CMRS Research Workshop

“Michael Servetus, his clashes with deans Tagault and Lax, and their serious consequences: his anonymous works from 1538 ahead, and his exile from Spain in 1527”
Miguel Gonzalez Ancin (Independent Scholar)

This paper examines the medical, grammatical, biblical and poetical works by Michael Servetus – studied by servetian González Echeverría- which were printed anonymously in the print-shop of Jean Frellon in Lyon. The main reason for their anonymity was the fierce trial that Servetus suffered in 1538  by the Univ. of Paris and its Faculty of Medicine’s dean. It also examines the first 13 documents of Michael Servetus in Spain (previously the first known was a letter he exchanged with hebraist Oecolampadius, already in 1531 in Basel), and these documents describe some of Servetus’s secondary education, and mainly his universitarian one, in the Studium Generale of Zaragoza, since he was a student of Liberal Arts, until he became one of the our Masters of Arts (professors of Arts) of that Studium (1520-1527). Based on many new documents the paper also provides 5 additional siblings of Servetus in Sigena, new data on many new characteristics regarding the primitive University of Zaragoza, with its board course by course, its teachings, and among other things an answer to why Servetus really left Spain for the Studium of Toulouse in 1527: for unknown reasons, on march 28 of that year he had a serious brawl with the head of the Studium, mathematician and logician Gaspard Lax, an academic celebrity during his time, who apparently expelled Servetus and blocked any possible position for him in any Spanish Studium Generale. At the end the paper will also discuss the possibility of Michael Servetus being actually the son of maestre Nicolás de Villanueva, a neophytus converted in 1498 in the south of Navarre.

Each CMRS Research Workshop is based on a pre-circulated research paper that the presenter—who may be a CMRS faculty member, associate, affiliate, or graduate student—wishes to discuss with colleagues. All attendees must read the paper under consideration and be prepared to contribute to the discussion.

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