Addresses Biographical and Historical ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A. tc_' Sometime Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History in the University of fifanclzester VETUS PROPTER NO VUM DEPROMETIS THE LINDSEY PRESS 5 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.2 1922 www.unitarian.org.uWdocs PREFATORY NOTE With three exceptions the following Addresses were delivered at the openings of Sessions of the Unitarian Home Missionary College, in Manchester, where the author was Principal from 1890 to 1911. The fifth Address (Salters' Hall) was delivered at the Opening Meeting of the High Pavement Historical Society, in Nottingham; the seventh (Doddridge) at Manchester College, in Oxford, in connection with the Summer Meeting of University Extension students ; The portrait prefixed is a facsimile, f~llsize, of the first issue of the original engraving by Christopher Sichem, from the eighth (Lindsey) at the Unitarian Institute, in the British Museum copy (698. a. 45(2)) of Grouwele.~,der Liverpool. vooruzaeutzster Hooft-Kettereuz, Leyden, 1607. In this volume the Addresses are arranged according to the chronology of their subjects; the actual date of delivery is added at the close of each. Except the first and the fifth, the Addresses were printed, shortly after delivery, in the Ch~istianLife newspaper ; these two (also the third) were printed separately; all have been revised, with a view as far as possible to reduce overlapping and to mitigate the use of the personal pronoun. Further, in the first Address it has been necessary to make an important correction in reference to the parentage of Servetus. Misled by the erroneous ascription to him of a letter from Louvain in 1538 signed Miguel Villaneuva (see the author's article Printed it1 Great Britain by on Servetus in the Encyclopwdia Britannica, also ELSOM& Co. LTD.,HULL. PREFACE vitiated by this error) the author furnished in the original Address a wrong account of the family of Servetus. The real parentage of Servetus was first disclosed in I903 with documentary proofs by Dr. Benet Roure Barrios, in Jozlentztt, a magazine in the Catalan language published at Barcelona; of this the present author had no knowledge prior to 1911, when he visited the locality for the second time A. G. Beljast, October, 1922. THE PERSONALITY OF MICHAEL SERVETUS. ;$ , . L - MICHAEL SERVETUS .. - N a lively passage of his most popular work, I lichael Servetus inveighs against the folly of alleging two causes when one suffices to account for the effect, and is especially insistent in his of a laborious investigator who must MIGUEL SERVETO.-Born, 1511 ; Toulouse, furnish forth a triad of causal activities, as 1528 ; Bologna, 1530 ; Lyons, 1530-36; Paris, if even with two he could not rest satisfied. It 1536-38 ; Charlieu, 1540-41; Vienne, 1541-53; seems, then, only too likely that, were he here, I Died, 1553. might fall under the lash of my present study when I put forward three reasons for my choice of this topic. Yet each of these reasons has had some weight .vith me. Through the generosity of our Pre- sident our store of books has been enriched, this year, with copies of the earliest publications of Servetus, in their rare and costly first editions. It is natural to take this as a call for some en- deavour to renew an interest in their author. Again; next year (I~II),if our calculations are correct, will bring round the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Servetus; and the occasion is to be celebrated in that city in which he spent his happiest years, till influences from MICHAEL SERVETUS MICHAEL SERVETUS 5 without brought on him the premonition of the ---- mark, and while partisans approved or catastrophe of his fate. So it may be well to acquiesced, nobler spirits shuddered and con- ask, What was there in him to make him deemed demned. Putting all this away from sight, I worthy, after all these years, that such celebra- want to rouse your curiosity and-enlist, if I may, tion should be accorded to his memory ? Further, your appreciation, while I make an effort to and as a third reason : it is to be feared that many recover the vivid impression of a gifted, almost a of us are apt to think far more of the fate of unique, personality, full of life and force, strenu- Servetus than of him on whom it fell. The fire ous in purpose, and with a heart as warm as his that consumed his body kindles imagination intellect was keen. much more readily than the flame that burned It is not easy to accomplish a task for which the in his soul, the radiance that illumined his spirit. ordinary means of information fail us. Con- Nay, there are those who even value his story for temporary notices are valuable, but extremely the most part, as a damaging episode in the giant rare; and in a life of surprises many points career of Calvin. remain dark and mysterious. While there is I am not anxious to treat my topic from that much of romance in this life, there are no love- point of view; into the circumstances which cut passages. When I sit down to biographize a man, short the days of Servetus, though elsewhere I I always want to know what kind of woman was have not shrunk from that enquiry, for the pur- his wife. Servetus did once contemplate matri- poses of this sketch I shall not go. With the mony, only to stifle the thought for an imperative verdict of history on that matter I am well con- reason. Of his correspondence, if we except the tent. This only will I now say. His modern few missives of miserable appeal penned in the apologists are ill-advised when they essay, Geneva dungeon, no vestige survives. Of his abandoning their defences, to make excuse for person as it appeared to his contemporaries we Calvin's share in the tragedy of Servetus. For have but a single glimpse, and this at second the excuse is shabby. It was the error of the hand. Ce'rtain spectators not named, who had age, say they-a sorry shift. Even in matters seen him at his trial and witnessed his execution, of tolerance, as in many other matters, Calvin, described him long after to Faustus Socinus as greatest of the Reformers, could on occasion rise quite an old man. His years were only f orty-two ; above the level reached by most of his contem- the impression made by his appearance tells how poraries. In the affair of Servetus he fell below effectually ten weeks' incarceration under the MICHAEL SERVETUS MICHAEL SERVETUS foulest conditions had wasted his health and some pages--is a figure inspired by a right taste strength. and a true reverence, qualities in which some of A small Dutch copperplate of 1607, the only the tributes to Servetus seem to be lacking. This possible portrait of him, presents us with no is true even of the memorial figure erected at ignoble visage; but it occurs in a series of effigies Vienne in 1911, though certainly this is more of heretics, some of which have no claim to pleasing than the Paris atrocity. These harrowing authenticity, and we are without means of spectacles of the victim give little satisfaction assuring ourselves that a genuine likeness was in either to the eye or the mind; on the Spaniard's the hands of Christopher Sichem, the engraver- monumental tribute to the Spaniard one may not a very scrupulous person, for he manufactured dwell with admiration, for at any rate it embodies an effigy of Arius by the simple expedient of a worthy conception of the man. scraping out the mitre from the portrait of a The birthplace of Servetus was probably at Swabian bishop, thus leaving a bald patch on the TudBa, in Navarre, now a gloomy and not too imaginary head of the Alexandrian arch-heretic. clean city, reminding one of Galway by its From this Dutch engraving, however, numerous melancholy ancient mansions, testifying in sculp- copies, more or less close, have been derived; and tured shields of arms to a long-past splendour, the sculptor's art has transferred the features, replaced to-day by squalor and decadence. This, more or less varied, to several statues. Of these, apparently at Paris and certainly at Vienne, he by far the most impressive is the earliest, erected avowed as his birthplace, and there seems no in 1876 at Madrid by the pious care of a leading good reason to challenge the statement, though anthropologist, the late Dr. Pedro Gonzales de it is true that in a solitary passage of his Geneva Velasco. Inferior to this, judging from a photo- testimony-if the minutes of the trial, which graph, is the statue at Annemasse in Haute often blunder about names, are here correct- Savoie, which was refused erection at Champel. he described himself not simply as de Villelzeufve The statue in the Place Beaumont at Paris is a but as de Villeneufve natifz. We may account for figure of horror, representing its subject near the the birth at Tudkla, if we suppose this to have last stage of his destitution and agony. The been his mother's old home, and the birth to have Paris statue, in the Place Maubert, of Etienne taken place while she was there on a visit. Dolet, martyr of the Renaissance-immortalized Richard Baxter's birth under his grandfather's in the late Chancellor Christie's learned and light- - roof came about in this way. MICHAEL SERVETUS MICHAEL SERVETUS The father of Servetus was Antonio Serveto rollin threw out the suggestion that Servetus was alias Revb, a notary at Villanueva de Sigena, Michael, because born on Michaelmas Day.