the documents (letters and leaves from the printed book as well as the MS. copy which he had kept) that would bring about his conviction, 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. Servetus 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 weeks 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 ventured imprudently to show himself at the evening service of a neighboring church. Being recognized, Calvin was informed of his presence, 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 criminal 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 who avowed himself aggrieved, and was contented to go to prison with the party he accused, the law of retaliation disposing 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 "personally 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 infected 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
