Reviewer: From Publishers Weekly
When Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for heresy
in 1553, he had spent much of his life running from the Church.
Born into a noble Spanish family, he studied medicine and
the humanities extensively. By age 20, he had written a treatise
on the Trinity that incensed Church authorities and led him
into self-imposed exile. But the book that doomed Servetus
was Christianismi Restitutio (Christianity Restored), which
challenged, among other ideas, John Calvin's doctrine of predestination
and argued that God exists in all people and all things. The
reaction to Servetus's text was so vehement that all copies
discovered were destroyed. As the Goldstones (book collectors
and authors of Used and Rare, etc.) reveal, three copies of
the book still exist. In this lively account, the authors
vividly recreate a Renaissance world of revolution and reform
in which the dissemination of ideas flourished thanks to the
printing press. They also trace the paths of the surviving
copies of Christianismi Restitutio as they make their way
through the hands of Voltaire, Rousseau, Jefferson and physician
William Osler. More than a theological treatise, the Christianismi
Restitutio contains a paragraph that explains pulmonary circulation,
decades before William Harvey generally credited with this
discovery announced his find. The Goldstones offer both a
portrait of an important but neglected Renaissance humanist
and a testimony to the power of books to shape minds and hearts.
Illus.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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