Why did Michael Servetus go to Geneva where he got burned by Calvin's Reformed community?

rakovsky · Feb 11, 2016

This is the infamous story where John Calvin instigated the execution of Servetus for denying the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus taught that Jesus and the Father could not be different "persons" and "hypostases", because they were "one". (John 10:30) My personal opinion, is that as a matter of logic and Tradition, one must differentiate the the two as "persons". The most I could agree with Servetus is that they shared the same "hypostasis", using that term in its Biblical and etymological meaning (substance).

What I find especially interesting about this case though is what it shows about Calvin in real life. On the surface, Michael Servetus went to Geneva, Switzerland, which was under the Reformed Protestants (ie. Calvin et al., not the Lutherans), just because he was fleeing the Inquisition in France. It was an officially unexplained stopover, and he and Geneva portrayed things as if he were just caught while in attempted hiding, unbeknownest to the official Genevan government and public. End of Story.

Servetus in portrait and in background

Is this, however, the real, full story?

Michael Servetus (Spanish: Miguel Serveto), also known as... Michel de Villeneuve (29 September 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553), was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist....

On 16 February 1553, Michael Servetus while in Vienne, France, was denounced as a heretic by Guillaume de Trie, a rich merchant who had taken refuge in Geneva, and who was a good friend of Calvin, in a letter sent to a cousin, Antoine Arneys, who was living in Lyon. On behalf of the French inquisitor Matthieu Ory, Michael Servetus and Balthasard Arnollet, the printer of Christianismi Restitutio, were questioned, but they denied all charges and were released for lack of evidence. Ory asked Arneys to write back to De Trie, demanding proof. On 26 March 1553, the letters sent by Michel to Calvin and some manuscript pages of Christianismi Restitutio were forwarded to Lyon by De Trie. On 4 April 1553 Michael de Villanueva was arrested by Roman Catholic authorities, and imprisoned in Vienne. Servetus escaped from prison three days later. On 17 June, Michel de Villeneuve was convicted of heresy, "thanks to the 17 letters sent by John Calvin, preacher in Geneva" and sentenced to be burned with his books. An effigy and his books were burned in his absence.

Meaning to flee to Italy, Servetus inexplicably stopped in Geneva, where Calvin and his Reformers had denounced him. On 13 August, he attended a sermon by Calvin at Geneva. He was arrested after the service and again imprisoned. All his property was confiscated. Servetus claimed during this judgement he was arrested at an inn at Geneva. French Inquisitors asked that Servetus be extradited to them for execution. Calvin wanted to show himself as firm in defense of Christian orthodoxy as his usual opponents. "He was forced to push the condemnation of Servetus with all the means at his command."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus#Imprisonment_and_execution

Geneva 1550

After escaping from prison when he was on trial for heresy in Lyons, Servetus traveled to Geneva on his way to Italy. According to Schaff's Church History, Servetus stayed at Geneva for about a month, taking few pains to conceal his identity. After attending services in Calvin's church one Sunday, Servetus was arrested on charges of heresy. Calvin believed that it was just and right for heretics to be put to death. In this regard, he was not different from Servetus who also believed that heretics, specifically the heretic John Calvin, should be put to death by the Genevese Council.

During the trial it was Calvin's job as expert witness to prove that Servetus was a heretic. Calvin's expert reason and clear thinking triumphed when Servetus chose to hurl insults at Calvin rather than offer a defense. It is important to note that at this time the Council was not controlled by friends of Calvin but by his enemies, the patriots and libertines. This is probably why Servetus felt that he did not have to offer a substantive defense against charges of heresy. We have a written record of the debate because each was required to write their statements and responses for review by the churches of four other prominent protestant cities.

http://reformedanswers.org/answer.asp/file/39726

Note the claim in bold from the "Reformed" website above that Servetus believed in executing Calvin. There is no citation for this. Indeed, the book Did Calvin Murder Servetus quotes Servetus as opposing the killing of heretics.(pp.20-21)

Before coming to Geneva,

Servetus sent Calvin a manuscript of his yet unpublished Restitutio. Calvin reciprocated by sending a copy of the Institutio. Servetus returned Institutio with abusive annotations but Calvin refused to return Servetus’s manuscript. On the day Calvin broke off the correspondence, he wrote to his colleague, Guillaume Farel, that should Servetus ever come to Geneva, “if my authority is of any avail I will not suffer him to get out alive.”

When Servetus finally published Christianismi Restitutio in early 1553 he sent an advance copy to Geneva. The printed text included thirty of his letters to Calvin. Soon afterward, at Calvin’s behest, the true identity of “Villeneuve” was betrayed to the French Inquisition in Vienne. After his arrest and interrogation Servetus managed to escape from the prison. On his way, perhaps, to northern Italy or to southeastern Switzerland, where he may have hoped that there were people receptive to his writings, he crossed the border into Geneva. Recognized at a church service, he was arrested and tried for heresy by Protestant authorities.

http://uudb.org/articles/michaelservetus.html

During the incident
Again Calvin writes Farel in a letter dated Aug 20th 1553 where he has Servetus arrested.
"We have now new business in hand with Servetus. He intended perhaps passing through this city; for it is not yet known with what design he came. But after he had been recognized, I thought that he should be detained. My friend Nicolas summoned him on a capital charge. ... I hope that sentence of death will at least be passed upon him"

http://www.bcbsr.com/topics/servetus.html

One curious thing, I find, is Servetus' escape from French prison before coming to Geneva. Calvin, by the way, said in March 1553 that he did not get Servetus arrested in order to get him killed because he was against killing heretics, but this is curious as 6 months or so later he advocated Servetus' death. What is curious about the arrest though is that Servetus was also well known in France as a doctor involved in scientific discoveries. His arrest was not at France's own instigation. I'm sure that true, unabetted escapes from medieval Inquisition prisons happened, but I think that they were rare. It would not surprise me then if Servetus was aided in his escape. The writer Stanford Rives writes that Servetus escaped due to the jailer's negligence. (Did Valcin Murder Servetus?_

The Earl Morse Wilbur's Our Unitarian Heritage says about the Inquisition's trial in France:

Before the examination was concluded the court adjourned for the night. That evening Servetus sent his servant from the prison to collect a large sum of money owing to him, and the next morning at daybreak he made his escape from prison — as was generally believed, not without connivance on the part of influential friends. When his escape was discovered, he was already well out of reach. The trial went on without him, and dragged on for ten weeks. The printers were discovered, and bales containing 500 copies of the book were found at Lyon. Servetus was found guilty of heresy and various related crimes, and was condemned to be burned to death by a slow fire, along with his books.
...
He therefore determined to go to Naples in order to practice his profession among his countrymen, of whom many had fled thither for the sake of enjoying greater religious liberty. He thought at first of crossing the Pyrenees and going through Spain, but danger of arrest on the border deterred him, and after wandering like a hunted thing for four months he at length turned to the route through Switzerland into northern Italy as the safest one for him. Fortunately for him, he was well provided with money. Thus it was that Servetus at length arrived at an inn in Geneva one evening about the middle of August, intending as soon as possible to get a boat up the lake on his way to Zürich and Italy. He had meant to keep out of sight as much as possible, hoping thus to escape discovery; but unhappily for him the next day was Sunday, when the laws required every one to attend church, and he may indeed even have been curious to hear Calvin preach. Here he was recognized before ever the sermon began.

The book Did Calvin Murder Servetus? By Stanford Rives, does not take the view that Servetus' presence in Geneva was unknown to Calvin before Servetus' arrest. Rives explains that Servetus saw God's creative "Word" as a manifestation of God, and that Servetus concluded that this meant Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit were all "one", not separate "persons". Rives goes on to say this was reasonable enough that Italian Protestants supported Servetus and decried his execution in Geneva, and asks: "Hence the question comes to mind why did Servetus turn from satefy in Italy to end up in Geneva that Sunday in August 1553? Why would he make his face so prominently visible to Calvin?"
https://books.google.com/books?id=M... OR miguel servetus geneva italy 1553&f=false

Rives proposes that it is clear that Calvin was responsible for exposing Servetus to the Inquisition in France and that even Geneva's court admitted it at the time. He concludes that Servetus came to Geneva to confront Calvin directly, and that this is why Servetus came to Calvin's church sermon. He notes that Geneva had not had religious based executions before under Protestantism, and that the Inquisition and Catholic religious institutes were closed there. Calvin was a major author of Geneva's new laws. Further, until then it had been a major, general Protestant objection that the Catholic inquisition killed heretics, stated in Luther's 95 theses and by Calvin himself at one point.
Further, under the the laws of the Catholic Inquisition, criminals were not convicted in other countries for heretical crimes they committed elsewhere, and so Servetus claimed that Geneva lacked jurisdiction, as his heresies were made when he was abroad. The formal punishment for blasphemy in Geneva was banishment, not arrest. Rives concludes that Servetus did not expected to get killed by Calvin.

Further, there were political factions in Geneva. Geneva decided in 1552 that Calvin could no longer teach "predestination", because it made God a tyrant. The Libertines, Calvin's opponents, were in power in the city, and so Servetus might expect their protection. Yet later that year, Calvin's ally Farel had Geneva pass a law saying that Calvin's Institutes were "God's holy doctrine" and could not be criticized. This is ironic considering Calvin's criticisms of "man-made" Catholic authoritarianism, and Rives proposes that news of this shameful law probably didn't spread far outside Switzerland to where Servetus would know about it.

Calvin had strong power in Geneva, beyond what one might expect. To attack him personally or his particular Protestant teachings was to risk criminal penalties. For example, a man named Gruet was tortured and burned for a placard calling Calvin a representative of the devil and of renegade priests, however Calvin himself noted that the placard was not in Gruet's handwriting. Rives lists other such cases on p. 418.

After Servetus' death, Calvin admitted in correspondence that the arresting accusation for Servetus was made on his advice and that he "engaged one to be the accuser" and "the accuser proceeded from me." This is interesting, because on p. 11, Rives says that Calvin later admitted that from March to August 1553, he knew that Servetus was in Geneva. So by the chronology of events:
Servetus was arrested in France, but escaped in April 1553, then in March-August Calvin knew he was in Geneva (but how can this be, if April comes after March?), and then in August Calvin in practice had Servetus arrested. So what was happening during those months when Genevans knew that Servetus was there? Why did no one in Geneva openly talk about this or take action, and then only in August did Calvin act? Rives says that at some point though, perhaps immediately after Servetus fled France, he went to Italy where he supporters were and only later went to Geneva. Rives cites alvin to that effect, but notes that Servetus says that he just went straight to Switzerland. Rives proposes that Servetus covered this up to protect his supporters in Italy.

I do remember a proposition by another author that Servetus may have come to and stayed in Geneva in coordination with people from the Libertine party who opposed Calvin. This may not be such a surprise considering that Servetus had supporters in Italy and people who helped him flee France, so he may have had supporters in Geneva too.

Blondepudding · Feb 11, 2016

That's one way to silence the opposition in a debate on God and theology. Burn the opponent at the stake and use green wood to send the message to any others that might think to take his place.

Savage men speaking on behalf of the Prince of peace. What a concept.

rakovsky · Feb 11, 2016

Blondepudding said:
use greenwood to send the message to any others that might think to take his place.

Savage men speaking on behalf of the Prince of peace. What a concept.

Yes. What you write is a coincidentally close mirror of what the immigrant Minus Celsus said in that era. Rives writes:

An Italian immigrant to switzerland Minus Celsus... decried that he came to join the Reformation but found it persecuted each other... "by roasting the living man with a slow fire" which even the wildest Cannibals did not do.

However, Rives seems to suggest that this was not really a simple matter of killing people for disagreeing with God, as your post might suggest. If Servetus had just been one of the various other nonstandard religious groups, it might not matter. Rather, Servetus was intensely abrasive in his doctrinal fights with Calvin. And Calvin, based on Rives' book, was authoritarian in his personality, perhaps to the level of psychopathy. Rives even considers whether an insanity defense could be made on Calvin's behalf, but ultimately rejects it because of the careful thought Calvin put into achieving Servetus' death.

Blondepudding · Feb 11, 2016

rakovsky said:
Yes. What you write is a coincidentally close mirror of what the immigrant Minus Celsus said in that era. Rives writes:

An Italian immigrant to switzerland Minus Celsus... decried that he came to join the Reformation but found it persecuted each other... "by roasting the living man with a slow fire" which even the wildest Cannibals did not do.

However, Rives seems to suggest that this was not really a simple matter of killing people for disagreeing with God, as your post might suggest. If Servetus had just been one of the various other nonstandard religious groups, it might not matter. Rather, Servetus was intensely abrasive in his doctrinal fights with Calvin. And Calvin, based on Rives' book, was authoritarian in his personality, perhaps to the level of psychopathy. Rives even considers whether an insanity defense could be made on Calvin's behalf, but ultimately rejects it because of the careful thought Calvin put into achieving Servetus' death.

John Calvin was prideful and a despot. I'd agree insanity may not be a proper diagnosis because of his calculated planning of the dogma he taught and the persecution he pursued against his detractors.
Someone who's trained in psychology and who know Calvin's history may know what diagnosis would fit.

Maybe he was just a bad person who got off on hurting people that disagreed with him because his self-esteem was in the basement. And killing or locking away adversaries silenced his detractors and made him feel smugly superior.
I'd think that would by consequence of those actions gain him adherents out of fear they'd be next.

Calvin, the Tyrant of Geneva
Fr. Leonel Franca, S.J.

rakovsky · Feb 11, 2016

Your thinking fascinates me, Blondepudding. What are your beliefs on religion? How does one find Truth?

Look at the suffering in the world. Christianity gives an attempted answer and gives with confidence an answer of salvation. It's extremely appealing psychologically and emotionally.

If one is not in the Church, where does one go for vital spiritual needs?

rakovsky · Feb 11, 2016

Since we are in the Conspiracy Theory section, I might as well point out that there is a Conspiracy Theory about Calvin. According to some conspiracy theories, the Templars, under their Red Cross, hid with their massive wealth in Switzerland after France banned them. These theorists connect Switzerland's independence, militancy, wealth, and red cross symbols with the Templars. One conspiricist website claims that Calvin was connected with the Templars and Rosicrucians:

Four men who disagreed with him on who should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper were beheaded, quartered, and their body parts hung in strategic locations in Geneva as a warning to others. He burned Michael Servetus [at the stake] (for rejecting infant baptism and for denying Christ’s deity). Calvin wrote about Servetus, ‘One should not be content with simply killing such people, but should burn them cruelly.’” (FBIS, “The Calvinism Debate”)

How does a “Reformed” minister justify burning heretics at the stake, with the same ferocity the Catholic Popes exterminated entire heretical sects? There is evidence that the Rosicrucian societies, who were the resurfaced Templars in Great Britain, infiltrated the Reformation where they operated as agents provocateurs. By founding new “Reformed” denominations, these agents acted in most un-Christian ways in order to give Protestant Christianity a reputation for violence, just as their agents had formerly done so effectively in the Catholic Church. (See: The Reformation: Rosicrucian Connections)
...
When he went from Geneva to France to start preaching his doctrine he became known as Cauin. Then in England it became Calvin. History proves that there is hardly a revolutionary plot that wasn't hatched in Switzerland; there is hardly a Jewish revolutionary leader who hasn’t changed his name.
“At B'nai B'rith celebrations held in Paris, France, in 1936 Cohen, Cauvin, or Calvin, whatever his name may have been, was enthusiastically acclaimed to have been of Jewish descent (The Catholic Gazette, February, 1936)...

http://enjoyingthejourney.blogspot.com/2006/06/john-calvin-orginally-cohen-then-cauin.html

See also the conspiricist site:
https://watch.pair.com/reformation-2.html

Please note, by the way, that I am not actually advocating this theory, and Calvin's ethnicity does not itself matter, and in any case he wrote anti-Semitic statements.

This debunking site says:

[The crackpot Mullins claims] that Calvin first gave his surname in Geneva as 'Cohen' and then changed it to 'Cauvin' when he entered France...

This inverts Calvin's historical movements almost one hundred and eighty degrees however as Calvin was born in the Cathedral town of Noyon (4) in France in 1509. (5) Calvin didn't go to Geneva until 1536 (6) and then only as a accident as he wished to go to Basel and was diverted through Geneva during his journey. (7) Calvin had to leave Noyon and Paris due to the prosecutions of Protestants in 1533 (8) and then left for Italy in 1536. (9) Calvin did return to France from Italy briefly in 1536 due to the tolerance for Protestant proclaimed in the Edict of Coucy: however he had already converted to Protestantism by 1533 and was connected with the material in the 'Affair of the Placards' in 1534. (10)
Calvin was born not with the surname 'Cohen', but rather with surname 'Cauvin' as his contemporary and friend Theodore Beza attests. (11) Cauvin only Latinized (not Anglicized) his name later in Basle as 'Calvinus',

The confusion may have started due to the fiery denunciations of reformers by orthodox Catholics; such as Luther's famous antagonist Johannes Eck, who pejoratively referred to Calvin and his fellows as 'Rabbis' because of their obsessive use of the Old Testament as theological justification...

There has been one recent semi-serious attempt to turn Calvin into a jew by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschmann and Donald Neal Yates. Hirschmann and Yates argue that because Calvin's father Gerard Cauvin was a lawyer who served the Lord of Noyon, had a significant; although not substantial in terms of population demographics, colony of Marrano jews from the Iberian Peninsula and that said jews often served as lawyers, bankers and general 'fixers' for the French nobility: then it means that Gerard Cauvin was a 'crypto-jew'.

However this completely ignores the fact that there is no actual evidence that Gerard Cauvin had any jewish ancestry at all [and] the Cauvin surname is very common to the Picardy region at the time as we know from records

http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2013/08/was-john-calvin-jewish.html

As to another alleged "hidden" side of Calvin, a modern biographer of Calvin, A. McGrath, writes:

Jerome Bolsec, with whom Calvin crossed swords in 1551... published his Vie de Calvin at Lyons in June 1577. Calvin, according to Bolsec, was irredeemably tedious and malicious, bloodthirsty and frustrated. He treated his own words as if they were the word of God, and allowed himself to be worshipped as God. In addition to frequently falling victim to his homosexual tendencies, he had a habit of indulging himself sexually with any female within walking distance. According to Bolsec, Calvin resigned his benefices at Noyon on account of the public exposure of his homosexual activities. Bolsec's biography makes much more interesting reading than those of Theodore Beza and Nicolas Colladon; nevertheless, his work rests largely upon unsubstantiated anonymous oral reports...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jérôme-Hermès_Bolsec

rakovsky · Feb 12, 2016

The essay "The_Expurgation_of_Reason" gives an interesting proposal, and I tend to think the right one, for Servetus' escape:

The Roman Catholic authorities of Vienne, discovering after a while the connivance of Calvin, in putting the execution of his enemy[Servetus] on them, contrived, it is said, to make his escape easy. They had no mind to have this work thrust upon them. They probably felt that the reformers should take care of their own heretics. Servetus, after his escape, wandered about from place to place, all the time his life in imminent danger, and finally brought up in Geneva, the home of Calvin, disguising himself, and hiding on the outskirts. What induced him to take such desperate chances is not positively known. His intention is supposed to have been to go to Naples, and to be gone from Geneva on the first favorable opportunity. Weary of confinement, and always piously inclined, he ventured imprudently to show himself, at the evening service of a neighboring church, and being there recognized, intimation of his presence was conveyed to Calvin, who, without loss of a moment, demanded his immediate arrest, making his arraignment himself, and industriously working until the end, as chief prosecutor and witness.

http://www.frederick.com/The_Expurg...ting_the_Doctrines_of_John_Calvin-a-1151.html

The Catholic French Inquisition might have found it quite ironic that their evidence was practically founded on the letters that Calvin had sent them, while Calvin in their own eyes was himself a leading heretic. That is, from their viewpoint, Calvin was a heretic trying to get them to kill another heretic.

Rick Otto · Mar 15, 2016

I agree with Calvin's soteriology, but part ways with him on sacramentology and ecclesiology, especially in the area of church discipline.

Why did Michael Servetus go to Geneva where he got burned by Calvin's Reformed community?

Why did Servetus go to Geneva?

To confront and debate Calvin

Because Servetus had supporters there

Because Geneva appeared more secure than Italy for religious dissidents/"heretics"

Because he wanted to be or was connected to resistance to Calvin's political control there

It was just a stop on a route to Italy and he didn't have other plans there

Other (explain).

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Why did Michael Servetus go to Geneva where he got burned by Calvin's Reformed community?

Why did Servetus go to Geneva?

To confront and debate Calvin

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Because Geneva appeared more secure than Italy for religious dissidents/"heretics"

Because he wanted to be or was connected to resistance to Calvin's political control there

It was just a stop on a route to Italy and he didn't have other plans there

Other (explain).

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