Servetus, Michael

ser-vee'tus, Michael (1511-1553), a Spanish physician and controversialist. He was born at Tudela, Spain. His father was a well-to-do notary. Servetus, a Latinized form of the family name, Serveto, studied law at Saragossa and Toulouse, but he appears to have taken more interest in theology. At Toulouse he saw a copy of the Bible for the first time. It was his fortune to travel in the train of a great man. He visited Bologna and Augsburg in the party of Juan de Quintana, the confessor of Charles V. As early as 1531, when only twenty, Servetus published a Latin pamphlet, Errors of the Trinity, in which he attacked the trinitarian doctrine. The pamphlet attracted attention, and a year later a revised second edition was published. Melanchthon wrote, "I read Servetus diligently."

We next hear of Servetus, 1535, editing scientific works for a printing firm in Lyons, France. A physician, whose friendship he won here, inspired Servetus to set off for Paris, 1536, to study medicine. He made a reputation for skill in dissection and was ranked "second to scarce any in knowledge of Galen." Calvin, in Paris, on a hasty errand, took occasion to set so bright a young man right on the question of the Trinity and appears to have lost his temper. Servetus wrote a popular treatise on sirups, lectured on geometry, and was defendant in a suit brought against him by the medical faculty on the ground of having delivered objectionable lectures on astrology. Servetus appears to have had a penetrating, inquiring, restless, brilliant mind. The rapidity with which he shifted, 1538, studying theology and Hebrew at Louvain, 1539, the practice of medicine at Avignon, 1540, a student of medicine again at Montpelier, and 1541 assisting the publishers again in Lyons, indicates as much. In the year last named, he entered the service of the distinguished archbishop of Vienne, who had heard him lecture in Paris. Vienne and its cathedral are situated on the banks of the Rhone, fourteen miles south of Lyons, about 100 miles from Geneva, where Calvin lived. Servetus remained in the household of the archbishop as confidential physician for twelve years.

Outwardly, Servetus had been a Catholic all these years, and there is no reason to believe that he withdrew from the church; but, although he appears to have been a sincere friend, he gave the good archbishop no little trouble by heretical utterances. He studied and wrote in private and opened correspondence with Calvin, and in 1546 he sent Calvin the manuscript of a revised edition of his tracts which he had in mind to publish. He proposed, also, that he visit Calvin. The latter replied in an inhospitable tone, and on the same day wrote a friend, "If Servetus shall come, I shall never suffer him, provided my influence prevail, to depart alive." It is needless to add that Servetus did not get his manuscript again. Although he knew he was getting on dangerous ground, he recast his pamphlets and, not being able to get the volume printed by a publisher at Basel, he had a thousand copies printed in secret under the very shadow of the cathedral of his staunch protector, the archbishop. The edition was completed January 3, 1553. The copies were sent privately to Lyons and to Frankfurt for sale the following Easter. Before that day, a letter arrived in Lyons from Geneva, revealing the secret of the forth-coming volume and its authorship. The inquisitor general was set on the track, the edition was seized, and Servetus was interrogated, arrested, and thrown into prison. The Geneva letter is believed to have been dictated, not by Calvin, but by a person having a grudge against the Lyons bookseller, but Calvin, now that the matter was up, furnished proof that Servetus was the author. April 7th, Servetus, due in all probability to be burned, escaped from prison through the connivance, it is believed, of the compassionate archbishop. After four months of wandering, Servetus was recognized one day in a Protestant congregation at Geneva. The Presbyterians, who hated a Unitarian even worse than they did Catholicism, arrested Servetus and spent two weeks in trying him for heresy. He was convicted of fifteen errors. Calvin counseled a moderate sentence and wanted Servetus beheaded, but the authorities burned both Servetus and his works at the stake. The volumes in question were hunted down and destroyed by Calvinist and Catholic. Only two copies are known. Curiously enough, in one passage Servetus describes the circulation of the blood. Had not the volumes been destroyed, the medical world would have had the true theory of circulation half a century before it was discovered independently by Harvey, the English physician. In 1903 Calvinists the world over subscribed toward the erection of an "expiatory" statue of Servetus at Geneva.