Two very good articles on the trial of Michael Servetus and Pierre Fatio were published today in the newspaper Tribune de Genève .
http://www.tdg.ch/dossiers/geneve/grands-proces
I place following this introduction by thanking the authors. Excellent reading.
http://www.tdg.ch/actu/divers/1553-michel-servet-brule-vif-heresie-2009-08-03
1553, Michael Servetus was burned alive for heresy 
Great Trials period. ETIENNE DUMONT This "blasphemer and heretic" was arrested on August 13. He attended worship at the Madeleine. Some people in the crowd recognized the man, known for his writings on the less controversial religion. Servetus was taken to the prison of the bishopric, often transformed thereafter until its demolition in 1930. She stood on the terrace current
Agrippa d'Aubigné. The
escaped Vienna
Servetus is a man on the run. He just escaped from a prison in Vienna with suspicious ease. This doctor has no doubt been helped by a customer senior, he healed the daughter. In the Dauphiné, he found himself in the clutches of the Inquisition. The evidence against him seemed overwhelming. It is not impossible that Calvin has helped Catholics against the common enemy by contacting the letters he has received from the English. In Geneva, the trial will be set in eight meetings. It responds to a complaint by Nicolas de la Fontaine, who is coincidentally the secretary of Calvin. The accused will answer the 38 items in this complaint, theological. all starts at the 14. In a previous hearing, Servet recognizes authorship of three books shocking Papists and Protestants. The procedure can begin on the 15th. Servet request adversarial with Calvin. The Commission denies. He wishes to retain control over the proceedings. In 1553, Calvin, who has not yet been received citizen, faces a strong opposition, led by Ami Perrin. The interrogation of 16 is also led by Berthelier, a "libertine" excommunicated. The
17, Servet faces John Calvin, understood as an expert. This is the first time that men see themselves. Twenty years before, they should have to meet in Paris. The thing did not performed. They have since been matched. The debate quickly turns to theological dispute. Of all the themes, the Trinidad wins. Father, Son and Holy Spirit Are one or three? We know that since the fourth century, all heresies stem from this central question. Calvin attack hard. Servet fact forehead.
Dispute writing
August 21, discussed the trial in Vienna, before it sends itself to the heads of thinkers such as Origen, Tertullian or Polycarp. The memoirs of the meeting was to lose his Latin. The Council, which keeps him, the Down to Earth, decides to write to the Inquisition for Viennese know his criminal case. We've seen everything! August 22, Servet directed him to the lord. It challenges the criminalization of heresy. Is it really a crime? The 23, Servet depicts his biography. He said ultimately to have intended to go to Naples. On 28, he must satisfy his sympathy for a work as suspect as the Koran. "From a bad book, you can make good things." On August 31, we return to trial in Vienna. The Inquisition sent graze Geneva. It does not transmit nothing.
Serious things again on 1 September. We left for higher religious speculations. The Secretary withdraws. He does not understand anything. We need to continue writing. Calvin and Servetus will exchange scholars incredibly texts produced at full speed and, Servet, in appalling conditions while not being tortured. When you see these documents, we can not but be struck by the writing perfect sentenced in power.
is finished, but longer still to come. If Calvin "chaos prodigious blasphemies deserves no forgiveness" Council wants the approval of Reformed cantons. It not intended to be solely responsible for such enforcement. October 18 he will be reunited for. On 26, Servetus was sentenced to death. Calvin would have liked a decapitation. This will be the stake. The execution is scheduled for tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 27.
(dr)
The last letter of the convict. The graph is for the time, completely modern, unlike that of Calvin.
A dreadful performance
the morning of 27, provided with permission of the Little Council, Calvin Servet will see the prison of the bishopric. This is the last interview. Already weakened, the prisoner received the sentence with amazement. The day before he threw a fit of hysterics. The Spaniard has taken
meantime. He managed to do with the man who became his enemy one more theological argument than two hours. It will not collapse. Besides, for him, the crime of thought does not exist. Servetus, as Sebastian Castellon, who will soon take its defense from Basel is a modern man, while Calvin is a character from the Middle Ages.
The reformer goes. He will not attend more. The procession can start towards Champel. Servet go on foot, without connection whatsoever. His tongue was not cut, as is often the heretics. Everyone hopes that it will retract. Although he acknowledged his mistake, it really would suit everyone.
This is not the case. Servet will be burned really bright. No one quietly strangle to shorten their suffering, as is often the thing. The man put a half-hour to die in the flames, tied to a stake by an iron chain. His last words were "O Jesus son of god, eternal, have mercy on me." Guillaume Farel, Neuchâtel came, he notes would have sufficed to say "Jesus son of God eternal" to be saved at the last minute.
One case (almost) unique in Geneva
❚ If one speaks of "the case of Michel Servet" in Geneva, while it remains simply a matter of Inquisition Catholic countries, that Because of the truly unique trial of 1553.
❚ Created in the Middle Ages, revived by Pope Paul III in 1542, the ecclesiastical court left thousands dead. Maybe tens of thousands. Nobody agrees on the numbers. In Spain, where she was introduced in 1479, the Inquisition soon scares Pope Sixtus IV himself. It will also maintain it longer. It was not until 1834 that the apparatus of terror disappears forever. In Portugal, the last date religious pyre of 1761, which seems incredibly late. But the Iberian peninsula, in the words of Regis Debray cruel, do not then it was "the backyard of Europe"? ❚
Geneva will never organized as a repressive system. The Consistory will be there to excommunicate, amend and rebuke, certainly, but without roasting heretics. Note, however, the case free-thinker Jacques Gruet, in 1547, and Nicolas Antoine, converted to Judaism in 1632 ...
❚ This does not mean that justice has eluded us in the prejudices of the time. Pyres, he would draw up in the seventeenth century to the wizards (and especially the witches!). We will live up walled in the time of Calvin, accused persons to kick the plague. This means ...
A death that takes place
❚ In October 1553, John Calvin thought he had finished his opponent Michael Servetus. It was not. Soon, dissenting voices are heard, including that Sebastian Castellon. The reformer will write a lot to be justified. "The case of Michel Servet
" will go to invade his "Institutes of the Christian religion," the book he takes up and reissues ever.
❚ In a more perverse, the execution by fire of the English Catholics well arranged. It proves that there is no difference, at least on that front, between the two religions. This way of returning them back to back will often return to France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
❚ We will say that in front of thousands dead, is little, even if it remains one too many. In his book "Michael Servetus, the stake to freedom of conscience" (Editions de Paris, 2009) which are borrowed amount of information published on this page, the Rev. Vincent Schmid talks to Geneva because of "lost innocence". Protestantism has now blood, or rather the ashes on his hands.
❚ The eternal return of Servetus in the debate of ideas lead logically, in 1903, the monument to atoning Champel. The Spaniard has his street. Something unthinkable elsewhere. A far as we know, France has not granted any Etienne Dolet or Anne du Bourg the most famous martyrs of the religious era.
http://www.tdg.ch/actu/divers/geneve-oligarchique-sacrifie-pierre-fatio-1707-2009-08-03
The Geneva oligarchic sacrificed Pierre Fatio in 1707
History Geneva August 18, 1707 is political. Everything shows it. On the eve of his arrest to his execution September 6, Pierre Fatio can not see his family. A lawyer is denied to the accused, himself a lawyer. The man has neither paper nor ink to write. The tension is such that the Geneva eat boiled eggs for fear of being poisoned.
But what strikes most is the thinness of the record. As explained well in Olivier Fatio and Pierre Nicole Fatio and the crisis of 1707 (Labor et Fides, 2007), the Little Council relies on the responses of Fatio to reconstruct the facts attributed to him. " The charges are non-existent. The government wants to punish the leader of "malicious" for acts covered by an amnesty he granted himself.
Like in the movies, a great flash-back is needed here. It all started on January 2. We are in Saint-Pierre. Over a thousand people gathered to elect, as usual, the Trustees. The dice are actually loaded. The General Council election records. It can reject up to a candidate. The sovereign people can not however propose. The
toilier of Longemalle
That's when Francis Delachana occurs. We seen throughout history. This toilier Longemalle wants to make claims. Fatio dissuaded him. "We must act later." Delachana is the true author of the ideas which are then charged to Fatio, who soon becomes the lawyer for the rebels. He wants the Council of Two Hundred s'élise itself, instead of being appointed by the Little Council. He asked the secret ballot for elections to the General Council. It requires that laws be published. And limit the number of members of one family in the councils to put an end to the domination of the Republic by clans.
These ideas, which we now seem to provide a modicum of democracy, the scariest oligarchy in place. For its members, they are neither more nor less than to overthrow the institutions. The aristocracy of fact (not law), which belongs to the large family Fatio (1), feels more injured in its management. Like good family men, the Councils do not they want happiness and prosperity of an entire population, even leaving it in a perpetual childhood? "With us, Geneva has known neither war nor real crisis for over a hundred years."
Still swollen and that the revolt continues. First, there are confabulations and demonstrations. It comes to insults and hands. Some fail to pass the Rhone. The General Council has exceptional awaited yet been met. The factions have received several tips satisfactions May 26: limiting family members, publication of laws, convening a General Council Five Year ...
But already the libertarian movement is losing momentum. Several of its members rallied against the oligarchy of personal promises. Germanic troops intervened, what would become a habit. The "resident" imposed by Louis XIV does not obviously preaches indulgence. Europe lives in absolutism.
Repression is therefore, despite the amnesty. Simply invent a plot. It exists for the four major culprits oligarchy: Piaget (who drowned while fleeing the city), Lemaitre (hanged August 23), and of course Delachana Fatio (banned for life August 24). A paper "seditious" of Delachana was found in a pocket of Fatio. That is great! Execution secret In both interviews, he defended himself quite softly. We expected some blistering returns. Nothing! Fatio seems like a fallen soufflé. It simply responds to questions about tours, inevitably suspect he would have received since late May.
31 August, the Little Council makes its decision. Fatio sees himself condemned without evidence, to death. As on December 10 wrote his cousin Nicolas Fatio de Duillier "Fatio counsel may well have been sacrificed, not so much for the crimes committed only to those who are afraid he could do someday."
remained to execute the unfortunate, become indifferent to its fate. Can not do it in public. Fatio musket will sit in a courtyard of the prison of the bishopric, in defiance laws. He will go to torment "as a walk," say the witnesses. Note that good Genevois, the man had asked to put his old wig instead of new. N'abîmons not something that can still serve ...
(1) Pierre Fatio's parents had 24 children. A complex political system
❚ In 1707, all the Genevois are far from being equal. At the top of the pyramid are citizens (Rousseau, "Citizen of Geneva" is a title of glory, not modesty), from people who have acquired the bourgeoisie at least a generation before. Only they dare to participate in the affairs public. Below are without rights, residents, natives, and even lower, farmers subjects.
remember that serfdom still very present in Europe in the eighteenth century. Given the number of Protestant refugees and their children, citizens represent a growing proportion of the population.
❚ theory, unlike in Bern and Zurich, the power belongs to the General Council, composed of all male citizens over 25 years (it is so important to 25 years). For the oligarchy in place from the late sixteenth century, this authority has been delegated, however once for all the councils restricted.
❚ These are two tips. The largest is the Little Council, which elects the members of the Council of Two Hundred. It speaks of "interlocking." The main problem is that everyone is closely related. We lost count of the brothers, brothers-and even more cousins sitting side by side. This is where we can speak of an aristocracy, even if the title of nobility (foreigners) are very rare in Geneva.
Bush House. Symbol of the patricians, it was built from 1699. (DR)
Repression Fall 1707
❚ paternalistic, Councils of 1707 had had to surrender in May in what they saw as a child rebellion. He agreed, after the executions of Peter and Nicolas Fatio Lemaitre, play the bogeymen. Repression, and Nicole Olivier Fatio describe in their excellent book "purge" will continue in autumn 1707. Few players, even very minor events in the spring and will be forgotten.
❚ What does it condemn? Not death, of course. If unjust and undemocratic it may seem to us, so is the Geneva neither France nor Louis XIV, a fortiori, the Russia of Peter the Great. The Government is therefore pleased to amend, "put in prison at home" or ban for periods ranging from years to life imprisonment, as is the case Dechanna, whose importance is revealed to us more greater than Fatio. Councils can also play on the abolition of the bourgeoisie, which corresponds to a social annihilation.
❚ The promise of May 26 will be held? Yes, for the opening of the Councils. Yes, for the holding of the General Council. But beware! By biasing. The General Council of 1712 and declare "Voluntarily" cease to meet it. This body will be resurrected medieval one last time in 1846, to endorse the radical revolution of James Fazy.
The prison of the bishopric. Sketches before the demolition took place in 1840. (DR)
Meanwhile the Church relaxes
❚ Are there any coincidences in history? Space does not (thankfully) to open the debate. However one can not but be struck by one thing. At the time the policy becomes rigid Geneva in 1707, the Protestant Church relaxes. ❚
the death of Calvin, Theodore Beza (Died at age 86 in 1605) had been the guardian of orthodoxy. The Protestant Church had seen mummified and especially rigid. Pastor, before entering the ministry, had to sign a "consensus". Correspondent of Leibnitz, Bayle's friend, the Genevan theologian Jean-Alphonse Turettini fight for its abolition in 1706. Now, the pastors (and their followers) retain full freedom of conscience. The agreement is made on some dogmas, as recommended in the sixteenth Sébastien Castellon. To each to interpret according to his ideas, "the obscure points."
❚ The idea of reconciliation was Turettini Reformed communities. One result was very fast. In 1707, the Lutherans were able to open their church (without a steeple!) To Bourg-de-Four.
❚ Note that a player unrest of 1707 will benefit from maintaining basic tenets. André-Robert Vaudenet said in May that he does not believe that Jesus was the son of God. After admonitions, the Genevois are seen off of the bourgeoisie, but he is allowed to live unmolested in Vésenaz in Savoy. When abroad then.
The Lutheran church. Open to the Bourg-de-Four (but without a steeple!) from 1707. (Frautschi)
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