The remainder of the month of April was spent in making a renewed
and more particular examination of the books, papers, and letters of
Villeneuve, and in having copies made of the letters addressed to
Calvin, the originals of which were placed for safe custody under the
official seals. And here, if our surmises be well founded: that the
authorities of Vienne had really no wish, on testimony supplied by
Calvin, to convict of heresy a man who had always comported himself as
a good Catholic and still professed himself a true son of the Church,
every way disposed to receive instruction and bow to the decisions
of those who must know so much better than himself what was the true
saving faith--the matter would probably have ended, in so far as those
of Vienne were concerned. But Ory, the Inquisitor, nowise anxious
like the others to hush up so promising an affair, had by some means
been informed in the beginning of the month of May that there had
been a couple of presses kept at work away from the proper printing
establishment of Arnoullet.
Of this significant fact, no mention had been made either by Villeneuve
or Arnoullet on their examination, and whence Ory had the intimation
we are left to conjecture. There seems hardly room for doubt, however,
that it reached him through the old channel, viz., Arneys; that Arneys
had the news he gave to Ory from Trie, and that Trie had the tale he
told from Calvin. Frelon, as we have seen, must have been in the secret
of Servetus, and Frelon was also the friend of Calvin; from Frelon
alone could Calvin have had the particular information he shows he
possessed concerning the terms on which the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’
was printed; and it was only from Calvin that Trie could have obtained
intelligence of the kind he communicates to his relative Arneys of
Lyons. The process against Servetus, as we know, began from Lyons; and
from Lyons was it now resuscitated. But who living there was so likely
to have heard of a printing press worked privately at Vienne, twelve
miles away, as he who had all he knew about the heretic Villeneuve from
Geneva, and had been the instrument in setting on foot the movement
that was now to proceed to more disastrous issues?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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