On Feb. 26, a letter, enclosing a sheet of the printed book, and revealing the secret of its authorship, was written from Geneva by Guillaume de Trye, formerly echevin of Lyons, to his cousin Antoine Arneys in that city. The letter bears no sign of dictation by Calvin (who must, however, have furnished the enclosed sheet). For a subsequent letter Calvin furnished (reluctantly, according to de Trye) samples of Servetus's handwriting, expressly to secure his conviction. The inquisitor-general at Lyons, Matthieu Ory (the "Doribus" of Rabelais) took up the case on March 12 Servetus was interrogated on March 16, arrested on April 4, and examined on the two following days. His defence was that, in correspondence with Calvin, he had assumed the character of Servetus for purposes of discussion. At 4 A.M. on April 7 he escaped from his prison, evidently by connivance. How he spent the next four months is not known. On Saturday, Aug. 6, he rode into Louyset, a village on the French side of Geneva. Next morning he walked into Geneva, put up at "the Rose," and asked for a boat to take him towards Zurich on his way to Naples. Finding he could not get the boat till next day (Monday) he attended afternoon service (he would probably have got into trouble if he had not done so), was recognized at church par quelques freres, and immediately arrested.
The process against Servetus (Nicholas de la Fontaine being in the first instance the nominal prosecutor) lasted from Aug. to Oct. 26, when sentence to be burned alive was passed, and carried out next day at Champel (Oct. 27, 1553). Calvin would have had him beheaded. Meanwhile the civil tribunal at Vienne had ordered (June 17) that he be fined and burned alive; the sentence of the ecclesiastical tribunal at Vienne was delayed till Dec. 23. Jacques Charmier, a priest in Servetus's confidence, was condemned to three years' imprisonment in Vienne. The only likeness of Servetus is a small copperplate by C. Sichem, 1607 (often reproduced); the original is not known and the authenticity is uncertain. In 1876 a statue of Servetus was erected by Don Pedro Gonsalez de Velasco in front of his Instituto Antropologico at Madrid; in i9o3 an expiatory block was erected at Champel; in 1907 a statue was erected in Paris (Place de la Maine du XIVe Arrondissement) ; another is at Aramnese; another was prepared (I 910) for erection at Vienne.
The denial by Servetus of the tripersonality of the Godhead and the eternity of the Son, along with his anabaptism, made his system abhorrent to Catholics and Protestants alike, in spite of his intense Biblicism, his passionate devotion to the person of Christ, and his Christocentric scheme of the universe. His
earliest theological writings, in which he approximates to the views of F. Socinus, are better known than his riper work. He has been classed with Arians, but he endorses in his own way the homoousian formula, and denounces Arius as "Christi gloriae incapacissimus." He has had many critics, some apologists (e.g., Postel and Lincurius), few followers. The 15 condemnatory clauses, prefacing the sentence at Geneva, set forth in detail that he was guilty of heresies, blasphemously expressed, against the foundation of the Christian religion. An instance of his injurious language was found in his use of the term "trinitaires" to denote "ceux qui croyent en la Trinite." No law, current in Geneva, has ever been adduced as enacting the capital sentence. Claude Rigot, the procureur-general, put it to Servetus that his legal education must have warned him of the provisions of the code of Justinian to this effect; but in 1535 all the old laws on the subject of religion had been set aside at Geneva; the only civil penalty recognized by the edicts of 1543 being banishment. The Swiss churches, while agreeing to condemn Servetus, say nothing of capital punishment in their letters of advice. The extinct law seems to have been revived for the occasion. A controversy fol lowed on the question of executing heretics, in which Beza (for), Mino Selsi (against), and several caustic anonymous writers (especially Castellio) took part.
2. Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo (Hagenau, 1532); two reprints of 1 and 2, to pass for originals; No. 1 in Dutch version (162o), by Regnier Telle.
3. Claudii Ptolomaei Alexandrini geographicae enarrationis libri octo; ex Bilibaldi Pircklieymeri translatione, sed ad Graeca et prisca exemplaria a Michaele Villanovano jam primum, recogniti. Adjecta insuper ab eodem scholia, etc., Lyons, Melchior and Gas par Trechsel (1535; 2nd ed., Lyons, Hugo a Porta, 1542 seq.; printed by Caspar Trechsel at Vienne) ; on this work Tollin founds his high estimate of Servetus as a comparative geographer; the passage incriminated on his trial as attacking the verity of Moses is from Lorenz Friese; the accounts of the language and character of modern nations show original observation.
4. In Leonardum Fuchsium apologia. Autore Michaele Villano vano (1536, reproduced by photography, 1909).
5. Syruporum universa ratio, etc. (Paris, 1537); four subse quent editions; latest, Venice, 1548 (six lectures on digestion; syrups treated in fifth lecture).