Blainton Haunted Heretic

I found this reading interesting because in its way, it both conflicted with and added detail to the Servetus incident as it was taught in my Church History class.  In that class, Servetus is seen as sort of a guy who got in trouble for writing something heretical and was dumb enough to actually go to Geneva to talk to Calvin about it.  In Geneva, he became a pawn between Calvin and the Catholics, so Calvin, of course had to react to this heresy, which of course meant executing Servetus, because he failed to repent.  This is the only execution ever ordered by Calvin and he was so fraught with misery about it that he tried his darndest to have the sentence be carried out by beheading because it was more humane, but he lost that argument due to the social pressures and had to consent to execution by fire.

Contrast this with the reading in this story and you have a doctor whose contributions to science were notable.  He wrote this book that was more a political and social criticism dating back to Nicea and that the real problem was political and anti-Catholic rather than theological.  He had to work hard to get a publisher and ended up needing to self-publish.

This was no work that he accidentally got in trouble for.  This was an intentional protest against the organized church which Calvin ended up adjudicating even though he had tried to pawn it off to the Catholics.

I was enthralled in the drama of the story in that the actually escaped like James Bond and how funny was it that when he was actually convicted a “civil” tribunal and that his penalty was $1,000 pounds AND THEN to be burnt at the stake.  Oh, gosh, I forgot my wallet! Darn.

He’s finally caught because he goes back to Geneva four months later because he senses a weakness in Calvin and becomes allied with Calvin’s enemy the Libertines to try to capitalize on that weakness.

In the end, it seemed that Servetus served as a lightning rod for the arguments between Calvin and the Anabaptists and Calvin and the Pope.  I am happy to walk away thinking that Calvin would not have killed him just for what he thought about the nature of God.