Note 76 — Chapter XII · THE REFORMATION AND FREETHOUGHT

The jurist Matthieu Gripaldi (or Gribaldo) lectured on law at Toulouse, Cahors, Valence, and Padua successively, and, finding his anti-Trinitarian leanings everywhere a source of danger to him, had sought a retreat at Fargias near Geneva, then in the jurisdiction of Berne. Venturing to remonstrate with Calvin against the sentence on Servetus, he brought upon himself the angry scrutiny of the heretic-hunter, and was banished from the neighbourhood. For a time he found refuge in a new professorship at Tübingen; but there too the alarm was raised, and he was expelled. Coming back to Fargias, he gave refuge to the heretic Valentinus Gentilis on his escape from Geneva; and again Calvin attacked him, delivering him to the authorities of Berne. An abjuration saved him for the time; but he would probably have met the martyr’s fate in time had not his death by the plague, in 1564, guaranteed him, as Bayle remarks, against any further trial for heresy.76