“Michael Servetus has the singular distinction of having been burned by the Catholics in effigy and by the Protestants in actuality.”

(Bainton, Roland, H. Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus 1511-1533. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1953, 3)

“…Miguel Servetus, a Spaniard, a great but erratic mind, who had already in 1531 written On the Errors of the Trinity. In 1553 he published his Restitution of Christianity, which restoration could be achieved only by the rejection of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, of the Chalcedonian doctrine of the Person of Christ, and of the practice of infant baptism, so Servetus thought.”

(Kromminga, D. H. A History of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1948, 213)

Michael Servetus: Doctor and Theologian

Michael Servetus, who lived and died in the 16th century, is a very representative figure of our existence, of our history, and also, of the Europe of his era, a Europe of unjust acts and fanatical errors. It is not a Europe of nations, but of religious territories. But Michael Servetus is also an example of the new cardiological science, when observing or sensing that the pulmonary artery is too large to justify being just a nutritional aspect of our lungs. Thus pulmonary minor circulation is born. To better understand the importance of our character in the scientific field, it is necessary to remember that his discovery is made at a time when the ideas of Galen were followed with no room for refutation. Something even more important should be added, and this is that he does not just limit himself to a description, but that he adds an interpretation of his observation, elaborating an explicative theory, i.e. he goes from observation to deduction. In this sense we can say that our Doctor is an initiator of scientific reasoning. It takes a long time for his discovery to be recognised, one of the reasons should be attributed to the fact that it was impossible to be a follower of a heretic. Michael Servetus met his death in the Calvinist bonfire, not because of his scientific ideas but because of his religious ones. It was religious intolerance that led him to this tragic end. Genius, effort, creative individuality and the struggle to swim against the tide, all attributes of our Michael, are typical of our own peculiar way of understanding life; it is not in vain that Menendez Pelayo, in his “Heterodoxos”, when speaking of Michael Servetus writes “….a kind of Errant Knight of Theology”.

(M. de Fuentes Sagaz, Michael Servetus (1511-1553), Barcelona: Uriach, n.d., 12; From Prologue by Alfonso Castro-Beiras, President of the Spanish Society of Cardiology)

Michael Servetus (Bainton)

II. Protestant Persecution of a Heretic: The Sentence Pronounced on Michael Servetus, October 27, 1553

The sentence pronounced against Michael Servet de [Villeneuve] of the Kingdom of Aragon in Spain who some twenty-three or twenty-four years ago printed a book at Hagenau in Germany against the Holy Trinity containing many great blasphemies to the scandal of the said churches of Germany, the which book he freely confesses to have printed in the teeth of the remonstrances made to him by the learned and evangelical doctors of Germany. In consequence he became a fugitive from Germany. Nevertheless, he continued in his errors and, in order the more to spread the venom of his heresy, he printed secretly a book in Vienne of Dauphiny full of the said heresies and horrible, execrable blasphemies against the Holy Trinity, against the Son of God, against the baptism of infants and the foundations of the Christian religion. He confesses that in this book he called believers in the Trinity Trinitarians and atheists. He calls this Trinity a diabolical monster with three heads. He blasphemes detestably against the Son of God, saying that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God from eternity. He calls infant baptism an invention of the devil and sorcery. His execrable blasphemies are scandalous against the majesty of God, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. This entails the murder and ruin of many souls. Moreover he wrote a letter to one of our ministers in which, along with other numerous blasphemies, he declared our holy evangelical religion to be without faith and without God and that in place of God we have a three-headed Cerberus. He confesses that because of this abominable book he was made a prisoner at Vienne and perfidiously escaped. He has been burned there in effigy together with five bales of his books…

(Roland H. Bainton, The Age of the Reformation, Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1956, 181-182; Excerpt from Reading No. 12, Persecution and Liberty)