On This Day In History: Michael Servetus Burned At The Stake ‘Atop A Pyre Of His Own Books’ – On Oct 27, 1553

AncientPages.com - On October 27, 1553, Michael Servetus (Michel de Villeneuve) was arrested in Geneva and burnt at stake as a heretic.

On this day, Michael Servetus was murdered for blasphemy and heresy.

Monument to Michael Servetus in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2019. Image credit: Iantomferry  - CC BY-SA 4.0

This historical incident led to an immediate controversy among reformers. Did a reformation church have the right to execute heretics?

Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist, versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine, and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.

He was the first European to describe the function of pulmonary circulation correctly.

However, his interpretations of the Bible caused his problems.

In 1531 Servetus published a work called the Errors of the Trinity, in which he said those who believed in the Trinity were Tritheists (believers in three gods) or atheists.

He said the gods of the Trinitarians were a 3-headed monster and a deception of the devil.

Protestants and Catholics found the work blasphemous, and the emperor banned it. Condemned by Catholics and Protestants alike, he was arrested in Geneva. He was denounced as a heretic by Guillaume de Trie, a wealthy merchant who had taken refuge in Geneva and a good friend of John Calvin, an influential French theologian.

To Calvin, Servetus' latest book was an attack on his personally held theories regarding Christian belief, theories that he put forth as "established Christian doctrine." Calvin sent a copy of his book as his reply. After Servetus promptly returned it with critical observations. Calvin wrote to him:

"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."

On October 27, Servetus was burnt alive—atop a pyre of his books—at the Plateau of Champel edge of Geneva. by order of the city's Protestant governing council.

Historians record his last words as:

"Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me."

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