Religion: For Heresy

Because the Papists persecute the truth, should we on that account refrain from repressing error?

—John Calvin

On the hill of Champel, just outside the city of Geneva, a man was made ready for burning. A crown of straw and leaves sprinkled with sulphur was placed on his head, and a thick rope was wound around his neck. He was chained to a stake and a pile of fresh wood lay at his feet. A book of his own authorship, called The Restoration of Christianity, was bound to his arm. When the executioner waved the torch before his face, he cried out: “O Jesus. Son of the Eternal God, have pity on me.” Then the faggots were lit.

The fire’s victim was a 42-year-old Spaniard named Michael Servetus. His crime, for which he had been duly tried and sentenced: religious heresy. Specifically, it was his denial of infant baptism and the doctrine of the Trinity. (The minister who accompanied him to the stake later observed that, had Servetus switched adjectives, and called on “the Eternal Son of God,” he might have saved his life.) Last week, for the 400th anniversary of Servetus’ death, Roland H. Bainton, one of Protestantism’s foremost modern historians (Here I Stand, The Reformation of the 16th Century), brought out his new book, Hunted Heretic (Beacon Press; $3.75)> the definitive biography of militant Protestantism’s most celebrated self-inflicted casualty.

The Nauseating Smoke. Michael Servetus was a classic 16th century man who could have existed only in that day, when a learned man had to know something about everything. He was a capable physician, the first in the West to discover that the blood circulates in the lungs. He was an astrologer of some repute, the author of several handy works on divination. He was a scholar in Hebrew and Greek, and, even by his enemies’ testimony, a brilliant theologian.

Servetus’ trouble was his instinctive knack for making himself a one-man minority. As Historian Bainton concludes: “Servetus could not agree altogether with anybody.” His minority stand on medicine was scientifically useful, and, as an independent astrologer, he gained the confidence of the court of Francis I. But his free-lance theology, at a time when Reformation Europe was quickly forming up into tightly disciplined Catholic and Protestant camps, was not to go unpunished.

Servetus started his career on the Catholic side of the fence, as a promising scholar-assistant to the confessor of Emperor Charles V. By 19, however, his theological studies had already made him a Protestant, and in 1530 he fled to the Reformation strongholds of Basel, and later, Strasbourg. He was welcomed in both places, until he started explaining his advanced religious views. His book, On the Errors of the Trinity, an attack on the “three-headed Cerberus” of traditional theology, shocked the reformers as much as it did the Catholics. In 1532, his book already banned in Strasbourg and Basel, Servetus prudently packed up and got out of Reformation territory.

His theology was so irritating because it was highly personal and opposed to the formal systems of any churches. Although he attacked the Papacy, he also ripped into cherished new Protestant doctrines such as Calvin’s predestination and Luther’s “justification by faith alone.” By the time Servetus was 22, the “Wanted” posters were up for him in both camps. Calvin denounced his writings as “a rhapsody composed of the impious ravings of all the ages.” Added Luther’s disciple, Melanchthon: “Astute and impious . . . blowing smoke perfidiously before his hearers.” For the Catholics, Jerome Aleander, Luther’s debating opponent at the Diet of Worms, commented: “I never saw or read anything more nauseating, though the man is very keen.”

The Unmolested Heretic. Hunted both by the reformers and the Catholic Inquisition (both in Spain and in France), Servetus boldly went to Paris and began a new life, in disguise, as Michel de Villeneuve, editor and physician.

Servetus could have lived and died as Doctor Villeneuve. But the old urge for theological dispute proved stronger than his caution. He began a clandestine theological correspondence with John Calvin, then leading the reform movement in Geneva, a correspondence which grew more insulting on both sides as their differences became more apparent. In 1553 Servetus secretly published his book, The Restoration of Christianity, reaffirming his attacks on the Trinity.

This was too much for John Calvin. One Genevan had written his Catholic cousin in France, reproaching him for allowing a heretic like Servetus to live unmolested in Catholic territory. When the cousin asked for details, Calvin gave the documentary proof that Dr. Michel de Villeneuve was indeed Michael Servetus, the man who had denounced the Trinity.

Flesh & Effigy. The Catholic authorities acted fast. Servetus was arrested and clapped in jail, but he escaped and made his way to Geneva in disguise. There, on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1553, he was recognized at church, arrested by the Calvinists.

On Oct. 27, two months after he had. been burned in effigy by the frustrated officers of the Inquisition, Servetus was burned in the flesh by the Calvinists.

It did not take long for Calvin’s spiritual descendants to develop a bad conscience about Servetus’ execution. “It served,” writes Historian Bainton, “as the occasion for the rise in volume and intensity of the toleration controversy within Protestantism.” This year John Calvin’s old congregation in Geneva has subsidized a study entitled “Michael Servetus, Heretic and Martyr.” And at the base of Champel there is now a monument to Servetus, erected in 1903 by local Calvinists—”Sons,” as its legend reads, “respectful and grateful of Calvin, our Great Reformer, but condemning an error which was that of his age.”