A generalized defense of freedom of speech would not soon appear in the West. The Hellenistic world thinkers for the most retreated from dangerous politics, with any critical voices at risk. Thus Aristotle's nephew, Callisthenes, after questionin g the divinity of Alexander the Great, was executed at Alexander's orders. Under the Roman Empire, which anticipated the politiques outlook in tolerating many religions which were neither novel nor subversive of order, a variety of religious sects asked for no more than toleration for themselves. Yet I know of no case where one sect urged the like for all other sects.

In a dynamic described in Nietzsche's Will to Power (I, xxxvii; II, ccxv; and III, Aphorism 784), Christianity began by asking for bare toleration under the Roman Empire, but it went on to demand parity, then privileges, then supremacy, whic h was accorded under Emperor Theodosius, who in 392-4 A.D. repressed even the Roman pagan religion of Jupiter. If there were any voices for freedom of speech in the European medieval world, they were soon silenced by repression and have been lost to hist ory. Even a relatively tolerant person such as Saint Ambrose, who did not think the church's excommunications should often be followed by the state's executions, did favor repression of heretics such as the Arians. He was mentor to Saint Augustine, who was even more repressive if also reluctant to urge execution. But no such reservation limited later Roman Catholic church hierarchs. In leaving the medieval world of very little freedom of speech and much repression, Roman Catholic humanists such as Tho mas More or Desiderius Erasmus favored some measure of free expression as helpful to reform the Catholic Church, provided that advocacy remained within the limits of retaining the one true church. More's Utopia envisioned even more diversity of fo rms of worship, if insisting, like Rousseau later, on a minimal profession of faith for everyone.

The Reformation may be viewed in part as a reversal of Nietzsche's stages: Roman Catholicism in many places loses its supremacy, then any privileges, and sometimes even parity, as when Roman Catholics became the object of Protestant persecutions, as most severely under Cromwell or to some degree even after the Glorious Revolution. Key reformers such as Luther and Calvin favored their own freedom of speech but sought none for Catholics or other kinds of Protestants, such as the widely detested Ana baptists (cf. Skinner, 1978).

But how then do some moderns begin to advance more general claims for free religious speech, well before John Milton opens up to "neighboring differences" or his friend Roger Williams tolerates more broadly? There are pleas for more tolerance in t he writings of Sebastian Franck (1499-1542) and Guillaume Postel (1510-81). But the most important pioneer in extended principled statement for freedom of religious expression was Sebastian Castellion.

Originally named Chateillon, with Castellio the latinized version, and Castellion the later version of both French and English, Sebastian Castellion lived 1515-63. He was a native of Savoy, a region which, like Vaud, historically originated or ha rbored many heretics. But Castellion went off to study at Lyon, becoming initially part of the Catholic humanist group seeking a middle way in Church reform. But as his major biographer Ferdinand Buisson shows, once France closed down the middle way opt ion, all intellectuals were forced to choose between Roman Catholic orthodoxy and Protestantism (Buisson, 1892, T. I, esp. 48-95). Castellion became a Protestant. Fearing Roman Catholic Inquisitors, he sought out John Calvin, first planning exile in Str asbourg, where Calvin had gone after his temporary banishment from Geneva. But Castellion soon followed Calvin back to Geneva, which was at that time a city-state of about 10-20 thousand population. It had sheltered Protestants, many of them like Castel lion in being religious refugees from France. Castellion was not the first choice, but when other candidates turned down offers, he was chosen as permanent head of the College of Geneva (Buisson, T. I, 121-42). Castellion needed a better income once he started a family, which would eventually include nine children (one died young) plus an adopted, orphaned niece. He remarried after losing his first wife in childbirth in 1650.

While he had been permitted to do some preaching without ordination, he had hoped to become a Reformed clergyman in Geneva but he was firmly blocked from that calling. The obstacle was John Calvin (1509-64), who dominated Geneva's Reformed Church, working hand in glove with his understudy Theodore Beza (1519-1605). Although himself a Protestant refugee from France (Noyon), and although he had sponsored Castellion in his moves to Strasbourg and then to Geneva, Calvin came to disapprove of several of Castellion's views: Against his more characteristic rationalism, Castellion took literally Christ's "descent into hell," which Calvin had interpreted as merely symbolic. But Calvin saw that as a lesser disagreement: Castellion, who would translate t he Bible into both Latin and French, shocked everyone in suggesting that the Song of Songs was of profane rather than of sacred origin, not really belonging in the Bible. Against Castellion, Calvin invoked the settled tradition of Christian churches and raised the slippery slope argument that if one part of the Bible were permitted to be challenged, any or all of the rest could be so, too.

Only much later, Castellion, like the physician Jerome Bolsec, would also question aspects of Calvin's Predestination. While he could understand that God's grace saved some even when they did not merit it, he could not understand the view that a j ust and merciful God would let the rest be damned without first looking at their conduct in life. He eventually came to the view that God offered his grace to all, and that this unmerited grace was indeed the key to salvation, but only those really accep ted grace who let active faith and Erasmian free will spur them to good works.

Castellion was outraged that he was denied a ministry for the first mentioned differences of creed, whereas others were elevated to the clergy even in the teeth of evidence of hypocrisy and misdeeds, perhaps even including adultery, which Castellio n regarded as a very serious offense against God's law.

Castellion in despair left his post at the College of Geneva and eventually made his way to Basel. After a period of doing odd jobs to make a living, including gaffing of drift logs from the Rhine River and editing work, he eventually completed hi s Bible translations in Latin (1551) and French (1555). His prefaces plead for tolerance, holding that Scripture often lacked the clarity to permit easy consensus on some obscure matters (he would much later so identify the doctrines of the Trinity and o f infant baptism), and that to force one interpretation on others required too much violence (Bainton, 1951, 41). The preface for the French Bible, dedicated to the young King Edward VI of England, especially denounces those who persecute in the name of Christ: "We are sanguinary and murderous with a zeal claimed of Christ -- He who, in order to prevent the blood of others being shed, shed his own." Or again, "Out of zeal in Christ, we do evil to others -- for Him who taught return of good for evil" (B uisson, T. I, 305, here and elsewhere translations mine). He adds that to compel people to say what they do not believe is to make them sin, by bearing false witness (Ibid., 307). His reputation already established by appearance of the Latin Bibl e, Castellion in 1553 won the chair in Greek at the University of Basel.

Although the main theologian of what became the more libertarian Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches in the English-speaking worlds as well as the Reformed churches of the western European continent, Calvin himself had supported continuing persecution of heretics in Geneva. One of these was Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician-theologian often called a precursor of the Unitarians. Knowing that the Catholics in Spain or France wanted to kill him, Servetus wrongly expected that, in traveli ng toward a refuge in Italy, he would be safest passing among fellow Protestants in Geneva. But Calvin, who had already secretly given the French authorities incriminating evidence about Servetus, seven years earlier had written to the old Genevan pastor Guillaume Farel, "If Servetus were to come to Geneva, to the extent that I have any influence, I would never let him leave alive" (Buisson, T. I, 336). Genevan authorities spotted Servetus attending a sermon and arrested him. Calvin saw dangerous heres ies in Servetus' denial of the Trinity, in his refusal to say that Christ was the eternal son of God (if Servetus was willing to say that Christ was the son of the eternal God), and in his rejection of infant baptism. Yet Calvin thought himself en lightened because he had recommended state execution of Servetus with the more instantaneous blade rather than by burning at the stake with small fire, and, if the latter, without having his tongue first cut out, as often then done to prevent dying uttera nces of heresy. In 1553 Servetus was burned at the stake, as the state preferred, but with his tongue in place, as Calvin had advised. While Servetus protested his innocence en route to the stake, once there he did not utter heresies, concluding his lif e with a prayer, "Lord Jesus, son of the eternal God, have mercy on my soul."

Horrified by these events back in Geneva, Castellion in Basel penned his vigorous treatise against it. Open to some influence from Erasmus and from the German mystic, Sebastian Franck, Castellion wrote his Concerning Heretics (1555), which came out in Latin and French versions. Castellion, whose name means castellan or castle keeper, used the pseudonym Martinus Bellius and inserted parts attributed to Kleinberg ("small castle") and to Montfort ("mountain fortress"), all of which suggest th at he did not seriously mean to hide his authorship (cf. Buisson, T. II, 12-13). While others suspected different men, Calvin soon locked on the truth that it was by Castellion, a man he came to call by such epithets "that dog," "this monster," "or the w orst plague of our time," while also falsely accusing Castellion of endorsing all of Servetus' teachings. Calvin joined Beza in referring to Castellion as the "chosen instrument of Satan," and Beza on his own added other nasty epithets (Buisson, T. II, 2 51; 255-56). For his part, Castellion would increasingly depict Calvin as a would-be Bishop, Pope, or tyrant.

While a very small book, Concerning Heretics was the earliest known, principled treatise against religious persecution, and it became widely known even in Castellion's time.

Like Erasmus, Castellion maintained that there were but a few necessary beliefs for people to get to Heaven, and that there was room for difference on other matters, most of which were beyond our capacity to certainly know. Castellion, who would a lso denounce torture, held that early church leaders such as Tertullian did not favor trying to force even the few beliefs of relative certainty. But those puffed up with pride of superior knowledge, such as Calvin, asserted many things necessary to salv ation, then persecuted anyone who dared to disagree on any particular. Castellion adds that the same problem extends to other sects: "Although opinions are almost as numerous as men, nevertheless there is hardly any sect which has not condemned all othe rs and desired to reign alone. Hence arise banishings, chains, imprisonments, stakes, and gallows." Jesus Christ, Castellion maintained, was without such pride or any other sin, and Christ urged that we focus on right deeds rather than correct creeds. But although teaching us to forgive wrongs done to ourselves many times over, and to never do violence toward others, Christ himself was crucified as if a heretic.

Castellion's Concerning Heretics argues that persecution of heretics is profoundly un-Christian, even "Satanic." A persecuting church becomes like Molech, the one-eyed, Canaanite god who required the sacrificial immolation of children. Mus lims and Jews would never be converted to Christianity as long as rival "Christian" sects are seen to almost eat each other alive, executing their victims with more ferocity than applied to ordinary criminals: "Who would wish to be Christian, when he saw that those who confessed the name of Christ were destroyed by Christians themselves with fire, water, and the sword without mercy and more cruelly treated than brigands and murderers?"

Any who would persecute should reflect that by crossing a border or two they could also be targets of such persecution. Note that about a century later, Blaise Pascal, too, understood how truth could change by crossing the Pyrenees, but he chose i nstead, like Montaigne, to let local custom decide the matter of religion. However, his fellow Jansenists (and the Jesuits in turn) later found that Thomist orthodoxy and the French state had no room for them within Roman Catholicism.

Castellion wrote a second small book against the attempt of Calvin as well as Theodore Beza to justify their support for the execution of Servetus, entitling it Contra Libellum Calvini (or "Against Calvin's Libel"). Calvin succeeded in prev enting its publication in Basel, and it would nowhere appear until 1612 in Holland. In this work Castellion again emphasized that some parts of Scripture were obscure, contrary to the pretensions of Calvin. In mockery of Calvin, Castellion says, "He wri tes huge tomes to explain what he says is absolutely clear" (in Bainton, 1951, 64). He also points out that the persecution of Servetus turned out to be counterproductive in advertising the dead man's books: "Now that the man has been burned with his bo oks, everyone is burning with the desire to read them" (Ibid., 1951, 75). Castellion further observed that Calvin denounces Roman Catholic repression of heretics, but then holds it "legitimate and praiseworthy" when he does it. Castellion rejects any subterfuge: "To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine. It is to kill a man." He notes that Calvin and Zurich's Bullinger agreed on little except on killing any who disagreed with both of them, if Bullinger would not have killed Servetus so quickl y, hoping for a "cure." Fundamentally, Castellion holds, "Calvin killed Servetus for his unwillingness to lie" (I draw from excerpts in Buisson, T. II, 39, 44, 46, 53). In this essay Castellion discounts Calvin's recourse to Old Testament examples to ju stify his repressions, emphasizing that, apart from the Ten Commandments, the law of the Old Testament had been largely displaced by Christ's mission. This view would be emphasized by Roger Williams almost ninety years later, in his The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644).

The third and last work against persecution, Castellion's 1562 Conseil a la France desolee ("Advice to Desolated France") comments on the bloody religious warring in the country of his birth. He denies that sedition is caused by heresy or c ured by persecution. On the contrary, persecution of those who think differently causes multiplication of French Protestants and turns them against the persecuting state (Bainton, 1951, 76). In fact it also turns both Protestants and Catholics to look f or foreign funds or forces to deepen the conflict. The cause of the problem is not that people think differently, it is that both sides believe in "forcing consciences." Castellion condemns the violence of both sides, once again calling it un-Chr istian, denying again the relevance of superseded special instructions of God in the Old Testament. No one has had such special instructions to destroy their rivals in the era since Christ. The French antagonists wrongly think that the solution is more repression of the other, until they hold monopoly status. Even if they were to succeed after too much gore, they would not find that force will make the other side inwardly assent but at most become hypocrites. People compelled to drink bad wine, even i f watered, would not really think it good. The real solution is to accept in France two kinds of Christian religion, Catholic and Protestant. Implicitly, that policy would have advantaged the more numerically weak Protestants of France, but that weaknes s and as well as zeal to fight caused disregard of Castellion's solution, later given much attention in Holland. His proposal reminds us that seemingly zero-sum conflicts could often in principle be re-framed as nonzero-sum, if only by mutual renunciatio n of extreme aims on the part of antagonists.

Castellion ended this third essay on tolerance by noting that most heresies should be left to the churches, which would only excommunicate those in error, and only theological errors sure to undermine any order should concern the magistrates. Even then, any turn to official force is conditional, for he writes, "These are the true means to resist heretics: by word if they use the word, and by sword if they use the sword" (Buisson, T. II, 225-35).

Earlier in his century, some Anabaptists such as John Beukels had turned to the sword (as well as polygamous and communist ideas) at Munster. A Delft painter of glass, David Joris (or Georges), had his tongue pierced there in punishment for shouti ng epithets at a Roman Catholic procession. After first turning away from the Beukels model toward the quietistic pacifist form of Anabaptism represented by Menno Sims, the founder of the Mennonites, Joris led a band of Anabaptists distinct from either, focused around his books on perfectionism and apparent belief that he was a reincarnation of King David, preceding a new revelation from Jesus. With the "Davidians" facing capital repression in the Netherlands, he turned to exile, changing his name to Je an de Bruges and passing as if a Lutheran aristocrat. He led his remnant band to near Basel, where his reputation and fortunes prospered for twelve years. Among others, Castellion became his friend, as both denounced the execution of Servetus. But a fe w found out his secret Anabaptist origins, and the anxieties over wider revelation contributed to the natural deaths of his wife and then of Joris himself (1656). A few years later the whole truth was revealed to the Basel authorities. Castellion was st unned when the body of Joris was exhumed, tried and convicted, and publicly burned with his portrait and books in Basel (Buisson, T. II, 133-65; Bainton, 1951, 50).

Like a brother and nephew in the printing trade, Castellion had himself experienced dangers. Under earlier pressure from Beza, Basel's clergy and magistrates put some formal theological queries to Castellion. This was done in part through the Uni versity of Basel, and some of Castellion's writings were prohibited. Martin Borrhee, head of theology and censorship, had the effrontery to ask Castellion to present to him in writing what his arguments would be if he were permitted to publish them. Cas tellion drily replied that Borrhee gagged him and kept words for himself alone, while asking him to surrender all argumentative arms even before any possible future battle (Buisson, T. II, 113). In that first round of interrogation, Castellion, a small m an who liked tranquillity, implicitly invoked the Golden Rule in his lament, "By the bowels of Christ, I ask of you, I beg of you, leave me in peace, stop pursuing me. Accord to me the liberty of my faith and the liberty of a professor, as I allow your l iberties to you" (Buisson, T. II, 130).

Toward the end of his life, Castellion was in a second difficulty with Basel authorities for having translated Bernardino Ochino's last book, Thirty Dialogues, which, among other theses, explored the possible theological acceptability of pol ygamy. Although Ochino was surely too old to have himself in mind as patriarch to many wives, this book brought banishment from Zurich to this Locarno Protestant and minister to a band of Italian refugees. In Basel, while Castellion argued that he was m erely trying to make some extra money, not endorsing the contents of the book, a legal process was being prepared against him. Already suffering from acute stomach pains and fevers, however, Castellion in late 1563 died of natural causes (at age forty-ei ght) before any trial could get under way. Socrates died in jail defending his own speech right, and Castellion died in the shadow of jail, exile or worse after defending speech rights of not only himself but of others as well. Castellion's nemesis, Joh n Calvin, would die in the following year.

As a pioneer of the idea of principled religious freedom, Castellion was willing to tolerate a broad range of religious views. Yet he accepted magisterial punishment of outright atheists and those who denied a providential God, as well as of those who claimed to be Christian but renounced confession or the Bible (Becker, 1951, 108-9). Later defenders of religious freedom would permit or even practice critique of the Bible (e.g., Paine and Jefferson) or even question the concept of a providential God (e.g., John Stuart Mill, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.). Whatever the limits of Castellion's religious tolerance, he was far ahead of his time. He preceded Roger Williams or George Fox in framing theological as well as practical reasons for a rather br oad toleration of religious diversity. Only later will there emerge new kinds of arguments in terms of natural rights or social utility. Also later are the arguments that the combat of ideas yields the truth. Castellion had used a curiously cont rasting metaphor emphasizing charity: "To hope that one will bring peace to our theological controversies without charity is to imagine that one could make mortar with lime and sand, without water" (Buisson, T. II, 259).

Castellion nevertheless wrote most of the substantive arguments for toleration, even noting in the third work that wars over religion waste treasure as well as blood, if unable to add the much later commonplace that toleration promoted the superior economic growth of Amsterdam or London. But most of his key arguments for toleration retain vitality in our time, making him in many ways seem far more relevant than Calvin, whose willingness to kill over the Trinity or Predestination now seems perverse even to those in faiths of Calvinist origin. Castellion will retain relevance as long as there remain any foolish enough to think that they are wise enough to decide definitively how everyone else ought to think.

He remains vital as long as any are tyrannical enough to assert the claim that they have the right to order others either to say what they do not believe or not to say what they do believe.