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AUG. 28, 1954 MICHAEL SERVETUS BRuTIsH 507 AU.2,15 ICALSREU MEDICAL JOURNAL Barcelonian Count Ramon Berenguer IV in the middle of THE CONTRIBUTION OF MICHAEL the twelfth century, and was given to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The father of Servetus, Anton Servet SERVFI'US TO THE SCIENTIFIC or Serveto, was a notary who worked at Sigena and who DEVELOPMENT OF THE had married the Aragonian lady Catalina Conesa. She RENAISSANCE* was the daughter of a nobleman, Don Pedro Conesa, and of BY Beatriu /paporta. From this couple three sons were born- Michael the physician, object of the present address, Peter J. TRUETA, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.S. a notary, and John who went into the priesthood and be- Nufjield Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of came rector of the church of Poliflino. Oxford For a long time many doubts existed regarding the place of Servetus's birth. The reason for this was due to Servetus Pondering on the life and work of Michael Servetus one himself. In the course of his trials in Paris and in Vienne gets the impression that what has best secured his im- he manifested that he had been born in Tudela (Navarra), mortality is not so much his early and undeniable con- and many old authors accepted his word on the place of his tribution to the physiology of the cardi6vascular system or his views on the Trinity, but the tragedy of his death. Without the circumstances of his death his name would have been remembered now, at the four hundredth anniversary of his passing, only by a number of scholars. His contribution to the theological discussions of the first half of the sixteenth century do not seem any more important than those of a number of his contemporaries. Also his work on medicine, including.his greatest con- tribution, the first printed description of the pulmonary circulation, outstanding though it is, is not thought to equal that of Vesalius in anatomy. Even the place of Servetus in the development of physiology is still being disputed by those who favour the priority of his con- temporaries Realdo Columbus and Juan Valverde in describing the pulmonary circulation. Four centuries after Servetus's tragic end one is sur- prised at Calvin's shortsightedness in bringing him to ignominious death. He who tried to remove Servetus and his works from the face of the earth made him immortaL at least for as long as there is any interest in the awakening of the conscience of modern man. Up to the present on every occasion that an anniversary of either Servetus's birth or of his death recurs the date is commemorated in the best way that a thinker may ever hope to be remembered-that is, by starting new interest in his contributions and,particularly in his life. He is then not only reborn twice every century, but by the example he offered in confronting human in- tolerance he has become even more than a martyr qf the old religious quarrels-a symbol for the modern Michael Servetus. Western man. For a medical audience, I think that more appropriate birth, forgetting that at the time of the Paris and Vienne than commenting on the of trials Servetus was hiding his own personality under the name religious writings Servetus, of Michael Villanovanus, this being the name of his birth- a matter far beyond my competence and even interest, place, Vilanova de Sigena. It seems obvious that if he had is to study his personality and some of the moulding stated that he had been born in Vilanova de Sigena, Aragon, factors which contributed to his own making and par- he would have been identified with the Michael Serveto ticularly the origin of his revolutionary physiological who had written a few years previously the heretic and most concept of the pulmonary circulation. Let us, then, persecuted works De Trinitatis Erroribus and the Dialo- analyse the early phase of his life until he definitively gorum Libri VII. In these two books he signs as Michael abandoned Spain at the age of 17. Serveto of Aragon. At the end of his life, during his trial at Geneva, when the identity between Servetus and Villano- vanus had been established, he states clearly "qu'il est His Birthplace de Villeneufve natif au Royalme d'Aragon," thus reverting to his earlier statement. But what provided the most im- Among so many facts that still remain obscure about the portant data to locate his birthplace was the contribution life of Servetus, at least the place of his birth seems well of Dr. B. R. Barrios, who found in Sigena the scriptures established. He was born in the small village known as signed by the father of Servetus. Already in 1511 he was Vilanova de Sixena in its original Catalan spelling, or signing as the notary of Sigena. The last document bearing Villanueva de Sigena in Spanish. This village is situated in his signature is dated 1553, the year of Michael Servetus's the area of Aragon adjoining Catalonia; administratively death. it is now part of the province of Huesca (Aragoh), but still It is known that from both belongs to the bishopric of L6rida (Catalonia) as in ancient sides Servetus belonged to times. The of had been founded the the lower nobility, or what was then called in Aragon monastery Sigena by "Infanzones." Servetus was probably born in 1511, and *Abridged version of a lecture read to the Osler Club, at the it seems that he was educated in his early days in the Medical Society of London on November 13, 1953. monastery at Sigena, but we do not know where his r 508 AuG. 28, 1954 MICHAEL SERVETUS MEDICALBD JOURNALiSH secondary education took place. It is supposed that he of Arabic, apart from the common Latin. Unfortunately, had been at the University of Saragossa, but no evidence with a stubbornness almost reaching obsession, Servetus con- of this exists. sidered it imperative to convince the Reformer in matters Influence of Sabonde referring to the Trinity. From Spain, at the age of 14, he went to Toulouse, in In Hagenau in 1531 he published the little book De the South of France, to study law. The School of Law in Trinitatis Erroribus, which he hoped would enlighten his Toulouse was reputed to be one of the best in Europe, and opponents. Unfortunately, instead of convincing them he in Servetus's time the inquiring spirit of the Renaissance antagonized them all, for Servetus was now touching was more alive there than in either Saragossa or Barce- matters related to the basic foundations on which the lona. While in Toulouse he became interested in the theo- Christian Church had been established since the Nicea logical discussions of the early Reformation, and decided Council. He seems to have feared the personal dangers to enter into what may be called a personal research on which he incurred in taking such an extreme attitude, and the biblical scripts. It is known that he read the Loci published a second book called Dialogorum de Trinitate Theologici of Melanchthon and probably the Theologia libri duo, which was meant to dispel some of the bad im- Naturalis Liber Chreaturorum, which had been written in pressions he had made by his earlier publication. Neverthe- Toulouse in the early fifteenth century by the rector of this less, his good purpose vanished soon after he began to take University, Ramon de Sibiude (Sabonde), a scholar born in up the pen, and he produced a pamphlet as uncompromis- Barcelona in the second part of the fourteenth century, who ing as the first. left Catalonia to teach medicine and theology at the Univer- sity of Toulouse until he died in 1432. Through Michel de Work on Ptolemy's " Geography" Montaigne we know the interest which was felt during the Renaissance, particularly in France, for the book of To avoid personal dangers he left Switzerland and Ger- for and we find him in where he Sabonde. It has been said that Sabonde put forward some many France, Lyons, began as a corrector for the with the brothers of the bases for the modern scientific approach; a thinker working press the famous of the Renaissance, under with a rationalist mind as that of Montaigne was so im- Trechsel, publishers pressed by the reading of the Theologia Naturalis that he the assumed name of Villanovanus. Soon they engaged him in and the re-edition of translated it into French, following the advice of his own annotating preparing Ptolemy's which in 1535. This book is one of father, a contemporary of Servetus in Toulouse. Geography appeared the earliest works, if not the earliest, on comparative The Theologia Naturalis had been printed ten times be- and a few will suffice to show its value fore 1527, with the first Four of the geography, examples edition in 1480. despite the early date at which it was written. editions came from Lyons and two from Strasbourg. Many of the ideas of Sabonde may be found in the writings of "Britain and Ireland* " Servetus. As an example we find Sabonde explaining how The language of the English, drawn from many peoples, is the rational exposition of God's revelation of Himself may very difficult to understand and to speak. In warfare they are be found in Nature, while inserted intrepid, the best bowmen, very rich and much given to commerce Servetus the description and celebrated for their noble cloth because of the supply of good of the pulmonary circulation, which he called a "most wool.

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