This statue of Spanish scientist and theologian Michael Servetus was only erected in Geneva in 2011, which I suppose is better late than never. And the reason we can be judgy here is because it was the Genevan government that had Servetus burned at the stake for religious heresy — and that had happened about half a millenia earlier. Although much less famous than Galileo Galilei (d 1642) or even Giordano Bruno (d 1600), Servetus belongs in the unfortunate company of “men who had edgy new ideas about how the universe operated and were persecuted by religious authorities.”
Servetus left Spain for France when he was only 15, studying law, theology, and anatomy. In fact, it was the latter arena in which Servetus made a major pronouncement about the way that blood flowed through the heart. He was exposed to the most advanced medical practices of his day at the University of Paris, where for a short time he held the title “Assistant Dissector” (the office had previously been held by the famed Andreas Vesalius). For over a thousand years before, scientists had thought that blood was made in the liver and then the veins delivered it to the body. Servetus argued correctly that the pulmonary artery first carried blood to the lungs before the pulmonary vein took blood to the heart in his work _Christianismi Restituto_, which, despite the important biological information, was mainly a theological tract.
And it was his theology that really got Servetus in trouble. He had left the Catholic Church after finding himself disgusted after viewing a particularly ostentatious display of wealth by the pope at the time. But then he decided that Jesus Christ was not God incarnate — basically denying the idea of a Trinitarian God — and so both Protestants and Catholics turned on him. After a series of written exchanges between Servetus and John Calvin, the Protestant Calvinists became particularly hostile. In 1553, Michael Servetus traveled through Geneva, the epicenter of Calvin’s followers, and was burned along with his writings.
Servetus’ scientific ideas never spread, and scientists like William Harvey figured out the way blood flows independently.
Source(s): Pp 27-28 _The Scientists_ John Gribbin, Random House 2002. “Miguel Servet, the heretical scientist who was burned three times,” 20 Sept 2023, Javier Yanes, _Open Mind BBVA_.
