was nearly related to Andrea Serveto d’Aninon, some time Professor of Civil Law in the University of Bologna, subsequently member of the Cortes of Aragon, and one of the Council of the Indies. So much makes it clear that Michael Servetus was of gentle blood, of Christian parentage, and neither of Jewish nor Moorish descent, as has been said on no better ground apparently than that he shows he was acquainted with Hebrew, had read the Koran, and in his writings is not intolerant towards Jews and Mahomedans, like his countrymen. Neither have we any very precise information as regards Servetus’s earlier years and education. Of somewhat slender build, and so of presumably delicate constitution, though he showed no trace of this in after life, he is said to have been destined by his parents to the service of the Church; in which view, whilst yet a youth, he was placed for nurture in one of the convents of his native town or its neighbourhood. And this we should imagine must almost necessarily be true; for the rudiments of the liberal education Servetus shows himself to have received, could only have been obtained in the early part of the sixteenth century in the quiet of the cloister, and under the fostering care of some monk more learned than the general. The precocious ability and pious temperament with which we must credit Servetus may have been a further motive for the line of life chalked out for him by his parents. The Church was then, as it still continues to be, the close through which an easy and a pious life can be best secured where there is neither talent nor aspiration; as it is also the highway to worldly wealth and power, where there is ambition and ability to back what passes for piety. By mental and moral endowment Servetus probably appeared to all about him a born churchman, with the crosier, and even the cardinal’s hat, in perspective. But side by side with so much that pointed in this direction, the reasoning, sceptical, and self-sufficing nature of the man that led the opposite way, as it had not yet appeared, so was it unsuspected. Servetus as a youth unquestionably received the education that would have fitted him for the Priesthood; and we think complacently of the solace and relaxation from the monotony of monastic life, which the worthy brother we evoke as his principal teacher found in imparting all he knew, and pointing out the onward way to one both apt and eager to learn. Before leaving the convent, or the convent school, where he doubtless remained for several years, Servetus must have been not only a tolerable Latin scholar, but, it may have been, also grounded in Greek and the rudiments of Hebrew.