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Updated: June 4, 2025
It is not then uncharitable to suspect that the leading men of the council like those reformers at Geneva who a century and a half later, 1553, sent Servetus to the stake were not sorry to be able to give so signal an evidence of their zeal for the maintenance of the faith which they had received, as thus, in the condemnation of Huss, they had the opportunity of doing.
When De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi, it was still two years before Luther's death; eleven years before the burning of Servetus; thirty years before the St. Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais was not yet published; 'Don Quixote' was not yet written; Shakespeare was not yet born; a hundred long years must still elapse before Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver Cromwell.
The infliction of the death-punishment for difference of opinion was still resorted to. When Calvin caused Servetus to be burnt at Geneva, it was obvious to every one that the spirit of persecution was unimpaired. The offense of that philosopher lay in his belief.
When Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn to death the pious and innocent Joan of Kent, who moreover was as mystical and illogical as heart could wish, was Cranmer not actuated by deep religious convictions? None question his piety, yet it was an awfully wicked deed. What shall I say of Calvin, who burned Servetus?
Or is it perchance an evangelical spirit, which breathes in Calvin's article: "That the heretic should be punished with death," and in the funeral pile of Servetus? Were the rack-chambers of Queen Elizabeth much more Christian than the dragonades of Louis XIV., and did Ireland live more happily under the yoke of a High Church forced upon her, than Spain under the Inquisition?
He was convicted and condemned to death by fire. On the morning of the fatal day, Calvin saw him; and Servetus, the victim, asked forgiveness of Calvin, the murderer, for anything he might have said that had wounded his feelings. Servetus was bound to the stake, the fagots were lighted. The wind carried the flames somewhat away from his body, so that he slowly roasted for hours.
In his next work, Dialogues on the Trinity and A Treatise on the Kingdom of Christ, Servetus somewhat modified his views, and declared that his former reasonings were merely "those of a boy speaking to boys"; but he blamed rather the arrangement of his book, than retracted the opinions he had expressed. Lugduni, a Porta, 1542, in-folio.
Those who diverge from the orthodox standards are always exposed to some measure of censure or discredit. In former days the stake or the gallows was the penalty. John Huss and Michael Servetus, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were put to death on the demand of orthodoxy.
Servetus was a rhetorician, controversialist and diplomat gentle, considerate, gracious. He belonged to that suave and cultured type of Catholic that wins to the Church princes and people to education and wealth. He has been likened by John Morley to Cardinal Newman.
It is shocking, it is perfectly ridiculous, that the Bishop of Rome should touch a hair of any man's head for contradicting him; and why? Because, do you see? he is wrong. Certainly they would bear improvement, but that is not my business. Writing to Farrel, he says, 'Spero capitale saltern fore judicium. Sentence of the court, he hopes, will, at any rate, reach the life of Servetus.
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