SERVETUS (Michael), an ingenious and learned Spaniard, born in 1509 at Villeneuve in Arragon. He studied the civil law at Toulouse, where he began to read the Scriptures, and to be fond of Antitrinitarian notions; so that after he had been two or three years there, he resolved to retire into Germany and set up for a reformer. He there printed two tracts, De Trinitatis erroribus, and Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo; which raised a great tumult among the German divines, and spread his name throughout Europe. After publishing these works, Servetus returned to Paris, where he studied physic, and was admitted a doctor of physic into the university there. All this while Calvin the reformer, who was the head of the church at Geneva, kept up a correspondence with Servetus by letters; for he tells us, that he endeavoured for the space of sixteen years to reclaim that physician from his errors. Servetus consulted him on many occasions, and sent him a MS. to have his opinion of it; a confidence which Calvin made an ungenerous and base use of: for he sent this MS. together with the letters he had received from him, containing heretical opinions, to the magistrates of Lyons, where Servetus resided, who thereupon distressed him. This unfortunate man made his escape, and fled to Vienne in Dauphiny; but there, by means of Calvin's correspondence with some principal divines, he was put in prison. Calvin now, under pretence of a reconciliation, invited him, when he was set at liberty, to retire to Geneva: but he was scarce arrived there, when, to the eternal disgrace of that reformer, he accused him of heresy; and by continual preachings and declamations on the danger the true religion was in from such impostors, he hurried the magistrates into an unjust sentence against him; which was as cruelly executed, for he was burnt alive in 1553. —Servetus was a man of great acuteness, of prodigious learning, and so admirably skilled in his own profession, that he appears to have had some obscure conception of the circulation of the blood. There are several of his books extant; the scarcest of which are, 1. De Trinitatis Erroribus, lib. vii. 2. Dialogorum de Trinitate, lib. ii. 3. De Justitia Regni Christi Capitula, lib. iv. These works are very scarce, because both Calvin and the Papists took great pains in burning all the copies they could find.