SKETCH OF MICHAEL SERVE TVS. 95 



rior endowment and culture, lie found himself antagonistic to almost 

 all around him ; his convictions were deep, and the haughtiness and 

 violence of his disposition made it impossible to suppress them. The 

 physician, therefore, met the fate of the theologian. It seems that he 

 had gone out of the way, in his lectures, to accuse his fellows of 

 ignorance, at least, of astronomy. The doctors of the faculty retali- 

 ated by denouncing him from their chairs as an impostor and a wind- 

 bag. Servetus then wrote a pamphlet, in which he laid hare the sore 

 places in the characters of his adversaries, even holding them up, in 

 their ignorance, as the pests of society. His intentions being made 

 known, the Senate of the University and the Parliament of Paris were 

 petitioned to forbid the publication of the pamphlet ; hut Servetus 

 outwitted them before the day of citation came, the dreaded pam- 

 phlet was distributed to the public. The faculty of medicine had him 

 summoned before the inquisitor of the king as an enemy of the Church, 

 on the score of heresy, implied in the practice of judicial astrology. 

 So thoroughly, however, did he satisfy the inquisitor that he was a 

 good Christian, that he left the court with flying colors, absolved 

 even of all suspicion of heresy. The doctors, however, in the end, 

 won the day. The award of the Parliament ordered Michael Villano- 

 vanus to call in his pamphlet and deposit the copies in the court ; to 

 pay all honor to the faculty and its members ; and he was expressly 

 forbidden to appear in public or in any other way as a professor of 

 astrology. 



Villeneuve now moved to Charlieu, near Lyons, where he resumed 

 the practice of medicine. While at Charlieu (1539), having attained 

 his thirtieth year, according to the religious tenets he professed, he 

 had himself baptized. 



Pierre Paumier, one of his Paris admirers and friends, and now 

 Archbishop of Vienne, hearing of his whereabouts, invited him to quit 

 the narrow field of his practice for a wider one. Villeneuve accepted, 

 and for the next twelve years he lived in Vienne, under the immediate 

 patronage of the eminent prelate. 



Besides practising medicine, he resumed his connection with the 

 publishers of Lyons, and among other works edited the Latin Bible 

 for Trechsel, with comments of his own. From his long studies in 

 the Scriptures he had come to the conclusion that, while the usual 

 prophetical bearing ascribed to the Old Testament was ever to he kept 

 in view, the text had a primary, literal, and immediate reference to 

 the age in which it was composed and to personages, events, and cir- 

 cumstances, among which the writers lived ; and, according to this 

 plan, he carried out the work. Yet Spinoza, Astruc, and others, who 

 lived a century latei-, are called the founders of the modern school of 

 Biblical exegesis, and Servetus is not even named as a Biblical critic 

 and expositor ! 



We have now arrived at a momentous event in the life of Servetus 



