On This Day in History: October 27

The church sets yet another scientist on fire

Subscribers can listen to the audio version of today’s post here.

Born sometime around 1511 in what is now Spain, Michael Servetus was a polymath who excelled in myriad sciences. Being such a critical thinking fellow, he began to look at some of this bullshit being spewed by Christian preachers and said hey that’s bullshit. So they set him on fire until he died.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: October 27, 1553--

This guy knew lots of stuff. Mathematics, astronomy, anatomy, geography, meteorology, and even pharmacology because people did drugs back then too. But holy shit the fucking thought police. When Mike was studying medicine in Paris, he was also teaching math and astronomy. During that time he also accurately predicted that Mars would be occluded by the moon. He ended up getting into a fight with the Dean of Medicine who argued that Servetus should be executed for teaching things he didn’t like.

But Servetus escaped that execution and finished his medical studies in Montpellier, and he became renowned for his knowledge in this area. He was the first to accurately outline how pulmonary circulation works, although he likely based it on the work of a Syrian scientist from three centuries previous. Continues below …

As a regular reader I expect you, like Michael Servetus, are also fond of critical thinking. Help fund keeping my critical analysis of history free for everyone by becoming a paying subscriber. I promise not to set you on fire.

Shit really went sideways when he began to question the Trinity. You know that whole God is God but also three stuff? Servetus wrote about how that was not only bullshit, but so was predestination. Servetus believed in the meritocracy approach of getting into heaven, saying that this stuff about God sending people to Hell for no good reason wasn’t true; he only did it if folks were dicks.

This did not make him popular in France, so he fled to Geneva to avoid the “burn him!” shit that people were calling for. Unfortunately for Servetus, Geneva was the land of preacher John Fucking Calvin. You know Calvinism? It’s another story, but suffice to say that Calvin was a fucking cock. Anyway, Servetus had sent letters to Calvin expressing a desire to meet him. After reading these letters Calvin was all yeah no. He said if Servetus came to Geneva, Calvin wouldn’t allow him to leave alive. And that’s what happened.

This is where Servetus was not so smart. He was still in France and his letters to Calvin were sent to the inquisitor in Lyon and they were all oh yeah we are so gonna burn this fucker. But Servetus escaped and went to Geneva where Calvin had said we’re gonna burn you. Like, why? Did he like fire?

There was a trial and Calvin was all let’s waste this fucker, although he wanted to have his head chopped off as the method of execution. And waste him they did, burning Servetus at the stake on October 27, 1553. There was backlash, with people starting to ask if we really should be setting heretics on fire. It didn’t do great things for Calvin’s reputation, either.

Servetus’s final words were “Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me.”

Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.