Servetus and Calvin. Robert Willis
men. Indefatigable in his proper calling, there was yet nothing which interested the citizens of Lyons that did not interest him. Fearless in bringing help on the battle-field, to which he accompanied his chief the Duke of Lorraine, he was no less ready to brave pestilence in the city, and was as often to be seen in the hovels of the poor as in the palaces of the great and wealthy—inopibus et infortunatis æque indiscriminatimque succurris opitularisve, says his biographer—a true physician, a great and good man.39
Among Champier’s numerous works published about this time, we note the Pentapharmacum Gallicum (Lyons, 1534), which Servetus we believe read and corrected for press, the gist of the work being to show that each country produces the medicines best adapted to cure the diseases of its inhabitants, and that to them exotics are for the most part not only useless, but injurious; an assumption in which he differs notably from present experience and the great writer, his countryman, who came after him, and said that ‘God had inflicted fever on Europe, but put its remedy in America.’ Correcting the proofs of Champier’s five-fold French Pharmacopœia, Servetus must have introduced himself to, or become acquainted with, the author; and if we may credit Pastor Henry Tollin, who will have everyone as truly interested in Servetus as himself, Champier was so much taken by the accomplishments of the poor scholar as even to make a home for him in Lyons. Be this as it may, certain it seems that contact with Champier was that which led Servetus to study medicine, of which he had not thought until now, for it was a science much looked down on by Spaniards in general, its practice being mostly in the hands of Jews and Moors, whom to contemn, where not to oppress, was a religion with all who boasted of their blue blood.
Another of Champier’s books printed by the Trechsels, which we need not doubt Servetus had also read and put to use, was the ‘Hortus Gallicus’ (Lyons 1533). But more influential on him still, though printed in another establishment (that of Seb. Gryphius) during the time he lived in Lyons, was the great Lyonnese Doctor’s Cribratio Medicamentorum, with the Medulla Philosophle—the Marrow of Philosophy—appended. In his chapter on the Vital, Animal, and Natural Spirits (p. 137), Champier speaks of ‘spirit as a subtle, aerial, translucid substance produced of the finest part of the blood, and carried by it from the heart, as principal vital organ, to all parts of the body. Spoken of as three,’ he continues, ‘there are in truth but two kinds of spirit, the vital and the animal.’ The sameness of this to what we shall find in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ will be obvious to all. It strikes us in fact that Villanovanus’s first medical production—the Treatise on Syrups—was wholly inspired by this Marrow of Philosophy of Champier, in which we discover much upon digestion and concoction, the maturation and evacuation of the humours, etc., precisely as in the treatise ‘De Syrupis.’
Nor did Champier’s influence on our scholar end here. One of the Doctor’s treatises is entitled, ‘Prognosticon perpetuum Astrologorum, Medicorum et Prophetarum—The guide of the Astrologer, Physician and Prophet in their prognostications or forecasts.’ Like so many in his age, Champier was a devoted astrologer; and it was he we may conclude who made Servetus one too. Champier having been attacked on the score of his astrology by Leonhard Fuchs, Professor of Medicine in Heidelberg,40 Michael Villanovanus, as grateful pupil, took up the pen in defence of his master, and replied by a pamphlet entitled, ‘Defence of Symphorien Champier, addressed to Leonhard Fuchs,41 and an Apologetic Dissertation on Astrology.’42 Villanovanus, it seems, would not neglect what he must have thought a favourable opportunity of showing himself to the world in company with so distinguished an individual as the great Physician of Lyons, to whom he owns himself much indebted—cui multum debeo, and ventilating a subject that interested him, like so many of his age, only in a less degree than theology itself.
CHAPTER X.
RETURN TO PARIS. STUDIES THERE. JO. WINTER OF ANDERNACH; ANDREA VESALIUS. DEGREES OF M.A. AND M.D. LECTURES ON GEOGRAPHY AND ASTROLOGY.
Villeneuve, we must presume, had reached Lyons poor enough in pocket if rich in lore; but so diligently had he laboured and so liberally had he been paid by the princely publishers of the day, that within two years he found himself in funds sufficient to authorise a return to Paris with a view to the study of Medicine, which he had now resolved to make his profession for life. The rebuff he had had from Œcolampadius, Bucer, and the rest, had probably sickened him for a while with theology and scholasticism, from which, however, we may presume he had only been diverted by his failure to make an immediate impression on the Reformers and the necessity of providing for his daily wants. But ‘the fresh fields and pastures new’ brought into sight by the study of Ptolemy, and the healthy influence of Champier, the physician and naturalist, gave another turn to his mind, and with the money he had earned in his purse, but still comporting himself as the poor scholar, he entered first the College of Calvi, and then that of the Lombards. To these as a subject of the Holy Roman Empire he probably had ready access, and in their quiet shades devoted himself to the new course of study he had determined to pursue.
His larger experience and intercourse with Champier must have shown Servetus that medicine was a more assured means of earning a subsistence than theology, and opened up a far wider field to his ambition than continued service with the typographers. Without utterly neglecting older studies, therefore, he now gave his chief attention to the great and useful art and science of medicine; and we shall find as we proceed that the lessons of such teachers as Joannes Guinterus (Jo. Winter of Andernach), Jacobus Sylvius (J. du Bois), Joannes Fernelius, and others of name and fame in their day, found congenial soil in the receptive mind of the student.
Servetus, indeed, would seem immediately to have made his presence felt in the medical school of Paris; he was at once more than a listener to the prelections of its professors. Associated with no less distinguished an individual than Andrea Vesalius, he was one of Winter of Andernach’s two prosectors, and prepared the subject for each day’s demonstration.
And let not the conjunction of talent that meets us here be overlooked. Vesalius, repudiating the authority of Galen, became the restorer—the Creator of Modern Anatomy. Servetus, breaking with scholasticism in theology, and freeing himself from the shackles of Greeks and Arabians in practical medicine, inaugurated Rational Physiology when he proclaimed the course of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart through the lungs. Working together as friends and fellow students for the Professor of Anatomy, Vesalius and Servetus, through diversity of mental constitution, yet saw things diversely. Vesalius, the observer, abiding by the concrete, described with rare felicity and truthfulness what he witnessed; Servetus, gifted with genius, aspiring to the ideal and inferring consequences, deduced the pulmonary circulation from the structure of the heart and lungs!
Nor were the two men associates only in their studies; they were fellows also in the untoward fate that befel them both in after life; for both may be said to have fallen victims to their zeal. Somewhat precipitate, we may presume, in his eagerness for information, the heart of a young nobleman who had died under his care and whose body Vesalius was inspecting, was either seen to palpitate, or was thought to have palpitated, when touched by the knife of the anatomist. Accused forthwith of murder, it was only by the interference of Philip II. of Spain, whose physician Vesalius was, that a formal trial for manslaughter was commuted for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with confession and absolution at the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre. The penance was undergone, but the pilgrim, homeward bound, suffered shipwreck on the island of Crete, and perished miserably there. Servetus again, as we shall see, in his eagerness to proclaim what he believed to be the truth, and given no chance for his life, had to abide the still more cruel death of the faggot and stake.
Joannes Guinterus, it is interesting to know, bears honourable testimony to the merits of his two assistants. In the preface to his ‘Anatomical Institutions’ he informs us that ‘he had been most effectually aided in the preparation of the work, first by Andrea Vesalius, a young man, by Hercules! singularly proficient in anatomy; and after him by Michael Villanovanus, distinguished by his literary acquirements of every kind, and scarcely second to any in his knowledge of Galenical doctrine. Under the supervision and with the aid of these two,’ he continues,