Note 109 — Chapter XX

For a more particular account of Calvin’s severities, the reader is referred to a paper by M. Galiffe in the Mémoires de l’Institut National de Genève for 1862, p. 79. But torture was an old institution in Geneva, and Servetus is said only to have escaped the rack on the remonstrance of Vandel, one of the senators of the libertine party. In older days we read of one Postel, who, failing to answer so satisfactorily as was desired when cited before the Roman Catholic bishop and his court, for some offence, was ‘suspended by the rope’—by the wrists we believe. A first suspension, however, not proving effectual, a second was ordered; but it being now dinner time, the culprit was suspended a second time whilst his lordship the bishop dined! In more recent times, and under Calvin’s rule, a certain Billiard, having been guilty of jeering at the thunder and lightning during a terrible storm, whilst the inhabitants of Geneva generally were on their knees praying to God for mercy, was adjudged to be lashed by the common hangman at the tail of a cart through the streets of the city! Germain Colladon declared that he deserved death; but as he had a wife and family they might be content with the scourging!