By Elaine Sartorelli
Prof.
University of Sao Paolo, Brasil, submitted to the Servetus International
Society, March 2004.
The key to understanding Servetus was provided by the author
himself in the title of his masterpiece Christianismi Restitutio,
or Christianity Restored, in which the word restitutio is not
used randomly or freely, but fulfils the very clear function of
explaining, with one ultimate purpose, a complete proposal for
the restoration of the Church to its original evangelical purity.
And this restitution must begin with the fundamental concepts,
rescuing the primary scriptural meaning of words (son, for instance),
and the impact of these on interpretation, as in: to christen
as Christ was christened - at the age of 30. The Restitutio is
also a program to re-establish; recover; rescue; to retrieve Christianity.
It proposes, therefore, a move toward the past, to the apostolic
times before the Council of Nicea, before the temporal power of
the Emperor was united with the spiritual power of a Pope. But
it looks back with a future purpose, for it is this rescue of
the past that enables the future in which Christ will return.
Hence is demonstrated one of the most important characteristics
of restitutionist Reformation: the Radical [1]. In this fiery
millenarian hope, Servetus is closer to the prophetic movements
of the apocalyptic Middle Ages than to either ‘official’
Catholicism or Protestantism [2]. If the Reformation represents
a scholastic movement, the Radical Reformation inherited from
popular medieval piety the belief in the Millennium, fed by astrological
forecasts, compilations of ancient prophecies, Sybilline oracles;
and several unfoldings of the historic-eschatological doctrine
by Joaquín de Fiori.
Since the time of Augustin it was commonly held that the Church
lived under the sixth age of the world traditionally identified
with chapter 20 of Revelations. According to such an interpretation,
the duration of the world would be ‘one cosmic week’,
and the Seventh day the eternal Sabbath [3]. It would seem, however,
that Augustin did not take all such concepts literally: not least
the Anti-Christ, Gog or Magog. For him, ‘one thousand years’
didn’t represent entirety, since the Millennium had already
begun with the ‘first’ advent of Christ [4] .
In the sixteenth century, however, the corruption of Rome and
the horrors of its Inquisition, together with the recurrent outbreaks
of pestilence and the catastrophic Ottoman invasion of Europe,
must have appeared as very definite proofs that far from Satan
being contained, this was the end of the world. With the rupture
in the very heart of the Church promoted by the Reformation, historic
powers of regulation suffered a collapse, liberating forces previously
controlled through assimilation or suppression. In parallel with
the major upheavals of the sixteenth century, eschatology took
on many and varied shapes, providing both the basis for Münster´s
armed revolution and the glorified martyrdom of the Anabaptists.
The Reformation, in the manner of Augustin, affirmed that the
Church would always be a mix of Good and Evil, just like man would
always be: ‘simul justus et peccator’ [5]. The Radicals,
especially the Anabaptists, interpreted the Church as the pure
‘community of saints’ which they regarded as an historical
inevitability [6]. Their restitution would be a sign that the
Millennium had come.
Servetus dedicated his life to explain this difference of perspective,
inseparable from the Millennium, and confesses to have written
his masterpiece, Christianismi Restitutio, because ‘The
time was fulfilled, as much by the evidence of the theme as by
incontrovertible signs of the times, as I propose myself to demonstrate
to all believers’ [7] (‘Quia completum est vere tempus,
vt ex rei ipsius certitudine, et ex signis temporum manifestis,
sum nunc piis omnibus ostensurus’, page 4). Calvin, on the
other hand, had not dedicated a single one of his Commentaries
to the Book of Revelations, and considered doctrines of Chiliasm
an ‘horrendum delirium' [8]. Nor had Zwingli shown either
a preoccupation with, or interest in, Millennianism [9].
Nevertheless, all the Reformers since Luther had considered the
Pope as the Antichrist and his Church, Babylon, and in one way
or another used apocalyptic language regarding Rome. Melanchthon,
for instance, had by 1521 published a pamphlet (illustrated by
Lucas Cranach) entitled ‘The Passion of Christ and of the
Antichrist’, in which fascinating pictures illustrated a
short but very persuasive text. In one image, Jesus was shown
washing the apostles´ feet whilst at his side the Pope had
his own feet kissed by the Emperor. In another, Christ expelled
the vendors from the temple, while the Pope invited them to come
in. The drawings of Jesus and the apostles were followed by quotes
from the Scriptures; the Pope’s by texts taken from civil
and canonical codes [10].
Contrary to the Radicals, this ‘prophet-phenomenon’
was not accepted amongst the ministerial Reformers. One of the
best known was an Anabaptist, Thomas Muntzer, regarded by his
followers as the new Enoch, but who had proclaimed himself as
the new Daniel. The revolutionary content of his preaching is
demonstrated by one explanation that followed his affirmation
about the ‘Princes’ playing no part in the Millennium:
Because they have spent their lives in banquets and carousals,
they have been from their youth very delicate people; they haven’t
ever experienced a mishap in their entire lives nor do they wish
to have one [11].
Melchior Hoffman was another self-proclaimed Anabaptist ‘prophet’,
due to his identification with the Angel of the Armageddon (Rev.
10:1-7 and 6-7). Amongst angels and prophets who also stood out
was Jan de Leyden, who had literally taken the role of ‘Davidian
Monarch’ of the Millennium by having himself crowned king
in the New Jerusalem of Münster, in 1534. With the fall of
the town in 1535, he was bound and forced to walk like a trained
bear [12]. In 1536 he endured in silence such brutal tortures
with red-hot irons that he even gained the sympathy of a Lutheran
witness [13]. The tragedy of Münster has recently been dramatised
by José Saramago in his play In Nomine Dei.
Norman Cohn, in the introduction to his ‘The Pursuit Of
The Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists
of the Middle Age’, considers that the movements have always
the same Doctrine of Salvation, described as: collective; earthy;
imminent; total; and miraculous [14]. In other words, salvation
is achieved by the whole community, it is accomplished in this
world, it is expected to happen very soon, it will be able to
change completely life in earth, raising it to perfection, and
it will happen in a supernatural way.
Such ‘universal’ or ‘community’ salvation,
proposed by the Radicals, differs diametrically from the Doctrine
of Predestination. Calvin, therefore, immediately attacked its
principle and its universality, as incompatible with the thesis
that the Kingdom will contain eternal punishment for temporal
sins. Says he:
Their sins are, as they say, temporal. Agreed. But God’s
Majesty is eternal as is His justice, which they violated when
sinning. So it is sure that the memory of their iniquity will
not perish [15] .
The millenarian Kingdom of the Radicals (labled ‘nugatores’
by Calvin) was in his opinion: ‘Fiction too childish to
require, or even deserve, a refutation’ [16]. A Refutation
that Calvin would write, nevertheless, and more than once.
The Biblical text that functions as starting point to the Restitutio
is found in the Acts of Apostles, ch.3.21, in which Peter said
that Jesus will be sent back: until such time, ‘…it
is necessary that Heaven receives Him until the time of restitution
of all things is fulfilled’. This tempus restitutionis omnium
has been calculated from the most diverse perspectives, each one
of these systems having its own intrinsic logic. Hans Hut had
predicted the beginning of the Millennium for the Pentecost of
1528 [17] , and Hoffman expected it in 1533 [18]. Having survived
this year, he died in prison ten years later [19]. Servetus added
the apocalyptic number of 1260 to the year of 325, the closing
of the Council of Nicea, and came to the final year of 1585.
Servetus dedicates some of his most eloquent passages to the
theme of the Millennium. In the section on ‘celestial, terrestrial,
and infernal power of Satan and of the Antichrist, and our victory’,
(starting on page 388), he discusses the ‘ancient serpent,’
which now ‘has taken the Roman whore’s spirit’,
the Catholic Church or ‘Babylonian Beast’: the Pope.
Even the angels, he says, ‘cry, get sad and suffer now’,
due to this ‘abomination of desolation’ whose duration
would be the 1260 years as predicted by Christ, Daniel, John,
and “the other prophets” (pp. 394-5). And he continues,
in a strongly millenarian language:
“According to Christ’s testimony, the heavenly armies,
in other words the very angels, cry and whimper, consternated
and touched, such is this huge disgrace to Christianity, this
huge misery of our condition. This, our deplorable situation,
will endure ‘for as long as in the temple of God sits a
sinner sits as if he were God’ (II Tes. 2). This ‘mystery
of iniquity’ has been forged since the times of the apostles,
as said by Paul. For it was a true ‘mystery of iniquity’
that the apostolic mystery was slowly transformed into the pomp
and kingdom of a papacy, especially since Sylvester and Constantine.
‘One thousand, two hundred and sixty years’ has lasted
the kingdom of the Antichrist, and they are over: now begins the
celestial fight” [20] .
According to Servetian interpretation, Paul’s ‘mystery
of iniquity’ is the papacy of Rome and ‘his ambition
for power and his pursuing of true Christians. That’s why
public decrees were issued to kill Christians, which is one of
the signs of the Antichrist’ (p. 396). The ‘Signs
of the Antichrist’ are many, and ‘we see that they
have been fulfilled totally since the times of Constantine and
Sylvester: since which have passed those 1260 years, under an
awful abomination’ (p. 398).
After a lengthy discussion on the ‘apostasy’ consummated
when ‘the Beast was placed on the pontifical throne by the
very spiritual dragon’ (p. 400), Servetus, resuming once
more the idea that the time was already fulfilled, addresses his
readers with the following exhortation:
“Therefore, let us keep a good disposition, for the number
of ‘souls that should be assassinated’ (as said Revelations,
chap. 6) is complete. The deadline of ‘three years and a
half’ has been met, at the end of which, under the reign
of the Beast, it will be founded the ‘Holy City’ (Lk.
25; Rev. 11, 12, and 13).” (p. 400) [21].
In a passage in which he speaks directly to the reader, Servetus
also presents his doctrine of Ecclesia fugata. According to it,
the true Church of Christ has fled since the Dragon, the papacy,
satv on the Roman throne:
“Ponder, reader, on what can signify in Daniel and John
this future coming and fighting of Michael at the end of ‘one
thousand, two hundred and sixty years’ (Dan. 12; Rev. 12).
Note how very precise is the way in which this prophecy speaks
about the issue, where John teaches us that since the times in
which the son of God was taken from us and his Church was scared
away, taking refuge in the desert, has already passed ‘time
and times and half time’: that is to say, a year, two years
and half a year. This period is interpreted here as three years
and a half, what John calls ‘forty and two months’,
‘one thousand, two hundred and sixty days’; but day,
in prophetic language, must be understood as year, as frequently
tell us the prophets. So that since the times of Constantine and
Sylvester, the Pope, the true Antichrist, has reigned for a span
of one thousand, two hundred and sixty years. Since then God has
been divided into three parts, Christ has been shaded completely,
the Church has sunk, the idols have prevailed, and countless sects
of perdition and abominable desolations of Christ’s reign
have appeared. First Daniel and then John said that since this
perverted destruction and before the restitution it would pass
one thousand, two hundred and sixty years’. (pp. 395-6)
[22]
Between the ‘XXX Epistles to Calvin’ and the ‘Apology
to Melanchthon’, Servetus had published a short treaty,
entitled ‘Sixty Signs of the Antichrist’. The hurry
with which it appears to have been written may signify a first
draft to be developed in the future (a hypothesis defended by
Angel Alcalá [23]). Such urgency, however, also can be
appropriate language for the theme: brief, short, hyperbolic –
apocalyptic, in short. In this case, it would be the only possible
format, given the emergency of the Millennium. Servetus opens
this treaty with the first sign, without any introduction or preliminary
explanation:
“The disturbance and the desolate commotion of the whole
world” (p. 664).
Although the whole book is built on a Millenarian foundation,
some ‘signs’ are more openly apocalyptic than others:
“Seventeenth signal: The estimate of this period of the
reign of one thousand, two hundred and sixty years over which
Daniel and John coincide so beautifully. Although the mystery
of the Antichrist began immediately after Christ, it manifested
itself truthfully and it established itself in the times of Sylvester
and Constantine, when in an ecumenical council the Son of God
was taken from us, the Church fled away from us, and all the abominations
were established by laws and decrees. Since this period it was
passed ‘time, times, and half of time’: one thousand,
two hundred and sixty years” [24] .
“Thirtieth sign: The big battle of Michael and his angels
(Dan. 12; Rev. 12). In the times of the Antichrist, said Daniel,
at the end of one thousand, two hundred and sixty years of its
reign, Michael will rise ‘from the Son of God’s people,
and it will be the time of the utmost anguish’. John also
felt this celestial war that would take place after the end of
one thousand, two hundred and sixty years. Already they began
to organize the heavenly and earthy armies against the dragon,
against this Antichrist! Daniel said that the greatest saints
will fight along with us.’ [25]
Here it is: another reason by which Servetus believes himself
integrally part of the Truth: he believed that the defence of
his cause is a battle against the Antichrist, in which Servetus
identifies himself with the warrior Archangel Michael, on whose
holy day, (Michaelmas, 29 September) he was born. The same date
was chosen in 1552 for printing the first page of Restitutio,
on the title page of which appeared, in Hebrew, the words ‘And
appeared Michael in the sky’ and, in Greek, ‘And there
was war in the sky’, which to the reader of Revelations,
refers immediately to the rest of the verse: ‘Michael and
his angels fought against the Dragon’.
This identification is not an internally inconsistent one, but
is explained very clearly by Servetus himself. In the XX Epistle
to Calvin, for instance, commenting on the passage of Revelations
12:6 which deals with ‘one thousand, two hundred and sixty
days’, he says specifically:
“I work constantly for the restitution of this Church,
and you get angry with me because I meddle in this war of Michael
and I want that all pious men do the same. But read this passage
attentively and you will see that it will have men who will fight,
exposing their lives to bloody deaths to bear witness to Jesus
Christ, as John teaches openly there”. (p. 628). [26]
On p.410 of the Restitutio, Servetus returns to this subject,
in an invocation to Christ whose vocabulary dispenses with interpretations:
Give your servant, your soldier, your great power to fight against
the dragon, serpent, devil, who has given his power to the Beast,
that is the Pope, so that I can discover the remaining mysteries
of the circumcision, in order that your book be open to everyone.
You, yourself, who do not know how to lie, have revealed to Daniel
the way how, with the enduring Roman dominion and once the Beast
is destroyed, the books of both Testaments would be opened, as
it is already happening. When your judgment takes place, may the
horn of the Antichrist be destroyed by the action of your servants
and may your kingdom be restored to your saints (Dn. 7). [27]
So, the identification with the Archangel is not just in the
task of promoting the vocatio, but it is clearly expressed in
all the biblical languages. One of the keys to understand the
Restitutio rests precisely in this identification of Servetus
with the Archangel Michael. An indignant Calvin mentions it with
the following words, in his Commentary to Daniel:
That foul hypocrite, Servetus, has dared to appropriate this
passage to himself, for he has inscribed it as a frontispiece
on his horrible comments, because he was called Michael! We observe
what diabolic fury has seized him, as he dared to claim as his
own what is here said of the singular aid afforded by Christ,
to his Church. He was a man of the most impure feelings, as we
have already sufficiently made known. But this was a proof of
his impudence and sacrilegious madness – to adorn himself
with this epithet of Christ without blushing, and to elevate himself
into Christ’s place, by boasting himself to be Michael,
the Guardian of the Church, and the mighty prince of the people!
This fact is well known, for I have the book at hand should any
one distrust my word. [28]
Servetus believed that it was his personal mission to fighting
for the restitution of the Church, which could no longer be delayed
as time had run out. And this might provide, at last, an answer
to the eternal question about his escape to Geneva: by exposing
himself to death, Servetus does not ‘hide his light under
a bushel’. In this manner, he offers his contribution to
the cause of the restitution: ‘cause that is common to all
Christians, with which we are all engaged’, as he says in
the Prologue (p. 4).
In short, Servetus believed, in common with most radical reformers,
in the end of the times of the Roman Beast’s reign, which
had already lasted almost 1260 years. And once he was Michael,
as the warrior Archangel, it confirmed he had a fundamental role
in this battle against the hellish powers. This was not only offering
a complete program for the restoration of Christianity, through
recapturing the earlier sense of the words in order to restore
the true Church, the original baptism, and the Supper to primitive
Christians practice. This was also giving - by his example and
at the cost of his own life – testimony of that in which
he believed, and that in the Premium of his Restitutio he had
affirmed to be ‘as sublime for its greatness, as it is easy
to understand and certain to demonstrate’ [29] .
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Williams ha llamado `Radical` a la Reforma de los anabaptistas
y otros restitucionistas en su importante The Radical Reformation,
publicado por primera vez en 1962.
[2] WILLIAMS, G. H., La Reforma Radical, Fondo de Cultura Ecónomica,
México, D.F., p. 4.
[3] KLASSEN, Living at the end of the ages. Apocalyptic Expectation
in the Radical Reformation. Lanham, Marylando: University Press
of America, 1992, p. 4.
[4] Ibid., p. 5.
[5] Ver STROHL, La pensée de la Réforme, Paris:
Delachaux et Niestlé, 1951, cap. VIII, pp. 173 a 224.
[6] Ver ESTEP, The Anabaptist Story. An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century
Anabaptism. Grand Rapids & Cambrigde: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1996, cap. X, pp. 237 a 266.
[7] En la traducción al castellano de Angel Alcalá
y Luis Betes, Restitución del Cristianismo. Madrid: Fundación
Universitaria Española, 1980, p. 121.
[8] BALKE, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals. Grand Rapids,
Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981, p. 295.
[9] KLASSEN, op. cit., p. 115.
[10] Ibid., 56.
[11] COHN, N. Na senda do Milénio. Milenaristas revolucionários
e anarquistas místicos da Idade Média. Lisboa: Editorial
Presença, 1981,, p. 199.
[12] Ibid. p. 228.
[13] KLASSEN, op. cit., p. 83.
[14] COHN, op. cit., 11.
[15] BALKE, op. cit., 111.
[16] Ibid.
[17] KLASSEN, op. cit., 27.
[18] Ibid., 29.
[19] ESTEP, op. cit.. 156.
[20] Exercitus caelorum, teste Christo, siue angeli ipsi consternati
et commoti hanc tantam Christianismi iacturam, hanc tantam status
nostri meseriam, lachrymantur, et deflent. Durauit lachrymabilis
nostra conditio ad tempus, quo in templo Dei sedit homo peccator,
quasi Deus in terris. 2. Thes. 2. Cuius mysterium iniquitatis
iam apostolorum tempore agebatur, vt ait ibi Paulus. Verum nanque
fuit mysterium iniquitatis, cum se apostolatus munus in Papatus
dignitatem et regnum sensim transformauit, idque magis post Syluestrum
et Constantinum. Annos mille ducentos sexaginta durauit regnum
Antichristi, quibus finitis erit nunc caelestis pugna.
[21] Completum est tempus trium annorum cum dimidio, quibus,
regnante bestia, erat ciuitas santas sancta calcanda, Lucae. 21.
Apoc. 11. I2. et i3.
[22] Cogita, lector, quid apud Danielem et Ioannem significet
ille Michaelis futurus aduentus, et pugna post annos desolationis
mille ducentos sexaginta, Dani. I2. et apoc. I2. Obserua bene,
quam certa sit ibi de hac re prophetia, qua nos docet Ioannes,
a tempore, quo ereptus est a nobis filius Dei, et a quo eius ecclesia
in solitudinem fugata fecessit, iam transisse tempus, tempora,
et dimidium temporis, annum vnum, annos duos, et semiannum. Hi
declarantur ibi esse tres anni cum dimidio, quos et Ioannes vocat
menses quadraginta duos, dies mille ducentos sexaginta.
[23] In Treinta cartas a Calvino. Sesenta Signos del Anticristo.
Apología a Melanchthon. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1981,
Introducción, cap. IV, p. 50.
[24] Decimum septimum signum, Tempus regni annorum mille ducentorum
sexaginta, in quo pulchre conueniunt Daniel et Ioannes. Quamuis
post Christum mox caepit Antichristi mysterium: vere tamen emicuit,
et stabilitum est regnum, tempore Syluestri et Constantini. Quo
tempore est mox oecumenico concilio a nobis ereptus filius Dei,
fugata ecclesia, et abominationes omnes legibus decretare. Hinc
transierunt tempus et tempora et dimidium temporis, anni mille
ducenti sexaginta.
[25] Tricesimum signum, Michaelis et angelorum pugna, Dani. I2
et apc. I2. In tempore illo regni Antichristi, ait Daniel, post
annos mille ducentos sexaginta regni eius, consurget Michael stans
pro filiis populi Dei, et erit tempus maximae angustiae. Vidit
Ioannes futuram post annos mille ducentos sexaginta, hanc caelestem
pugnam. Caelestia et terrestria contra draconem, et Antichristum
iam mouentur. Sanctos altissimos hic pugnaturos ait Daniel.
[26] In huius ecclesiae restitutione ego iugiter laboro, et ob
id tu mihi succenses, quod pugnae illi Michaelis me immisceam,
et pios omnes misceri disiderem. Sed locum illum diligenter expende,
et videbis, homines fore, qui ibi pugnabunt, animas suas morti
exponendo, in sanguine et testimonio Iesu Christi, vt aperte docet
ibi Ioannes.
[27] Da seruo tuo, militi tuo, vt contra draconem serpentem diabolum,
qui potestatem Bestiae, id est, Papae dedit, potentia tua magna
viriliter pugnet, et sequentia circuncisionis mysteria ita aperiat,
vt líber tuus omnibus aperiatur. Tu enim ipse, qui mentiri
nescis, Danieli reuelasti, vtriusque testamenti libros, stante
Romano império, destructa bestia, esse aperiendos, vt nunc
aperiuntur. Et quod tunc indicium tuum in caelo sedebit, et pugnantibus
ministris tuis cornu Antichristi perdatur, et regnum tuum sanctis
tuis restituatur, Dani. 7.
[28] Commentary on Daniel, vol. 2, in http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/calcom25/htm/vii.htm.
[29] Qui nobis hic ponitur scopus, vt est maiestate sublimis,
ita perspicuitate facilis, et demonstratione certus.
