Michael Servetus

Michael Servetus
Portrait of Michael Servetus by Christoffel van Sichem, burin engraving. Inscription: Michael Servetus Hispanus de Aragonia. National Library of Spain.
Born	c. September 29, 1509 Villanueva de Sigena
Died	October 27, 1553 (aged 44) Geneva
Parent(s)	Antón Serveto and Catalina Conesa

Michael Servetus (in Spanish Miguel Servet; also called Miguel de Villanueva or Michel de Villeneuve), whose real name was Miguel Serveto y Conesa, alias "Revés" (Villanueva de Sigena, Aragon, c. September 29, 1509 or 1511 – Geneva, October 27, 1553), was a Spanish theologian and scientist.

His interests spanned many sciences: astronomy, meteorology, geography, jurisprudence, theology, physics, the study of the Bible, mathematics, anatomy and medicine. Much of his later fame and recognition is due to his work on the pulmonary circulation described in his work Christianismi Restitutio.

He took part in the Protestant Reformation and developed a Christology contrary to the Trinity, which held that baptism should be practiced consciously in adulthood. Repudiated by Catholics and Protestants alike, he was arrested in Geneva and condemned to die at the stake at the instigation of John Calvin, with whom he had a long theological controversy, and who had warned that if Servetus set foot in Geneva, "he would not leave alive."

Birth and formative years

Façade of the house where Michael Servetus was born in Villanueva de Sigena, seat of the Instituto de Estudios Sijenenses "Miguel Servet"/Michael Servetus Institute and research center on his life and work.

Today most biographies of Servetus place his birthplace in Villanueva de Sigena, although some researchers maintain that he was born in Tudela, Navarre. This view is based on documents in which Servetus attributed to himself a Navarrese origin while he was living in France under the false identity of Michel de Villeneuve. However, according to the supporters of the Aragonese hypothesis, this fictitious name would allude to his true hometown, Villanueva de Sigena, where the family house is preserved, today converted into an interpretation center.

He was the son of Antón Serveto, a nobleman of the rank of infanzón and notary of the Monastery of Sigena, and of Catalina Conesa, who on her mother's side descended from the converso family of the Zaporta. He had two younger brothers: Pedro, who continued his father's notary office, and Juan, who was ordained a priest.

The Serveto family used a nickname, "Revés," an apparent anagram of their surname, whose origin may be that a member of a Villanueva family, probably old and distinguished, with the surname Revés married into the Serveto family, so that both names were preserved in later generations.

A young man with outstanding gifts for letters and a great knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Miguel left his hometown to further his studies, perhaps at the Castle of Montearagón. He was accepted as a pupil by Friar Juan de Quintana, who would become confessor to Charles I. After a stay to study Law in Toulouse (France), where he first came into contact with circles close to the Reformation, he traveled with Quintana through Italy and Germany as part of the imperial retinue and witnessed the coronation of Charles V as emperor in Bologna (1530).

First theological works

He later left his mentor and began a journey through several Central European cities sympathetic to the nascent Protestantism. He established an increasingly difficult and contentious relationship with some reformist leaders, such as Oecolampadius of Basel, and later went to Strasbourg, where he associated with Bucer, and to Hagenau (an Alsatian city then belonging to the Holy Roman Empire).

In 1531 he published De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity), which caused a great scandal among the German reformers. Nor was it well received in his homeland, since Servetus had the audacity to send a copy to the Bishop of Zaragoza, who promptly requested the intervention of the Inquisition. The following year he published Dialogorum de Trinitate (Dialogues on the Trinity), accompanied by a supplementary work, De Iustitia Regni Christi (On the Justice of the Kingdom of God). Another short work attributed to Servetus, though of imprecise date, is Declarationis Iesu Christi Filii Dei (Declaration of Jesus Christ Son of God), also known as the "Stuttgart Manuscript."

On the Errors of the Trinity: structure and content

Edition of the Errors of the Trinity.

In this work, divided into seven books or chapters, Servetus argues that the dogma of the Trinity lacks a biblical basis, since it is not found in the Scriptures, but is rather the later fruit of the speculations of "philosophers."

Relying on abundant quotations from the Bible, Servetus concludes that Jesus is man insofar as he was born of a woman, however miraculous his birth may have been. At the same time, Jesus is also the son of God, insofar as his birth is the fruit of the fecundation of the Virgin Mary by the divine Logos.

Servetus thus denies that the Son is eternal, since he was begotten as such in the incarnation, although he is divine by the grace of God, his Father. Nor, therefore, is he a Person of the Trinity, whose existence he vehemently denies, describing it as "three phantoms" or "a three-headed Cerberus dog."

Likewise, he describes those who believe in such a doctrine as "atheists, that is, without God" and "tritheists." In turn, the Holy Spirit would not be a third Trinitarian Person, but the force or manifestation of the spirit of God as it acts in the world through men.

Dialogues on the Trinity and On Justice: structure and content

A work of lesser size and ambition than Errores..., the Dialogues is structured in two books as a fictitious conversation between two characters: Miguel (the author himself) and one Petrucho. According to Servetus, he wrote it to dispel the doubts and concerns raised by his previous work, which in his view were due "to my own lack of skill and to the negligence of the typographer." Unlike what was stated in Errores..., Servetus says that Jesus is divine not only by grace but also by nature, although he clarifies that this is only insofar as he partakes of the divine substance of his Father.

In turn, in the short work On the Justice of the Kingdom of God included at the end, he explains, among other things, the complementarity between faith and charity, for although the justification of the believer is by faith alone, charity and good works are commendable and please God, an aspect in which he clearly differs from Luther and other Protestant reformers. At the end is one of the texts for which Servetus is considered a champion of tolerance and freedom of conscience, since he states that

... I neither agree nor disagree in every point with either these or those. It seems to me that all have part of the truth and part of error, and that each one sees the error of the other, but no one his own... It would be easy to decide all questions if all were allowed to speak peacefully in the church, contending in the desire to prophesy.

— Servetus, De la Justicia..., in Obras completas, Vol. II-1, p. 481).

Time in hiding

Michael Servetus went to Lyon. He had been briefly in Paris, where a planned meeting with Calvin, which in the end did not take place, became the beginning of an epistolary relationship between the two. Servetus arrived in Lyon with a new identity, Michel de Villeneuve, supposedly a native of Tudela in Navarre, in order to avoid persecution by the Inquisition. He was employed at a printing house, first as a proofreader.

Claudii Ptolemaei Geographicae enarrationis

In 1535 he was commissioned to publish and annotate the Geography of Claudius Ptolemy, which he carried out, giving proof of his great erudition.

In Lyon Servetus lived one of the most productive and stable periods of his life. Under the patronage of the influential physician and humanist Symphorien Champier, he found the right environment to deepen his medical studies, which finally led him to move to Paris to formalize his medical training.

During this Lyon period, he showed his early independence of judgment by publishing in 1536 a medical treatise against the German Leonhart Fuchs, in which he not only criticized the anti-Arabist positions of several colleagues but also took the opportunity to refute the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith without works, thus showing the inseparable connection between his medical and religious ideas. In this same work he argued that the scammony of the Greeks was identical to that of the Arabs, and denied that syphilis corresponded to the affliction called lichen or impetigo in antiquity. Shortly afterward he would publish an innovative treatise on the use of syrups (Paris, 1537), in which he systematized the administration of medicines.

In 1537 he formally enrolled at the University of Paris to study medicine, where he had as classmates and rivals figures such as Andreas Vesalius and Jean Fernel. His talent allowed him to combine his studies with teaching mathematics and medicine at the same institution.

However, his nonconformist spirit soon caused him difficulties: when giving a course on astrology, he openly defended judicial astrology (the influence of the stars on future events and human destiny), a position that contradicted the dominant academic thought. This controversy, together with his short work on syrups that questioned established medical practices, set him against the conservative Parisian university community, foreshadowing the conflicts that would mark his career.

He left Paris again and lived in various towns in France, until in Lyon he met the Archbishop of Vienne in the Dauphiné, Pedro Palmier, whom he had previously known in Paris. In this way he entered his service as personal physician in 1541.

The Restoration of Christianity

Title page of his work Christianismi restitutio (1553).

In Vienne in Isère, Servetus devoted himself to continuing his studies and publications, and secretly prepared what would be his masterpiece.

He continued his correspondence with Calvin, to whom he sent a first version of his book, Christianismi Restitutio (Restoration of Christianity), fundamentally theological in character, awaiting his comments (1546). In it he wanted to demonstrate, on the basis of the Scriptures, that Christ was only human. The concept of Christianity set out there is close to pantheism. Christ is in all things. The world is filled with him. He was also opposed to the baptism of children, since he believed that baptism should be a mature and conscious act of Christian discipleship, which brought him close to Anabaptist positions. On the appropriate age to receive baptism, he suggested following the example of Jesus: "Jesus Christ was himself baptized at about thirty years of age."

Curiously, the book would pass into posterity for containing in its "Book V" the first exposition in the Christian West of the function of the pulmonary or lesser circulation: according to Servetus, the blood is transmitted by the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein through a prolonged passage through the lungs, in the course of which it turns red and is freed "from the sooty vapors by the act of expiration." Servetus held that the soul was an emanation of the Divinity and that its seat was the blood. Thanks to the blood, the soul could be spread throughout the entire body, so that man could thus assume his divine condition. Therefore, the discoveries relating to the circulation of the blood had a more religious than scientific impulse. Hence the description of the pulmonary circulation is found within a work of theology and not one of physiology. For Servetus there was no difference between the two fields, since everything obeyed one and the same great divine design.

In response, Calvin urged him to read his work Institutio religionis Christianae (Institutes of the Christian Religion), published in 1536. Servetus not only read the book but annotated it profusely in the margins with very critical comments, returning it corrected to the reformer. This audacity deeply angered Calvin, who did not expect to be refuted in those terms; he took offense and cut off all correspondence with Servetus. So great was his anger that he later wrote to Guillaume Farel that he would put an end to his life if he came to Geneva, foreshadowing the tragic fate of Servetus in Geneva seven years later.

Finally, Christianismi Restitutio was published anonymously at the beginning of 1553, again with great scandal. A Calvinist from Geneva wrote to a Catholic friend revealing to him that the author of the book was Michael Servetus himself, hidden under the false identity of Villeneuve. It is suspected that Calvin himself may have been behind this denunciation, since he had had access to the text thanks to the private letters of Servetus himself. The French Inquisition of Lyon received part of the correspondence exchanged between them, after which Servetus was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in Vienne.

On April 7, however, he managed to escape, and on June 17 he was sentenced to death in absentia and burned in effigy.

Trial in Geneva and death

Monument to Servetus in the Town Hall square of Annemasse (France), a town located 4 km from Geneva, on the other side of the French-Swiss border. The inscription under the sculpture reads: to Michael Servetus, apostle of free beliefs, born in Villanueva de Aragón on September 20, 1511, burned symbolically in Vienne by the Catholic Inquisition on June 17, 1553 and burned alive in Geneva on October 27, 1553 at the instigation of Calvin

Servetus, probably on his way to Italy, stopped in Geneva, where he was recognized in the church where Calvin himself preached, and was arrested on August 13.

Servetus suffered great hardships during his captivity. In his letter to the Council of Geneva of September 15, 1553, Servetus describes the harsh conditions of his imprisonment, including cold, unsanitary conditions and mistreatment, something that was also amply documented in the records of the trial, which detail the physical and psychological privations he faced.

During the trial, he held various debates of a theological nature. On September 22, Servetus wrote a final plea in which he blamed Calvin (who acted as the principal theological accuser in the trial, and presented the private correspondence between the two as evidence) for making false accusations of heresy against him, and requested that he too be arrested and interrogated as he had been, concluding:

"I will be content to die if I do not convict him of this as well as of other things of which I accuse him below. I ask you for Justice, Sirs, Justice, Justice, Justice."

Once the proceedings were over, the Reformed churches of the cantons of Zürich, Schaffhausen, Bern and Basel were consulted, after which the accused was condemned to die at the stake on October 27, 1553.

In a letter dated the day before the sentence, Calvin remarked to Farel that Servetus was going to be condemned without discussion and led to execution. This letter, together with an earlier statement by Calvin in 1546, in which he affirmed that, if Servetus came to Geneva, "he would not leave it alive if his authorship prevailed" (Nam si venerit, modo valeat mea auctoritas vivum exire numquam patiar ...),, shows that the sentence had already been decided in advance by Calvin himself, although officially the final decision was ratified by the Petit Conseil.

The sentence handed down against Michael Servetus by the Council (Petit Conseil) of Geneva reads as follows:

Against Michael Servetus, of the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain: Because in your book you call the Trinity a demon and a three-headed monster; because you contradict the Scriptures by saying that Jesus Christ is son of David; and for saying that the baptism of little infants is a work of sorcery, and for many other points and articles and execrable blasphemies with which the said book is thus directed against God and the sacred evangelical doctrine, to seduce and deceive the poor ignorant.
You, Michael Servetus, we condemn to be bound and taken to the place of Champel, and there to be tied to a stake and burned alive with your book, both the one written by your hand and the printed one, until your body is reduced to ashes; and thus you shall end your days to give an example to others who might wish to commit such a deed.

Consequences of the execution of Servetus

Regardless of the importance of his physiological discoveries or of his work as a religious polemicist, the events that led to the trial and death of Michael Servetus have been considered the starting point of the discussion that led to the recognition of freedom of thought and of the expression of ideas. Likewise, the Unitarian churches, which arose from the anti-Trinitarian movements of the 16th century and later, consider Servetus their pioneer and first martyr.

The execution of Servetus scandalized many thinkers throughout Europe, mainly in the Protestant sphere, who were opposed to people being killed for reasons of faith. The Anabaptist David Joris wrote, for example, that "the true church is not the one that persecutes, but the one that is persecuted"; he died in 1556, and three years later his Anabaptist theology and his secret defense of Servetus (he used a pseudonym) were discovered, for which reason his body was exhumed and burned in Basel by the Protestants. Particularly notable is the defense of Servetus made by Sebastian Castellio: "To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, it is to kill a man. When the Genevans executed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine, they killed a man." On the other hand, from the mid-19th century and the early 20th century, Servetus began to be vindicated by supporters of freethought, who saw in his execution proof of the dangers entailed by religious fanaticism, although often as the result of a superficial analysis and without taking into account the work and theological concepts of Servetus himself.

Marian Hillar, a Polish-American scholar of Servetus's work, made the following assessment of the lasting impact of the execution of the Spanish scholar: "It was the turning point in the dominant ideology and mentality since the 4th century. [...] Historically speaking, with the death of Servetus, freedom of conscience eventually became a civil right in modern society."

Statue of Michael Servetus bound hand and foot to the stake. Place Aspirant Dunand, Paris.

Tributes to the memory of Michael Servetus

Michael Servetus in the Paraninfo of the University of Zaragoza

Statue dedicated to Michael Servetus at the Miguel Servet Hospital in Zaragoza. Made by the Swiss sculptor Clotilde Roth in 1908.

Monument to Michael Servetus on Calle Asalto in Zaragoza, Spain.

Spain:

• In his hometown of Villanueva de Sigena in Aragon there is a statue representing him, located next to the town church, and a study center dedicated to Michael Servetus.
• The University Hospital of Zaragoza bears the name of Miguel Servet.
• In the city of Valencia an outpatient clinic also bears his name.
• The municipal park of Huesca is called Miguel Servet.
• In numerous Spanish cities there are streets dedicated to Miguel Servet.

Switzerland:

• In Geneva there is a street bearing his name, Michel Servet, and a commemorative monument near the place where he was burned, erected in 1903. In addition, on October 3, 2011, a statue with the likeness of Servetus, a copy of the statue in Annemasse, was inaugurated next to the previously existing monolith.

France:

• In Vienne, in the department of Isère, where Servetus lived after 1540, there is a public primary school that bears his name, where there is also a monument in his honor, made by the sculptor Joseph Bernard.

• In Paris, in the Place de l'Aspirant Dunand, in the 14th arrondissement, there is a marble statue representing him chained to the stake. This statue was erected in 1908 and is the work of the sculptor Jean Baffier.

• In Annemasse there is a statue of Michel Servet in the town hall square, a replica of an earlier work destroyed by the German army in the Second World War, and originally made by the sculptor Clothilde Roth.

• In Lille there is a vocational lycée that bears his name.

Venezuela:

• In the city of Maracaibo there is a school bearing his name.

United States:

• A Unitarian Universalist church includes Servetus in its name: the Michael Servetus Unitarian Society, in a town on the outskirts of Minneapolis (Minnesota).

Works related to Michael Servetus

• Theater: La sangre y la ceniza (Blood and Ash, 1967), by Alfonso Sastre.

• Film: Passion et mort de Michel Servet (Passion and Death of Michael Servetus). Directed by Claude Goretta, 1975. With Michel Cassagne in the role of Michael Servetus.

• Television: Miguel Servet, la sangre y la ceniza (Miguel Servet, Blood and Ash). Series for Televisión Española directed in 1988 by José María Forqué with Juanjo Puigcorbé in the role of Michael Servetus.

• Opera: Le procès de Michel Servet (The Trial of Michael Servetus). Composed by the Australian singer and composer Shauna Beesley and the Swiss librettist Jean-Claude Humbert, it premiered in Geneva on October 28, 2011.

• Historical essay: Castellio against Calvin (1936), a philosophical reflection by Stefan Zweig.

• Novel: Reconstrucción by Antonio Orejudo.
• Novel: El médico hereje (2013), José Luis Corral.

Notes and references

Bibliography

• Alcalá, A. (March 2003). "Los dos grandes legados de Servet: el radicalismo como método intelectual y el derecho a la libertad de conciencia". Turia (in español) (63–64).
• Barón, José (1989). Miguel Servet: Su vida y su obra (in español). Madrid: Austral.
• Gómez Rabal, Ana (March 2003). "Vida de Miguel Servet". Turia (in español) (63–64). Teruel.
• Gracia, Diego (March 2003). "Servet, médico". Turia (in español) (63–64). Teruel.
• Martínez Laínez, F. (2003). Miguel Servet: Historia de un fugitivo (in español). Madrid: Temas de Hoy.
• Palacios Sánchez, Juan Manuel (1979). "A propósito del lugar de nacimiento y origen familiar de Miguel Servet" (PDF). Argensola (in español) (87). Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses. ISSN 0518-4088.
• Servet, Miguel (2011). Escritos médicos: Apología contra Leonhart Fuchs. Doctrina completa de los jarabes. Introducción, edición crítica, traducción y notas a cargo de Mª Teresa Santamaría Hernández. Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.

External links

• Instituto de Estudios Sijenenses Miguel Servet
• Michael Servetus Institute
• Carlos Gilly (1985). Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck (PDF) (in Deutsch). Helbing & Liechtenhahn, Basel & Frankfurt. ISBN 3-7190-0909-2. Archived from the original (PDF; 64.1 MiB) on June 14, 2013. (pp. 277–326 on Servetus in Basel and Alfonso Lincurio [Matteo Gribaldi] as author of the pseudepigraphic Declaratio of Servetus)
• Carlos Gilly (2005). Erasmo, la reforma radical y los heterodoxos radicales españoles (PDF) (in español). Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana. ISBN 84-8021-489-9. Archived from the original (PDF; 34.1 MiB) on June 14, 2013. (pp. 225–228 and 312–333 on the fundamental influence of Erasmus on the young Servetus and the authorship of the pseudo-Servetian Declaratio, a work by Matteo Gribaldi later than the murder of Servetus)

Online editions

• Miguel Servet, Christianismi restitutio..., Nurembergae apud Rau, 1790. It is a page-for-page and line-for-line reprint of the edition by Balthazar Arnoullet and Guillaume Guéroult, Vienne in the Dauphiné (Vienne, Isère, Rhône-Alpes), 1553, the date that appears on the title page.
• Servet, Miguel (1981). Ángel Alcalá (ed.). Treinta cartas a Calvino; Sesenta signos del Anticristo; Apología de Melanchton (in español). Editorial Castalia. ISBN 9788470393761.
• Christianismi restitutio: Totius ecclesiae apostolicae est ad sua limina vocatio..., 1790, digitized in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain