Frederik Sjollema, manager of a local Geneva café cum second-hand book store called Les Recyclables, says he approached the Geneva Calvin '09 organizing committee about including a feature event devoted to Michel Servet, as Miguel de Serveto is known in French, on the official jubilee calendar of activities celebrating the anniversary of Jean Calvin's 500th birthday. He found no takers.
While Protestant church leadership erected an ‘’expiatory’’ monument on the site of Servetus’s execution in 1903, thus making an official gesture of atonement for his death, many like Mr. Sjollema believe that the church has yet to fully open up and explore the ‘’shadow’’ side of Calvin’s record fully or at least publically, but also accord the figure of Servetus himself greater acknowledgement if only for the horrific suffering he underwent by all accounts with great bravery.
So on the anniversary of Servetus’s burning at the stake, October 27, Sjollema organized a panel discussion in his café featuring panelists Michel Grandjean, professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Geneva, and Vincent Schmid, pastor of St. Peter’s Cathedral – a position Calvin himself held from 1536 to 1538. Schmid is also the author of a French-language book about Servetus, Michel Servet: du bûcher à la liberté de conscience, that came out this year. The poster for the Recyclables event was duly posted on the Eglise Protestante de Genève’s website.
Michael Servetus Featured In Panel Discussion
Some 30 mostly older Genevois showed up for the 9 p.m. discussion, not quite filling café premises, and after two and a half hours – illuminating as the background information provided by Grandjean and Schmid was about the 16th century mind set, the life of Servetus and the lead up to the execution – the conclusions reached were identical to those posted on the church Calvin 09 committee’s calendar listing for October 27.
These are: that Servetus’s execution was ‘’intolerable’’, representing ‘’the most somber day in the history of Calvinism’’. Furthermore, Calvin’s own behavior with regard to Servetus was murky. (There seems to have been a great deal of competition, not to say jealousy, between the two men, who hated each other). Servetus had ‘’undeniable qualities’’ and his contributions as a multidisciplinary humanist were many and diverse, but he was on the wrong side of the fence at a time when any form of challenge to doctrine was viewed as heresy and punishments were severe.
Nevertheless, even in the 16th century there were critics of the severity of Servetus’s punishment, and both calendar text and panel at Les Recyclables give the last word on the matter to theologian Sébastien Castellion who said in 1562: ‘’Killing a man isn’t defending a doctrine, it’s killing a man.’’
Monument To Michael Servetus
Geneva’s monument to Michael Servetus is a rough-hewn rock about 3 meters (10 feet) tall with a plaque on it that reads, in French: ‘’We, respectful and grateful sons of Calvin our great reformer, condemning an error which was that of his century, and firmly committed to the freedom of conscience in accordance with the true principles of the Reformation and the Gospel, have erected this expiatory monument on October 27, 1903.’’
The rock stands in what used to be open space outside Geneva city walls where executions took place, right next to a bus stop in the vicinity of the university hospital and medical school and at the edge of the wealthy neighborhood of Champel. The street leading down from Champel to the hospital is Rue Michel Servet.
That the monument should happen to be near Geneva’s medical facilities is an interesting coincidence, since Servetus was among other things a doctor sometimes credited with discovering pulmonary blood circulation. Son of an affluent family from Villanueva in Spain, widely travelled, a linguist, teacher, writer, and theologian turned heretic because he refused the concepts of the Trinity and predestination and did not believe in baptizing children, Servetus may have been exactly Calvin’s age or two years younger: whether he was born in 1509 or 1511 has not been established. In any case, he was in his early 40s when transiting through Geneva, he hoped incognito, he was recognized, tried and sent to his death.
The ‘’Servetus Affair’’ Not Over Any Time Soon
Despite the low profile nature of the Les Recyclables event which might seem to indicate lack of widespread interest in the issue, the conclusion that ‘’l’affaire Servet’’ has largely been laid to rest (as, Grandjean says, Protestant authorities hoped it had after the monument was erected) is, Grandjean and Schmid both agree, not the case. Schmid’s own recently released book, in which he posits the theory that Servetus was actually striving for the kind of influence Calvin had by creating a sort of ‘’ideal monotheism’’ that would unite Christians, Muslims and Jews in a single religion, begs the question as to whether the Spaniard’s contributions have been adequately recognized. Also, as written tributes occasionally left at the Servetus monument divulge, in many quarters Servetus is considered a hero of the freedom of thought.
And, as manifested by the attitude of some audience members and acknowledged by the speakers to be an issue for significant numbers of others, the elusive feeling that the church is choosing to stay with a rigid note of formal apology paired with refusal to delve deeper is perceived as a kind of denial not least of the less salubrious side of Calvin’s own nature. The evening, like the issue itself, left an unsatisfactory aftertaste of a debate not showing any signs of resolution soon.
On a lighter note: a local brewing company that produces Calvinus beer bottled some of their organic blonde beer with a special Servetus label for the Les Recyclables evening, and may go on producing it for the café. A beer, a discussion evening, a book – perhaps precursory signs of a day when there will be much more, and the ‘’too little, too late’’ aura that hangs over Michael Servetus’s memory in Geneva will finally achieve genuine closure.
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