SERVETO, MICHELE (MIGUEL SERVET). – Antitrinitarian heretic, born probably on 29 April 1511 at Villanueva de Sigena, in Aragon, died at Geneva on 27 October 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 warm welcome from Oecolampadius and Capito. In 1531 he published at Hagenau the De Trinitatis erroribus, in which he attacked the dogma. Sought by the authorities, he concealed himself under the name of «Villanovanus» and practised medicine in Paris; he then went to Lyon as a proofreader in the printing house of the Trechsel brothers, with whom he published a Geography of Ptolemy in 1535.
It is commonly held that already at that time he had discovered and made known, long before Harvey, whose work dates from 1628, the circulation of the blood, or at least the pulmonary circulation. In 1540 S. moved, as a physician, to Vienne in Dauphiné, protected by Archbishop Paulmier. An outwardly irreproachable Catholic, he secretly composed his principal work, published 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, telling Farel that if S. went to Geneva, he would «not come out of it safe and sound». Six years later, when the work appeared, a certain G. de Trie, from Lyon, a refugee in Geneva, probably acting in agreement with Calvin, denounced him to the Catholics of Lyon, who brought the matter before the Inquisition. Calvin asserted (Opera, ed. in Corpus Reformatorum, XXXVI, Braunschweig 1863 ff., p. 479) that it was a stupid slander to accuse him of having denounced S. to the Inquisition. Contemporary historians, however, held that the denunciation made by Calvin’s friend would not have been possible without Calvin’s authorization.
S., having been arrested, succeeded in escaping on 7 April 1553. The trial continued at Vienne, and on 7 June S. was condemned to death in effigy. To travel to Italy, S. took the route through Geneva, where he was recognized, arrested on 13 August, and subjected to trial. Thirty-eight articles of accusation against him were presented to the Geneva tribunal. A refugee in Calvin’s service, Nicola de la Fontaine, constituted himself accuser, declaring himself ready to undergo S.’s punishment if the latter’s guilt were not demonstrated. S. received the support of Calvin’s political opponents, above all Filiberto Berthelier; thus, more than a theological question, the matter had by then become a question of Calvin’s position in Geneva. Noting the seriousness of the affair, on 17 August Calvin personally appeared to conduct the prosecution, removing Nicola de la Fontaine. On the 21st, the Little Council decided to request the opinions of Berne, Basel, Zurich, and Schaffhausen; according to S.’s friends, this offered a strong possibility of saving him from a death sentence. On 31 August the Little Council replied with a courteous refusal to the tribunal of the Inquisition at Vienne, which was demanding S.’s extradition. On 1 September a theological debate took place between Calvin and S., the outcome of which is unknown. S. asked for a written debate, and this was granted; Calvin’s attack was signed by all the pastors of Geneva, while S. replied violently (cf. Opera Calvini, ibid., pp. 501-553). Meanwhile, a heated dispute broke out between Calvin and Berthelier concerning the power of excommunication claimed by Calvin. Calvin’s position prevailed, worsening S.’s situation; on 18 October the replies arrived from the pastors and magistrates of the cantons consulted. All the letters, especially that from Berne, declared that such a «plague» had to be «removed» from the churches, and therefore on 26 October S. was condemned to be burned alive. He, who had hoped until the end, displayed courage in the face of death; his final word was a prayer: «Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me». In 1903 a monument was erected at the site of the burning, as an act of reparation. It has been observed (W. Walker, J. Calvin, Paris 1909, p. 367, n. 3) that the entire debate is summed up in S.’s final cry: «Jesus, Son of the eternal God», instead of «eternal Son of God»; the difference is essential. S. claimed to reform Christianity; in his view the Trinity was a «kind of Cerberus with three heads». Proceeding from a pantheistic conception, which he believed to be founded on Scripture, he maintained that the Eternal Father had manifested himself in Christ’s flesh, and that Christ had indeed become the Son of God, but only through birth; consequently, he rejected the Trinitarian doctrine of the Council of Nicaea and the Christological doctrine of Chalcedon, infant baptism, and predestination as understood by Calvin; instead, he admitted the merit of good works, believed in the imminent end of the world and in the millennial reign of Christ, for whose preparation he believed himself sent. S.’s antitrinitarianism was not rationalistic, like that of Socinus, but mystical.