"It was in defence of Servetus' execution that Beza published his 1554 De Haereticis, the most important and influential sixteenth-century Protestant defence of hereticide... For Beza, as an "obstinate" heretic and blasphemer Servetus deserved to die with the most excruciating death that could be invented. In his Life and Death of Jean Calvin, Beza reflected on Servetus as "not a man, but rather, a horrible Monster, compounded of all the ancient and new heresies, and above all an execrable blasphemer against the Trinity" who had "by the just judgment of God and man" "ended by the punishment of fire". Calvin has, for Beza, done "the office of a faithful Pastor, putting the Magistrate in mind of his duty" that he might make sure that "such a pestilence should not infect his flock"."