November 13, 2005

Rev. Henry Ticknor
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Shenandoah Valley

Out of the Flames: The Life of Michael Servetus

I'm sure that at some time or other each of us has participated in a discussion that begins with if you were stranded on a desert island and ends with the question what books, records, or famous persons (alive or from history) would you want to have on the island with you?

Usually the number of choices is severely limited to somewhere between five and ten people, books or records and this restriction puts us in a position of having to make forced choices.

Let's see, do I want Mozart's Requiem or Gabriel Fore's? Do I want Bach's B minor Mass or the Beatles White Album? Would it be Shakespeare's sonnets or Faulkner's fiction? Would it be Jesus, Mohammed or the Buddha? All would be great, but I can only choose five, so what choices will I make?

If I was to ask you this morning what five persons from history would you choose to be with you on a desert island who would you choose?

The first hominid? One of the Pharos? Jesus? King Arthur? Henry V? Edison, Bell or Einstein? Bach, Beethoven or Mick Jagger? Who would you choose to be with you on your island adventure?

Well, let me suggest someone that you may not be very familiar with but I have found to be one of the persons that I would have on my list. I have mentioned this person briefly in other sermons but this morning I want to give him some real attention because I do believe that he would bring to any conversation a really sharp mind, a predilection toward tolerance and a passion for religious Freedom. One of the people I would like to have on my desert island is the sixteenth century Spaniard, Michael Servetus.

And here's why. John Calvin, the Protestant reformer and theologian, once called Servetus the boldest, most rash and dangerous heretics that ever lived. Sounds like a pretty good recommendation to me. So who was this most rash and dangerous man?

Servetus was born into a respected Catholic family in the early 1500s in the Spanish town of Villanueva at the foot of the Pyrenees. His father was a local nobleman so Servetus' early years were quite comfortable. He had a brother Juan who was a respected priest.

Very little is known of his childhood but at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was sent to France to study law at the University of Toulouse. While as student in Toulouse, Servetus began a life-long fascination with the Bible.

He learned Hebrew and Greek to better understand scriptures and he met secretly with other students to discuss what they believed the Bible taught about Christianity.

Servetus' early Catholic upbringing had presented him with the traditional views of the Trinity. As one of his biographers, Earl Morse Wilbur suggests, "There was in such a doctrine more than enough to puzzle and confuse one's head, but nothing to warm his heart or inspire his life.

In his newly discovered Bible, however, Servetus found something to which his whole religious nature responded...he was relieved and inspired to find in the New Testament as the center of Christian faith a historical being, the man Jesus of Nazareth." From this experience, Wilbur concludes, "Servetus was destined to become not a jurist, nor yet a priest, but a religious reformer..."

At the height of his studies, Servetus was called back to Spain to accompany Charles V to Rome so that Pope Clement VII could crown Charles emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. So at the age of eighteen Servetus left Spain forever.

The coronation was a magnificent affair full of opulence and pageantry. But Servetus, still reveling in his new understanding of Christian faith found the spectacle to be too much and soon left Italy to find his way to Switzerland where he hoped to find acceptance of his ideas and to study with the Protestant reformers of the day.

But his ideas concerning the make-up of the trinity received a very cool reception. Disappointed by the response to his ideas he decided that he would publish a book outlining his new insights.

Unable to find a publisher in Basel willing to publish such a controversial work, he traveled to Germany and in Strasbourg, a city known for tolerance, he found a willing printer. At the age of twenty he published his first book titled "On the Errors of the Trinity."

In this work Servetus made plain his beliefs regarding the nature of the trinity. He maintained that Jesus was fully human, and yet still the son of God. He believed in the virgin birth and stated that the Holy Spirit was God working through humankind.

It would take many more hours than we have here to truly delve into all the understandings of the trinity and how the different churches interpreted Trinitarian thinking, so let's just say that the publication of his book touched off a firestorm of controversy and very quickly the book was banned in a number of cities including Strasbourg where it had been published.

Servetus took personally the attacks on his book and so he shortly published another book more discreetly titled Dialogues on the Trinity. Unfortunately this work only served to make matters worse for the young Spaniard and the Inquisition ordered his arrest. As a consequence he was forced to flee back to France. According to Charles Howe, writing in his history of Unitarianism in Europe, the Inquisition stated," we deem it expedient to try every possible means to lure Servetus back to Spain, enticing him by promises or other offers...let this be done with secrecy and dispatch as the importance of the case requires."

Even Servetus's brother Juan was recruited for the job with orders to find his brother and bring him back for trial.

Soon Servetus was a wanted man in France as well. Thus, condemned by Protestants and Catholics alike, he had no choice to but disappear from the public eye.

So while living in Lyon, France, he adopted the new name of Michael de Villanueva and found work in the printing business. During the next twenty years he became a student of geography and medicine. In fact his interest in medicine led to his becoming a well respected anatomist and physician. During his studies of medicine he came very close to publishing a totally accurate study of pulmonary circulation almost 100 years before William Harvey.

But Servetus could not keep his theology completely on the back burner. Near the end of this period, he began work on a new book which would have the title The Restitution of Christianity.

In this work Servetus outlines where his thinking has taken him. In a rather modern understanding of the divine, he wrote that God is everywhere, the complete essence of all things and that god can be found in "fire, air, stone, amber, a twig a flower, whatever you will."

So convinced was Servetus hat his view was the correct one that using his assumed name of Michael de Villenueva he began a correspondence with John Calvin. At first Calvin was polite but soon he tired for the correspondence and refused to communicate further.

It rapidly became clear that the author of the Restoration of Christianity was indeed Servetus. Calvin quickly notified the French Inquisition and Servetus was arrested. However, while under the equivalent of house arrest, one morning before dawn he used the excuse of needing to use the privy as an opportunity to climb over his garden wall and escape. And here the story comes to its climax.

For reasons unknown, Servetus traveled directed to Geneva, the city of John Calvin. Some think he may have been traveling to Italy; but none-the-less while in Geneva he was spotted attending a church service and when this was reported to Calvin he was immediately arrested.

After a lengthy and at times confusing trial Servetus was found guilty not of heresy but of spreading heresy. In a letter to one of his lieutenants Calvin wrote, "I hope he[Servetus] be at least sentenced to death, though it is my wish that he be spared needless cruelty. To which the lieutenant replied, that for Calvin to spare Servetus cruelty would be the same as showing friendship to his worst enemy."

So on the afternoon of October 27, 1553, a verdict was reached which read in part that Servetus had for a long time "promulgated false and thoroughly heretical doctrine...that he secretly published a book full of the said heresies and horrible, execrable blasphemies against the Holy Trinity, against the Son of God, against the baptism of infants and the foundations of the Christian religion.

That he had tried to make a schism and trouble the church of God by which many souls may have been ruined and lost--a thing horrible, shocking, scandalous and infectious." The document concluded that Servetus "be bound and taken to Champel and there attached to a stake and burned with his books to ashes." The sentence was carried out that same day.

And so at the age of 42 the life of Michel Servetus, aka, Michael de Villanueva, was ended. Calvin insisted that Servetus had been given every opportunity to recant his beliefs: however more than a few of Calvin's detractors observed that the green wood used for the execution was simply intended to extend the prisoner's suffering.

The historical legacy of Servetus, particularly for Unitarian Universalists is threefold. First, following his execution there arose quite a storm of protest over the method of the killing and also the crime of heresy itself. One of Calvin's strongest critics wrote, "To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man. When the Genevans killed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine, but they killed a man. To protest a doctrine is not the Magistrate's affair (What has the sword to do with doctrine?) but the teacher's....when Servetus fought with reasons and writings, he should have been repulsed by reasons and writings."

So in an unexpected and unanticipated way the death of Servetus began the movement toward religious freedom and religious tolerance.

Earl Morse Wilbur has written that Servetus's execution, "Came to stand as a symbol of religious persecution at its worst, and his name as a symbol for martyrdom for freedom and consciousness...he thus had important role in stimulating the rise of religious tolerance as a general policy."

A second impact of Servetus's death that was equally unanticipated and really quite extraordinary is related by the historian Charles Howe. "On the day following Servetus's execution," Howe writes, "with the ashes at Champel still warm, there passed through Geneva an Italian expatriate, Bernardino Ochino, a former Franciscan friar who had left Catholicism in order to embrace the Reformation.

Even though he professed Calvinist beliefs, he was shocked by the news of what had happened to Servetus."

Howe goes on to tell how over the next several years Ochino's thinking became more and more humanist in its tenor and in order to escape a heresy trial of his own he fled Switzerland.

After many twists and turns and several years later he established himself in what is today the city of Krakow. Here he continued to develop his humanist ideas that in future years would give rise to a strong Unitarian movement throughout much of Eastern Europe. A movement that would eventually be exported to England and then to American and, well, you know the rest of the story.

The third impact of Servetus's death is something that affects each one of us today. Servetus was killed for his individual search for religious truth. Today our faith stands for the free and responsible search for truth and meaning in each of our lives.

Within this room we have atheists and agnostics, Christians and Jews, pagans and Buddhists and others who are still searching for what is most meaningful to them. We need to be careful that we are truly open to what another believes and to support them on the religious journey.

We Unitarian Universalists are a people who recognize the importance of the freedom of religious expression and religious practice. Truly, we are the decedents of Servetus and we are true to his calling whenever we speak out in favor of permitting dissenting opinions and embrace conflicting theologies.

But perhaps we need to do more.

Has our culture really embraced religious tolerance when the televangelist Pat Robertson, commenting on the defeat of the pro intelligent design school board in Dover, Pennsylvania states, "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God...you just voted God out of your city." ?

Have we really embraced religious freedom when the ministers of churches can no longer communicate because of individual, deeply help, prejudices and biases?

Have we embraced freedom of belief when our communities refuse to permit mosques from being built or Hindu Temples from being built?

Have we really embraced religious tolerance when various groups criticize their own ministers and pastors and rabbis and imams for participating in interfaith worship?

I last mentioned the name of Servetus from this pulpit on All Souls day a couple of years back. I said that I thought he was one of our Unitarian Universalist saints and I feel that even more today. Michael Servetus--theologian, physician, anatomy professor, herbalist, geographer and who knows what else seems to exemplify so many of our Unitarian ideals.

He was a true consumer of knowledge. Not content to know just what is; but eager to know what might be. Not content with the old dogma, but always seeking new and fresh ways of looking at our innermost selves and the world around us. Some might call him the quintessential Renaissance man. I think he was the quintessential Unitarian.

Servetus was strong in his beliefs but open to the understandings of others. As he was willing to explore the world of ideas, of scripture and theology, he believed, perhaps naively, that others would wish to do the same. He was curious in his world view and he was convinced that the lives of others could be improved by his living and his interactions with them.

Sometimes when I am talking with my Christian brothers and sisters, I will comment that I believe each of us is called to live our lives in accordance with the moral values of Jesus. I we could all live more Jesus-like-lives, I say, the world would be a better place.

Perhaps if each of us could lead lives that reflect the honesty, the insightfulness and the determination to seek out what is true for us, then we might say we are living the kind of lives that Servetus would have wished for us.

And so, I add Michael Servetus to my desert island guest list. The person called the boldest, most rash and dangerous heretic that ever lived.

I'd love to be able to ask him where he found his strength to be so resolute in his positions. I love to find out what kind of person he was--whether he was truly driven by a desire for truth or whether he was just rebelling against the status quo. Most mostly I would like to introduce him to some of my other guests. "Michael," I would say, "this is Jesus, and the Buddha and Dr. Einstein. The topic is religion. Say what you will"

Amen