Michael Servetus

“ Turning to the Scholia of Villanovanus, we find it not a little interesting in these days to have a glimpse of ourselves in our sires, and of our neighbours in theirs, from the pen of a man of genius hard upon three centuries and a half ago; and as Michael Servetus is really only known to us through his works and the judicial trials he underwent, we make no apology for referring briefly to his additions to the bald and matter-of-fact text of the original Ptolemy. ”

“ So much makes it clear that Michael Servetus was of gentle blood, of Christian parentage, and neither of Jewish nor Moorish descent, as has been said on no better ground apparently than that he shows he was acquainted with Hebrew, had read the Koran, and in his writings is not intolerant towards Jews and Mahomedans, like his countrymen. ”

“ Poor Michael Servetus shared as hard a fate at the hands of Calvin, as ever "heretic" did at the hands of the Catholics; and this fate was entirely caused by his writings. This author was born in Spain, at Villaneuva in Arragon, in 1509. At an early age he went to Africa to learn Arabic, and on his return settled in France, studying law at Toulouse, and medicine at Lyons and Paris. ”

“ The angel Michael led the embattled hosts of heaven to war against the Dragon; and he, Michael Servetus, had been chosen to lead the angels on earth against Antichrist! The Roman interpretation of Christianity, with its Pope and hierarchy, its assumed sovereignty, its pompous ceremonial and ritualistic apparatus, had failed to make the world either wiser or better; the entire system was rotten to the core; hence the revolt of such scholarly monks as Erasmus and Luther, and of such learned priests as Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon, Bullinger, Bucer, and the 183 rest. ”

“ There is a man now in prison with us, Michael Servetus by name, who has thought fit to write and have printed certain books on the Holy Scriptures, containing matters which 448 we think are nowise according to God and the holy evangelical doctrine. ”

“ In the year 1553 Michael Servetus was on trial for his life at Geneva on the charge of Arianism. Servetus had rendered many services to scientific truth, and one of these was an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, in which Judea was spoken of, not as "a land flowing with milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the truth, as, in the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against him by his arch-enemy John Calvin with fearful power. ”

“ Fancy John Calvin feeling himself taken in hand by Michael Servetus!
The fourth, sixth, and seventh epistles are remarkable for their pantheistic views. ‘God,’ says Servetus, ‘is only known through manifestation, or communication, in one shape or another. In Creation God opened the gates of His Treasury of Eternity,’ says he very grandly. ‘Containing the Essence of the Universe in Himself, God is everywhere, and in every thing, and in such wise that he shows himself to us as fire, as a flower, as a stone.’ Existence, in a word, of every kind is in, and of, God, and in itself is always good ”

“ That proposals had really been made at the meeting of the 21st to abandon further proceedings against the prisoner, though overruled by the majority, seems to be proclaimed by the resolution then come to, viz., ‘Inasmuch as the heresies charged against Michael Servetus appear to be of great importance to Christianity, resolved to continue the prosecution.’ Such a resolution, though we have no intimation of that which led up to it, coupled with Calvin’s activity out of doors, suffices to show that Servetus had really had a chance of escape from the grip of his pursuer at this particular moment. ”

“ But that Michael Servetus, mystic though he was, believed in his soul that one man can absolve another of his sin, we do not think possible. He did not surmise that the fourth gospel was only written a hundred and fifty years after the death of Jesus, and by a Neo-platonic philosopher, presumably of Alexandria, fashioner, like Paul of Tarsus, of a Christology and Christianity of his own. ”

“ Bigotry, however, is not confined to any one creed, since we know that Calvin the reformer, a man who had suffered persecution without learning mercy, no sooner found himself invested with the power to punish the freedom of thought in which he had himself indulged, than he persecuted to death the learned physician, Michael Servetus, not for any immoral proclivity, but because he believed him to be unsound on the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of Paris about the year 1535. ”

“ The Logos and the Spirit imply nothing of personal distinction in God so that, when it is said, “God made all things by his Word,” it is himself as Creator, and not another, that is to be understood: the Word and the Holy Ghost are not to be thought of as distinct entities, but as dispositions in God.’
But enough of this—more than enough, indeed, is before the reader to enable him to judge of the kind of matter that never yet influenced man in his conduct towards either God or his fellow, on which Michael Servetus was adjudged to die. ”

“ The man I refer to has been condemned in all the Churches you hold in such dislike, but is suffered to live unmolested among you, to the extent of even being permitted to print books full of such blasphemies as I must not speak of further. He is a Spanish-Portuguese, Michael Servetus by name, though he now calls himself Villeneuve, and practises as a physician. He lived for some time at Lyons, and now resides at Vienne, where the book I speak of was printed by one Balthasar Arnoullet. ”

“ After the receipt of Trie’s third epistle, a solemn council was convened within the Archiepiscopal Château of Roussillon, at which were present the Cardinal Tournon, the Archbishop of Vienne, the two Grand Vicars, the Inquisitor Ory, and many Ecclesiastics and Doctors in Divinity. There and then the letters of Trie, the printed leaves of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ and more than twenty epistles addressed to John Calvin, were examined with every care and attention, all being reported the work of Michael Servetus, alias Revés, living at Vienne under the assumed name of Michel Villeneuve. ”

“ School and college days come naturally to an end, or are cut short by one intervening incident or another; and the studies of Michael Servetus at Toulouse were interrupted by an invitation to enter his service from brother Juan Quintana, a Franciscan friar, confessor to the Emperor Charles V., about to attend on his Sovereign to his coronation in the imperial city of Bologna, and, of still greater significance, to the Diet of Augsburg, which followed it closely. ”

“ The proper officer then proceeded to recapitulate the heads of the process against him, Michael Servetus, of Villanova, in the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, in which he is charged—
First: with having, between twenty-three and twenty-four years ago, caused to be printed at Hagenau, in Germany, a book against the Holy Trinity, full of blasphemies, to the great scandal of the Churches of Germany, the book having been condemned by all their doctors, and he, the writer, forced to fly that country. Item. ”

“ Calvin would not have stood forth on this occasion as the defender of any heresy, but of the very fundamentals of the Christian faith as embodied in its Creeds; to some of the most essential propositions in which Servetus, on the contrary, must have shown himself diametrically opposed. Servetus therefore, in this instance at least, saw perforce that discretion was the better part of valour, and wisely stayed away. He was in truth far too deeply compromised to venture on an appearance; for if discovered to be Michael Serveto, nothing could have saved him from 85 the heretic’s death. ”

“ From this we learn that Michael Villanovanus, all in laying on flattery somewhat thickly, could still show himself the grateful man; as ready to acknowledge kindness as we have known him apt to take fire at opposition and ready to resent what he held to be unworthy usage. But the matter is even more interesting to us, as giving us to know the kind of society Servetus frequented in Vienne, and the consequent esteem in which he must have been held. The ‘noble triad’ referred to, we imagine, may have consisted of M. Maugiron, the Lieutenant-General of Dauphiny; M. de la Cour, the Vibailly ”

“ SERVETUS, MICHAEL [Miguel Serveto] (1511-1553) , physician and polemic, was born in 1511 [1] at Tudela in Navarre, his father being Hernando Villanueva, a notary of good family in Aragon. His surname is given by himself as “Serveto” in his early works, “per Michaelem Serueto, alias Reues.” Later he Latinized it “Servetus”; when writing French (1553) he signs “Michel Seruetus.” [2] It is probable that he was of the same family as the Spanish ecclesiastic Marco Antonio Serveto de Reves (d. 1598) , born at Villanueva de Sigena in the diocese of Huesca (Latassa, Bibl. nuevo, 1798, i. 609) . ”

“ He doubtless imagined at one time, but had already discovered his mistake, that among heretics, as he had been accustomed to hear the Reformers designated, he might freely expend himself in heresy. To the very end of his life, he seems to have had some difficulty in divining why he had not been welcomed by them with open arms as a brother. But he was well aware that Roman Catholic France had yet less in common with Michael Serveto, alias Revés, author of the Seven books and Two dialogues on Trinitarian Error, than Protestant Switzerland and Germany. ”

“ Marie-Louise Bouet, veuve Serieyx (W) ; 26Oct60; R264669.
SERIEYX, MARIE-LOUISE. SEE Bouet, Marie-Louise.
SERVETO, MICHAEL. SEE Servetus,
Michael.
SERVETO Y REVES, MIGUEL. SEE
Servetus, Michael.
SERVETUS, MICHAEL. The two treaties of Servetus on the Trinity. By Michael Serveto, alias Reves. Translated into English by Karl Morse Wilbur. (Harvard theological studies, no.16) © 6Oct32; A55734. Mrs. William Newell Nelson, Jr. (Elizabeth Fuller Wilbur) (C) ; 26Sep60; R263240.
SEWELL, HELEN. Farmer boy. SEE Wilder, Laura
Ingalls.
SEYMOUR, MADELEINE, pseud. ”

“ In these we shall now find him more intemperate than he has yet shown himself; more aggressive, too; not only indisposed to yield in jot or tittle, but negligent of opportunities to defend his conclusions, and eager to attack his pursuer; ready to call him opprobrious names, and to charge him with wilful misrepresentation and malignity. The recent 403 triumph of Perrin and Berthelier had obviously infected Servetus, and not only lost him his chance of continuing to improve his position with his judges, but even made him careless of making any serious effort to prove himself in the right. ”

“ Can it be that mere confusion of mind is to be deemed an adequate object of faith?" Speaking of the Holy Ghost, Servetus forgot what is due to a subject that has engaged the serious thoughts of so many pious and learned men. He saw some portions of the Catholic Christian dogma so unreasonable as to be unable to refrain from ridiculing them. Yet the idea of God to which Servetus had attained is unquestionably pure and grand—the only one, in fact, as we see the subject, that can be reasonably held by a true idealist. ”

“ But all this, though illustrative of one element in 145 the character of the subject of our study, and not to be passed over by us, is of less moment than the insight we gain through the comments—assuredly referable to him alone—into the intellectual side of his nature. In so far as we know, Servetus is nowhere even named as a biblical critic and expositor; yet did he precede by more than a century Spinoza, Astruc, Simon, Eichhorn, and others, founders of the modern school of Scriptural exegesis. ”

“ It is not uninteresting, however, to observe the same tendency towards unity or oneness here, in the domain of positive knowledge, which we discover pervading Servetus’s other works that lose themselves in the realm of metaphysical abstraction. He will not acknowledge two or any greater number of concoctions or digestions, whether in health or disease, such as were generally admitted in his day. The processes that take place in disease he declares to be of the same nature, though they are perverted, as those that occur in the healthy body. ”

“ But pantheism, when not detached from the idea of personality, in the usual acceptation of the word, leads inevitably to such absurdity. 190 Speaking as he does now, Servetus forgets his philosophy and yields himself up to his mysticism. With as much justice might he have said that Cannibals partake of God when they eat one another, as that the Christian communicant partakes of Christ when he joins the simple, solemn, commemorative feast. ”

“ This decree and interdict of the Parliament of Paris could not have been satisfactory to Servetus. We need not question his belief in the reality of judicial astrology, nor doubt of the application of its presumed principles having been found profitable by him; for a longing to pry into futurity is among the infirmities of human nature, and a belief in the influence of the stars on the fortunes of men was all but universal in the age of Servetus. ”

“ Though he uses the words person and hypostasis, we know that he did not understand 418 them in the same way as theologians generally. He did not acknowledge any proper personality in the nature of God, who to him was invisible, all-pervading Essence, inscrutable too, save as manifesting and making himself known in Creation. Servetus’s persons and hypostases are modes or manifestations of God in nature, and, not limited to three, are, in truth, infinite in number, and proclaimed in an infinity of ways. ”