Born around September 29, 1509 or 1511, in Villanueva or Tudela, Miguel Servet, also called Miguel de Villanueva was a Spanish physician and theologian whose unorthodox teachings led to his conviction as a heretic by both Protestant and Roman Catholics and led to his execution by Calvinists from Geneva.
While living in Toulouse, France, Servet He studied law and delved into the problem of the Trinity. In February 1530 he accompanied his sponsor, the Franciscan Juan de Quintana, to the coronation of Emperor Charles V in Bologna. Distressed by the papal ostentation and by the emperor’s deference to the worldly pope, he left his patron and visited Lyons, Geneva, and Basel. In Basel and Strasbourg he met with the leaders of the Reformation, John Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer and Kaspar Schwenckfeld. Servet published his new ideas on the Trinity in De Trinitatis erroribus libri vii (1531), attacking the orthodox teaching and trying to form a vision of his own, affirming that the Word is eternal, a mode of self-expression of God, while the Spirit is the movement or power of God within the hearts of men. The Son is the union of the eternal Word with the man Jesus. Although both Catholics and Protestants may have had difficulty following the speculations involved from Servet, what he proposed was clearly hateful to them. Therefore, he published a revised formulation, Dialogorum de Trinitate libri ii (1532).
Servet submitted the manuscript for an expanded review of his ideas, the Christianismi Restitutio, to Calvin in 1546 and expressed his desire to meet him. After his first letters, Calvino wanted nothing more to do with him and kept the manuscript. He declared to his eloquent colleague, the French preacher Guillaume Farel that if Servetus ever made it to Geneva, he would not allow him to leave alive.
A rewritten version of the Servetus manuscript was secretly printed in 1,000 copies in Vienna in 1553. In discussing the relationship between the Spirit and regeneration in that book, Servet made known almost by chance his discovery of the pulmonary circulation of the blood. In the book, Servet He argued that both God the Father and Christ his Son had been dishonored by the Constantinian promulgation of the Nicene Creed, thus obscuring the redemptive role of Christ and bringing about the downfall of the church; Servet He felt that he could restore the church by separating it from the state and using only those theological formulations that could be proved from the Scriptures and the pre-Constantine fathers.
When some of the letters from Servet Calvin fell into the hands of Guillaume de Trie, a former citizen of Lyon, exposed to Servet to the Inquisitor General of Lyon. Servet and its printers were captured. However, during the trial, Servet he escaped and the Catholic authorities had to be content with burning him in effigy. He made a quixotic appearance in Geneva and was recognized, arrested, and tried for heresy from August 14 to October 25, 1553. Calvin played a prominent role in the trial and lobbied for his execution, albeit by beheading rather than burning. Despite his intense biblicalism and completely Christocentric view of the universe, Servet he was found guilty of heresy, primarily for his views on the Trinity and Baptism. He was burned alive in Champel on October 27. His execution produced a Protestant controversy over the imposition of the death penalty for heresy, provoked severe criticism of Calvin, and influenced Laelius Socinus, a founder of modern Unitarian views.