As a center of book printing, a place where Erasmus worked, and through its role as a mediator in religious policy, Basel became a place of refuge for religious dissidents and representatives of the radical Reformation in the mid-16th century. They engaged in a polyphonic and multilingual discussion among themselves and with Basel citizens. When in 1553 the Spaniard Michael ervet
was burned at the stake for heresy in Calvin's Geneva, Basel became the center of protest.
The Savoyard humanist Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563), with his courageous writings that combined mystical piety with Enlightenment reasoning, gave this milieu a voice that was heard far and wide in Europe through the following centuries, wherever people fought for religious freedom, human rights and tolerance.
Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.
