Out of the Flames Read online

  All the rest is here right enough, the big book and the other writings of the same author, but I can tell you, I had no little trouble to get from Calvin what I am sending. Not that he does not wish to repress such execrable blasphemies, but he thinks his duty is rather to convince heretics with doctrine of other means, because he does not exercise the sword of justice. But I remonstrated with him and pointed out the embarrassing position in which I should be placed if he did not help me, so that in the end he gave me what you see. For the rest I hope by and by, when the case is further advanced, to get from him a whole ream of paper which the scamp has had printed, but I think that for the present you have enough, so that there is no need for more to seize his person and bring him to trial.

  Even after Ory received this reply, the Inquisition still refused to act. There was no real proof, he claimed, that Michel de Villeneuve was Michael Servetus or, even if he was, that it was he who had written Christianismi Restitutio.

  When Calvin learned of this, he knew that if he was to force Ory's hand, he would have to supply even more compelling evidence, although each time he sent something new, his own participation in the affair became more obvious.

  On the last day of March, he had Trie make one last try.

  My dear cousin,

  I hope that I shall have satisfied your requests in part at least by sending you the handwriting of the author. In the last letter which you received you will find what he says about his name, which he disguised, for he excuses himself for having assumed the name Villeneuve when he is really Servetus alias Reves, on the ground that he took the name from that of his native town. For the rest I will keep my promise, God willing, that if there is a need I will furnish you with the manuscripts which he has printed, which are in his handwriting like the letters… As for the printer, I am not sending you the proofs by which we know it is Balthazar Arnoullet and his brother-in-law, Gerard Geroult, but we are well assured nevertheless and he cannot deny it… When you have finished with the letters, let me have them back.

  If this letter had not spurred the inquisitors to action, it is possible that Calvin would have been forced to drop the entire matter. He was running out of options. He certainly was in no position to cross the border himself, travel to Vienne or Lyon, and harass Matthieu Ory until he arrested the heretic.

  As it turned out, he didn't have to.

  On April 4, Tournon, Ory, Palmier, and other members of the local ecclesiastical hierarchy met at the Château de Roussillon. Ory was finally willing to press the case. There was compelling evidence that Vil-leneuve was the heretic Servetus, and he and the printer Arnoullet must be arrested without delay. Tournon and Palmier had no choice but to agree.

  It fell to Palmier to handle logistics. After dinner, the archbishop and his vicar returned to Vienne. Word was sent to Arnoullet that Palmier wished to see a copy of his newly printed New Testament. When Arnoullet showed up with his book, he was dragged off to prison.

  Dr. Villeneuve, however, was not at home. He was, in fact, in the midst of a house call—he had left his home at night to tend to a sick patient. That patient was none other than Guy de Maugiron, the lieutenant governor, the same Maugiron who had warned the doctor three weeks before that his house was going to be searched, thus allowing him to destroy any incriminating papers that may have been lying about. The sheriff was sent to Maugiron's with instructions to tell the doctor that there were many sick and wounded prisoners at the palace and ask if he could possibly come and tend to them? The doctor replied that he would be pleased to offer whatever assistance he could.

  When he arrived at the palace, he was arrested.

  DESPITE THE SERIOUSNESS of the charges, the terms of imprisonment were not severe. Although the jailer was instructed to watch the prisoner closely, the doctor was given his own suite of rooms, his valet was allowed to continue to attend him, and visitors were permitted.

  Early the next day, Palmier informed Tournon of the arrest and asked if Ory wished to come to Vienne for the interrogation. Now that he had official sanction, Ory took off at a gallop and almost wore out his horse, arriving by midmorning. He then set off for the prison with Palmier's vicar and the sheriff. Palmier himself did not attend.

  At the interrogation, in response to queries about his background, Villeneuve—he still insisted he was Villeneuve—gave a brief history of his life, which focused almost entirely on the period after he enrolled at the University of Paris. He omitted completely all of his dealings with the Protestants. He identified himself only as the author of works on medicine and geography. He was shown the pages of Calvin's Institutes that referred to baptism but was asked only to interpret the passage, not questioned about the marginal notes. He replied in a manner consistent with accepted dogma. When he was then asked about the handwriting of the notes, he said that he wasn't sure since it had happened so long ago, but that the handwriting might be his. Regardless, however, since the Institutes was itself heretical, he took the position that all the notes had been proper.

  Once again the judges were unsure what to do. They could hardly fail to agree with someone who had been so lacerating to the arch-heretic Calvin, and the explanations of the accused seemed reasonable enough. They adjourned the interrogation until the following day.

  The next day, they confronted the prisoner with the letters from Servetus to Calvin. This time, they heard a slightly different story:

  My Lords, I tell you the truth. When these letters were written, at the time I was in Germany about twenty-five years ago, a book was printed in Germany by a certain Spaniard called Servetus. I do not know where from in Spain, nor where he lived in Germany… Having read the book in Germany when I was very young, about fifteen to seventeen, it seemed to me that he spoke as well or better than the others. However, leaving all that behind in Germany, I went to France without taking any books, merely with the intention of studying mathematics and medicine, as I have since done. But having heard that Calvin was a learned man, I wanted to write to him out of curiosity without knowing him otherwise… requesting that correspondence should be confidential… to see whether he could not convince me or I him… When he saw that my questions were those of Servetus he replied that I was Servetus. I answered that although I was not, for the purposes of the discussion, I was willing to assume the role of Servetus, for I did not care what he thought of me, but only that we should discuss our opinions. On those terms we wrote until the correspondence became heated and I dropped it. For the last ten years, there has been nothing between us and I affirm before God and you sirs that I never wished to dogmatize or assert anything contrary to the Church and the Christian religion.

  The proceedings were adjourned, but even the accused knew that this tortured explanation would not hold and there was now no longer any question of the ultimate outcome. As soon as he was returned to the prison, Villeneuve sent his valet to a local monastery to collect a debt that was owed him. He also instructed the boy to bring him a gold chain, six gold rings, and other valuables. Minutes after the valet returned with the money, Ory informed the jailer that security was to be tightened and that Dr. Villeneuve was to speak to no one without express permission.

  At 4 A.M. the next morning, the jailer was up to take care of his own small vineyard on the grounds when he heard Dr. Villeneuve call to him. When he got to the cell, he found the doctor dressed in his fur-trimmed, floor-length bathrobe and black velvet nightcap. Villeneuve asked for the key to the gardens so that he might take a walk (a euphemism for going to the bathroom). Although ordinary prisoners were chained in their cells, it was permissible for one of high position to walk about, so the jailer gave him the key, then left to go back to his vines and allow the doctor some privacy.

  The garden was on the third floor, but it contained a terrace that looked out over the courtyard of the palace. Between the terrace and the courtyard was the roof of a shed. Michel de Villeneuve went to the very end of the terrace and took off his bathrobe and nightcap. Underneath he was fully dre
ssed. Leaving the robe and cap under a tree, he noiselessly leapt from the terrace onto the roof, and from there down to the courtyard. Michel de Villeneuve, physician and longtime resident and respected citizen of Vienne, once more became the heretic Michael Servetus and, slipping out the Rhône gate, disappeared into the night.

  IT “WAS AFTER 6A.M. when the jailer's wife got up and made the rounds of the cells. She noticed immediately that Dr. Villeneuve was missing. She ran and got her husband, and together they searched the garden and the grounds. When it became clear that the prisoner had escaped, the jailer's wife, fearing repercussions, put on quite a show. She screamed, she beat her breast, she beat her children, she beat the servants and all the prisoners then at hand. She tore her hair. Finally, she clambered up onto the neighbor's roof and wailed.

  The judges, informed that their prisoner had fled, ordered that the palace gates be closed and all the nearby houses searched. The search turned up nothing. Although everyone in the surrounding areas was questioned, only a peasant woman had seen the fugitive, dashing through the woods just outside the city. The judges then immediately seized all of the prisoner's papers and effects, and claimed all the money that he had in the bank.

  The sheriff was put in charge of the investigation, although he eventually fell under some suspicion as well. It seems Dr. Villeneuve had cured his daughter of a dangerous illness.

  AT THE BEGINNING OF MAY, Ory got a tip, possibly through the old Calvin-Trie-Arneys pipeline, that Arnoullet had two printing presses in the countryside that he had said nothing about.

  When Ory and the police arrived at the cabin in the woods, they found three printers at work. They confronted them with the pages of Christianismi Restitutio. The printers got down on their knees and admitted printing the book although they claimed to be ignorant of its contents. The author had corrected the proofs himself, they said, and in any event, none of them spoke or read Latin. After they had heard of the arrest, they told the sheriff, they realized what the book really was but were afraid to speak for fear of being burned. The printers added that ten days after the printing had been completed, on January 13, five bales of books had been sent to a typecaster in Lyon named Pierre Merrin at the request of the author.

  Arnoullet, who had been released, was once again thrown into prison, but Geroult had already fled. The next day, the inquisitor questioned Merrin at his shop. Merrin readily admitted that he had received the five bales with the label: “From Michel de Villeneuve, Docteur en Médecine, to Pierre Merrin, caster of type, near the Church of Our Lady of Comfort.” The same day, Merrin said, a Vienne churchman named Jacques Charmier had arrived and said that Dr. Villeneuve had asked that the bales be stored until called for, and that they contained blank paper. No one had contacted him since.

  The inquisitor took the bales back to Vienne and confronted Charmier, who insisted that he never had any idea of their true contents. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to three years in prison, as was Merrin. The printers were not excused for their ignorance of Latin and were given prison terms as well.

  On June 17 the civil tribunal declared the fugitive Servetus guilty of scandalous heresy, sedition, rebellion, and evasion of prison. He was sentenced in absentia to pay one thousand livres to the king, have all his property and possessions confiscated, then, if he was caught, to be burned at a slow fire until his body was reduced to ashes. In the absence of the actual prisoner, the sentence was to be executed in effigy.

  The next day, the sentence was carried out. Servetus's picture was hung for a moment to “dull its sensibilities,” and then burned along with all the books by Michael Servetus that the Inquisition could get its hands on, which included the five bales that contained half of the copies of Christianismi Restitutio.

  As for Arnoullet, he remained in prison for four months. On July 14 he wrote to his agent asking him to go to Frankfurt and destroy every remaining copy of Christianismi Restitutio, so that not a single page could be found.

  Calvin, as he expected, was later accused of complicity in the arrest of Michael Servetus. He replied, “They say I did nothing else than throw Servetus to the professed enemies of Christ as to ravening beasts, that I was responsible for his arrest at Vienne in the province of Lyon. But how should I come to such familiarity with the satellites of the pope? To be on such good terms?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DESPITE BEING PERHAPS the most wanted man in France, Michael Servetus once again succeeded in vanishing without a trace. He had a large circle of friends and admirers in Vienne, some of whom certainly helped him, but no one was ever accused. Servetus later said that after he left the city he went south, but no evidence of his actual whereabouts has been found. In a time of no fingerprints, no mug shots, no Identi-Kits, no police artists, and only the most limited communications between civil authorities in different sections of a country, it was almost impossible to track a fugitive unless he behaved ostentatiously, told people who he was, or was spotted by someone who knew him personally. Once he had cleared the area around Lyon, Servetus, traveling with a good deal of gold, could have gone almost anywhere. If he had traveled south toward the Mediterranean, even his dark skin would not have stood out.

  The choice of a final destination, someplace where Servetus could be confident that his past would not catch up to him, was more problematic. He had mentioned earlier in his life that he considered the New World a place where intellectual and religious freedom might be pursued. But even in Europe, there were a number of locations where his ideas had gained sufficient popularity to ensure his safety. One of the most prominent of these, ironically, was Naples, in Catholic Italy, where Servetus had learned that a large community of Spaniards was set to embrace him. Instead of traveling down the Rhône, however, and taking a ship from Marseilles or traveling through Savoy and then down along the coast of Italy, Servetus chose a route that has puzzled scholars for centuries.

  In order to begin his trip south to Naples, Servetus went north, to John Calvin's Geneva.

  CALVIN'S POSITION HAD worsened considerably over the course of the year. In March the Libertines had succeeded in gaining complete control of the Little Council, and the syndics asked the Consistory for a list of all persons who had been excommunicated and the reasons for each ban. The list contained, as everyone knew, the names of a goodly number of leading Libertines, including Berthelier. The ministers said they would rather resign. The issue remained unresolved, but the Council began to nettle Calvin in any way it could—overturning his rulings, ignoring his dictates, even coughing during his sermons. On July 24 a beaten Calvin asked to be allowed to resign. The Council refused. The last thing they wanted was Calvin traveling about the country denouncing the godless Genevans and drumming up support for himself, a tactic he had used to good effect in the past. A toothless Calvin in Geneva was far preferable.

  Calvin, stuck where he was, hunkered down. He refused to reinstate Berthelier even after the Council let it be known that it intended to vote to restore him. This, as both parties knew, could well be the final blow, the one that broke the power of theocracy in the city. And there seemed to be no way out. Only an immense turn of fortune, some might say a miracle, could save Calvin now.

  Then, on Saturday, August 1% Michael Servetus came to town.

  HE ARRIVED ON FOOT and took a room at the Inn of the Rose. He claimed later that he had only intended to stay for one day and had asked the host and hostess at the inn to help him rent a boat to take him up Lake Geneva to Lausanne, where he might link up with the Zurich road, from whence he would then head south to Italy.

  But the next day was the Sabbath, when there would be no boats. Nor could Servetus simply remain at the inn. Church attendance was mandatory. Failure to attend would be conspicuous and might easily result in arrest. Yet of all the churches in Geneva, Servetus seems to have chosen the Madeleine, the very one where Calvin himself was preaching. According to the city records, he was recognized “by certain brothers” and arrested.

  Calvi
n had his miracle. Personified in this one fugitive was the very reason that Geneva had invited him to return in the first place—unmitigated sin.

  And what were the Libertines to do? Although one of its leaders, Ami Perrin, was a friend of Geroult—Geroult had even dedicated a book to him—the Libertines as a political group had no love of Servetus. If they supported Calvin, however, they were admitting that their enemy was needed to defend the city from heresy. If they sided with the heretic or even asked for leniency on his behalf, they would fall prey to that age-old epithet, “soft on crime.” The situation was far from hopeless, however. Calvin was not known for subtlety. It was always possible that now, with control of the city hanging in the balance, he might be baited into overplaying his hand and the Servetus case might turn out to be enough of a fiasco to ruin him.

  It was to be the ruin of the Libertines instead.

  Calvin did not for a second back away. Servetus was immediately thrown into a lice-infested cell with the windows shuttered closed. Within hours, all Geneva knew of the arrest. “It seemed good to make him a prisoner,” the city records read, “that he might no longer infect the world with his heresies and blasphemies, seeing that he was known to be incorrigible and hopeless.” No one bothered to mention that making him a prisoner was itself a violation of law, since Servetus had committed no crime in the city.

  According to the Codex Justinian, the legal code under which Geneva operated at the time, in cases such as this, the accuser must be imprisoned along with the accused until he could produce evidence to support his charges. If no evidence was forthcoming, under the lex tal-ionis (the law of retaliation), the accuser would then suffer the punishment set aside for the crime. In this case, of course, the punishment was death.