CASTELLION, SÉBASTIEN. - Protestant theologian and anti-Calvinist polemicist, b. in 1515 at St-Martin-du-Fresne in Bugey, d., as poorly as he had lived, on 29 Dec. 1563 at Basel. C. met Calvin at Strasbourg, and by him was made regent in the college of the city of Geneva. In this post of his he fell into disfavor with the Genevan council because it was said that he had doubted the descent of Jesus into hell and had given irreverent judgments concerning the biblical book of the Song of Songs, so that he found himself refused the appointment, to which he aspired, of Protestant minister at Geneva. This refusal decided him to leave Geneva and betake himself to Basel, at whose University he, on account of the notoriety that had come to him from his translations of the Bible into Latin and then into French, obtained in 1552 the chair of Greek.
Of his biblical works there appeared first the dialogues: Dialogorum sacrorum libri quatuor (Lyons and Geneva 1540, '43 and '45). Then came the translations: Moses latinus ex hebraeo factus (Basel 1546), Psalterium reliquae sacrorum litterarum carmina et precationes (ibid. 1547) and the Biblia Veteris et Novi Testamenti (ibid. 1551), which was dedicated to King Edward VI of England, while La Bible translate avec annotations (ibid. 1555) was dedicated to Henry II, King of France.
These translations, as C. himself had occasion to say, caused him hatred and envy precisely on the part of those who ought to have repaid him with affection. Beza declared its style "unbearable." Almost down to our own days (1922), Buisson said "the translation of C. is Savoyard and not at all French," and Bayle, in the eighteenth century, censured "the affectation of C., who wished to use only terms of good Latinity." He employed, for example, the word "genius" instead of "angelus," "lotio" instead of "baptisma," "respublica" instead of "Ecclesia" and "collegium" instead of "synagoga."
In the second edition he yielded somewhat to the suggestions of friends. Unjust therefore is the judgment of Henri Estienne, who accused him of not having taken his task as translator seriously at all.
No less celebrated has C. made himself for his attack on the Inquisition established by Calvin at Geneva, by which the Spanish doctor Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for his anti-Trinitarian doctrines (27 Oct. 1553). In agreement with others who did not share this extremist act of Calvin and Beza, C. wrote his book De haereticiis, an sint persequendi, published in 1554 under the pseudonym of Martin Bellio: "To kill a man - he wrote - is not to protect a doctrine... Servetus had adduced arguments and writings: with arguments and writings he ought to have been refuted" (a. 77). The work is today untraceable. C. further showed his dissent from Calvin regarding the doctrine of predestination and election. Calvin, who had already seen himself condemned by C. for the intolerance used against Servetus, branded him as a swindler and troublemaker and wrote against him a libel: Calumniae nebulonis cuiusdam (1554); three years later Beza piled it on and, in the title of a similar libel of his, called him a cunning calumniator (sycephanta), but today the very Calvinists, who have repudiated the extremes of the theology of Calvin and Beza, justify the Savoyard humanist.
Bibliography6 works
Piero Chimnelli