John Calvin and the Death of Michael Servetus: Part III
The Heresy, Trial, and Execution of Michael Servetus; Continuation of the Series Anabaptism and the Long Quest for Religious Liberty
Note: This post comes in two parts. So this last part (III) has a sequel coming very soon.
Introduction: Calvin and Servetus
The average person today knows two things about John Calvin. He believed in predestination, and he was responsible for the execution of Michael Servetus. But why has this execution become so scandalous when the same sort of thing took place with other Reformers?
I find there are two ways people respond to the infamous event. First, many will use it to effectively write off Calvin. In their minds this totally disqualifies him from teaching us anything. I can sympathize with that. It is hard to recognize much good coming from a man who was more than partially responsible for slowly roasting a heretic in an execution pyre because he did not hold to an orthodox view of the Trinity. An error this egregious—killing a human being for not believing correctly— seems more serious than the heresy punished.
A second way people respond is to quickly dismiss Calvin’s mistakes. Often, in slavish glorification of Calvin, they ignore the sad event or quickly wave it off as a tired and redundant insult that modern hedonists inflict on the moral saints of the past. Or, similarly, they will defend him with the feeble excuse: “Well, Calvin must be judged by the standards of his own time and not ours.”
Really? Well, that is an interesting excuse. But even if we were to allow it, I’d like to point out: there were those who spoke and developed “standards” in his time and directly from the New Testament. Why wasn’t the notable scholar from Geneva, who was so well-versed in humanist studies listening to, say, Hubmaier’s On Heretics and Those Who Burn Them published in Calvin’s earlier years? And surely the humanist student, so influenced by the Master of 16th century humanism, knew that Erasmus despised senseless executions for thought crimes.
Furthermore, the only standard from which we can judge any doctrine or practice is the standards of the Bible. And Calvin was extremely equipped at getting to the true meaning of Scripture. He had a proficient knowledge of Hebrew and Greek and that within a Christian humanist tradition, showing himself unparalleled in Bible exposition. As a Reformer, he could denounce and repudiate Roman Catholic errors with eloquence and clarity. But he willingly participated in this one? Why?
There is simply no New Testament justification for torture and death to be imposed on those who reject Jesus or believe aberrations concerning him. The church is to discipline the wayward and the apostate, and eventually excommunicate when unrepentant, but it must then leave them to God who judges righteously.
Paul uses language in I Corinthians: “Deliver unto Satan for the destruction of the Flesh” (5:5). In Galatians, he asserts, concerning the false gospel teacher: “Let him be accursed” (1:8). In I Timothy he commands to shun the “profane and vain babblings,” speaking of those heretical teachers that said the resurrection was already past. While Calvin used the case of Ananias and Sapphira to defend the execution of Servetus, it was God that smote the two, not Peter. The Apostles teach a robust church discipline, but they refrain from suggesting that capital punishment should be inflicted upon Christian heretics.
I. Who was Michael Servetus and What was his Heresy
Michael Servetus was born in Spain in Villenueva (Villanova) somewhere between 1509 and 1511. He received his early education at a university of Saragosso where the influence of Erasmus had found some root. As we have noted in prior posts, the influence of the humanist Erasmus was everywhere in Europe at this time. In Spain, one particular cause of this came through the Emperor, Charles.
Charles was the grandson of the famous Ferdinand and Isabella but had been educated in the Spanish holdings in the Netherlands; this was the home of the great humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Through Charles, the court became infected deeply by the thinking of Erasmus. Servetus, as a young man, was employed in a position in the court working under the Emperor’s confessor, a man named Quintana. Quintana was known for his sympathies for Luther.
Servetus then went to France to study law at the acclaimed University of Toulouse. And here, even though the university was solidly Catholic and orthodox, there was an evangelical spirit in the air. Students were studying the Bible and were making waves pointing toward reforms. Servetus began a close study of the Gospels.
One issue that troubled the young man, an issue that would cast a dark cloud upon his life and eventually lead to his death, was the plight of the Jews and the Moors and the question of why they so stubbornly rejected Christianity.
Through observation and inquiry, he found that their chief obstacle to Christianity was the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus set out to study this doctrine. To his dismay he could not find the word in either the gospels or the teaching of the Apostles, so he began to question imposing a concept not included in the actual text of Scripture.
While the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned, the actual creedal words homousios (same-substance), the “consubstantiation” of the Son with the Father, and the word Trinity itself are not biblical terms. This led Servetus to develop some novel ideas.
There is a complex history to this whole discussion. The church since Nicaea has always thought that the heresies of Arianism (which denies Christ’s deity) as well as the more general errors of tritheism (three Gods) and modalism (the persons of the Godhead are only modes of manifestation) require the addition of some extra-biblical wording to state the substance of what the Bible means. Servetus, however, was consumed only with a simple question. How can we impose alien terms upon those who are only objecting to what they can’t read as literal words in the Scripture?
When looking at this question, Servetus delved into late medieval discussions on the subject. This takes us into some pre-Reformation historical theology and its intersection with scholastic philosophy.
A. Nominalism and Idealism
Before you zone out of this and dismiss it as academic gibberish, I challenge you to track with me for a minute. Pre-Reformation thought is one of the most under-studied and even unknown pieces of the modern/post-modern puzzle. Most of our historical theology moves from the Early Fathers to Nicene Orthodoxy, and then sails into the Reformation without bothering to try to understand anything in the lost millennium in between. I will argue (but more in detail another day) that when we work at it this simplistically, we are unable to explain well, both Reformation and post-Reformation thought currents, especially how some of these currents have led to secularity and hence to the astonishing godlessness of today. But if you do not wish to take the time to wade through this, then skip to the next section (B below).
There were philosophical drivers (as well as the usual moral and theological ones often emphasized) to the Reformation and the eras beyond. Ironically the same drivers that steered the church into the Reformation (producing men like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli) also steered the church through the Reformation and then led society, when unstudied and unprotected, into humanistic and scientific modernity.
Servetus certainly was a heretic, but he was a pioneering kind of heretic. He foresaw the eras of Socinianism, Unitarianism, liberalism, and modernism, as well as a measure of naturalism. He was a brilliant polymath, scientist, and biologist; we might learn a little something if we thought about his quandary. Why do we believe in the doctrine of the Trinity if the word Trinity is not in the Bible? How do we discriminate between tenets of Catholic orthodoxy that are not biblical and those we should keep?
Servetus’ study on this took him back to the scholastic discussions between Realism and Nominalism. This philosophy, though emerging first out of the thought of Plato and Aristotle two thousand years earlier, was particularly rife in the several centuries just before the Reformation.
The Roman church had always emphasized, along side of the Bible, the idea of a Platonic Idealism where universals exist in a reality outside the world of time and space. In this way, the natural world within time and space has a close referent to these ultimate ideals. This side of the debate was called Realism, because it believed that the ideals were Real. They actually existed in God’s world of the Ultimate. Here the natural world, because it is hinged to its “real” referent, has objective meaning and can take on even spiritual definition.
But in the late medieval period and especially after the philosophy of Aristotle was increasingly emphasized, another set of ideas came to the fore. This side of the argument focused, not on the actual existence of ultimate realities in a transcendent world, but in the natural existence of things in the world as humans observed them. This led to a more scientific study of particulars in time and space. Rather than hinging our observations to ideas about what things are metaphysically related to, the human observer should just study the thing in itself. In philosophy, one would call this empiricism. The nominalist believed that universal categories might well enough exist but only as a kind of sorting mechanism. They did not have “real” but rather “nominal” existence.
You can see how this could eventually lead to a more scientific and rationalistic (and also subjective, even relativistic) understanding of the world. As thought went in that direction, it passed through the theology of the church. And here Servetus was caught in his quandary.
Within the older, Realist framework, it was much easier to associate the three aspects (persons) of deity to a substance or essence of deity. In this way, one could make the case for the Trinity in a more reasonable way. To believe in the Trinity, while surpassing our intellectual rationality, was not irrational. It could be illustrated, and some (as in the case of St. Anselm), might demonstrate (almost prove) it. But when Peter Abelard and Roscellinus (12th century) and William of Ockham (14th century) began emphasizing their Nominalist ideas, they unhinged the natural world from its universal Ideal. As a result, skepticism about the existence of universal essences developed, and this happened in theology as well as the sciences.
It is important to point out here that these Nominalist thinkers did not just suddenly turn atheistic; they still believed in God as a transcendent Being, and most still held to the orthodoxy of Catholicism. But these new ideas would challenge doctrines like Transubstantiation and the Trinity. Roscellinus used Nominalist philosophy to equate the Trinity with tritheism. He could not unite the three into one essence and leaned heretical even as early as the twelfth century.
This had the effect of shifting arguments for orthodoxy toward fideism. Yes, we can believe in the Trinity, but it is only by blind faith in what the church has taught. Doctrine became dogma. This is precisely the point where faith began to separate itself from science and reason. This is a troublesome move because it leaves scientific curiosity not properly tethered to anything universal and transcendent. Doctrinal authority began to bluster its way, just stating rather than illustrating, and demanding rather than indicating and proving. Subsequently, thinkers and scientists became skeptical of the church’s authority, and both science and theology became more and more humanistic.
This is what happened to Servetus. As he studied the nominalists and became an advocate of William of Ockham, like Ockham he grew skeptical of universal essences. But unlike Ockham, he couldn’t accept the dogma of the Church. For him, the three persons became three gods. And as he weighed this alongside of his missionary zeal for the Muslims and Jews, he began to sympathize and eventually embraced the thinking of anti-trinitarian monotheists, that the Trinity is a Christian heresy of tritheism.
Though Ockham and the other nominalists a century earlier remained orthodox and accepted the church’s view of the Trinity, they did so because of sheer (sort of blind) faith. But when the reformers unraveled Catholic dogmas in areas like the Mass, transubstantiation, purgatory, etc., Servetus included the Trinity in his list of now defunct doctrines. It cost him his life even though the seeds were sown for him to come to this conclusion by the nominalist philosophes of medieval scholasticism, many of whom were well regarded by the Church.
One might feel some pangs of sympathy for Servetus. I do not in any way support or align with his strange views on theology and Christology, but he was pulled along with the momentum of Aristotelian/nominalist philosophy. This was the spirit of the Renaissance. He was struggling within a monumental “paradigm shift,” only a few of which have happened in Western history. Servetus’ contemporary, Copernicus, was outlining this seismic shift, publishing (what the Church would deem unbiblical) Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543. This would have been just before Servetus began his last heretical work outlined below. And within another half a century, the scientific spirit sparked from nominalism would lead Kepler and Galileo toward conclusions the church would not like (Galileo actually threatened death, resulting in his recantation), though they kept mostly orthodox as far as we know.
Calvin could more easily jump off the nominalist train when he needed to. Calvin was a theologian and not a scientist. But Servetus was a scientist and only a wanna-be theologian.
In summary for this little digression: the nominalism that to some extent drove the Reformation (Luther and Calvin were both heavily influenced by Ockham) enabled them both to refute and then condemn certain Catholic dogmas. But, for Servetus, when the concept of individual/personal learning became unhinged from objective (Realist) antecedents, it led him to a subjectivity that easily enough proliferated into heresy. For society in the centuries following, that same momentum would eventuate into a more intense unbelieving secularism. This is where we are today.1
B. Servetus’ Attraction to Heretical Controversy
In 1529, Charles was inaugurated as the Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope at Bologna. This radically changed the spirit in Spain. Any openness toward reform was condemned, and Erasmus’ works were placed on the Index (list of censored books). Servetus was recalled from his studies in Toulouse and eventually dismissed from his ties to Quintana.
Around this time, Servetus began developing his heretical views. His first book appears in 1531, not in Spain, but in what was the most pluralistic city of Europe, Strassburg. Here Servetus found more kindred spirits among the diverse groups in the city, including Anabaptists. But his book was still by most any sect’s standards blasphemous; the title of the work was The Errors of the Trinity.
Servetus did not quickly see the danger of disseminating his heresy; he sent a copy to the bishop of Sargossa back in Spain. Alarmed, the bishop reported the young heretic to the council of the Inquisition. Hereafter, Servetus moved and lived incognito for most of the rest of his life. He was so much without a home that he entertained the possibility of moving to America. (Note the date here in early 1530s; it wouldn’t be till 1560s that the first permanent settlement was founded in America, and that by his native Spaniards, in St. Augustine, FL).
He found some refuge in France, but only because he lived under the pseudonym of Michael Villanovanus. He worked in Lyons as a proofreader and editor and prodigiously put out a mass of work, most of which got him into trouble.
He published a new Bible replete with his own prophetic notes where he seemed to deny the predictive element in prophecy.
He also edited a magnificent edition of Ptolemy’s geography that unduly praised himself in the preface. This work interestingly was published just one year before Calvin’s Institutes. They both were about the same age. Here too, Servetus couldn’t steer clear of heretical-sounding statements. He slandered the land of Palestine as not being a land of promise when spoken of in everyday terms. This was brought up in his trial in Geneva, twenty some years later.
In 1536, Servetus went to Paris and became a Doctor of Medicine. Here he published a treatise on “Syrups” used as medicine. This became a well-known work and went through four editions.
Servetus was a brilliant man in the fields of science and medicine. But he couldn’t keep his mind away from theology and the latter brought him to his ruin. Ironically, in the same work in which he discovered and wrote up a treatise explaining his discovery of the pulmonary circulation of blood through the lungs, he speculated on the “vital spirits.” This work on the vital spirits was also part of his heretical treatise Restitution of Christianity which was later condemned. Both together were burned as heresy. (Servetus’ discovery was verified and furthered by William Harvey a century later). Servetus also wrote a treatise on “An Apologetic Dissertation on Astrology.”
We mention all of this to say that though Servetus was a heretic, he was a brilliant and and broad-interested writer, scientist, physician, and theologian as well. But despite of all of this, Europe had no use for him; he would be condemned to die throughout the countries, and this primarily because of his understanding of the Trinity.
C. Servetus an Anabaptist?
Around 1540, while practicing medicine near Lyons, Servetus sought to be rebaptized. His age was part of his motivation. As Christ was around 30 when he was baptized, so Servetus should be as well. When he had encountered the Anabaptists in Strassburg a decade earlier, Servetus found himself in agreement with much of their doctrine on the concept of the believer’s church. And he thought the rite of infant baptism desecrated the institution. He even wrote letters to Calvin and urged him to be rebaptized as well (imagine Calvin’s response: the heretic calling the stern Calvin to join him in Anabaptist waters). At his final trial in Geneva, the two primary crimes that he died for were his denial of the Trinity and his repudiation of infant baptism (Calvinists seldom mention this last fact).
We don’t know for sure whether Servetus was actually rebaptized, but we do know that his interest in this caused such a stir that he had to leave the town. He then made his way to Vienne. Here he stayed and worked as a physician for thirteen years (1540-1553). There he seemed to mostly conform to the Catholic consensus and lived there peacefully; no one knew he was the author of the Errors of the Trinity written now so many years ago
D. Servetus’ Last Work
But around 1545, Servetus opened up correspondence with Calvin on the subject of the Trinity. He was working on what would be his last book, The Restitution of Christianity. He sent him a copy of the draft and asked questions. First Calvin responded respectfully. But when Servetus persisted with more questions, some of them demanding and insolent, Calvin, thinking him a distraction from the Devil, responded only by sending Servetus a copy of his Institutes. Servetus then returned the book, filling the margins of Calvin’s famous work with some very critical “marginalia.” Writing later about this, Calvin says: “There is hardly a page that is not defiled by his vomit.”
At some point after this series of interchanges and more, Calvin became convinced that Servetus was incorrigible. He infamously wrote to a friend:
“Servetus offers to come hither, if it be agreeable to me. But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his safety, for if he shall come, I shall never permit him to depart alive, provided my authority be of any avail.”2
Servetus secretly published the book at his own expense in 1553. One thousand copies were printed. It would be the death of him. A citizen of Geneva, who had a Catholic cousin in Lyons where the book had been printed, happened upon one of these copies The cousins frequently corresponded with one another and were trading insults on whether the Catholics or Genevans held to a purer church. The Genevan charged the Catholic from Lyons with tolerating a heretic in that city that had recently published a work of blasphemy. In the work, the author likened the Trinity to Cerberus the three-headed hound of Hades. This heretic also denied infant baptism. Through this interchange, it became known that the heretic was Michael Servetus though the book cryptically included only the initials, “MSV.”
When evidence was sought from Inquisitors in France working with the Catholic cousin, the Genevan managed to secure letters from Calvin that further indicted Servetus: two dozen manuscripts that revealed in handwriting Servetus’ guilt of Trinitarian heresy. It is noteworthy here that because of these manuscripts given from Calvin, Calvin cooperated with the Catholic French Inquisitors in bringing about Servetus’ arrest. Some scholars criticize Calvin for this. After all, Calvin himself was thought to be a heretic by the French as well.
With this evidence, the authorities in France arrested and tried Servetus. In the middle of the trials, as things were looking very dangerous for him, he managed to escape from his imprisonment. The French condemned him to death and burned his effigy but could not recapture him.
It is a great mystery why Servetus then fled to Geneva, but it was a fatal mistake. He shows up there in July 1553. He is not noticed till he attends the church. There he was recognized by several attendees; it was told Calvin who had him arrested.3
To be continued; coming soon: “The Last Trial and Execution of Servetus”
For those interested in looking deeper, see Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation (Belknap Press, 2015); also G.G. Coulton, Studies in Medieval Thought (Thomas Nelson, 1940); and Colin Brown, Christianity and Western Thought Vol. I (IVP, 1990).
This is quoted or paraphrased by many: Schaff, Bainton, and others.
Other sources used: Roland Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty (Harper & Brothers, 1951); Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Eerdmans, 1910) 681-798.