought to his pursuer, his first coherent words were to request an interview with Calvin, which he, we need not doubt, was nowise slow to grant, for he must have thought it both a flattering and a hopeful proposal. Now had the sinner come to his senses; now would he make a clean breast of it, abjure the convictions of his life, and with a lie on his lips be made meet for glory! But nothing of all this was in the mind of Servetus. He had no misgivings about his theological conclusions; in these he was securely anchored; but he felt like a true man in the face of impending fate, and would own that he had not comported himself with all the respect that was rightfully due to his theological opponent. Hence his request for the interview.