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Updated: June 4, 2025
There he was tried for heresy and blasphemy, and was burned at the stake . This was at a time when Calvin was in the midst of his contest with the "Libertines," the party actuated by hostility to him. They appear to have stood behind Servetus in his defiant attitude towards the Genevan authorities.
We put them to the execution of the laws. It seemeth very much to call them our brothers, because we burnt them." Calvin held the same persecuting doctrine. All who opposed him were dealt with ruthlessly. He was a veritable Pope of Geneva. His treatment of Servetus was infamous.
The name of Servetus might call up unpleasant recollections, but that of another medical practitioner may be safely mentioned. "It was not till the middle of the last century that the question as to the authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with anything like a discerning criticism.
SERVETUS. The Reformers were not, any more than their adversaries, advocates of liberty in religious beliefs and professions. A melancholy example of the prevailing idea, that it was the duty of the civil authority to inflict penalties upon heresy, is the case of Michael Servetus.
When Calvin caused Servetus, to be burnt, he was animated, not by the principles of the Reformation, but by those of Catholicism, from which he had not been able to emancipate himself completely. And when the clergy of influential Protestant confessions have stigmatized the investigators of Nature as infidels and atheists, the same may be said.
Yet notwithstanding the burning of Servetus at Geneva, and the hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston, it is certain that France, England, the Netherlands, and America, owe a large share of such political liberty as they have enjoyed to Calvinism.
Now, there were really many more Catholics in Switzerland than dissenters, or "Protestants," and Servetus, knowing Calvin's weakness for exaggeration, did not take his threat seriously. So Servetus journeyed by leisurely stages southward, on his way to Naples, but he never reached there. He stopped at Geneva, like other pilgrims, "to study the new religion."
Melanchthon unreservedly approved of the burning of Servetus. Catholic Europe was covered with stakes for the Protestants, and, if Servetus had had the upper hand, I doubt if Calvin would have received from him any better treatment than he received from Calvin. I do not on that account detest the burning of Servetus any the less; but I do not count it as a fault personal and peculiar to Calvin.
Priestley blamed Gibbon for his covert mode of attacking Christianity, and observed that Servetus was more to be admired for his courage as a martyr than for his services as a scientific discoverer. Now Gibbon knew by instinct that the historic style would at once become ludicrous if used to answer such a letter; so he deserted his ordinary majestic manner, and wrote thus
The outrageous cruelty of Calvin towards the Anti-trinitarian Servetus, whom he caused to be burned at Geneva in 1553, affords a glaring instance of this inconsistency. But a sad proof is given that, about that time, even Anti-trinitarians themselves were not always tolerant. Among the countries where the orthodox dogma was most freely questioned was Transylvania, adjacent to Hungary proper.
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