Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/111

vin; not only indisposed to yield one jot or tittle, but negligent also of opportunities to defend his conclusions. Perhaps he knew it was useless to argue, for, as a Spanish proverb says, "No man is so deaf as he who will not hear." Perhaps Perrin and Berthelier, the leaders of the Libertines, too, had fed his brain with false hopes and promises.

The trial was now interrupted through differences between Calvin and the city fathers about municipal affairs. On September 15th Servetus wrote to the council a letter, from which we quote the first paragraph:

"My most Honored Lords: I humbly entreat of you to put an end to these great delays, or to exonerate me of the criminal charge. You must see that Calvin is at his wit's end, and knows not what more to say, but for his pleasure would have me rot here in prison. The lice eat me up alive; my breeches are in rags, and I have no change—no doublet, and but a single shirt in tatters. I have also demanded to have a counsel assigned me. This would have been granted me in my native country; and here I am a stranger, and ignorant of the laws and customs of the land. Yet you have given counsel to my accuser,^[1] refusing it to me."

On the 22d of September, perhaps instigated by Berthelier, Servetus took a bold step: he accused Calvin as his calumniator, and asked him to be declared subject to the law of retaliation; but the council took no more notice of this than they had of the previous petition. The appeal to the churches of Switzerland caused another pause in the proceedings, and Michael Servetus, October 10th, forwarded the following letter to the council:

"Most Noble Lords: It is now about three weeks since I petitioned for an audience, and still I have no reply. I entreat you for the love of Jesus Christ not to refuse me that you would grant to a Turk, when I ask for justice at your hands. As to what you may have commanded to be done for me in the way of cleanliness, I have to inform you that nothing has been done, and that I am in a more filthy plight than ever. In addition, I suffer terribly from the cold, and from colic, and my rupture, which causes me miseries of other kinds, I should feel shame in writing about more particularly. It is very cruel that I am neither allowed to speak nor to have my most pressing wants supplied; for the love of God, sirs, in pity or in duty, give orders in my behalf!"

This appeal of the prisoner, as far as his needs were concerned, met with an immediate response; but the audience was never granted. The answers of the Swiss churches arrived at last, and as Calvin had been their inspirer, and they had been taken in concert, they unanimously condemned Servetus's theological views. On the 26th of October the council solemnly assembled and condemned Servetus to be burned alive with his books; the sentence to be carried into effect on the morrow! In a letter to Farel, alluding to the vain attempts made by Perrin, the first syndic, by delay and entreaty, to save the prisoner's life, Calvin speaks of the merciful man by the nickname under

1. Germain Colladon was introduced as counsel for Nicolas La Fontaine, and continued all through the trial as Calvin's champion.