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The Michael Servetus
Institute is a public non-profit educational and research
institution located in Villanueva de Sijena, a town of 500
inhabitants belonging to Los Monegros (black mountains) County, in
the Province of Huesca. Huesca is one of the three provinces of
Aragón, a region in the northeast of Spain. It was founded in 1976
by Mr. Julio Arribas Salaberri with the objective of studying, by
way of scientific criteria, the life and works of Michael Servetus
and spreading his intellectual and scientific legacy. The Institute
is also dedicated to study the history of the Royal Monastery of
Sijena, the place in which Servetus’ father acted as Royal notary
public.
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Pursuant to Servertus’
teachings, the Institute assumes as part of its
mission:
- the defense of the values and
dignity inherent in any individual,
- the
freedom of conscience and speech as a way to foster human
beings’ development,
- the
need to practice tolerance and justice in human relationships,
- the search for truth as the source of
all knowledge, and
- the rejection of dogmatism by
affirming Reason within the framework of the humanistic
principles . |
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The Institute’s main
mission is to bring together all the Servetus’ specialists in
the world. This reveals the international nature of the
Institute's activities.
During more than 25 years,
the Michael Servetus Institute has regularly organized
seminars and workshops on Servetus’ life and legacy.
When nobody in Spain
remembered this unique Spanish humanist, the Institute was,
and continues to be, the cradle of a rich and rigorous
intellectual debate around the figure and the legacy of
Michael Servetus. This debate has always been free from the
such superficial and derisive cultural spirit that inspires
most official educational systems. |
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Institute has been always conscious that any institution that
vindicates a space for its cultural activities must hold a special
responsibility before society so that all the research activities
that sponsors or encourages rely on quality and scientific rigor.
For that reason, the Institute uses its best endeavours so that all
the studies that promotes, and specially, those on Michael Servetus,
adjust to the objectivity, rigor and transparency that all research
work demands
Since the Institute initiated
its activities in 1976, the Institute has edited and sponsored more
than twenty lectures given in its headquarters by some of the most
conspicuous specialist in Servetus’ works. These edited lectures are
a landmark collection for all those wanting to acquire a deeper
knowledge of Servetus’ universe.
Each year, at the end of
October, the members of the Institute gather in Villanueva de Sijena
to commemorate the death of Servetus in Geneva and pay homage to his
memory before the monument that was erected by the neighbors of
Villanueva in 1975, precisely in the same place in which the Spanish
inquisition burned Servetus’ effigy.
The Michael Servetus Institute
also devotes part of its effort to study and spread the history of
the Royal Monastery of Sijena. Founded above a lake located 0.5
miles. from the town of Villanueva in 1188 by Queen Sancha, wife of
king Alfonso II, The Chaste, the Monastery became the family tomb of
the Aragon monarchy during the XII and the XIII
centuries.
During the XIV century,
the Monastery, under the patronage of Princess Blanca, the
daughter of King James II, became one of the most magnificent
monasteries of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in
Europe.
Since it was burned and
looted by the troops loyal to the Spanish Republic in 1936,
most of its rooms have remained in ruins. The Institute has
constantly defended and vindicate before the authorities the
need to restore and recoup for the Aragonian and Spanish
society this landmark monument to understand the origins of
the Kingdom of Aragon.
The Michael Servetus
Institute is an institution opened to all those interested in
the study and spread of Servetus’ legacy, or the history of
the Royal Monastery of Sijena. Since the Institute was
founded, numerous famous professors, such as Alcalá Galve,
Marian Hillar, Ciriaco Morón, Fernando Solsona, Sánchez
Blanco, Bainton, Friedman, and Laín Entralgo, have been
members (consejeros) of the Instituto. |
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Currently, the Institute has
approximately 275 members whose task is aimed at pursuing the work
of all those members who consecrated its effort to claim and revisit
Servetus’ life and legacy in Spain and abroad, as well as to the
study and the vindication of the Sixenam
heritage. |
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Mr.
JULIO ARRIBAS SALABERRI
The
Michael Servetus Institute is the project of a visionary.
Before its creation in 1976, there was not any organization in
Spain aimed at promoting and coordinating scientific research
on Servetian studies.
Mr. Julio Arribas Salaberri was
a man who used his passion for Aragón to overcome the
stereotypes associated with Aragonian culture (mostly related
to regional dancing and a traditional red or purple checked
scarf worn on the head). The most evident manifestation of
this passion was the creation of the Michael Servetus
Institute. |
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Like
other great figures of the Aragonian culture, he was born in a
little town, Apiés (1911), in the Huesca Province. He studied first
in the "Escuelas Pías" of Zaragoza, and thereafter in the Commerce
School of Zaragoza where he was granted the degree of Mercantile
Professor. He also graduated from the School of High Mercantile
Studies in Barcelona.
He spent the first years of his
professional life in the Huesca Province, in which he was the
secretary general of the city councils of Bolea and de Villanueva de
Sijena, and the Finances Director in the city council of Jaca and in
the Provincial Administration of Huesca. In 1942 he was appointed
Finances Director of the Provincial Administration of Lérida, a city
located 75 km. from Villanueva de Sijena. He lived and developed his
career in this city until his retirement. While being in the local
administration, he modernized it, enhancing the services rendered to
citizens and speeding up the administrative tasks. En 1971, he was
appointed as a member of the Studies Institute of Lérida, where he
developed a meritorious research activity .
Arribas was a
man of tremendous work capacity and a controversial, passionate and
progressive personality, which resulted in some misunderstandings
and enmities. Nonetheless, the main feature of his personality was
generosity. Only by taking into account his generosity can we
understand his intense and valuable task during the years he headed
up the Institute.
Mr. Arribas served as a catalyzer and
coordinator of Servetian studies in Spain which at that time
remained very scarce, spread out and based on an anecdotic knowledge
(hence superficial) of Servetus' legacy. It must be stated without
exaggeration that Arribas is responsible, along with Professors José
Barón Fernández and Angel Alcalá Galve, for the evolution in Spain
from anecdotic Servetism to scientific Servetism. In addition, his
activities heading up the Institute marked a turning point in the
internationalization of Servetian studies in Spain As he used to
say: "I am attempting to bring together all the Servetians around
this Aragonian entity".
Equally important to his work
regarding Servetus was his personal battle to defend the heritage of
the Sixena Monastery. Mr. Arribas was, through his newly created
Institute, one of the first intellectuals to petition the
restoration of the Monastery of Sijena and to firmly denounce the
lack of will of the authorities towards Sixena's ruins.
He
died on April 22, 1984, after fighting against a long disease. He
was buried in Huerto, a little town located 30 miles from Villanueva
de Sijena.
To learn
more about Julio Arribas Salaberri, you may want to consult the book
which was edited in his honor by the Ateneo de Zaragoza and the
Michael Servetus Institute: “D. Julio Arribas (1911 -
1984)”.
Written and translated
by Sergio Baches Opi
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