SERVETIIS, MicuAEL, or, in his native Spanish, MIGUEL SERVEDE, a notable and unfortunate speculator in theology, was b. at Villanueva, in Aragon, in 1509. At the age of nineteen he quitted Spain 7 and commenced the study of law at Toulouse, width he soon abandoned to devote himself with ardor to the knotty points of the reformation doctrines. In 1530 he went to Basel to hear (Ecolampadius, and thence to Strasburg,. where Bucer and Capito taught. His daring denial of the doctrine of the Trinity frightened or angered these divines to such a degree that they denounced him as "a wicked and cursed Spaniard." Servetus appealed from their judgment to that of the public in his De Triatatis Erroribu.s Lib. VII. (Haguenau, 1531; modern edition, Nurem berg, 1791), and his Dialogues (Haguenau, 1532); but the public thought as little of his teaching as the theologians; and to avoid the odium which it had occasioned, he changed his name to Michael de Villanueva, and fled to Paris; where he studied medicine under Sylvius and Fernel, and took his degree as a physician with honors. Servetus seems to have possessed a kind of penetrating, if also rash and restless intellect, which enabled him to bit truth occasionally in his flighty researches, or, at least, to make happy guesses in the right direction. Thus, for example, he had an idea (sea M. Flourens in the Journal des &trans, April. 1854) of the doctrine of the circulation of the blood. He attacked Galen and the faculty with his customary violence in a treatise on syrups (Syroporoon_ Universa Untie, Paris, 1537; Lyons, 1546). About this time he made the nequalntance of Calvin, with whom he had several conferences or private disputations, the result of which was a public challenge; but Servetus, after assenting to the arrange meats, decamped, afraid probably, and not without reason, that his precipitate imperious way of thinking did not fit him for discussing with so cool, wary, and merciless a logi cian as the Genevese reformer; afraid, tot-, perhaps, of being unceremoniously handed over to the authorities for heresy! After living successively for sonic time at Lyons, Charlieu, and Avignon, and supporting himself by writing for the booksellers, he found an asylum iu the palace of Pierre Pauimier, archbishop of Vienne, in 1541, where he remained for some years, and wrote his famous Christianismi Restitutio, first published in 1553. The work has been twice reprinted, first by Dr. Meade of London (incom
plete), and again by Murr, at in 1790. Its celebrity is due more to the fact that it sealed the fate of its author, than to its intrinsic merits, the ideas being obscure, and the style incorrect. After its publication, Servetus wished to go to Italy, by way of Switzerland, but in passing through Geneva, was arrested and imprisoned at the instigation of Calvin (q.v.). After a long and complicated judicial procedure, Servetus was condemned to be burned, and the sentence was carried into execution, Oct. 27, 1553—the hapless heretic expiring in agonies. The fate of Servetus, after all the pallia thous that can be offered are weighed, remains a dark stain on the memory of Calvin. Lee Willis's Sanctus and Galata :1S77)