§ 140. The Early Life of Servetus.
For our knowledge of the origin and youth of Servetus we have to depend on the statements which he made at his trials before the Roman Catholic court at Vienne in April, 1553, and before the Calvinistic court at Geneva in August of the same year. These depositions are meagre and inconsistent, either from defect of memory or want of honesty. In Geneva he could not deceive the judges, as Calvin was well acquainted with his antecedents. I give, therefore, the preference to his later testimony. ^
Michael Serveto, better known in the Latinized form Servetus, also called Reves,^ was born at Villa-nueva or Villanova in Aragon (hence " Villanovanus "), in 1509, the year of the nativity of Cahdn, his great antagonist.^ He informed the court of Geneva that he was of an ancient and noble Spanish family, and that his father was a lawyer and notary by profession.
1 A. V. d. Linde, p. 3 sq., presents the contradictory statements of Servetus in parallel columns.
2 In the title of his first book. "Reves" is an abridged anagram of Serveto. Others derive it from the maiden name of his mother. But we know nothing of his family. Tlie form " Servede " never occurs among his contemporaries, and not before 1597, but is used by several modern writers, as Herzog, Gucricke, Hase, Dorner, Harnack.
3 Place and date are disputed. In the trial at Vienne he stated that he was born at Tudela in the old Spanish kingdom of Navarre, that he was tlien forty-two years old, which would put his birth in 1511. In the trial at Geneva he declared himself to be " Espagnol Arragonese de Villeneufve," and to be forty-four years old. This is confirmed by the author's name on the title-page of his first book: "Per Michaelem Serveto, alias Reves ab Aragonia Hispanum," by the subscription at theend of his Restitutio " M. S. V." [Villanovanus] and by the name " Villeneuve," under which he was known in France. So also Willis and v. d. Linde. But Tollin decides for Tudela and for the year 1511. See his Servers Kindheit und Jugend, in Kahnis' " Zeitschrift fur hist. Theol.," 1875.
§ 140. THE EARLY LIFE OF SEKVETUS. 713
The hypothesis that he was of Jewish or Moorish extraction is an unwarranted inference from his knowledge of Hebrew and the Koran.
He was slender and delicate in body, but precocious, inquisitive, imaginative, acute, independent, and inclined to mysticism and fanaticism. He seems to have received his early education in a Dominican convent and in the University of Saragossa, with a view at first to the clerical vocation.
He was sent by his father to the celebrated law-school of Toulouse, where he studied jurisprudence for two or three years. The University of Toulouse was strictly orthodox, and kept a close watch against the Lutheran heresy. But it was there that he first saw a complete copy of the Bible, as Luther did after he entered the University of Erfurt.
The Bible now became his guide. He fully adopted the Protestant principle of the supremacy and sufficiency of the Bible, but subjected it to his speculative fancy, and carried opposition to Catholic tradition much farther than the Reformers did. He rejected the oecumenical orthodox}^ while they rejected only the mediaeval scholastic orthodoxy. It is characteristic of his mystical turn of mind that he made the Apocalypse the basis of his speculations, while the sober and judicious Calvin never commented on this book.
Servetus declared, in his first work, that the Bible was the source of all his philosophy and science, and to be read a thousand times.^ He called it a gift of God descended from heaven.2 Next to the Bible, he esteemed the ante-Nicene Fathers, because of their simpler and less definite teaching. He quotes them freely in his first book.
We do not know whether, and how far, he was influenced
1 Omnem philosopkiam et scientiam ego in BIblia reperio. . . . Lege ohsecro millles Bihliam." {De Trinitatis Erroribus, fol. 786 and 79.)
2 " Datus est de ccelo liber ut in eo Deum investigemus, adjuvante ad hocjide quae non est ilk crudus sophistarum assensus, sed inotus cordis, sicut dicit Scriptnra, corde creditur." (Ibid. f. 1076.) " Figmenta sunt imaginaria qua Scriptura limites transgrediuntur." {Ibid, f . 816.)