Michael Servetus (1509-1553) was a Spanish theologian, scientist and scholar, who had a talent for meeting the rich and famous, and an ultimately unfortunate knack for annoying them.
He was born in Villanueva de la Sigena, Aragon, to a family of lower nobility. As a young boy, he studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew under Dominican Friars, and then went to the University of Toulouse. He then entered the employment of a Franciscan friar, Juan de Quintana, who in 1530 became confessor to Emperor Charles V. The imperial entourage toured through Germany and Italy, arriving at Bologna for Charles’s coronation by Pope Clement VII. The pontiff’s splendid household disgusted Servetus, who shortly thereafter left the imperial service, and declared for the new “Reformed” religion.
