• 500 Years of Calvinism—What Has It Achieved?
    The Watchtower—2010 | September 1

    • Geneva did not provide safe refuge for everyone, however. Michael Servetus, born in 1511 in Spain, studied Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and medicine and might have met Calvin when both were students in Paris. Servetus recognized from his study of the Bible that the doctrine of the Trinity was unscriptural. He tried to correspond with Calvin on the subject, but the latter viewed Servetus less as a friend than a foe. Persecuted by Catholics in France, Servetus fled to Calvin’s city, Geneva. Rather than being met with a welcome, he was arrested, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake in 1553. “The execution of Servetus continues to be a stigma on the life and work of the otherwise great Reformer [Calvin],” says historian Friedrich Oehninger.