“Now, you want to talk about the Roman Catholic persecution of the Jews during the same time frame?”
How does that have any possible bearing on the deeds of the supposed “elect” of God?
The laws of Geneva in the 16th Century, were pretty much the same as in most European cities, based on old Roman law which made heresy a executable offense. Nothing new or innovative in John Calvin’s approach to that...
The same kinds of old Roman Catholic medieval laws being relied up on to kill hundreds (and in 1572 TENS OF THOUSANDS) of Protestant “heretics” in France, and other parts of Europe—by Roman Catholic authorities—were used to execute one Micheal Servetus—who had been on the run for years from the Roman Catholic Inquisition—having just escaped captivity during an Roman Catholic trial in France.
There was no speculation—definite heretics (and Servetus strongly and arrogantly denied the Trinity—not some minor point of Calvinism, or any form of Christianity) were routinely burned at the stake in the 1500s—and Calvin was a man of his day—a day when NO ONE was religiously tolerant.
Upon the trial of Servetus—by the democratically elected City Council, by the way, NOT the non-Citizen John Calvin, letters were sent out to all the neighboring Protestant cities and centers about their opinion on executing a heretic—and ALL of THEM (including the Lutherans) favored it.
Was Calvin strict? Yes he was, and so were the old (medieval, Roman Catholic-written) laws which backed the City Council up—who directly ruled Geneva (Calvin did not—and was never even a full Citizen) who followed Calvin’s advice.
It is amazing to me that Roman Catholic apologists-for-the-Inquistion....would be so self-righteously hard on a man—of the first generation of Protestants—who followed their Church’s lead in lacking religious tolerance.
If you want the real story, and a picture into the world of 16th Century Reformation-era Europe, try renowned scholar Roland Bainton’s book, “Micheal Servetus” which is the source of my knowledge about him.