CHAPTER III.

THE SERVICE WITH QUINTANA COMES TO AN END.

Ir is greatly to be regretted that we have nothing from Servetus on the other impressions he received, during the term of his service with Quintana, beside those connected with the pomp and power of the Papacy. We do not even know precisely how long he continued with the confessor of the Emperor, nor where, nor at what moment he left him. Neither have we a word of his whereabouts and mode of life, after vacating his office, until we meet him seeking an interview with Jehan Hausschein, the individual, with his name turned into Greek, so familiar to the world as Ecolampadius. From Servetus himself we have it that he quitted the service of Quintana on his death, which, he says, occurred in Germany. But the truth of this statement has been called in question on very sufficient grounds, Quintana having been seen alive in the flesh, and still in attendance on the Emperor, years after dates at which we know positively that Servetus had been in Basle and Strasburg, communicating with Ecolampadius, Bucer, and others of the Reformers. More than this, he had come before the world as author of

the book entitled 'De Trinitatis Erroribus,' a copy of which having been found by Joannes Cochlæus,` an ecclesiastic in the suite of the Emperor, in a bookseller's shop at Ratisbon, was by him shown to Quintana, who, we are informed, expressed extreme disgust that a countryman of his own and personally known to himquem de facie se nôsse dicebat-should have fallen so far into the slough of heresy as to write on the mystery of the Trinity in the style of Michael Servetus, alias Revés.1 Nor indeed is this the last we hear of Quintana. After the settlement of affairs at Ratisbon and Nürnberg, he attended the Emperor to Italy, and thence to his native Spain, where we find him installed as Prior of the Church of Monte Aragon and a member of the Cortes of the kingdom. Quintana appears in fact to have lived for yet two years, actively engaged in his duties, having only been gathered to his fathers towards the end of the year 1534.*

Servetus did not therefore leave the service of Quintana after, or in consequence of, the death of the confessor. We find it difficult indeed to think of one with the decidedly unorthodox opinions to which Servetus had attained at an early period of his life, continuing on terms of intimacy with a man of Quintana's capacity, without showing something of the leaven of unbelief that must have been already ferment

1 Cochlæus, De Actis et Scriptis Martini Luther, p. 233, fol. Mogunt. 1549.

* Tollin, Die Beichtväter Karls V., S. 261.

ing in his mind. There is, it is true, commonly enough, so much more of policy than of piety among hierarchs of the Church of Rome, and indeed of any church largely possessed of wealth and culture, that their real opinions and beliefs have often been made subject of debate. But Quintana was a monk, although a liberal one, and he was Charles V.,'s confessor. Of the Emperor's orthodoxy, bigotry, and hatred of heresy, however, there can be no question; so that, though policy moved him for a time to entertain as his spiritual adviser a man more tolerant than the general, the occasion for this ceasing, Charles was not likely to find himself altogether at his ease with one at his elbow much more liberally disposed than himself. Quintana consequently on the return to Spain, being absolved of his office of confessor, but handsomely provided for in the Church, Charles recalled Loaysa, his former director in matters of faith, from Rome, and lapsed into the groove of intolerance from which considerations of state had for a moment withdrawn him.

From the false account Servetus gives of the cause of his quitting Quintana, we therefore think it probable that soon after the settlement of matters at Augsburg in the early autumn of 1530, he had incautiously betrayed the state of his mind on some point of the religious question, and been dismissed from his service by the confessor. Service of any sort, indeed, from the estimate we are led to form of the mental constitution of Michael Servetus, could only have been a bondage

never patiently to be endured, but to be shaken off at the earliest possible opportunity. His was not a nature that could brook a master; and we have the assurance of Ecolampadius that Michael Servetus was in Basle and making himself obnoxious by his theological fancies previous to the month of October 1530. The coronation at Bologna having taken place in the autumn of 1529, and the Diet of Augsburg assembled at midsummer 1530, Servetus could not, thus, have been in the following of Quintana for more than a year, or eighteen months-no long term if reckoned by the lapse of time, but certainly covering a vast area in the sphere of his mental development. He may have had little leisure for the study of books, but he had his eyes open to the doings of men; and his inner senses were awakened to truths, his reason to conclusions, that influenced him through the rest of his life, and possibly had no insignificant part in bringing him to his untimely end.

CHAPTER IV.

INTERCOURSE WITH THE SWISS REFORMERS.

It would appear that Ecolampadius, Bucer, Bullinger, Zwingli and others, their friends, had had a sort of 'clerical meeting' for talking over the theological questions of the day at Basle in the autumn of 1530. On this occasion Ecolampadius informed his friends that he had been troubled of late by a hot-headed Spaniard, Servetus by name, overflowing with Arian heresies and other objectionable opinions, maintaining particularly that Christ was not really and truly the Eternal Son of God; but if not, then was he not, and could not be, the Saviour were Christus nit rächter, warer, ewiger Gott, so were er doch und könte nit seyn unser Heiland. Waxing warm in his tale, and fearing that such poison, as he conceived it, would not be poured into his ears alone, but would reach those of others, he was minded that measures should be taken against such a contingency. To this Zwingli, addressing him as brother Ecolampady, replied, that there did seem good ground for them to be on their guard; for the false and wicked doctrine of the troublesome Spaniard goes

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