A Spanish Youth
Michael Servetus was born in the Spanish town of Villanueva, some ninety kilometers north of Saragossa, into the family of a well-known, wealthy notary. He grew up when the writings of Erasmus had not yet been banned in Spain. The books of Jews and Muslims attracted him so much that he read the Koran and the commentaries of Jewish rabbis. Jewish criticism of Christianity convinced him that Christianity, with its prayers to the three persons of the Trinity, the Virgin and the saints, rested on belief in many gods. Luther called him a Moor. At Toulouse, where he studied law, he met the full text of the Bible for the first time and resolved to read it "a thousand times." The visions of the Book of Revelation took hold of his mind. Juan de Quintana, Charles V's confessor, took him under his protection, and with his help Michael went to Bologna and Augsburg (1530). In these cities he became acquainted with Protestantism and was drawn to it. In Basel he met Oecolampadius, and in Strasbourg Capito and Bucer; because his ideas smelled of heresy to them, they asked him to turn his thought in other directions.
Against the Trinity
In 1531 and 1532 Servetus published his chief early work, On the Errors of the Trinity (the book says twice). The work was confused and in its Latin so crude and immature that it might have made Calvin laugh, yet considering the author's command of Scripture it was astonishing for a young man of twenty. For Servetus, Jesus was God's son only in that the Creator had revealed his wisdom to him; he was not equal to the Creator, who might grant the same wisdom to others, nor sharer of his eternity. "God sent his son into the world like one of the prophets." So he thought of Christ's rank much as of Muhammad, founder of Islam. On the Trinity he followed the Semitic view, saying that all who believe in a threefold divine being are worshippers of three, and since they deny the unity of God, "atheists by nature." These views partly sprang from the acute, extreme feelings of youth. In a passage calling Christ "the light of the world," Servetus tried to soften his heresy, yet many who read his works thought he had put out that light. Like the Anabaptists, he held that only adults have the right to be baptized. Oecolampadius and Bucer rejected him, and Servetus had to flee from Switzerland to France (1532).
On June 17 the Inquisition ordered his arrest at Toulouse. Servetus thought of going to America but chose Paris. There, under the assumed name Michel de Villeneuve, he studied mathematics, geography, astronomy and medicine, and for a time dabbled in astrology. The famous Vesalius was his fellow student, and their teachers praised both. Here Servetus quarreled with the head of the medical school, a quarrel that seems to have sprung from his youthful rashness, ardor and pride. He challenged Calvin to a debate but did not appear at the agreed time and place (1534). Soon, after the anger aroused by Cop's addresses and the heretical wall placards, he left Paris, as Calvin did. In Lyons he edited and published Ptolemy's Geography in a scholarly manner. In 1540 he moved to Vienne (some ninety kilometers south of Lyons) and spent the rest of his life there in medicine and scientific research. Among the many scholars living in Lyons, the publishers chose him to revise the Latin Bible translated by Santes Pagninus. The work took three years and appeared in six volumes. In a note on the prophet Isaiah, whose text Jerome had translated as "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son," Servetus wrote that the Hebrew word means "young woman," and added that the text refers not to Mary but to the wife of Hezekiah. He further remarked that other similar passages of the Old Testament concerned only contemporary men, women and events. This view was at odds with the belief of Protestants and Catholics, who take some Old Testament passages as earlier prophets' predictions of events in the Gospels.
The Pulmonary Circulation
We do not know when Servetus first understood the pulmonary circulation of the blood: that blood flows from the right side of the heart through the arteries to the lungs and, purified there, returns to the left side. We know only that until 1553, when he was writing his last work, The Restoration of Christianity, he had said nothing of his discovery. He put his theory into a religious treatise because he thought blood the vehicle of life and probably, more than heart or brain, the seat of the human soul. Leaving aside for now the question of Servetus's priority in the discovery, we recall that he apparently finished the Restoration in 1546, since in that year he sent a copy to Calvin.
The Quarrel with Calvin
The book's title alone was enough to provoke the author of the Institutes, but Servetus went further and called the belief that the Creator condemns some people from eternity, regardless of merit, blasphemy. He held that God does not condemn anyone who has not made himself deserving of condemnation. Faith is good, he said, but love is greater, since God himself is love. In reply Calvin sent him a copy of the Institutes. Servetus returned it with insulting notes in the margins and followed it with letters so abusive that Calvin wrote to Farel (February 13, 1546): "Servetus has sent me a thick book full of ravings. If he comes here, I will not let him leave alive." Angered by Calvin's refusal to correspond, Servetus wrote in 1547 to Abel Poupin, a Geneva pastor, that their teaching denied God, true faith and good works, that their god was Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding Hades (the Trinity as the fixer of human fate), that in place of faith they admitted the dreams of determinism, that for them man is like a tree trunk without motion and God a prisoner of his own will, and that they close the kingdom of heaven to men. He wrote that this was the third letter he had sent to warn them, that he would warn them no more, that he was sure he would be killed in the war now begun, but would not stop telling the truth, for Christ would come, and his coming would not be long delayed (I abridge the letter).
By the standards of his time Servetus was a little mad. He declared that the world's end was near; that Michael, the archangel, would lead a holy war against the Antichrists, both papal and Genevan; and that he himself, named for the archangel, would be killed in the war. The Restoration was the proclamation of this war. It is no surprise that the Basel publishers refused to print it. It was finally printed secretly at Vienne by Balthasar Arnoullet and Guillaume Guéroult, with no publisher's name or place on the title page and the letters "M.S.V." in place of the author's name. Servetus paid the whole cost himself, corrected the proofs alone, and then destroyed the manuscript. The book ran to 734 pages, because besides the Errors of the Trinity it contained thirty letters from Servetus to Calvin (the book's figures).
Discovery and Arrest
Of the thousand copies printed, Servetus sent some to a bookseller in Geneva. One fell into the hands of Calvin's friend Guillaume Trie. The thirty letters addressed to Calvin left no doubt that the author, who signed himself M.S.V., was Michael Servetus of Villanueva. On February 26, 1553, Trie wrote to his Catholic cousin Antoine Arneys at Lyons, expressing surprise that Cardinal François de Tournon allowed such a book to be printed in his diocese. How did Trie learn the place of printing? Calvin knew that Servetus was in Lyons or Vienne.
Arneys put the matter to Matthieu Ory, the Inquisition's officer at Lyons, and Ory ordered Maugiron, the deputy governor of Vienne, to investigate the printing and the author. On March 16 Servetus was summoned to Maugiron's house. Before he went he destroyed all the letters that might be used to prove his guilt. He denied writing the book. Arneys asked Trie to gather further proof that Servetus wrote it. Trie obtained from Calvin some of the letters Servetus had written to him, matching those printed in the book, and sent them to Lyons. On April 4 Servetus was arrested, and three days later he escaped from custody by jumping over a wall. On June 17 the court of Vienne ruled that he be burned alive if caught.
Servetus spent three months in hiding in France and at last decided to take refuge in Naples by way of Geneva. For reasons unclear to us, he stayed a month in Geneva under an assumed name, apparently preparing to leave for Zurich. On Sunday, August 13, to avoid arousing the city's suspicion, he went to church. But he was recognized. When Calvin learned that Servetus was in Geneva, he ordered his arrest. He justified this later in a letter (September 9, 1553): at a time when the papists, in defense of their false beliefs, had carried cruelty so far as to spill innocent blood, should Christian authorities not be ashamed of laxity in defending their true faith? The Little Council followed Calvin and went further than he in anger. But since Servetus was only passing through and not subject to the city's rules, the council could legally do nothing but banish him.
The Trial
Servetus was held in the old bishop's palace, now a prison. He was not tortured but suffered greatly from vermin. He was allowed pen, paper and any book he wished, and Calvin himself lent him several volumes of the early Church Fathers. His trial, which lasted two months, was conducted carefully. Calvin himself drew up the indictment in thirty-eight articles, citing Servetus's writings. One charge was that Servetus, like Strabo, held Judea to be dry and barren, whereas Scripture calls it a land flowing with milk and honey. The chief charges were that he denied the Trinity and the need for infant baptism and "attacked the teachings of the church of Geneva." On August 17 and 21 Calvin appeared in person as prosecutor. Servetus boldly defended his views, even his belief in pantheism. At this point religious differences were forgotten, and Geneva's council asked the Catholic judges of Vienne to place their claims against Servetus at the court's disposal. One of their claims was that Servetus's sexual life was impure. He called this baseless and answered that a rupture had long ago made him impotent and kept him from marriage. He was also accused of attending the Catholic Mass at Vienne, which he blamed on fear of death. He objected to the competence of a civil court to try religious and doctrinal charges, assured the court that he had never taken part in sedition or broken Geneva's laws, and asked that counsel be assigned to him who knew the city's laws better than he. The court refused. The French Inquisition sent a representative to Geneva asking the authorities to return Servetus to France to be punished under the sentence of Vienne. With tears in his eyes Servetus begged the council not to hand him over to the French; the council granted it, but the French request seems to have pushed Geneva's council toward harsher decisions.
On September 1 two enemies of Calvin, Ami Perrin and Philibert Berthelier, joined the judges and disputed with Calvin. They gained nothing, but they led the council to consult the other Protestant cantons of Switzerland on Servetus's fate. On September 2 the Patriots and Libertines on the council again threatened Calvin's leadership. Calvin stood firm against his opponents, but the opposition's evident inclination to free Servetus seems to have made him insist on the heretic's execution. Still, it should not be forgotten that the prosecutor at Servetus's trial was a Libertine, Claude Rigot. On September 3, in a letter to Geneva's council, Servetus answered Calvin's thirty-eight charges. He refuted them all with strong arguments and citations of the Fathers, found Calvin unfit to meddle in the trial, and called him a disciple of Simon Magus, a criminal and a murderer. Calvin in turn gave the council a twenty-three-page letter rebutting Servetus's arguments. The council showed it to Servetus, who, apparently after a month of prison suffering, had lost self-control and sent Calvin's letter back with sharp notes in its margins calling Calvin a liar, an impostor and a helpless wretch. Calvin's own letters about Servetus's trial, in the manner of the time, are full of insulting and foul phrases, such as "the filthy dog has wiped his snout" and "the vile traitor" (I abridge). Servetus asked the council to prosecute Calvin for "opposing the truth of Jesus Christ," to destroy him and to compensate for the harm by confiscating his property. The council did not favor the request.
The Verdict and the Stake
The reply of the Protestant churches of Switzerland, whose opinion had been asked on Servetus's fate, reached Geneva on October 18. All supported condemning Servetus, but none asked for the death penalty. On October 25 Perrin made a last attempt to save Servetus, asking the Council of Two Hundred to reopen the trial, but the council paid no heed. The next day the Little Council sentenced Servetus to death for heresy, for Unitarianism and for denying the need for infant baptism. According to Calvin, when Servetus learned the verdict he "moaned like a madman, beat his breast, and cried in Spanish, 'Woe is me, wretched that I am!'" He then asked to speak with Calvin and begged his forgiveness. Calvin would not pardon him unless Servetus accepted the true faith and renounced his false beliefs. Servetus did not recant, and asked to be beheaded instead of burned. Calvin was nearly ready to grant this, but the aged Farel kept him from leniency, and the council voted that Servetus be burned. The order was carried out the next morning (October 27, 1553) on the hill of Champel, south of Geneva. As he was led to the place, Farel insistently urged him to confess his error and win the Creator's mercy; but the condemned man, in Farel's own account, answered, "I am not guilty and do not deserve death," and prayed God to forgive his accusers. He was chained to a stake with his last book hung at his side. When the flames reached his face he gave a cry of pain, and after half an hour he died in the fire (I abridge the details).