Michael Servetusl

From Philosopedia

Servetus, Michael (Miguel Serveto) (1511–1553)

A Spanish physician and Unitarian theologian, Servetus was the first to publish an account of how the blood circulates in the body.

In 1531, his On the Errors of the Trinity was published, and he became the most famous of the sixteenth-century anti-Trinitarians, hated by Catholics and Protestants alike. Luther called the book horribly wicked. Servetus sent a copy of his Christianismi Restitutio to Calvin, who denounced him to the Catholic authorities at Lyons, where Servetus was imprisoned but escaped. Melanchthon in 1539 warned the Venetian Senate against allowing the book to be sold.

Servetus himself was said to have been an astrologer (at a time when Martin Luther on Biblical grounds rejected astrology and the Copernican astronomy alike, holding devoutly to a belief in witchcraft). His retort:

• Your Trinity is the product of subtlety and madness. The Gospel knows nothing of it. God is one and indivisible.

Declared a heretic on charges brought by the Protestant leader John Calvin, Servetus refused to recant and was caught heading for Italy via Geneva. There he was burned alive, in what has been described as “a slow fire,” along with some of his allegedly odious writings, to the delight of Protestants and Catholics alike.

(See entry for Otto Karmin.)

Servetus's Grave Stone

{BDF; CE; CL; ER; EU, Paul H. Beattie; HNS2; JM; JMR; JMRH; RE; TRI; TYD; U, UU}