Sebastian Castellio 1515 – 1563

Sebastian Castellio was a French Reformed theologian and one of the earliest sustained defenders of religious toleration. After collaboration with Calvin in Geneva and Strasbourg, he broke with the Genevan Reformation over the execution of Michael Servetus in 1553 and produced Should Heretics Be Persecuted? and Concerning Heretics: Whether They Are to Be Persecuted, anthologies of patristic and Reformation argument against the use of the sword in matters of conscience. He spent his later years in poverty as professor of Greek at Basel and is now widely regarded as one of the founders of the modern doctrine of freedom of conscience.