1553

The execution of Michael Servetus in Geneva

The Spanish physician Michael Servetus rejected the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity and the eternal generation of the Son. He held it to be rationally untenable and absent from Scripture.

Servetus escaped from a French inquisitorial prison but was recognized in Geneva. There Calvin drew up 38 charges against him. All the Protestant cantons of Switzerland declared Servetus a heretic. In 1553 he was burned at the stake, though Calvin himself had proposed the more merciful penalty of beheading.

Sebastian Castellio criticized the execution. It later became one of the most contested episodes in the history of the Reformation. Contemporaries, however, mostly approved of it – they persecuted heretics in both Catholic and Protestant lands.