The Rest Is History - 274: Switzerland: Calvin's Cancel Culture

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Today, Tom and Dominic are in 16th century Calvinist Geneva, where Michael Servetus is being condemned for heresy. Execution, imprisonment, treachery and public burnings all feature in this story which bears unusual similarities to the times we live in today… Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Bonjour, willkommen and benvenuto to The Rest is History. Now, as you can tell by that beautiful European introduction, we have reached, in our World Cup marathon, the great and neutral country of Switzerland, haven't we, Tom? We have. Yes, we have. Very exciting.

Are you going to be talking cheese, cuckoo clocks, alpine delights? What have we got to look forward to? No, I'm opening with a scene of execution. And it's the 27th of September, Dominic, 1553. Okay. And I'll give you the scene. It's a man who is preserving a grim silence. He's being led out to a location on the borders of the city of Geneva. He's being chained to a stake

at the place of execution. And the pyre is a great pile of this man's books. Oh my word. So imagine that. I mean mean every author's worst nightmare yeah not only you being burnt to death but your books are being burnt as well that would be awful that would be awful and his execution is they've got the straw they've got these leaves they've sprinkled it with sulfur and they scatter it on his head and then they tie his arms behind his back make sure that he absolutely can't escape and then they light uh the fire and they show it to him he maintains his silence and then they set

the books alight and the flames start to crackle and flicker and it licks and touches the uh the unfortunate man who's been chained to the stake and suddenly he he screams and howls and for half an hour he suffers in agony and his very last words before he dies oh jesus son of the eternal god have pity on me wow tom it's like one of my um talks to primary schools this it's very gory but that's how i like it oh i see i thought you were comparing your treatment at the hand of the primary school children well there is that there is that element they generally burn the books after i've left right so you may be wondering who who is this yeah who is this man okay so he's a spaniard uh miguel cervetto but he's better known to us in the English-speaking world as Michael Servetus. He was a celebrated polymath, Dominic.

Okay, yeah. And actually, he's very keen on science. You'll be glad to know. Oh, no. So he's the first European to describe the circulation of the blood. He's lost a lot of sympathy in the Sandbrook household already, Tom. So as you'll know, that's an achievement that's usually chalked up to the Englishman William Harvey. But sadly, I'm afraid the Spaniard got there first which is very sad it's the americas all over again

so civetus is also he's a great cartographer loves his maps he's a brilliant linguist he can speak all the ancient languages so greek latin um hebrew interestingly his french isn't actually very good uh and in Geneva, they speak French, and this is going to be part of the story. But the reason that he is a controversial and celebrated figure in Europe, and the reason that he has been chained to this stake and is being burnt alive is the fact that he is probably Europe's most controversial theologian. He's from Aragon. He'd been a page boy in the train of Charles V, the emperor who's king of Spain as well. And that takes him to Rome. He sees a lot of the workings of the Roman church and it appalls him.

He's disgusted by the display of the papacy's corruption. And the backdrop to this is the emergence of Luther, the start of the Reformation, and he becomes a very, very committed reformer, becomes a very committed Protestant. But he pushes the trends of radicalism and Protestantism to very, very radical extremes. So he denies original sin, which is the doctrine that since the fall of man, the whole earth is fallen, that all of us human beings are born with the taint of original sin. But also, perhaps even more controversially, he denies the doctrine of the Trinity, which ever since the age of Constantine has been fundamental to how Orthodox Christianity defines itself. This idea that God is three distinct persons sharing the one essence. And he denies this, which is why his last words,

and you remember, Dominic, he refers to Jesus as being son of the eternal God, is so key because he's not describing Jesus as the eternal son of God. So he is implying that Jesus is inferior to God the Father. And that's unacceptable. And this is why he is suffering the fate he is, because fire is the penalty for heresy. And this is generally associated with the Catholic attempt to repress heresy. So you think famously of the Inquisition and in the English context,

the burning of Protestant martyrs at Smithfield. But what is distinctive about this is that it's not the Catholics who are burning this poor guy, Michael Servetus, but the Protestants. Geneva is perhaps actually the most famous Protestant city in the whole of Europe by the 1550s. And by and large, Protestants are reluctant to burn heretics because they themselves are viewed by the Catholics as heretics. And so they're much more kind of sensitive about that. But they don't rule it out. And this is because even the most kind of enthusiastic Protestants have come to recognize by the mid 16th century that it is possible to push the Reformation a bit too far. And the absolute kind of shining example of this, well, shining is the wrong word, the kind of the monstrous example of this is what happens in Munster in 1534-5. The whole doctrine of Protestantism is sola scriptura, the idea that if it's in scripture, then it's justified. And the Anabaptists kind of look in scripture.

They find that biblical patriarchs have had lots of wives. They've instituted communism. They've gone around smashing images. And so this is what they do. So the Anabaptists rule in Munster. There's polygamy, there's wholesale desecration of images and icons and everything, and basically communism. And the scandal and the horror of this reverberates across Europe, in Protestant Europe, as well as in Catholic Europe. And Anabaptist Munster ends up being stormed by an alliance of Catholics and Lutherans. So essentially, this whole kind of episode channels for Protestants the kind of the paradox that haunts the Reformation, which is basically, how do you fashion an order that permits Protestants the liberty that will enable them to worship in the way that they feel God wants them to worship. But at the same time, maintaining sufficient discipline that this

liberty can then be kept secure. So how can you have freedom of worship, but ensure that it won't kind of collapse into this bloody, sexually depraved horror show of which Munster is the shining example. And the reason that Geneva by the 1550s has become as famous as it has done is that it seems to Protestants to offer the transcendent answer. So Geneva has become the great arc of the Reformation. It's the place where Protestants can go to preserve themselves from the storms and the floodwaters of persecution that are starting to wash over Europe. So for instance, reformers go to Geneva from both England and Scotland, because the forces of Catholic

reaction are very strong there. So Queen Mary has come in, she's starting her persecution. So English reformers are heading there. Likewise, in Scotland, John Knox, who will go on to become the kind of the figurehead of the Scottish Reformation, he turns up in Geneva. And he describes it as famously as the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in earth since the days of the apostles. So Geneva, at this point, is it a republic? Is it part of the Swiss Confederacy? Yeah, it's a city-state. It's a city-state. So Switzerland consists of a number of city-states, a bit like kind of ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy. And lots of them are great enthusiasts for the Reformation. But each city has a slightly different understanding of what the Reformation should be. And Geneva had not been kind of preeminent in this to begin with. It was Zurich, it was Basel,

but Geneva comes up on the outside track and becomes this kind of shining example for Protestants of what a Christian community should be. But this is due to the leadership, not of someone from Geneva, not even someone who's Swiss, but a Frenchman. And that Frenchman, he's born in 1509 in Paris, takes the name Jean Calvin. But of course, he's best known in the English speaking world as John Calvin. Yeah. And that reflects the fact that his influence on Britain, on England and Scotland, and then by extension on the United States is absolutely huge. I would say it's impossible it's impossible to contemplate anglo-american culture

without reference to john calvin his influence is that enormous and i think we should do a kind of an episode on him and his influence because it's a huge topic of course but just to sort of put it into really really simplistic terms for people like me who who are not you know devotees of theological history yeah calvin believes that there are two kinds of people, doesn't he? The saved and the damned. He does. Well, yes, and most Protestants think that. But Calvin is peculiarly rigorous in his kind of understanding

of the theological implications of this. So he's a very, very smart guy, very, very clever, schooled in law in Paris, would undoubtedly have gone on to become a kind of leading figure in the French court had he not become Protestant at a time where this renders him liable to violent persecution. And so he flees Paris, he frees France altogether, and he goes over the border into Switzerland, and he tries out kind of various cities to see which seemed to him the most promising in terms of setting up a godly republic, but also which will offer him a sanctuary.

And so he tries various places. He goes to Zurich, he goes to Bern, he goes outside Switzerland, goes to Strasbourg. All of these are kind of leading Protestant cities. But he ends up in Geneva and he has two cracks at staying in Geneva. So he goes there in 1538 and he piles in and he tries to mold it into a godly community. And this does not go down well. The Genevans don't want a Frenchman turning up and telling them they can't do things. So he gets run out of town. But three years later, Geneva is in such a rundown state. Its government is inefficient. It seems to be in a state of absolute moral decline, that the city elders decide that they will invite Calvin back. And Calvin is very clear that he will only come back basically if he has the kind of the run of the city. So he says, if you desire to have me as your pastor, then you will have to correct the disorder of your lives. And the city elders give him carte blanche to do this. And Calvin absolutely seizes his opportunity.

And what's striking about him is that he does not impose a dictatorship. So this is not even equivalent to say Cromwell's protectorate. Calvin does not have any civic office. And in fact, until 1559, he doesn't even have Genevan citizenship. He lives unarmed. He doesn't have bodyguards. The of geneva are free to insult him you know if they spit at him in the street he just turns the other cheek his only weapon dominic yeah is his pulpit oh the reason that the pulpit is such a kind of key stage for him is both because he's a brilliant speaker but also because he has thought through this great question of how Christian liberty, which he very highly prizes, freedom of thought, freedom of

conscience, all that kind of thing, how it can be squared with the necessary order that affirms the fact that this is indeed a Christian commonwealth. So in his understanding of how Christians should lead their lives and what a church should be, he sets an absolute premium on the freedom of every individual Christian to join and to leave a godly community. That's nice. The dictates of conscience are very, very important to him. But what he also appreciates drawing on the lessons of scripture and the theological inheritance of the Christian church is that not everyone can be saved. And this is what you were alluding to, this idea that there are two kinds of people. There are those who are doomed to be damned and those who are saved.

And Calvin's assumption is that the number of elect is very few, very small, that most people are predestined to be damned. And he says this is a dreadful decree. It seems a dreadful decree, but he doesn't shrink from it. And it's precisely because he knows that humanity has fallen, that most people will spurn the gifts of the spirit, that he's so keen to kind of shape Geneva into a community that can exist in harmony with God's plans and thereby kind of attract the elect to Geneva so that the whole city will become a kind of a community of the elect and thereby serve as a beacon to the rest of Christendom and to the rest of the world. And so the way that he kind of achieves this balance between liberty and order is that he institutes four offices that enable Geneva to be run according to his understanding of what a godly community should be.

So there are ministers who preach the word of God. He's a minister. That's his role. He has teachers to instruct the young. So that's very important. You know, get them young. He has deacons whose role is to meet the needs of the poor, the sick, the orphans, the widows, basically to provide charity. So this is essentially a welfare state within the fabric

of Geneva. And obviously this is very, very appealing. So this is one of the reasons why by and large people in Geneva are happy to go along with Calvin's regime. And then he has elders, church elders, Presbyters. So this is the origin of Presbyterianism. And these are basically kind of moral watchdogs whose job it is to make sure that the Genevans are behaving. So they're like those people in Iran who go around telling you to put a veil on. They're like people in Iran or they're like people on Twitter. People calling you out, Tom, holding you to account. Yeah, people calling you out. Exactly so. And I mean, obviously on Twitter, the eye

of the moral majority are permanently on you. In Geneva, you have the same thing. You have the sense that these moral guardians are perpetually watching you. And every Thursday, they meet. It's like an American university. It is. Well, so I was saying that the influence of Calvin on Anglo-America is huge. And I think that it is not a stretch to say that American universities, which were founded, you know harvard's founded by presbyterians that that the american universities absolutely bear the stamp of this kind of calvinist um this calvinist train of thought so presbyters and ministers meet every thursday and they form a group that a body that is called the consistory basically Basically, they draw up lists of people who have offended

God's law. So you might have failed to attend a church service. You might have transgressed the Ten Commandments. You made a joke about Jeremy Corbyn. Who knows? Exactly that. You might have misgendered somebody, anything like that, that kind of thing. So basically, if you offend Calvin's understanding of what a godly community is, the summons will come. And it doesn't matter what your rank, you know, you have to answer it. You can be the wealthiest merchant in Geneva. You could hold an official office in the city. You could be a magistrate.

If you've done something wrong, you get called out. You have to go and answer for yourself. And basically, I mean, every year on average, about one in 15 citizens of Geneva are called up before the consistory. And so the question is, you know, is this oppressive or is it liberating? And there are people in Geneva who find it incredibly oppressive. I mean, and hate Calvin. And actually, by 1553, which is the year that Cervetus will be burned, there are quite a lot of people in the city government who are getting very, very resentful of it and who are quite hostile to Calvin. But equally, Geneva has become this kind of great beacon for Protestants across Europe. And it is absolutely a part of Calvin's doctrine. You should welcome refugees

wherever they come from and they don't even have to be protestant they could be catholic they could be jewish whatever you have to welcome them you have to give them sucker and so there is this it has been awakened from its darkness let's put it like that right it is in other words in a very real sense it's very woke it's the progenitor of that idea yeah people can be wakened from darkness that there are people outside in darkness but we have yet woken to the light and that they have to be condemned and they have to be reformed yeah i mean literally i wasn't meaning that jokingly i meant it absolutely seriously but but of course the different the difference the difference is that today i think

that the doctrine of original sin has been cancelled. But to Calvin, it's incredibly important. We're all for everybody is fallen. And so therefore, no one can adopt a position of such moral superiority as to assume that they are definitely saved. So the presbyters, the ministers, they don't think they're saved or they think they might be. They know that if they're not behaving in a godly way, then they're clearly not saved. But even if they're behaving in a godly way, they can't be certain that they're saved. And so they're constantly looking into their souls and putting the fact that they have been redeemed and a part of the elect and say even the most godly of presbyters in Calvin's Geneva. And I think it's that that gives this kind of tension between liberty and order. You know, it's very, very finely balanced because there is liberty of conscience. There is kind of freedom to say what you want.

Equally, there is order. And it's that tension that makes the Genevan experiment so radical and so influential. Now, how does Servetus fit into this? Well, relations between Servetus and Calvin go back a long way. So Servetus, you know, he's a radical Protestant. Calvin is a radical Protestant. In 1534, Servetus was in Paris and he wrote to Calvin and said, I'd really like to talk to you. So Calvin, at some risk to himself, goes to Paris at the appointed time and Servetus doesn't turn up. So obviously,

this really annoys Calvin, understandably, and they don't then meet. Calvin keeps track of Servetus's career because Servetus is a definite figure on the kind of the radical fringe of Protestantism. And he becomes increasingly appalled by what he sees Servetus as writing. The Trinity and all that stuff. Yeah, but also the original sin. I mean, Servetus' rejection of the doctrine of original sin strikes at the absolute heart of Calvin's theology. So Calvin is very, very disapproving of that. And perhaps Calvin would have been content to ignore Servetus, except for the fact that Servetus has become absolutely obsessed by Calvin. And I think the reason for that is that Servetus looks at the structures of discipline at Geneva and he sees this as basically being

a papist. He sees Calvin as a kind of Pope, that he's imposing discipline in the way that the Inquisition imposed discipline. And so this generates a kind of tension between the two men that will culminate in what is basically the disaster of Servetus' appearance in Geneva in 1553. And I'm aware that I've been talking a lot. We haven't had a break. So perhaps we should pause here. And when we come back, I'll explain how it is that Servetus comes to end up in Geneva and then to suffer the fate that he suffers.

We'll take a break. Examine your consciences. If you feel that you are one of the elect, return after the break. If you're one of the damned, you can all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Members of the elect, members of the damned, we are united here before the pulpit of Tom Holland,

great theologian, preacher, moral arbiter. And he is taking us through the story of, well, you told me, Tom, this was going to be the Swiss Taliban. I think that is an excellent title. Are you still sticking to that title or have you abandoned it? I think that's harsh. I actually think that's a bit harsh. I mean, it is quite a good title. I think we're focusing specifically on the execution of servetus uh here okay so the burning of servetus we're returning for that crack on burn servetus okay so how does it how does this come about so by 1550 um servetus is living in vienne which is a french city on the rhone just south of lyon yeah i've been i've been to Vienne, Tom. I've passed through it.

It's lovely. Yeah. And he's living there, obviously, under an assumed name, because France is very Catholic, Servetus is a notorious Protestant, and he's practicing as a doctor. And in 1553, early in 1553, he publishes a book called The Restoration of Christianity. And it's in this book, Dominic, that you'll be delighted to hear that he mentions his theory of the circulation of the blood. Delighted to hear that, Tom. And one of the reasons why this doesn't become generally known in the way that, say, in the 17th century, Harvey's discovery of this theory will be is that this is a book

that is profoundly and shockingly heretical. And from Calvin's point of view, what is appalling about it is that it directly attacks his doctrines. So his doctrines of the Trinity, his doctrines of predestination, all that kind of stuff. Calvin is a very, very distinguished theologian and Servetus is directly attacking him. And what Servetus does is he sends it to Geneva. He sends it to the town hall in Geneva, together with 30 letters that Servetus has written to Calvin over the course of the preceding years and that Calvin has ignored. And again, this is kind of quite Twitter behavior. It's calling someone out, basically, and it's kind of it's calling someone out basically and and it's it's trolling them it's trying to get yourself noticed calvin has been ignoring him right but by now calvin is

is so furious by this behavior that he writes to the civic authorities in vien and says you've got a notorious heretic living among you he informs informs on him. He informs on him. Servetus gets arrested. He gets tried. He gets sentenced to death. But he then manages to escape. And he's from Savoy in northern Italy. And so he's aiming for Savoy, he says.

Except that he goes to Savoy via Geneva. Why on earth would you go to the very place? Or is this part of the trolling, as you would put it? I think it is. And I think that it's a deliberate provocation that is shaped by Servetus' apocalyptic views, his feeling that the end of the world is coming, that the four horsemen are galloping across Europe and that the appearance of Antichrist imminent, it's Servetus' job to confront the man whom Servetus sees as the servant of Antichrist, namely Calvin, and that Servetus is deliberately courting martyrdom so that his fate will serve to

kind of emblazon his understanding of Calvin and the horrors of what's happening in Geneva. And so he arrives in Geneva and he's arrested because he is plainly a heretic. It's not Calvin who arrests him. Calvin doesn't have an official position. He's arrested by the city authorities. But pretty much everyone in Geneva feels that it's legitimate to try Servetus as a heretic because they have the example of the Anabaptists before them. They're terrified of the kind of poison that radical heresy can bring. And basically, Protestants and Catholics are agreed on this. So I guess, again, to kind of pursue the modern parallel, I think we are tempted to side with Servetus, who we see as the spokesman for free speech. But it's a bit like, I don't know, a Nazi or a white supremacist or someone turning up in a university and- Giving a provocative talk. talk yes i say an openly racist talk that i think that that that gives you some sense of the the horror that cervetis presence in geneva inspires yeah and the anxiety about what to do

about him so what calvin wants is for him to be arrested and to be sentenced to death and then for him to be pardoned that's what that's what he says he wants but because the whole situation is becoming increasingly awkward for him just quick question does servetus have followers tom he does have followers so he has a number of um i guess you could call them humanists so so people who are more like erasmus say than luther right people who are who are definitely sympathetic you know they are protestant they're hostile to the catholic church they would see protestantism as leading to a kind of the right to to question

uh you know all kinds of received doctrines that's kind of skeptics yeah but these are generally intellectual so so he doesn't have any kind of movement calvin only wanted him to be to be to be pardoned didn't he yes but the whole situation is kind of excruciating for calvin firstly because uh he's been having a lot of bust-ups with the city authorities, people who have been fingered by the consistory and who are very resentful of this and who are keen to embarrass Calvin in any way that they can. And the other thing that's embarrassing is that Calvin gets an official letter of thanks from the Catholic authorities in Vienne for his role in arresting. So that's very mortifying as well.

And so basically, Calvin is kind of losing it more and more with Servetus and he kind of fulminates that there is no form of impiety, which this monster has not raked up as if from the infernal regions. And so as the months go by, he basically, he swings around

and he decides that Servetus should be executed, but it should be done with a sword. So it should be done as mercifully as possible but that he should be executed meanwhile the city authorities have been consulting all the various other cities so zurich and so on yeah and they all basically agree that servitors should be should be executed calvin says look don't burn him because that is too reminiscent of what the Inquisition do. But the city authorities decide that they will burn him. And they do this, I think, primarily to embarrass Calvin. Servetus becomes a pawn in the arguments and the power play between

Calvin and his enemies in the city magistracy. And so the news is brought to Servetus that he's going to be burned. And Calvin describes Servetus's reaction. At first, he was stunned and then sighed so as to be heard throughout the whole room. Then he moaned like a madman and had no more composure than a demoniac. At length, his cries so increased that he continually beat his breast and bellowed in Spanish, mercy, mercy. Oh, so after all the martyrdom talk, Servetus, not unreasonably, when he's told the sentence, thinks, oh God, this isn't for me after all. No, he sticks to his principles. Oh, he does. Yeah, so he asks to see Calvin just before he's due to be burned.

Calvin goes to see him. Calvin tries to persuade him to recant, which would, of course, have preserved him from death. Servetus refuses. As Servetus is being led to the place of execution, one of Calvin's closest friends and followers goes with him, again, trying to persuade him to recant. But of course, Servetus doesn't. And so he is burned. And this, of course, is a terrible and enduring blow to Calvin's reputation. And so Servetus's friends, his his fellow scholars the ones we were talking about they condemn him as as a new pope as a herod as a Pontius Pilate and in 1554 which is the year after Servetus's death a book appears which is called concerning heretics and whether they to

be persecuted and these are a collection of texts from the writings of the kind of reformers we've been talking about the more scholarly Erastian reformers, in which they very explicitly oppose the death penalty of heretics. They say, this is not to be done. It's too papist. And the preface to this book is written by a particular friend of Servetus's, a man called Sebastian Castelio, who is also a great opponent of Calvin. And at the core of his argument is one that will reverberate into the early modern period and into the Enlightenment. And he says that the reason that Protestants and indeed Christians should not persecute and execute heretics is that basically that is what happened to Christ. And this, of course, is an argument that Voltaire will pick up. And it's an argument that free

thinkers who are opposed to Christianity will pick up. They will say, you know, we're not against Christ, but we're against the framework of religion. And you can see here- The career of Philip Pullman. Well, you can see the way in which the Reformation is the womb, both of the distinctive quality of religiosity, which will mark American culture, but also that strain of a free thinking emphasis on tolerance, the ambivalences, the paradoxes, which will mark the history of modern Europe and modern America. That's why I think Calvin's Geneva is so fascinating. I was about to say, it's a tension not just in the reaction to the execution of Michael Servetus, but it's also a tension that's implicit in the structure of Calvin's Geneva, isn't it? Order and liberty, as you said. It is. And the influence of Calvin's Geneva on the Dutch Republic, on England, on Scotland, on the English colonies in America, it is impossible to emphasize how huge the influence is. Right.

And that's why I mean this incident is absolutely fascinating. I think for the light that it sheds on the way that our culture manifests itself right at the moment. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I think that we attempted to side with Servetus, but Calvin is really wrestling with issues that we are still wrestling with at the moment. Right. You know, we believe in freedom of speech don't we in debate and all these things we don't believe in total freedom as long as you don't say the wrong thing and then we don't believe in it um and that wrong thing might be racist it might be xenophobic it might be exactly whatever and the question of of you know how how total should the limits of free speech be what limits

should be set on them are obviously incredibly live issues. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. So just for people who don't know, what happened to Calvin and Calvin's Geneva in very, very simplistic terms? So Calvin stayed in Geneva. He's still the boss, basically. Yeah, he dies. Yeah, he's the boss. And Geneva retains its very, very Protestant character. I mean, right the way up to the present day, there's a kind of great series of statues of the reformers from the age of Calvin and so on, Reformation statues. Calvin is, yeah, I mean, he maintains his hold on Geneva and on the imaginings of Protestant Europe. But isn't it weird though, Tom? I mean, Switzerland is one of those places that you just think the sense of a sort of an abyss between history and present is so vast.

I mean, history is kind of exciting book burnings and indeed people burnings. And present is banks and people enjoying apres-ski. The contrast could not be greater. Calvin presumably would be pretty gutted if he went to Switzerland now. But there is a kind of, there's a sobriety about Swiss culture. Yes, I suppose so. I mean, it's not like it's famed for its wild hedonism.

No, no, you're right. So I think it does preserve that kind of slight Calvinist character. Yeah. And if some Swiss bank would like to sponsor us to do a tour of Geneva, we might be able to bring ourselves to do that. Do you think, Tom? Yeah, I think so. That's such a fascinating story, Tom, because it's both completely, like so many great stories,

it's both completely of its time and only comprehensible within the context of its time. But it also anticipates so many of the issues in contemporary culture. Yeah, it does. And I think that, I mean, we taught right at the beginning of this World Cup extravaganza when we were doing our episodes on the actual World Cup itself. Yeah. And I said at the start of the first episode that there are two areas of historical inquiry that lots of people who, you know, may be fascinated by history, but are proud to say they don't care about one of them being sport, but the other one is religion. Yes. And there's kind of feeling that, oh, we don't want to touch theology because it's complex and boring.

But it really isn't. And it's so influential. Yeah. And we remain absolutely stamped by these theological arguments. And I hope that if you're absolutely gagging for more Calvinist theology, we will be revisiting the topic when we come to the Netherlands. Oh, yes. And we look at the ideology of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century. And also, Tom, you are itching.

I mean, you are itching to do something about the Reformation, aren't you? Yeah, I am. Since the beginning of this podcast, you every now and again, you'll say sort of this little voice goes up and says, the Reformation and the producers frown grimly and shake their heads. But I think you'll be able to win them over one day. I think you might win them over Tom within the next 12 months. And that really is something.

Who knows? Well, that would be something to look forward to. Very good. Okay. Thank you, Tom. That was,

as they say, an absolute tour de force. Thank you. And on that bombshell, goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes,

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