The Trial of Michael Servetus – May 24, 2015 by David Green

I’ve met a lot of people who were very serious about their religion. I may have mentioned this guy before, but I’ll never forget the street preacher who held court every day on a busy corner at the University of Texas when I was a student there. He was big and burly, dressed head to toe in black, had a long black beard – way before long black beards were cool – and a powerful, booming voice. All the while he spoke, he waved a very thick, very large .

He always drew a crowd, and about lunchtime students would sit around – at a distance – just to watch. It was like street theatre. He had one consistent message: the threat of eternal damnation, and there did not seem to be anyone

– any group, any passerby – he would not condemn and warn about their fate.

Every so often some brave student – or foolish student, depending on your perspective – would try to engage him in a debate, which would turn into a screaming match. And on one occasion the street preacher became so enraged, he threw his Bible at a student, hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. But he kept right on preaching.

Someone called the police, the student filed an assault charge, and the street preacher was absent for several weeks.

Apparently, he was confined to preaching to his fellow inmates.

One thing struck me about that street preacher. As wild as he was, and as much as I might have disagreed with his , I was grateful we lived in a time and place where someone like him was free to share his religious views. As long as no one got hurt, and he wasn’t causing a disturbance, he could stand on a public corner and preach until his lungs gave out. It was only when he actually did hurt someone by thumping him on the head with a Bible that he got in trouble. And even then, he did not get in trouble for his religious views.

It’s just understood. It’s the law. One of the things you and I should all appreciate – even cherish – is the First

Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing our right to practice and express the religion we believe – or not – without the fear of anyone condemning us, putting us on trial, in jail, or worse.

It’s not called the First Amendment for nothing. Freedom of religious expression was of course one of the main reasons – if not the reason – boatloads of Europeans braved the journey to North America, leading eventually to the establishment of United States.

When the U.S. Constitution was written, it had only been 230 years earlier that people in Europe who had religious ideas that differed from the status quo, were being hauled before kangaroo courts, charged with , and burned alive at the stake in the public square.

That’s hard for us to imagine today, but it was still relatively fresh in the minds of those who drafted the Constitution.

It also might be hard for us to fathom today that anyone would be serious enough about his or her religion to condemn anyone to death for questioning it. Or, that anyone would be serious enough about his or her religion that they would actually be willing to die for it.

At least, here. Tragically, we know this kind of thing still happens in places where fundamentalist forms of religion are practiced. And where there are no legal guarantees of religious freedom of expression. The combination of those two elements: religious fundamentalism of any kind, and the lack of legal protection for those who don’t agree, inevitably leads to persecution and death.

Unless you ever took a course in the history of Christianity, or Europe at the end of the Late Middle Ages, or the

Protestant , it can be kind of shocking to learn just how brutal things could be for anyone who dared to speak their own mind in those days. Especially about religion.

The early 1500s – 1517 to be exact – marked the official kickoff of the Reformation, although for hundreds of years there had been mumblings and grumblings about the way the Roman was doing business. The very word “catholic” means universal.

So, it was the and only church, the one true faith that tolerated no dissent. It was deeply woven into the fabric of society, politics, every aspect of everyday life. There was little distinction between religious law and civil law.

And in many ways the church was corrupt. Popes and cardinals and bishops with incredible power, wealth, ambition, and influence ruled it. The doctrines of the church and the enforcement of those doctrines held sway over your daily life and whatever hope you had for an afterlife. To ever question its authority meant risking your very existence, and condemning your soul to eternal punishment. If you ruled a region or ethnic group, to go against the doctrines or wishes of the church meant going to war.

But over time, at the dawn of the – and usually for reasons that had more to do with political power than religious belief – some local rulers increasingly chafed at the power of the church. Especially those who were more isolated from Rome, geographically. These rulers wanted greater independence, and to achieve that they began supporting local priests who questioned the church’s authority.

One such priest, , is credited with starting the Reformation in 1517 by publicly posting a list of grievances against church practices. Among other things he protested the idea of purchasing your way out of hell, and he believed people ought to be able to read the Bible for themselves and not have to follow the Pope’s interpretation of things.

This did not make him popular down at the Vatican. But local leaders protected him, and for the first time in centuries, the concept that there might be different ways of thinking about Christianity really took hold.

Over the next 20 years or so, more and more local theologians, priests, and politicians also decided to challenge the authority of the Catholic Church. One such person was , originally from France. Because of his outspoken views he had to flee to and set up shop in where he was offered protection from angry Catholics.

And, if you’re going to start a new movement anywhere, it might as well be in one of the most beautiful places on

Earth.

The unfortunate thing about both Martin Luther and John Calvin was, the more influential their ideas became, the more sure they became about the absolute rightness of their doctrines. And their movements became more intolerant of competing ideas, and more repressive. And again, these were in the days when there were few distinctions between religious and civil law. Until the start of the Age of Enlightenment, over a hundred years later, no one openly challenged the assumption that there even should be a separation of church and state.

Meaning, if I’m John Calvin, and have proclaimed through my writings and my preaching to know the one true way of believing and practicing Christianity, and I have the support of the folks in political power to enforce my ideology, I’m not just a religious leader. I’m effectively in charge of the courts. I get to define what’s legal, and what’s not. I get to decide who’s a heretic and who’s not.

So, the protest against what had been the established church – the Catholic Church – fractured into a handful of movements that were also very certain about the absolute rightness of their doctrines. And they followed the model already established by the Catholics of not tolerating any dissent.

The Catholics really had a problem on their hands, because the Protestant Reformation was like having an old house in a thunderstorm. Every time you looked around you discovered a brand new leak coming from somewhere. There’d be some priest or other educated person with the annoying habit of thinking for themselves, and maybe even started a movement. You could kick them out of the church – excommunicate them – but that didn’t do a whole lot of good because once the genie’s been let out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back in.

One of those troublemakers was Michael Servetus. He was a Spanish whose hobby was theology. He was highly educated, he was a good writer and he knew the Bible inside and out. And his interpretation of the Bible led him to different conclusions than what was being taught as Catholic doctrine.

In 1531, when he was 22 years old, he published a book that got a lot of attention. It was called the Errors of the

Trinity. Which pretty much had the same effect on the world, as telling a three year old on Christmas Eve that Santa

Claus has died and there won’t be any presents tomorrow.

And it’s because Michael Servetus questioned the Catholic idea of the , modern Unitarians have adopted him as a kind of hero. The first Unitarian. It is true he challenged a particular view of the Trinity, but to be honest if you look at his writings, by today’s standards he still had pretty traditional Christian beliefs. It’s just that his beliefs were different enough at the time; they were a real poke in the eye to Catholics. So he was condemned and in very real danger of being arrested, tortured, and put to death.

So he did what any rational Spaniard would do. He changed his name to Michel de Villeneuve, moved to France and concentrated on . He kept a low profile for a while, but became something of a celebrity because he did groundbreaking research on how the human works.

At the same time he kept being drawn back to religion. And was more and more convinced he needed to point out the errors he saw in traditional doctrines. So, he started writing – again – things that questioned accepted beliefs. For instance, he put down prophecies as being based on quack .

And famously, he opened up a public correspondence with none other than John Calvin, who by that time in Geneva essentially ruled the place, and whose brand of Christianity – – was growing very fast. Servetus engaged Calvin in this publicly-printed debate because he not only believed his ideas were right and some of

Calvin’s ideas were wrong, but because he believed it was in the public interest to have a free and open exchange of ideas.

Servetus didn’t want to start his own religious movement. Although a lot of people really liked what he had to say, and that’s one reason Unitarian churches sprung up in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia and . With all the new ideas flying around, Servetus just wanted equal time and attention. And who better to debate than one of the most famous Protestants of all: John Calvin.

But Calvin was not a huge fan of anyone disagreeing with him. Around Geneva, folks who did that had a pretty short lifespan. And Servetus was outspoken in his criticism of Calvin. He called Calvin an antichrist, and for some reason

Calvin took that kind of personally. Calvin even conspired with his old enemies, the Catholics, to have Servetus arrested, and he was, but he escaped.

And what Michael Servetus did next was just plain crazy, or self-destructive, or noble and heroic, depending on your opinion of him. He went to Geneva. There, he went to church, and sat right down to hear John Calvin preach a sermon. As he certainly knew he would be, he was recognized and arrested, and a trial was set. The charge was heresy, and if found guilty, the sentence would be death. Servetus had to know that would be the outcome, but he sat down in that church – John Calvin’s very own church – anyway.

Why? So he could make his case, make his argument. He knew his trial would be reported throughout Europe. He knew his views would be spread far and wide. This would be the trial of the century. And even though the outcome was a foregone conclusion, it would demonstrate an important principle: that not all people agree on religious belief.

It was also a pretty arrogant and self-assured thing to do.

Which may be another reason Unitarians admire Michael Servetus. It was a bold move, but even if it meant his life, he was determined.

The trial itself was stacked against him from the start. Officially, he was charged with spreading non-Trinitarians and saying that was wrong. But at the trial, Servetus made claims that only dug his grave deeper.

I could go into details, but for us today, none of his statements would be anything we would find very remarkable.

We’d just chalk them up to a difference of opinion. Today, if you don’t agree with the beliefs held at one church, you just drive down the street until you find a church you do like, or you start your own church, or you stay home on

Sunday and work in your garden.

We take for granted we can do that, in freedom. We take for granted we live in a pluralistic society, and we have a

First Amendment. We take for granted that a street preacher can stand on a corner and yell at people as long as no one gets hurt.

Michael Servetus was burned alive at the stake on October 27, 1553. At the time, many people – like John Calvin – believed it was only fitting, because in their view, there could only be one correct way of religious belief. But others saw the trial and death of Michael Servetus differently. It was the trial of the century. And for many, it had just the effect he hoped for. Even if you didn’t agree with his beliefs, you could believe in the revolutionary idea that he had the right to express them.

There’s a direct line between Michael Servetus, and you and me. It’s called freedom of conscience.