A view of the Servetus affair 450 years later

In judging this whole affair one must take care not to be unjust toward Calvin, by being as narrow and unsympathetic toward him as he was toward Servetus. For he deserves to be judged by the standards of his own age rather than of ours, even though we condemn those in comparison with our own. Besides being a man of extraordinary ability, he had many of the finest traits of personal character. He has been called the father of popular education and the inventor of free schools.

Protestantism owes him more than any other man after Luther, and for more than three centuries he remained the leader of its thought outside the Lutheran churches. But he took his office very seriously, and so wholly identified himself with his cause that he took attacks upon himself as equivalent to attacks upon the Christian religion; and when one had seemed to him to commit an offense against the honor of God, or to endanger the salvation of immortal souls, he would never forgive nor make allowances, but would pursue his opponent vindictively, relentlessly, and without pity. This should help us to explain, if not to excuse, his attitude toward Servetus, and even his willingness so treacherously to betray him to the authorities at Vienne.

Servetus, on the other hand, was in controversy self-conceited, obstinate, fanatical, insulting, and exasperating to the last degree, and by his own manner brought upon himself no small part of what he suffered. Though a man of brilliant and versatile talents, he held, along with the most advanced ideas, others that bordered on the superstitious and made some think him half mad. Yet at bottom he was a sincere and reverent Christian, prizing the Bible far above all other books, devoutly attached to Jesus, who to him was all in all, and willing for the sake of what he held true to be faithful even unto death. Three centuries and a half have squared accounts between him and Calvin. Persecution has been condemned and toleration vindicated. Servetus’s heresy has steadily gained upon Calvin’s orthodoxy until at Geneva itself Calvin’s creed has long since been laid aside, and an expiatory monument has been erected by Calvin’s followers near the spot where Servetus perished; while in four cities of Europe where in 1553 he would not have been permitted to live, statues of him now stand to honor his memory.