Michael Servitus was a strange, and admirable figure in the early Reformation. He made important contributions to medicine and cartography, but is best known for questioning the Church’s idea of the Trinity. He did not, in fact, offer a Unitarian theology, but merely a different interpretation of the Trinity. What is important, however, is that he maintained a firm belief in the right to free thought and inquiry in an intolerant age. Sentenced to death, and burned in effigy by the Catholic Church, he fled from France, making the foolish error of passing through Calvin’s totalitarian dictatorship in Geneva. Calvin had already secretly communicated with the Catholic clergy to encourage his capture and execution. When Servitus fell into his clutches, the Protestant revolutionary seized him, concocted a ludicrous heresy trial, and had him burnt alive. This was done in a specially sadistic fashion — a slow roasting on a spit, so that he remained conscious in torment for half an hour. Calvin rather liked this sort of thing, and did it to thirty-five other people. He even condemned two children to the flames. Neither Protestant nor Catholic churches were in any mood to see freedom of thought, speech, or conscience promoted by anybody.
Servitus is forgotten by most historians, except those interested in the Anabaptist and Unitarian movements. The Unitarians take him as the starting point of their movement, though on strictly theological grounds, this is not plausible. But it was really his ideas of religious tolerance and free inquiry, a firmer step forward in the path tentatively explored by Erasmus, that they honour him for. So should we.
the three books:
18244. (Roland H. Bainton) Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus
18245. (Marian Hillar) The Case of Michael Servitus, 1511–1553 ― The Turning Point in the Struggle
. . . . . for Freedom of Conscience
18246. (M. Hillar & Claire S. Allen) Michael Servitus ― Intellectual Giant, Humanist, and Martyr
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