Servetus, Michael (Miguel Servet)

SERVETUS, MICHAEL (MIGUEL SERVET). - Anti-Trinitarian heretic, b. probably on 29 April 1511 at Villanueva de Sigena, in Aragon, d. at Geneva on 27 Oct. 1553. He studied at Saragossa, then at Toulouse; received in 1530 at Bologna as secretary to the confessor of Charles V, he followed the emperor to Augsburg; from there he moved to Basel, then to Strasbourg, where he received a great welcome from Oecolampadius and from Capito. In 1531 he published at Hagenau the De Trinitatis erroribus, in which he attacked the dogma. Sought after, he hid under the name of "Villanovanus" and practiced medicine in Paris, then moved to Lyon as a corrector in the printing house of the brothers Trechsel, with whom he published a Geography of Ptolemy in 1535.

It is commonly held that from that time he had discovered and made known, well before Harvey, whose work dates to 1628, the circulation of the blood, or at least the pulmonary circulation. In 1540 S. moved, as a physician, to Vienne in the Dauphiné, protected by the archbishop Paulmier. Externally an irreproachable Catholic, he secretly composed his principal work, which appeared under the title Christianismi restitutio (Vienne 1553) as a reply to Calvin's Institutio religionis christianae.

As early as 1547 he had sent Calvin a draft of his book; Calvin, irritated, replied harshly, informing Farel that if S. were to go to Geneva, he would not "come out of it safe and sound." Six years later, when the work appeared, a certain G. de Trie, of Lyon, a refugee at Geneva, probably in agreement with Calvin, denounced him to the Catholics of Lyon, who interested the Inquisition in the matter. Calvin asserted (Opera, ed. in Corpus Reformatorum, XXXVI, Braunschweig 1863 ff., p. 479) that it was a stupid calumny to accuse him of being the author of the denunciation of S. to the Inquisition. Contemporary historians held, instead, that the denunciation made by Calvin's friend would not have been possible without Calvin's authorization.

S., arrested, managed to escape on 7 April 1553. The trial continued at Vienne and on 7 June S. received the death sentence in effigy. S., in order to go to Italy, took the road to Geneva, where he was recognized, arrested on 13 Aug. and subjected to trial. Thirty-eight articles of accusation against him were presented to the court of Geneva. A refugee in Calvin's service, Nicolas de la Fontaine, constituted himself accuser, professing himself ready to suffer the penalty of S., if the latter's guilt were not proved. S. had the support of Calvin's political opponents, especially of Philibert Berthelier; with this it was by now a question not so much of a theological issue as of Calvin's own situation in Geneva. The latter, noting the gravity of the matter, on 17 Aug. presented himself in person to sustain the accusation, ousting Nicolas de la Fontaine. On the 21st, the Small Council decided to ask the opinion of Bern, Basel, Zurich, Schaffhausen: this, according to the friends of S., offered a great possibility of saving him from a death sentence. On 31 Aug. the Small Council replied with a courteous refusal to the tribunal of the Inquisition of Vienne, which was demanding the extradition of S. On 1 Sept. there was a theological discussion between Calvin and S., the result of which is not known. S. asked to argue in writing and it was granted to him; Calvin's attack was signed by all the pastors of Geneva; S. replied with violence (cf. Opera Calvini, ibid., pp. 501-553). Meanwhile a strong dispute broke out between Calvin and Berthelier, regarding the power of excommunication that Calvin claimed. Calvin's thesis prevailed, aggravating the position of S.; on 18 Oct. the replies of the pastors and magistrates of the consulted cantons arrived; all the letters, especially that of Bern, declared that "such a pestilence" must be removed from the churches, and therefore on 26 Oct. S. was condemned to be burned alive. He who had hoped until the end showed himself courageous in the face of death; his last word was a prayer: "Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have pity on me." In 1903 a monument was erected on the place of the pyre, in reparation. It has been possible to observe (W. Walker, J. Calvin, Paris 1909, p. 367, n. 3) that the whole debate is summed up in the last cry of S.: "Jesus, Son of the eternal God," instead of "eternal Son of God"; the difference is essential. S. claimed to reform Christianity; in his judgment the Trinity would be a "kind of Cerberus with three heads." Starting from a pantheist conception, which he believed to be founded in Scripture, he maintained that the Eternal Father manifested himself in the flesh of Christ, who had indeed become the Son of God, but only with his birth; therefore he rejected the Trinitarian doctrine of the Council of Nicaea and the Christological doctrine of Chalcedon, the Baptism of children and predestination, as understood by Calvin; he admitted instead the merit of good works, believed in the imminent end of the world and in the millennial reign of Christ, for the preparation of which he believed himself sent. The anti-Trinitarianism of S. was not rationalist, like that of Socinus, but mystical.

Leone Cristiani