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27.10.2007
Welcome! I'm glad to present You the new site about Michael Servetus.
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After his studies in medicine he started a medical practice. He became personal physician to Pierre Palmier Archbishop of Vienne, and was also physician to Guy de Maugiron, the lieutenant governor of Dauphiné. While he practiced medicine near Lyon for about fifteen years, he also published two other works dealing with Ptolemy's Geography. Servetus dedicated his first edition of Ptolemy and his edition of the Bible to his patron Hugues de la Porte, and dedicated his second edition of Ptolemy's Geography to his other patron, Archbishop Palmier. While in Lyon, Symphorien Champier, a medical humanist, had been Servetus' patron, and the pharmacological tracts which Servetus wrote there were written in defense of Champier against Leonhart Fuchs.
While also working as a proof reader, he published a couple more books which dealt with medicine and pharmacology. Years earlier he had sent a copy to John Calvin, initiating a correspondence between the two. Initially in the correspondence Servetus used the pseudonym "Michel de Villeneuve".
In 1553 Servetus published yet another religious work with further Antitrinitarian views. It was entitled Christianismi Restitutio, a work that sharply rejected the idea of predestination and the idea that God had condemned souls to Hell regardless of worth or merit. God, insisted Servetus, condemns no one who does not condemn himself through thought, word or deed. To Calvin, who had written the fiery Institutes of the Christian Religion, Servetus' latest book was a slap in the face. The irate Calvin sent a copy of his own book as his reply. Servetus promptly returned it, thoroughly annotated with insulting observations.
Calvin wrote to Servetus, "I neither hate you nor despise you; nor do I wish to persecute you; but I would be as hard as iron when I behold you insulting sound doctrine with so great audacity."
In time their correspondences grew more heated until Calvin ended it.[9] Whereupon Servetus bombarded Calvin with several extraordinarily unfriendly letters. [10] Thus Calvin's antagonism against Servetus seems to have been based not simply on his unorthodox views but also on Servetus's tone of superiority mixed with personal abuse. Calvin stated of Servetus, when writing to his friend William Farel on 13 February 1546:
"Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings. If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my word for if he comes here, if my authority is worth anything, I will never permit him to depart alive ("Si venerit, modo valeat mea autoritas, vivum exire nunquam patiar").[11]
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