He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.

After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France, he fled to Calvinist Geneva where he was denounced by John Calvin himself and burned at the stake for heresy by order of the city's governing council.

[3] However, in 2002 a paper published by Francisco Javier González Echeverría and María Teresa Ancín suggested that he was born in Tudela, Kingdom of Navarre.

[4] It has also been held that his true name was De Villanueva according to the letters of his French naturalization (Chamber des Comptes, Royal Chancellorship and Parlement of Grenoble) and the registry at the University of Paris.

His father was a notary of Christian ancestors from the lower nobility (infanzón),[6] who worked at the nearby Monastery of Santa Maria de Sigena.

[8] Although Servetus declared during his trial in Geneva that his parents were "Christians of ancient race", and that he never had any communication with Jews,[9] his maternal line actually descended from the Zaportas (or Çaportas), a wealthy and socially relevant Converso family from the Barbastro and Monzón areas in Aragon.

[20] It is not known when Servetus left the imperial entourage, but in October 1530 he visited Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel, staying there for about ten months, probably supporting himself as a proofreader for a local printer.

Working also as a proofreader, he published several more books, which dealt with medicine and pharmacology (such as his Syruporum universia ratio (Complete Explanation of the Syrups)), for which he gained fame.

In Paris, his teachers included Jacobus Sylvius, Jean Fernel, and Johann Winter von Andernach, who hailed him with Andrea Vesalius as his most able assistant in dissections.

His teaching classes were suspended by the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Jean Tagault, and Servetus wrote his Apologetic Discourse of Michel de Villeneuve in Favour of Astrology and against a Certain Physician against him.

Calvin wrote to Servetus, "I neither hate you nor despise you; nor do I wish to persecute you; but I would be as hard as iron when I behold you insulting sound doctrine with so great audacity".

If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my word; for if he comes here, if my authority is worth anything, I will never permit him to depart alive (Latin: Si venerit, modo valeat mea autoritas, vivum exire nunquam patiar).

[26]On 16 February 1553, Michael Servetus while in Vienne, France, was denounced as a heretic by Guillaume de Trie (a rich merchant who had taken refuge in Geneva and who was a good friend of Calvin)[27] in a letter sent to a cousin, Antoine Arneys, who was living in Lyon.

On behalf of the French inquisitor Matthieu Ory, Michael Servetus and Balthasard Arnollet, the printer of Christianismi Restitutio, were questioned, but they denied all charges and were released for lack of evidence.

French inquisitors asked that he be extradited to them for execution, but Calvin wanted to show that he was as firm in defense of Christian orthodoxy as his opponents, and determined "to push the condemnation of Servetus with all the means at his command".

At his trial, Servetus was condemned on two counts for spreading and preaching Nontrinitarianism, specifically, Modalistic Monarchianism (or Sabellianism) and anti-paedobaptism (anti-infant baptism).

Some other anti-trinitarian thinkers began to be more cautious in expressing their views: Martin Cellarius, Lelio Sozzini and others either ceased writing or wrote only in private.

[43] Peter Gonesius's advocacy of Servetus' views led to the separation of the Polish brethren from the Calvinist Reformed Church in Poland, and laid the foundations for the Socinian movement which fostered the early Unitarians in England like John Biddle.

Servetus hoped that the dismissal of the trinitarian dogma would make Christianity more appealing to believers in Judaism and Islam, which had preserved the unity of God in their teachings.

"[46] Unitarian scholar Earl Morse Wilbur states: "Servetus' Errors of the Trinity is hardly heretical in intent, rather is suffused with passionate earnestness, warm piety, an ardent reverence for Scripture, and a love for Christ so mystical and overpowering that [he] can hardly find words to express it ... Servetus asserted that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were dispositions of God, and not separate and distinct beings.

Servetus states his view clearly in the preamble to Restoration of Christianity (1553): "There is nothing greater, reader, than to recognize that God has been manifested as substance, and that His divine nature has been truly communicated.

"[48] His theology, though original in some respects, has often been compared to Adoptionism, Arianism, and Sabellianism, all of which trinitarians rejected in favour of the belief that God exists eternally in three distinct persons.

[53] Aspects of his thinking—his critique of existing trinitarian theology, his devaluation of the doctrine of original sin, and his examination of Biblical proof-texts—did influence those who later inspired or founded unitarian churches in Poland and Transylvania.

"[57] Oneness Pentecostal scholar David K. Bernard has written the following regarding the theology of Michael Servetus: "... some historians consider him to be a motivating force for the development of Unitarianism.

[61] The Polish-American scholar Marian Hillar has studied the evolution of freedom of conscience, from Servetus and the Polish Socinians, to John Locke, and to Thomas Jefferson and the American Declaration of Independence.

His discovery was based on the colour of the blood, the size and location of the different ventricles, and the fact that the pulmonary vein was extremely large, which suggested that it performed intensive and transcendent exchange.

In the same passage, from pages 169 to 178, he also refers to the brain, the cerebellum, the meninges, the nerves, the eye, the tympanum, the rete mirabile, etc., demonstrating a great knowledge of anatomy.

Servetus also contributed enormously to medicine with other published works specifically related to the field, such as his Complete Explanation of Syrups and his study on syphilis in his Apology against Leonhart Fuchs, among others.

The committee then offered the statue to the neighbouring French town of Annemasse, which in 1908 placed it in front of the city hall with the following inscriptions: "The arrest of Servetus in Geneva, where he did neither publish nor dogmatize, hence he was not subject to its laws, has to be considered as a barbaric act and an insult to the Right of Nations".

New studies reveal Servetus as the author of an additional set of anonymous editions of grammatical, medical and Biblical works —exactly like his Biblia cum glossis from 1545 —which came from that print shop.