98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the documents (letters and leaves from the printed book as well as 

 the MS. copy which he had kept) that would bring about his convic- 

 tion, and consequently his death. And this was not done openly. 

 Calvin sent the wanted information through a convert to the Reform, 

 a young man by the name of William Trie. Did not the style of 

 Trie's letters and the documents show plainly the part played by the 

 Reformer in the treason, he might be easily absolved from the charge 

 so cautiously had he worked to keep his treachery a mystery. Ser- 

 vetus was arrested and tried ; he only avoided being burned alive by 

 making good his escape from prison (April 17, 1553), in which he 

 seems to have been aided by some devoted friend. All the books, 

 however, that could be found, were seized and burned, together with 

 his effigy. 



Escaped from the prison of Vienne, after rambling some w r eeks 

 through Southern France, he fled to Geneva. His choice of this place 

 can hardly be accounted for. Perhaps, though he knew that Calvin 

 had been his denunciator, it never entered his mind that the Reformer 

 would now take the knife in hand himself. In the early morning of 

 some day after the middle of July, he entered Geneva and put up at a 

 small hostelry on the banks of the lake, where he seems to have lived 

 very privately for nearly a month. On Sunday, August 13th, he vent- 

 ured imprudently to show himself at the evening service of a neigh- 

 boring church. Being recognized, Calvin was informed of his pres- 

 ence, and without a moment's delay he again denounced him, and 

 demanded his arrest. Servetus was at once thrown into the common 

 jail of the town. 



According to the laws of Geneva, grounds for an arrest on a crim- 

 inal charge were to be delivered within twenty-four hours thereafter. 

 Calvin worked all night, and thirty-eight articles drawn from the 

 " Christianismi Restitutio " were in due time presented in support of 

 the charge. Another law prescribed that criminal charges should be 

 made by some one w 7 ho avowed himself aggrieved, and was contented 

 to go to prison with the party he accused, the law of retaliation dis- 

 posing of him in case his charges were not made good; and Calvin 

 complied with this law, too, by means of a substitute. His cook, 

 Nicolas La Fontaine, was the man who now came forth as " person- 

 ally aggrieved by," and prosecutor of, Michael Servetus ! 



The main charges against the Spaniard were : his having troubled 

 the churches of Germany, about twenty-four years previously, with his 

 heresies and with an execrably heretical book, by which he had in- 

 fected many ; having continued to spread poison abroad with his 

 " Comments to the Bible," the " Geography of Ptolemy," and lately 

 with his " Restoration of Christianity ; " having blasphemed against 

 the Trinity, the Sonship of Christ, his consubstantiality with the 

 Father, and proclaimed infant baptism a diabolic invention ; having 

 escaped from the prison of Vienne ; and, finally, " of having in his 



