Pity Rome's literal blood lust paralled the verbal tenor of the times.
Protestants believed then and now in the "sword of the Spirit."
Rome, not so much.
Honour, glory, and riches will be the reward of your pains. Above all do not fail to rid the country of all those zealous scoundrels that stir up the people to make head against us. Such monsters should be smothered, as I have done here by Michel Servetus the Spaniard.or this one?
--John Calvin (Letter to the Marquis du Poet, Grand Chamberlain of the Queen of Navarre, 30 September 1561) )
Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority; it is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for his Church. . . . Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that I would like to kill again the man that I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.And to that you just say "Yes, the rhetoric was pretty ferocious 500 years ago"....
-- John Calvin (Defense of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, written in 1554; in Philip Schaff, History of the Reformation, [New York, 1892], vol. 2, p. 791; cited in Stanford Rives, Did Calvin Murder Servetus?, Infinity, 2008, pp. 348-349)