Michael Servetus

Michael Servetus (Spanish: Miguel Servet; French: Michel Servet; also known as Michel Servetus, Miguel de Villanueva, Revés, or Michel de Villeneuve; 29 September 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553) was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a polymath 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 is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine. His work on the circulation of blood and his observations on pulmonary circulation were particularly important. He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and mainstream Catholic Christology. Biblical unitarians credit him with reviving this theological issue, originally associated with Arius more than a thousand years previously.

After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France after the publication of the Restitutio, he fled to Calvin's Geneva in 1553. He was denounced by John Calvin, a principal instigator of the Protestant Reformation, and burned at the stake for heresy by order of the city's governing council. The full culpability of Calvin in the execution has been the subject of historical debate.