John Calvin and context at Geneva in 1553
 Before
proceeding to speak of the long trial that followed, it will
be necessary for a clear understanding of it to say something
of Calvin himself, and of conditions in Geneva at this time.
John Calvin had been born in 1509, two years before Servetus,
at Noyon in Picardie, and had been well educated and designed
for the priesthood. Later falling out with the Church, he
had, like Servetus, studied law; and he was becoming converted
to the views of the Reformation at the very time when Servetus
was publishing his first books against the Trinity. In 1536
he had published his Institutes of the Christian Religion,
a clear, logical, and able presentation of the Protestant
system of belief, much the strongest work yet written in defense
of the Protestant cause; and this had at once caused him to
be recognized as the intellectual leader of the Reformed religion
outside Germany. Obliged to flee from France, where no Protestant’s
life was quite safe, he had happened to come to Geneva at
the very moment when the cause of the Reformation, which had
been adopted earlier that year, hung trembling in the balance
for want of a powerful leader. Quite against his inclination
he was pressed into service there, and although never in name
more than one of the city pastors and a preacher and teacher
of theology, he soon became in fact, and by the force of his
character, practically dictator.
Geneva in 1553 was a cosmopolitan little city of about 20,000
inhabitants. Before the Reformation it had been gay and dissolute,
and even now its people were much given to pleasure, and none
too strict in their morals. Calvin determined to change all
this, and to make Geneva a model for the Protestant world,
with its life strictly conformed to the Word of God. He soon
brought order out of chaos, reformed the code of laws, and
aimed by strict laws strictly enforced, even as to the small
details of private life, to root out vice and make religion
and good morals universal among the inhabitants. The Genevese,
however, resenting that a mere foreigner should thus interfere
with their old habits and customs, rose in indignant opposition,
and after two years drove Calvin and his fellow reformer,
Farel, into exile, forbidding them ever to return. Thereupon
things drifted from bad to worse until after three years it
was necessary to recall Calvin. He returned in 1541 to remain
at Geneva for the rest of his life, ruling with a more absolute
hand than ever, though not without great and persistent opposition.
The Libertines (as the strong party opposed to Calvin came
at a later time to be called) found him in the way of their
political ambitions, and determined if possible to destroy
his power. After he had caused one of their number to be beheaded
in 1547 they became doubly infuriated against him. They insulted
him in every way: named their dogs Calvin, and called him
Cain. The struggle was hard and hot, and the outcome of it
was long uncertain. After gaining some temporary victories
over his opponents, Calvin had had to face renewed opposition,
and in the summer of 1553 he seemed to be all but defeated.
This was the critical state of things when Servetus arrived
upon the scene, with the Libertines ready, if opportunity
offered, to take any advantage of his presence in order further
to thwart Calvin’s influence. The trial of Servetus
was thus not merely a trial of an individual for heresy, but
one in which political and personal interests were also deeply
involved; and on its outcome seemed to depend not simply the
life of the accused, but also the fate of the Reformation
in Geneva, and perhaps even in all Switzerland and France.
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