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]