History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 40

The theological path thus opened by these strong men became the main path for science during ages, and it led the world ever further and further from any fruitful fact or useful method. Roger Bacon's investigations already begun were discredited: worthless mixtures of scriptural legends with imperfectly authenticated physical facts took their place. Thus it was that for twelve hundred years the minds in control of Europe regarded all real science as FUTILE, and diverted the great current of earnest thought into theology.

The next stage in this evolution was the development of an idea which acted with great force throughout the Middle Ages--the idea that science is DANGEROUS. This belief was also of very ancient origin. From the time when the Egyptian magicians made their tremendous threat that unless their demands were granted they would reach out to the four corners of the earth, pull down the pillars of heaven, wreck the abodes of the G.o.ds above and crush those of men below, fear of these representatives of science is evident in the ancient world.

But differences in the character of magic were recognised, some sorts being considered useful and some baleful. Of the former was magic used in curing diseases, in determining times auspicious for enterprises, and even in contributing to amus.e.m.e.nt; of the latter was magic used to bring disease and death on men and animals or tempests upon the growing crops.

Hence gradually arose a general distinction between white magic, which dealt openly with the more beneficent means of nature, and black magic, which dealt secretly with occult, malignant powers.

Down to the Christian era the fear of magic rarely led to any persecution very systematic or very cruel. While in Greece and Rome laws were at times enacted against magicians, they were only occasionally enforced with rigour, and finally, toward the end of the pagan empire, the feeling against them seemed dying out altogether. As to its more kindly phases, men like Marcus Aurelius and Julian did not hesitate to consult those who claimed to foretell the future. As to black magic, it seemed hardly worth while to enact severe laws, when charms, amulets, and even gestures could thwart its worst machinations.

Moreover, under the old empire a real science was coming in, and thought was progressing. Both the theory and practice of magic were more and more held up to ridicule. Even as early a writer as Ennius ridiculed the idea that magicians, who were generally poor and hungry themselves, could bestow wealth on others; Pliny, in his Natural Philosophy, showed at great length their absurdities and cheatery; others followed in the same line of thought, and the whole theory, except among the very lowest cla.s.ses, seemed dying out.

But with the development of Christian theology came a change. The idea of the active interference of Satan in magic, which had come into the Hebrew mind with especial force from Persia during the captivity of Israel, had pa.s.sed from the Hebrew Scriptures into Christianity, and had been made still stronger by various statements in the New Testament.

Theologians laid stress especially upon the famous utterances of the Psalmist that "all the G.o.ds of the heathen are devils," and of St.

Paul that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils"; and it was widely held that these devils were naturally indignant at their dethronement and anxious to wreak vengeance upon Christianity. Magicians were held to be active agents of these dethroned G.o.ds, and this persuasion was strengthened by sundry old pract.i.tioners in the art of magic--impostors who pretended to supernatural powers, and who made use of old rites and phrases inherited from paganism.

Hence it was that as soon as Christianity came into power it more than renewed the old severities against the forbidden art, and one of the first acts of the Emperor Constantine after his conversion was to enact a most severe law against magic and magicians, under which the main offender might be burned alive. But here, too, it should be noted that a distinction between the two sorts of magic was recognised, for Constantine shortly afterward found it necessary to issue a proclamation stating that his intention was only to prohibit deadly and malignant magic; that he had no intention of prohibiting magic used to cure diseases and to protect the crops from hail and tempests. But as new emperors came to the throne who had not in them that old leaven of paganism which to the last influenced Constantine, and as theology obtained a firmer hold, severity against magic increased. Toleration of it, even in its milder forms, was more and more denied. Black magic and white were cla.s.sed together.

This severity went on increasing and threatened the simplest efforts in physics and chemistry; even the science of mathematics was looked upon with dread. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the older theology having arrived at the climax of its development in Europe, terror of magic and witchcraft took complete possession of the popular mind. In sculpture, painting, and literature it appeared in forms ever more and more striking. The lives of saints were filled with it. The cathedral sculpture embodied it in every part. The storied windows made it all the more impressive. The missal painters wrought it not only into prayer books, but, despite the fact that hardly a trace of the belief appears in the Psalms, they ill.u.s.trated it in the great illuminated psalters from which the n.o.blest part of the service was sung before the high altar. The service books showed every form of agonizing pet.i.tion for delivery from this dire influence, and every form of exorcism for thwarting it.

All the great theologians of the Church entered into this belief and aided to develop it. The fathers of the early Church were full and explicit, and the medieval doctors became more and more minute in describing the operations of the black art and in denouncing them.

It was argued that, as the devil afflicted Job, so he and his minions continue to cause diseases; that, as Satan is the Prince of the power of the air, he and his minions cause tempests; that the cases of Nebuchadnezzar and Lot's wife prove that sorcerers can transform human beings into animals or even lifeless matter; that, as the devils of Gadara were cast into swine, all animals could be afflicted in the same manner; and that, as Christ himself had been transported through the air by the power of Satan, so any human being might be thus transported to "an exceeding high mountain."

Thus the horror of magic and witchcraft increased on every hand, and in 1317 Pope John XXII issued his bull Spondent pariter, levelled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginnings of chemical science. That many alchemists were knavish is no doubt true, but no infallibility in separating the evil from the good was shown by the papacy in this matter. In this and in sundry other bulls and briefs we find Pope John, by virtue of his infallibility as the world's instructor in all that pertains to faith and morals, condemning real science and pseudo-science alike. In two of these doc.u.ments, supposed to be inspired by wisdom from on high, he complains that both he and his flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the sorcerers; he declares that such sorcerers can send devils into mirrors and finger rings, and kill men and women by a magic word; that they had tried to kill him by piercing a waxen image of him with needles in the name of the devil. He therefore called on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who thus afflicted the faithful, and he especially increased the powers of inquisitors in various parts of Europe for this purpose.

The impulse thus given to childish fear and hatred against the investigation of nature was felt for centuries; more and more chemistry came to be known as one of the "seven devilish arts."

Thus began a long series of demonstrations against magic from the centre of Christendom. In 1437, and again in 1445, Pope Eugene IV issued bulls exhorting inquisitors to be more diligent in searching out and delivering over to punishment magicians and witches who produced bad weather, the result being that persecution received a fearful impulse.

But the worst came forty years later still, when, in 1484, there came the yet more terrible bull of Pope Innocent VIII, known as Summis Desiderantes, which let inquisitors loose upon Germany, with Sprenger at their head, armed with the Witch-Hammer, the fearful manual Malleus Maleficarum, to torture and destroy men and women by tens of thousands for sorcery and magic. Similar bulls were issued in 1504 by Julius II, and in 1523 by Adrian VI.

The system of repression thus begun lasted for hundreds of years. The Reformation did little to change it, and in Germany, where Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in proving their orthodoxy, it was at its worst. On German soil more than one hundred thousand victims are believed to have been sacrificed to it between the middle of the fifteenth and the middle of the sixteenth centuries.

Thus it was that from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Aquinas to Luther, and from Luther to Wesley, theologians of both branches of the Church, with hardly an exception, enforced the belief in magic and witchcraft, and, as far as they had power, carried out the injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

How this was ended by the progress of scientific modes of thought I shall endeavour to show elsewhere: here we are only concerned with the effect of this widespread terrorism on the germs and early growth of the physical sciences.

Of course, the atmosphere created by this persecution of magicians was deadly to any open beginnings of experimental science. The conscience of the time, acting in obedience to the highest authorities of the Church, and, as was supposed, in defence of religion, now brought out a missile which it hurled against scientific investigators with deadly effect. The mediaeval battlefields of thought were strewn with various forms of it.

This missile was the charge of unlawful compact with Satan, and it was most effective. We find it used against every great investigator of nature in those times and for ages after. The list of great men in those centuries charged with magic, as given by Naude, is astounding; it includes every man of real mark, and in the midst of them stands one of the most thoughtful popes, Sylvester II (Gerbert), and the foremost of mediaeval thinkers on natural science, Albert the Great. It came to be the accepted idea that, as soon as a man conceived a wish to study the works of G.o.d, his first step must be a league with the devil.

It was entirely natural, then, that in 1163 Pope Alexander III, in connection with the Council of Tours, forbade the study of physics to all ecclesiastics, which, of course, in that age meant prohibition of all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to make them.

What the Pope then expressly forbade was, in the words of the papal bull, "the study of physics or the laws of the world," and it was added that any person violating this rule "shall be avoided by all and excommunicated."(274)

(274) For the charge of magic against scholars and others, see Naude, Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupconnes de Magie, pa.s.sim; also Maury, Hist. de la Magie, troisieme edition, pp. 214, 215; also Cuvier, Hist.

des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 396. For the prohibition by the Council of Tours and Alexander III, see the Acta Conciliorum (ed.

Harduin), tom. vi, pars ii, p. 1598, Canon viii.

The first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into theologic pitfalls, persevered in a truly scientific path, was Roger Bacon. His life and works seem until recently to have been generally misunderstood: he was formerly ranked as a superst.i.tious alchemist who happened upon some inventions, but more recent investigation has shown him to be one of the great masters in the evolution of human thought. The advance of sound historical judgment seems likely to bring the fame of the two who bear the name of Bacon nearly to equality. Bacon of the chancellors.h.i.+p and of the Novum Organum may not wane, but Bacon of the prison cell and the Opus Majus steadily approaches him in brightness.

More than three centuries before Francis Bacon advocated the experimental method, Roger Bacon practised it, and the results as now revealed are wonderful. He wrought with power in many sciences, and his knowledge was sound and exact. By him, more than by any other man of the Middle Ages, was the world brought into the more fruitful paths of scientific thought--the paths which have led to the most precious inventions; and among these are clocks, lenses, and burning specula, which were given by him to the world, directly or indirectly. In his writings are found formulae for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bis.m.u.th. It is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that he investigated the power of steam, and he seems to have very nearly reached some of the princ.i.p.al doctrines of modern chemistry. But it should be borne in mind that his METHOD of investigation was even greater than its RESULTS. In an age when theological subtilizing was alone thought to give the t.i.tle of scholar, he insisted on REAL reasoning and the aid of natural science by mathematics; in an age when experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on experimenting, and braved all its risks. Few greater men have lived. As we follow Bacon's process of reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see that he was divinely inspired.

On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most conscientious men of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they fought him steadily and bitterly. His sin was not disbelief in Christianity, not want of fidelity to the Church, not even dissent from the main lines of orthodoxy; on the contrary, he showed in all his writings a desire to strengthen Christianity, to build up the Church, and to develop orthodoxy. He was attacked and condemned mainly because he did not believe that philosophy had become complete, and that nothing more was to be learned; he was condemned, as his opponents expressly declared, "on account of certain suspicious novelties"--"propter quasdam novitates suspectas."

Upon his return to Oxford, about 1250, the forces of unreason beset him on all sides. Greatest of all his enemies was Bonaventura. This enemy was the theologic idol of the period: the learned world knew him as the "seraphic Doctor"; Dante gave him an honoured place in the great poem of the Middle Ages; the Church finally enrolled him among the saints. By force of great ability in theology he had become, in the middle of the thirteenth century, general of the Franciscan order: thus, as Bacon's master, his hands were laid heavily on the new teaching, so that in 1257 the troublesome monk was forbidden to lecture; all men were solemnly warned not to listen to his teaching, and he was ordered to Paris, to be kept under surveillance by the monastic authorities. Herein was exhibited another of the myriad examples showing the care exercised over scientific teaching by the Church. The reasons for thus dealing with Bacon were evident: First, he had dared attempt scientific explanations of natural phenomena, which under the mystic theology of the Middle Ages had been referred simply to supernatural causes. Typical was his explanation of the causes and character of the rainbow. It was clear, cogent, a great step in the right direction as regards physical science: but there, in the book of Genesis, stood the legend regarding the origin of the rainbow, supposed to have been dictated immediately by the Holy Spirit; and, according to that, the "bow in the cloud" was not the result of natural laws, but a "sign" arbitrarily placed in the heavens for the simple purpose of a.s.suring mankind that there was not to be another universal deluge.

But this was not the worst: another theological idea was arrayed against him--the idea of Satanic intervention in science; hence he was attacked with that goodly missile which with the epithets "infidel" and "atheist"

has decided the fate of so many battles--the charge of magic and compact with Satan.

He defended himself with a most unfortunate weapon--a weapon which exploded in his hands and injured him more than the enemy; for he argued against the idea of compacts with Satan, and showed that much which is ascribed to demons results from natural means. This added fuel to the flame. To limit the power of Satan was deemed hardly less impious than to limit the power of G.o.d.

The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend Guy of Foulques, having in 1265 been made Pope under the name of Clement IV, s.h.i.+elded him for a time; but the fury of the enemy was too strong, and when he made ready to perform a few experiments before a small audience, we are told that all Oxford was in an uproar. It was believed that Satan was about to be let loose. Everywhere priests, monks, fellows, and students rushed about, their garments streaming in the wind, and everywhere rose the cry, "Down with the magician!" and this cry, "Down with the magician!" resounded from cell to cell and from hall to hall.

Another weapon was also used upon the battlefields of science in that time with much effect. The Arabs had made many n.o.ble discoveries in science, and Averroes had, in the opinion of many, divided the honours with St. Thomas Aquinas; these facts gave the new missile--it was the epithet "Mohammedan"; this, too, was flung with effect at Bacon.

The attack now began to take its final shape. The two great religious orders, Franciscan and Dominican, then in all the vigour of their youth, vied with each other in fighting the new thought in chemistry and physics. St. Dominic solemnly condemned research by experiment and observation; the general of the Franciscan order took similar ground.

In 1243 the Dominicans interdicted every member of their order from the study of medicine and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this interdiction was extended to the study of chemistry.

In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order a.s.sembled at Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teaching, and the general of the Franciscans, Jerome of Ascoli, afterward Pope, threw him into prison, where he remained for fourteen years, Though Pope Clement IV had protected him, Popes Nicholas III and IV, by virtue of their infallibility, decided that he was too dangerous to be at large, and he was only released at the age of eighty--but a year or two before death placed him beyond the reach of his enemies. How deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be gathered from that last affecting declaration of his, "Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science!"

The attempt has been made by sundry champions of the Church to show that some of Bacon's utterances against ecclesiastical and other corruptions in his time were the main cause of the severity which the Church authorities exercised against him. This helps the Church but little, even if it be well based; but it is not well based. That some of his utterances of this sort made him enemies is doubtless true, but the charges on which St. Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.

Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. He held the key of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also. The nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thirteenth. But for that interference with science the nineteenth century would be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century, and even later. Thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth.

In two recent years sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales of scarlet fever; probably quite as many died in the United States. Had not Bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands, by this time, the means to save two thirds of these victims; and the same is true of typhoid, typhus, cholera, and that great cla.s.s of diseases of whose physical causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. Put together all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger Bacon, and closed the path which he gave his life to open.

But despite the persecution of Bacon and the defection of those who ought to have followed him, champions of the experimental method rose from time to time during the succeeding centuries. We know little of them personally; our main knowledge of their efforts is derived from the endeavours of their persecutors.

Under such guidance the secular rulers were naturally vigorous. In France Charles V forbade, in 1380, the possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical processes; under this law the chemist John Barrillon was thrown into prison, and it was only by the greatest effort that his life was saved. In England Henry IV, in 1404, issued a similar decree. In Italy the Republic of Venice, in 1418, followed these examples. The judicial torture and murder of Antonio de Dominis were not simply for heresy his investigations in the phenomena of light were an additional crime. In Spain everything like scientific research was crushed out among Christians. Some earnest efforts were afterward made by Jews and Moors, but these were finally ended by persecution; and to this hour the Spanish race, in some respects the most gifted in Europe, which began its career with everything in its favour and with every form of n.o.ble achievement, remains in intellectual development behind every other in Christendom.

To question the theological view of physical science was, even long after the close of the Middle Ages, exceedingly perilous. We have seen how one of Roger Bacon's unpardonable offences was his argument against the efficacy of magic, and how, centuries afterward, Cornelius Agrippa, Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a mult.i.tude of other investigators and thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and death, for similar views.(275)

(275) For an account of Bacon's treatise, De Nullitate Magiae, see Hoefer. For the uproar caused by Bacon's teaching at Oxford, see Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1869, vol. i, p. 63; and for a somewhat reactionary discussion of Bacon's relation to the progress of chemistry, see a recent work by the same author, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1874, pp. 85 et seq.; also, for an excellent summary, see Hoefer, Hist. de la Chimie, vol. i, pp. 368 et seq. For probably the most thorough study of Bacon's general works in science, and for his views of the universe, see Prof. Werner, Die Kosmologie und allgemeine Naturlehre des Roger Baco, Wein, 1879. For summaries of his work in other fields, see Whewell, vol. i, pp. 367, 368; Draper, p. 438; Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs, deuxieme edition, pp. 397 et seq.; Nourrisson, Progres de la Pensee humaine, pp.

271, 272; Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, Paris, 1865, vol. ii, p.

397; Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 417. As to Bacon's orthodoxy, see Saisset, pp. 53, 55. For special examination of causes of Bacon's condemnation, see Waddington, cited by Saisset, p.

14. For a brief but admirable statement of Roger Bacon's realtion to the world in his time, and of what he might have done had he not been thwarted by theology, see Dollinger, Studies in European History, English translation, London, 1890, pp. 178, 179. For a good example of the danger of denying the full power of Satan, even in much more recent times and in a Protestant country, see account of treatment in Bekker's Monde Enchante by the theologians of Holland, in Nisard, Histoire des Livres Populaires, vol. i, pp. 172, 173. Kopp, in his Ansichten, pushes criticism even to some scepticism as to Roger Bacon being the DISCOVERER of many of the things generally attributed to him; but, after all deductions are carefully made, enough remains to make Bacon the greatest benefactor to humanity during the Middle Ages. For Roger Bacon's deep devotion to religion and the Church, see citation and remarks in Schneider, Roger Bacon, Augsburg, 1873, p. 112; also, citation from the Opus Majus, in Eicken, chap. vi. On Bacon as a "Mohammedan," see Saisset, p. 17. For the interdiction of studies in physical science by the Dominicans and Franciscans, see Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol. iv, p. 283. For suppression of chemical teaching by the Parliament of Paris, see ibid., vol. xii, pp. 14, 15. For proofs that the world is steadily working toward great discoveries as to the cause and prevention of zymotic diseases and their propogation, see Beale's Disease Germs, Baldwin Latham's Sanitary Engineering, Michel Levy's Traite a Hygiene Publique et Privee. For a summary of the bull Spondent pariter, and for an example of injury done by it, see Schneider, Geschichte der Alchemie, p. 160; and for a studiously moderate statement, Milman, Latin Christianity, book xii, chap. vi. For character and general efforts of John XXII, see Lea, Inquisition, vol. iii, p. 436, also pp. 452 et seq.

For the character of the two papal briefs, see Rydberg, p. 177. For the bull Summis Desiderantes, see previous chapters of this work. For Antonio de Dominis, see Montucla, Hist. des Mathematiques, vol. i, p.

705; Humboldt, Cosmos; Libri, vol. iv, pp. 145 et seq. For Weyer, Flade, Bekker, Loos, and others, see the chapters of this work on Meteorology, Demoniacal Possession and Insanity, and Diabolism and Hysteria.

The theological atmosphere, which in consequence settled down about the great universities and colleges, seemed likely to stifle all scientific effort in every part of Europe, and it is one of the great wonders in human history that in spite of this deadly atmosphere a considerable body of thinking men, under such protection as they could secure, still persisted in devoting themselves to the physical sciences.

In Italy, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, came a striking example of the difficulties which science still encountered even after the Renaissance had undermined the old beliefs. At that time John Baptist Porta was conducting his investigations, and, despite a considerable mixture of pseudo-science, they were fruitful. His was not "black magic," claiming the aid of Satan, but "white magic," bringing into service the laws of nature--the precursor of applied science. His book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached on this subject; his researches in optics gave the world the camera obscura, and possibly the telescope; in chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of several important industries. He did much to change natural philosophy from a black art to a vigorous open science.

He encountered the old ecclesiastical policy. The society founded by him for physical research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul III and forbidden to continue his investigations.

So, too, in France. In 1624, some young chemists at Paris having taught the experimental method and cut loose from Aristotle, the faculty of theology beset the Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament prohibited these new chemical researches under the severest penalties.

The same war continued in Italy. Even after the belief in magic had been seriously weakened, the old theological fear and dislike of physical science continued. In 1657 occurred the first sitting of the Accademia del Cimento at Florence, under the presidency of Prince Leopold de'

Medici This academy promised great things for science; it was open to all talent; its only fundamental law was "the repudiation of any favourite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment"; it entered into scientific investigations with energy. Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural history, and many others, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge.