Michel Servet

Michel Servet ( Miguel Servet there Dreams in Spanish), born the September 29th 1511 in Aragon and carried out the October 27th 1553 with Geneva, is a Théologie N and Médecin of Spanish origin which discovered the way in which blood passes in the lungs to oxygenate itself. It was burned alive for its ideas the October 27th 1553.

Youth and education

It was born in Villanueva de Sijena, Huesca. Its paternal ancestors had come from the hamlet of Serveto, in the the Aragonese Pyrenees, from where its family had taken her name. By his mother, it went down from converted Jews of the area of Monzón. In 1524, his/her father Antonio Servet (alias Revés, i.e. “opposite”), which was notary with the royal monastery close to Sijena, sent it to the university, probably that of Saragossa or Lérida. Michel Servet had two brothers: one became notary like their father and the other priest. Very gifted for the languages, he studied the Latin , the Greek and the Hebrew . At the fifteen years age, it entered to the service of a monk franciscain of the name of Juan de Quintana, a érasmien and it lute the whole Bible in the original languages of the manuscripts one had at the time. He attended thereafter (in 1526) the Université of Toulouse where he studied the right. There, it became suspect because of its participation in secret meetings and the activities of Protestant students.

In 1529, he travelled in Germany and Italy with Quintana, which was then the confessor of Charles Quint. In October 1530, it returned visit to Œcolampade, Basle, where there remained approximately ten months, by probably earning its living as corrector in a local printing works. About this time already, its convictions started to be formed. In May 1531, it met Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Fabricius Köpfel Capiton with Strasbourg and, two months later, in July 1531, it published trinitatis erroribus (“Errors concerning the Trinity”). The following year, it published Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duet (“Dialogs on the Trinity in two books”) (1532) and De Justitia Regni Christi (the Justice of the Reign of Christ”).

In these books, Servet exposed a theology which supported that the belief in the Trinité was not founded on biblical teaching but rather on what he saw like a misleading teaching of the philosophers (Greek). It was looked at as that which would bring back to simplicity and the authenticity Évangiles and first Pères of the Church. Moreover, he hoped that the abolition of the dogma trinitaire would make also Christianity attractive towards the Jews and the Moslems, whose religion had severely remained monotheist.

Servet affirmed that the Logos divine, which was a demonstration of God and not a distinct divine person, had been plain with an human being, Jesus, when the spirit of God had entered the uterus of the Virgin Mary. It is only as from the moment of the design that the Son had been really generated. Thus the Son was not eternal, but only the Logos with the means of which it had been formed. For this reason, Servet always rejected the idea that Christ was “the Son eternal of God”, it supported that he was simply “the Son of God eternal”. This theology, although completely original, was often compared with the Adoptianisme, the sabellianism or the Modalisme, which were old heresies of Christianity. Under the strong pressure as well of the catholics as of the Protestants, it somewhat modified this explanation in its second book, Dialogs , to make coincide to some extent the Logos with Christ. It was almost the design pre council of Nicée, but he was always shown of heresy because of his insistence to fight the dogma of the Trinity and the individuality of the three divine people as an only one God.

He took the pseudonym of Michel of Villeneuve to avoid being persecuted by the Church because of these religious works. He studied with the Calvi College with Paris in 1533, then after a certain time returned to Paris to study medicine in 1536, having for teachers Sylvius, Fernel and Guinter, which greeted it with Vésale like its most qualified assistant for the dissections.

Course of heretic

Its medical career continues with Vienna in the Dauphiné. Servet acquires a position of notable there, and discovers the small blood circulation , i.e. the way in which the Sang passes in the Poumons to oxygenate itself. He sees there the breath of God in the middle of the man .

Servet believes indeed in God “to which the man can link himself”. Its enemy Jean Calvin describes “a Seigneur sovereign (…) in front of which the weak and miserable man cannot that prosterner in ash, to adore and obey”.

Especially, Servet pushes very far the principle from the return to the Évangiles. No the trace, in the latter, of the complex speech on the Trinité that the Catholic church developed during centuries. Jesus is not God, but a man to which the divine gasoline is temporarily allied. To the heresy, he adds the Blasphème: the Trinity is a “dog of the Enfers to three heads, signs Antéchrist”. Calvin writes then: “If I have authority in this city (Geneva), I will take care that it does not leave it alive”.

Epistolary quarrel

In Vienna, Servet anonymously publishes a new scathing attack, the Of erroribus Trinitatis , a work in 7 volumes, and launches out in an argument by correspondence with Calvin. This last collects evidence and delivers to the Inquisition, lack of little to make burn Servet by the catholic . Imprisoned, Servet escapes. For reasons which remain obscure, it goes to Geneva, being thus thrown in the mouth of the wolf.

“I believe that it had enough of it to live under a false identity. Perhaps he thought that it was likely to replace Calvin”, suggests the German documentarist Oliver Eckert which carried out in 2005 documentary on Servet. “To find a compromise with the emperor Charles Quint, the reformers had preserved theories which the Catholic church had developed after the Gospels. Servet wanted to go further in the return to the Writings. It was caught for the representative on ground of the archangel Michel which, in the Apocalypse, drives out the Animal… ”.

It is in the current garden of the Hill, private clinic located at the bottom of Champel, that Michel Servet was attached to a post and burned alive on order of the Great Council controlled by Calvin, on October 27th, 1553: “Toy, Michel Servet, let us condemn to debvoir estre dependant and carried out instead of Champel, and to debvoir estre with piloris there attached and bruslé all vifz with your book, as well escript of your hand as printed, jusques so that your body is tiny room in ashes; and thus will finish your days to give example to the others which such case vouldroient to make”.

To remember

Today, Michel Servet has his street in Geneva, his district (Servette) which gave its name to several Genevese sporting clubs (such as the Servette FC, the Geneva-Servette Hockey Club), like its expiatory monument '' '' set up in 1903 close to the site its to rough-hew. This Menhir carries an inscription where the Calvinisme Genevese regrets the error but bleaches its person in charge, Calvin, to make wear the hat to manners of its century . It acts then, according to the historian Valentine Zuber, “to defuse the obstacle which still the business Michel Servet for the reputation of Jean Calvin represents, the day before the jubilee of the reformer of Geneva in 1909”.

In this connection, Sebastien Castellion will write: “To kill a man, it is not to defend an idea. It is to kill a man”.

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