eternal punishment, he seemed to teach that Christ was inferior to God. The orthodox therefore complained of him, and although he was strongly supported by his own parish, he was convicted of heresy and banished from the country in 1544. Another ex-monk and disciple of Ochino, Girolamo Marliano, pastor of the neighboring church of Lavin, besides holding Anabaptist views also taught that the doctrine of the Trinity, as commonly held, is contradictory and absurd. He was therefore dismissed by his church, and later went to Basel.

A bolder step was taken by a mysterious traveling preacher who is known to us only by the name of Tiziano, and of whose origin and fate no memory survives. He had been in some cardinal's court at Rome, had accepted the teachings of Luther, and had later become an Anabaptist. It was he that converted and re-baptized the priest Manelfi at Florence in 1548 or 1549, after which they together visited the brethren at Vicenza; and at the Anabaptist Council at Venice in 1550 he appeared as a delegate from some congregation in the Grisons, whither he had evidently had to flee from Italy. Besides his entertaining the usual Anabaptist views, his especial offense was that he considered Christ only an ordinary man, filled with the divine Spirit, but not miraculously born. These views he preached at many places in the Grisons, winning numerous followers. But the orthodox at length became so enraged against him that he was in imminent danger of being put to death, had not milder counsels prevailed. He was arrested, and after long refusal was finally brought by threats of death to sign a statement which had been prepared for him, explicitly renouncing his errors. His influence over his followers having thus been destroyed, he was flogged through the streets, and forever banished from the country in 1554.

But the widest and deepest influence is generally ascribed to one Camillo. He was a Sicilian scholar, who had been with Valdez at Naples; and after embracing the doctrines of the Reformation he assumed the name by which he is best known, Renato, by which he signified his feeling that he had been "born again." A man of talents and fine education, he had a singular power of deeply influencing those whom he attracted to him. He was by nature serious, reserved, and shy; and his opponents regarded him as crafty and insidious in spreading his views. To escape the danger that threatened all Protestants, he fled from Italy in 1542 and came to the Valtellina, where he supported himself as tutor to the sons of prominent families. But although he was a teacher by occupation, his deepest interest was in questions of theology, which he seems to have taken every opportunity to discuss with his pupils and trusted friends.

Renato had imbibed Anabaptist views, and was one of the carliest Italian Anabaptists to exert much influence; he had also read Servetus. It may well have been he that converted Tiziano. Quite independently of the Creeds he had developed a simple system of belief which shows that he was much of a mystic. But though he was not orthodox as to the atonement, and held that Christ inherited a sinful nature so that he at least could have sinned, yet he never let it be known, unless perhaps to his intimate friends, whether he believed in the doctrine of the Trinity or not. It is very noteworthy, however, that several of the most important of those that later spread antitrinitarian views north of the Alps had been in Renato's circle in the Grisons; and his system of belief in several respects so closely resembles that afterwards taught by Socinians (Unitarians) in Poland, that it is hard not to trace these various results to his quiet influence as their source.

Renato left the Valtellina in 1545 for Chiavenna, the center of the Reformation in the Italian Grisons, where he soon acquired much influence, and where refugees fleeing into Switzerland were likely, if they remained long, to meet him and learn his views. Here he fell into a long and bitter controversy upon the Lord's Supper (a subject very hotly debated among the early reformers), with the pastor of the Chiavenna church, in which he had won a large number of sympathizers. The end of the matter was that, having refused to refrain from spreading his views, he was excommunicated in 1550, and returned to the Valtellina. From now on we lose track of him, save that four years later he sent from here to Calvin an eloquent Latin poem of protest at the burning of Servetus, and in favor of religious toleration, and that he was yet living, though blind, until after 1560. He still kept up relations with his friends through correspondence, and his influence long persisted.

Among those to take Renato's part and receive his influence was Francesco Stancaro, formerly a monk, and very famous as a Hebrew scholar. After turning Protestant he fled to the Grisons, whence he soon went on to Switzerland. Through his unorthodox teaching as to the Atonement he later did much, as we shall see, to prepare the way for Unitarianism in Poland and Transylvania.

The narrow mountain valleys of the Grisons were no place for men whose life had been spent in the society of large towns and the world of scholars. Most of the leaders therefore soon went on to the stirring centers of Geneva, Zürich, Basel, or Strassburg, where we shall hear more of some of them in connection with our history. Alone of those whom we have named, Renato remained behind; and even after we cease to hear of him directly the leaven of his teaching continued to work. But in 1570 the Diet voted to banish all

Anabaptists and Arians; and when two notorious Antitrinitarians from Geneva returned in 1579 for a visit to the Grisons, they were ordered to leave the country.

Thus the antitrinitarian movement disappeared also from the Grisons, although it is most interesting to discover not only that nine of the old Protestant churches of that district still exist, with a numerous membership, but that more than half their pastors are decidedly liberal, preaching a Christianity which no longer insists upon creeds or believes in miracles. The teachings that were nourished there in the time of which we have spoken, however, were not destroyed by the persecution they received, but simply transplanted beyond the Alps. For it was as though the Grisons had been a hot-bed for heresy, in which the seed-thoughts planted in the minds of the Italian refugees might develop, protected from the harsh winds of persecution, until they were strong enough to be transplanted into the more vigorous atmosphere of northern Europe, where they were later to bear fruit. Under this figure, the tending and cultivating of the young plants until they were well rooted was largely the quiet work of Camillo Renato. Meantime the stage had been setting for another and more dramatic scene at Geneva, and we must therefore return to follow the later history and the tragic fate of Servetus.

CHAPTER XI

SERVETUS IN FRANCE, 1532-1553

Soon after the publication of his Dialogues on the Trinity in 1532, Servetus finding himself friendless, penniless, and in imminent danger of trial for heresy, left Basel and was no more heard of for twenty-one years. As Germany and Switzerland had grown too hot to hold him he next went to France, and in order the better to conceal himself he dropped his name of Servetus and adopted that of his early home, and thus became Michel de Villeneuve (Michael Villanovanus). We first find him in Paris, perhaps disheartened for a time over his failure as a religious reformer, and studying mathematics at the University for some two years, while he became so proficient that presently he was giving university lectures on the subject. In this period he met the young Calvin, who was now becoming prominent in the Reformation, and was later to bring him to the stake. He challenged Calvin to a public debate on religious subjects, and the meeting was arranged for; but in the end Servetus failed to appear-why, we do not know, though he may well have shrunk from the danger involved in a city where every day heretics were being burned at the stake.

Want of money now forced him to interrupt his studies, and he therefore went to Lyon (Lyons), which ranked next to Paris as a publishing center, and here for over two years he was employed by a famous publishing house as corrector of proof, which was then a common occupation for scholars.