1511-1530. Early times and first contacts with the reformation
Servetus was born in 1511 at Villanueva
de Sijena, a small city in Aragon, where his father had
received an appointment as royal Notary, an office of some
distinction, and where the family lived in handsome style.
His parents were devoted Catholics, and it is thought that
he may at first have been designed for the priesthood. Little
is known to a certainty about his early education, but he
seems to have been a precocious youth, and early in his teens
to have acquired a knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,
and to have become well versed in mathematics and the scholastic
philosophy. At age 14 he entered the service of Juan Quintana,
a scholarly Franciscan monk. [more
about historical context]
When Servetus was seventeen his father determined that he
should enter the law, and to that end sent him across the
Pyrenees to the University of Toulouse, then the most celebrated
in France. Even in his youth Servetus was struck by the fact
that the doctrine of the trinity was a serious obtstacle to
evangelization of the Moors and Jews. While studying law at
the University of Toulouse in France, he read the Bible, which
the invention of the printing press had made newly and dangerously
available. He was surprised to find the trinity nowhere explicitly
mentioned, much less defined, in the sacred text.
After two years at the University, Servetus was recalled,
in late 1529, to the service of Quintana, who had been appointed
confessor to Emperor Charles V. He was to accompany Quintana
as he traveled with the imperial party to the coronation of
the Emperor in Bologna, Italy. In Italy Servetus was horrified
by riches of the church, the adoration accorded the Pope,
and the worldliness of the priesthood. Some time in 1530 Servetus
dropped out of the emperor's entourage and made his way to
the Swiss city of Basel to join the Protestants. He stayed
for months in the household of Oecolampadius,
the local pastor and Reform leader, nevertheless he did not
find any support on his views. [know
more]
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