Servetus and Calvin. Robert Willis
whom the liver was the source as it was also the laboratory of the blood, as the veins were the channels for its distribution to the body.
It is not uninteresting, however, to observe the same tendency towards unity or oneness here, in the domain of positive knowledge, which we discover pervading Servetus’s other works that lose themselves in the realm of metaphysical abstraction. He will not acknowledge two or any greater number of concoctions or digestions, whether in health or disease, such as were generally admitted in his day. The processes that take place in disease he declares to be of the same nature, though they are perverted, as those that occur in the healthy body. Diseases are therefore nothing more than perversions of natural functions, not new entities introduced into the body; a conclusion which, on physiological grounds, he sums up in these words: ‘The rationale in the maturation of disease and in the digestion of the food is one and the same.’46
CHAPTER XII.
THE MEDICAL FACULTY OF PARIS SUE VILLANOVANUS FOR LECTURING ON JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY.
Servetus’s fate on starting in life was opposition; and how should it have been otherwise?—he found himself through superior endowment and higher culture antagonistic to almost all he saw around him in the world. We have already had him met as a trespasser on their domain by the Reformers of Basle and Strasburg, and we have now to find him looked on as an intruder by the Medical Faculty of Paris. The lecturer on Geography and Astrology had attracted a large amount of public attention, and the author of the book on Syrups began to get into vogue as a practitioner of medicine. The book had in fact been as well received as the lectures; it was extensively read, much commended at the time, and reprinted oftener than once in after years. No wonder, therefore, that Michel Villeneuve M.D. had now as many eyes upon him in Paris as Michael Servetus had had in other days in Switzerland. Before he could well look about him, the whole faculty of Physicians and the heads of the University of Paris were in array against him.
It seems that he had gone out of his way in his lectures to say something disrespectful of the doctors, his contemporaries, accusing them of ignorance of many things necessary to the successful practice of their profession, particularly of Astronomy, or more properly Astrology, a science in which Villeneuve plumed himself as being a master. The doctors naturally enough complained of such impropriety, and had him cited before their council. There he was told that something more of respectful bearing was due from him to men who had been his masters; and above all that he was transgressing the boundaries of true science and common sense in making so much of Astrology. The Dean of the Faculty is even said to have had him several times privately before him, and warned him of the difficulties he would inevitably fall into, if he continued casting nativities and prescribing for the ailments of his patients from the aspects of the stars; for this, it appears, was the principal element in his medical practice. Servetus, unhappily for himself, was not one of those who could take even friendly advice in good part. As credulous as he was sceptical, and believing implicitly in himself and in stellar influences, he not only made no submission, but said that his ill-wishers should rue their opposition.
The doctors on their part not only gave no heed to his threats, but publicly denounced him from their chairs as an impostor and wind-bag; with the consequence of arousing him to self-defence, and with his ready pen setting him to work upon a pamphlet, in which he did not fail to lay bare some of the sore places in the persons of his adversaries, characterising them as mannerless and unlettered, and even holding them up in their ignorance as very pests of society. Once in the hands of the printer, Villeneuve’s purpose to expose his detractors through the dreaded press became known; and such alarm does his meditated attack appear to have excited that the Faculty of Physicians, calling the Senate of the University to their side, petitioned the Parliament of Paris to forbid the publication of the pamphlet, as well as to interdict its author from continuing to lecture on Astrology, which they now characterised as Divination.
The Parliament, with becoming judicial impartiality, would take no step in the matter until they had heard Villeneuve in his defence and had something tangible, such as the pamphlet which it was sought to suppress, before them. Nothing more was done, consequently, than the issuing of a summons to Villeneuve to appear at the bar of the house on a certain day and give an account of himself. This gave him all he required: time to have his pamphlet printed. Keeping the compositors at work, with a promise of higher pay if they used despatch, it was not only ready before the day of citation came round, but had been distributed gratis in numbers to the public as well as to the members of the medical profession. They reckoned without their host who thought that Michel Villeneuve was to be cowed by opposition, however imposingly headed.
The doctors were naturally excessively wroth with this daring move on the part of the man they desired to crush. He had not awaited the decision of the Parliament; and neither now did they pause; for believing they had a hold upon him on the score of heresy, implied in the practice of judicial astrology or divination, they had him summoned before the Inquisitor of the king as an enemy to the Church, and contemner of its statutes. There was no regularly established Inquisition at this time in France; but papal inquisitors, often Italians by birth, were commonly enough found accredited by the Holy See, with the sanction of the Sovereign, to the large towns of the country. There they held courts before which cases of imputed heresy were tried and adjudged—the decisions come to, however, being always made subject to revision by the civil tribunals of the realm. Nay, there was a right of demurrage to the jurisdiction of the inquisitor, at the option of the party incriminated, were he minded to be tried by the ordinary civil, rather than the extraordinary ecclesiastical, court.
We might have imagined that Michael Servetus, with the experience he had had of ecclesiastical incapacity to hear reason and ‘true judgment give,’ as he interpreted it, would have paused before venturing to appear before the inquisitor of the king; but so safe must Michel Villeneuve have felt against a charge of heresy at this time, and so secure in his new designation, that he did not hesitate to obey the summons; although we learn that had he been so minded, he might as a member of the Faculty of Physicians have even disregarded it entirely. He appeared accordingly at the proper moment; and so well did he play his part, so thoroughly did he satisfy the inquisitor of the king that he was a good Christian, that he left the court with flying colours, absolved of all suspicion of heresy, to the utter discomfiture of his accusers, who had now nothing for it but patiently to wait the award of the Parliament.
Before this tribunal, acting it would seem as a court of justice, a suit was regularly instituted, with the Rector of the University of Paris and the Dean and Faculty of Physic of the same as pursuers, on the one part, and Michael Villanovanus as defendant, on the other. For the University and Faculty, it was alleged that judicial astrology, otherwise to be styled divination, is forbidden by various statutes, as well canonical and divine as civil, the penalty for practising the same being death by fire, and that the defendant, a man of learning, and so incapacitated from pleading ignorance of these statutes, had notoriously lectured both in public and private on certain books of divination, among others, on the works entitled ‘De Aleabiticis’ and ‘De Divificationibus,’ both of which are full of divination.
It was alleged further, that he had been known to make forecasts for various persons in respect of their fortunes from their nativities, on the assumption that according to the day and the hour of a man’s birth, and the aspect of the heavens at the time, would fortune of a favourable or adverse kind befal him; all of which by the Faculty of Theology is held highly reprehensible. That for his lectures and lessons, moreover, he takes money and attracts numerous auditors, who, seduced by the pleasantness of the poison he sells, have been debauched and led to forsake the true philosophy of Pico de Mirandola, who declares divination to be the most pestilent of frauds, degrading philosophy, invalidating religion, strengthening superstition, corrupting morals, and making men miserable slaves instead of free men.
Not stopping short at such public and private misdeeds, continue the pursuers, he has written and had printed a certain apology or defence of divination,47 with his name attached, which is of a highly objectionable character in every respect; the Theological Faculty declaring