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Updated: June 4, 2025
The early history of Protestantism shows that at that time the principle of religious intolerance brought over from Romanism manifested itself in the actual putting to death of numerous dissenters. Thus, we find Calvin, at Geneva, consenting to the burning of Servetus because of a difference in religious views.
We walked out the other evening, with M. Fazy, to a beautiful place, where Servetus was burned. Soft, new-mown meadow grass carpets it, and a solemn amphitheatre of mountains, glowing in the evening sky, looked down Mont Blanc, the blue-black Mole, the Saleve! Never was deed done in a more august presence chamber!
And so Chaumette went to the scaffold, and Servetus to the stake, on the one common principle that the civil magistrate is concerned with heresy. And Hébert was only following out the same doctrine in a mild and equitable manner, when he insisted on preventing the publication of a book in which the author professed his belief in a God.
This disguised freethinker, for he does not appear to me to be anything else, was one of the most original thinkers of the period intermediate between the Middle Ages and Descartes. MICHAEL SERVETUS; VANINI. Such instances of temerity were sometimes fatal to their authors.
To Paris, the strong school of the period, he went in 1533, and studied under two men of great renown, Jacob Sylvius and Guinterius. Both were strong Galenists and regarded the Master as an infallible authority. He had as a fellow prosector, under the latter, the unfortunate Servetus. The story of his troubles and trials in getting bones and subjects you may read in Roth's "Life."
It was under the influence of the Socinian spirit that Castellion of Savoy sounded the trumpet of toleration in a pamphlet denouncing the burning of Servetus, whereby he earned the malignant hatred of Calvin.
The pious or personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus the guilt of his own rebellion; and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer. The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs.
Ere this these two may have conferred together of the tragedy, with far other thoughts than then. The world is always unjust to its progressive men. If one fragment of past absurdity cleaves to them, they celebrate the absurdity as a personal peculiarity. Hence we hear so much of Luther's controversial harshness, of Calvin's burning Servetus, and of the witch persecutions of New England.
The Protestant party in the course of time became a warring camp of Ishmaelites, Luther fighting everybody and everybody fighting Luther. Religious intolerance and persecution became the prevailing policy of Protestants in their dealings with other Protestants. The burning of Servetus at Geneva by Calvin was the logical outcome of Luther's teaching.
"Never was there," she said, in a sharp, clear voice; "but I hope to go soon." "You will have a great deal to see." "All I want to see, and hear, is the Rev. Servetus Frost," replied the lady. "My idea of perfect happiness is to hear him every Sunday. He comes here sometimes, for his sister is settled here; a very big mill. He preached here a month ago.
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