Word: servetus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This was too much for John Calvin. One Genevan had written his Catholic cousin in France, reproaching him for allowing a heretic like Servetus to live unmolested in Catholic territory. When the cousin asked for details, Calvin gave the documentary proof that Dr. Michel de Villeneuve was indeed Michael Servetus, the man who had denounced the Trinity...
...Servetus started his career on the Catholic side of the fence, as a promising scholar-assistant to the confessor of Emperor Charles V. By 19, however, his theological studies had already made him a Protestant, and in 1530 he fled to the Reformation strongholds of Basel, and later, Strasbourg. He was welcomed in both places, until he started explaining his advanced religious views. His book, On the Errors of the Trinity, an attack on the "three-headed Cerberus" of traditional theology, shocked the reformers as much as it did the Catholics. In 1532, his book already banned in Strasbourg...
...theology was so irritating because it was highly personal and opposed to the formal systems of any churches. Although he attacked the Papacy, he also ripped into cherished new Protestant doctrines such as Calvin's predestination and Luther's "justification by faith alone." By the time Servetus was 22, the "Wanted" posters were up for him in both camps. Calvin denounced his writings as "a rhapsody composed of the impious ravings of all the ages." Added Luther's disciple, Melanchthon: "Astute and impious . . . blowing smoke perfidiously before his hearers." For the Catholics, Jerome Aleander, Luther...
...Unmolested Heretic. Hunted both by the reformers and the Catholic Inquisition (both in Spain and in France), Servetus boldly went to Paris and began a new life, in disguise, as Michel de Villeneuve, editor and physician...
...Servetus could have lived and died as Doctor Villeneuve. But the old urge for theological dispute proved stronger than his caution. He began a clandestine theological correspondence with John Calvin, then leading the reform movement in Geneva, a correspondence which grew more insulting on both sides as their differences became more apparent. In 1553 Servetus secretly published his book, The Restoration of Christianity, reaffirming his attacks on the Trinity...