From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
Subject: Re: Calvin
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Distribution: world,public
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 07:31:57 GMT

In article <Dec.16.18.10.02.1992.15572@klinzhai.rutgers.edu> hedrick@klinzhai.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:
>dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
>
>>And slowly too!  It took Michael Servetus 30 minutes to die.  But then,
>>he thought that the Trinity was incomprehensible and needless, so
>>Calvin was perfectly justified in roasting him.  It wouldn't do
>>to have people running around denying the obvious Truth of the Trinity.
>
>Just for the record, Calvin was involved in only that one execution
>for heresy, as a theological expert for the prosecution.

If my source is correct, then you are vastly downplaying Calvin's
role in the whole sordid ordeal.  According to George Smith's
_Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies_:

    While hiding in France under an assumed name, Servetus sent a
  manuscript copy of his last book (The Resurrection of Christianity)
  to Calvin in Geneva.  Servetus apparently hoped the great Reformer
  would view the book sympathetically -- a naive and fatal miscalculation.
  Calvin never returned the manuscript; he had a better use for it.
  He gave four incriminating pages to a colleague, Guillaume Trie,
  who forwarded them to a Catholic correspondent in France.  Trie also
  revealed the true identity of "Villanovanus," the psuedonym used
  by Servetus.  The Protestant Trie chided Catholics for tolerating
  this heretic in their midst:

     You suffer a heretic, who well deserves to be burned wherever he
     may be.  I have in mind a man who will be condemned by the Papists
     as much as by us or ought to be. ... Where I'd like to know is
     the zeal you pretend?  Where is the police of this fine hierarchy
     of which you so boast?

  The tactic of Calvin and Trie almost worked.  Servetus was convicted
  of heresey, but before he could be roasted over a slow Catholic fire,
  he managed to escape and head for Italy.  Unfortunately, Servetus
  chose a route that took him through Calvin's Geneva, where he was
  recognized, charged with 39 counts of heresy and blasphemy, and
  sentenced to death for "trying to infect the world with his stinking
  heretical poison."

    On October 27th, 1553, Servetus was bound to a stake with a rope
  twisted around his neck, his book tied to an arm, and a Protestant
  fire stirring below.  It took thirty minutes for Servetus to die,
  thereby vindicating the honor of Calvin's God.

>He opposed
>burning, believing a more humane method of execution should be used.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that Calvin
pretty much ran Geneva at the time.  If he hadn't wanted Servetus
burned, then Servetus wouldn't have been burned.

>Even one is too much, but when evaluated by the standards of the time,
>Calvin was certainly not blood-thirsty.

Yes, the standards of the time certainly weren't all that sane.
That just goes to show what happens when a bunch of crazy
people start quibbling over which superstition is The Truth.
But according to Smith, Calvin was even less tolerant than Luther,
and that's saying a lot:

    Calvin was the hardest among the hard-liners.  Under no circumstances
  should secular authorities tolerate heretics and blasphemers.  Indeed,
  "Those who would spare heretics and blasphemers are themselves
  blasphemers."  Such "implacable severity" is required because "devotion
  to God's honor should be preferred to all human concerns."  And, in
  pursuit of this end, we "should expunge from memory our mutual humanity"
  as we exterminate heretics with righteous zeal.

>Catholics in Geneva were booted out, not killed.
>Servetus was regarded as a political danger as well as a heretic,

Not according to Smith:

    The execution of Servetus marked a turning point in the history of
  toleration.  True, disposing of heretics was nothing new to Protestants,
  but their previous judicial murders had been defended primarily on
  political grounds.  Servetus threatened no one politically; the brilliant
  intellectual was burned solely for heresy, and fellow Protestants had
  lit the fire.  This spectacle appalled a handful of Protestant humanists,
  including the Frenchman Sebastion Castellio.

    Sadly, Castellio is virtually unknown today, except to scholars.  Yet,
  if we engage in the decidedly value-laden search for heroes from the past,
  and if we rank candidates based on their contributions to liberty, then
  Castellio towers above Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and other
  familiar names.  If anyone deserves to be called a founding father
  of toleration, that person is Castellio.

He goes on to describe Castellio's fight with Calvin.  So, you folks
can go on apologizing for the sorry bunch of fascists that you call 
theologians, but I think I'll find my heroes elsewhere.

>and would have been killed in most places in Europe.

Perhaps.  But as far as I can tell, not for political reasons.
He was adjudged a criminal for two reasons only: he rejected the
Trinity as needless and incomprehensible, and he denied the efficacy
of infant baptism.

>I believe he was given the option of being extradited to his
>homeland, and refused.

There is no hint of that in Smith's account.  I'm willing to
do more research though, if you think Smith is portraying Calvin
to be more of a monster than he really was.

>His treatment there would have been even worse.

Even worse than slow burning?
--
The Truth is still the Truth even if you choose to ignore it.

Doug Graham         dgraham@bnr.ca         My opinions are my own.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism