Michael Servetus

Michael Servetus (born 1511?, Villanueva or Tudela, Spain—died October 27, 1553, Champel, Switzerland) was a Spanish physician and theologian whose unorthodox teachings led to his condemnation as a heretic by both Protestants and Roman Catholics and to his execution by Calvinists from Geneva.

While living in Toulouse, France, Servetus studied law and delved into the problem of the Trinity. In February 1530 he accompanied his patron, the Franciscan Juan de Quintana, to the coronation of Emperor Charles V at Bologna. Distressed by papal ostentation and by the emperor’s deference to the worldly pope, he left his patron and visited Lyon, Geneva, and Basel. At Basel and Strasbourg he met with Reformation leaders John Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer, and Kaspar Schwenckfeld.

Servetus published his new ideas on the Trinity in De Trinitatis erroribus libri vii (1531), attacking the orthodox teaching and attempting to form a view of his own, asserting that the Word is eternal, a mode of God’s self-expression, whereas the Spirit is God’s motion or power within the hearts of humans. The Son is the union of the eternal Word with the man Jesus. Although both Catholics and Protestants may have had difficulty following Servetus’s involved speculations, what he proposed was clearly odious to them. He therefore published a revised formulation, Dialogorum de Trinitate libri ii (1532).

Moving to Lyon under the name Villanovanus, Servetus edited scientific works and published a translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia. About 1534 a rendezvous was arranged with John Calvin in Paris to discuss theological questions, but Servetus failed to arrive.

Four years later he published a work on astrology, maintaining that the stars influence health; despite attacks by the medical faculty, he matriculated in medicine at Paris in 1538 and subsequently became physician to the archbishop at Vienne, France. Servetus remained outwardly a conforming Catholic while pursuing his private theological studies. He soon published at Lyon his most important work, Biblia sacra ex Santis Pagnini tra[ns]latione (1542), notable for its theory of prophecy.

Servetus forwarded the manuscript of an enlarged revision of his ideas, the Christianismi restitutio, to Calvin in 1546 and expressed a desire to meet him. After their first few letters, Calvin would have nothing more to do with him and kept the manuscript. He declared to his eloquent French preacher colleague Guillaume Farel that if Servetus ever came to Geneva, he would not allow him to leave alive.

A rewritten version of Servetus’s manuscript was secretly printed in 1,000 copies at Vienne in 1553. In discussing the relationship between the Spirit and regeneration in that book, Servetus almost incidentally made known his discovery of the pulmonary circulation of blood. In the book, Servetus argued that both God the Father and Christ his Son had been dishonoured by the Constantinian promulgation of the Nicene Creed, thus obscuring the redemptive role of Christ and bringing about the fall of the church. Servetus felt he could restore the church by separating it from the state and by using only those theological formulations that could be proved from Scripture and the pre-Constantinian fathers.

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When some of Servetus’s letters to Calvin fell into the hands of Guillaume de Trie, a former citizen of Lyon, he exposed Servetus to the inquisitor general at Lyon. Servetus and his printers were seized. During the trial, however, Servetus escaped, and the Catholic authorities had to be content with burning him in effigy. He quixotically appeared in Geneva and was recognized, arrested, and tried for heresy from August 14 to October 25, 1553. Calvin played a prominent part in the trial and pressed for execution, although by beheading rather than by fire. Despite his intense biblicism and his wholly Christocentric view of the universe, Servetus was found guilty of heresy, mainly on his views of the Trinity and baptism.

Servetus was burned alive at Champel on October 27. His execution produced a Protestant controversy on imposing the death penalty for heresy, drew severe criticism upon John Calvin, and influenced Laelius Socinus, a founder of modern Unitarian views.