The Popes and Science

Like his great teacher Albert, Thomas was respected even more for his piety than for his learning. Not long after his death, people began to speak of him as a saint. Though he was the most learned man of his time, he was considered to have given an example of heroic virtue. A careful investigation of his life showed that there was nothing in it unworthy of the highest ideals as a man and a religious. Accordingly he was canonized, and has ever since been considered the special patron, helper and advocate of Catholic students. All down the centuries his teaching has been looked upon as the most important in the whole realm of theology. There has never been a time when his works have not been considered the most authoritative sources of theological lore. At the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII. crowned the tributes which many Popes had conferred upon Thomas by selecting him as the teacher to whom Catholic schools should ever turn by formulating the authoritative Papal opinion–the nearer to Thomas, the nearer to Catholic truth. When it is recalled that this is the man who gave the great modern impulse to the doctrine of matter and form, who taught the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy, and declared with St. Augustine that the Creator had made only the seeds of things, allowing these afterwards to develop for themselves, which is the essence of the doctrine of evolution, it is hard to understand how there should be question of opposition between the Church and science in his time. With regard to the third of these great physical scientists, the story of his relation to the ecclesiastical authorities is not quite so simple. Roger Bacon was in his younger years very much thought of by his own order, the Franciscans. They sent him to Paris and provided him opportunities to study under the great Albert, and then transferred him to Oxford, where he had a magnificent opportunity for teaching. Many years of his life were spent in peace and happiness in the cloister. A friend and fellow student at Paris became Pope Clement, and his command was the primary cause of the composition of Bacon's great works. All three of his books, and especially the Opus Majus, were written at the command of the Pope, and were highly praised by the Pontiff himself and by those who read them in Rome. Unfortunately, difficulties occurred within Friar Bacon's own order. It is not quite clear now just how these came about. The Franciscans of the rigid observance of those early times took vows of the severest poverty. There had been some relaxation of the rule, however, and certain abuses crept in. The consequence was the re-assertion after a time of the original rule of absolute poverty in all its stringency. It was Friar Bacon himself who had chosen this mode of life and had taken the vows of poverty. Paper was a very dear commodity, if indeed it was invented early enough in the century for him to have used it. Vellum was even more expensive. Just what material Bacon employed for his writings is not now known. Whatever it was, it seems to have cost much money, and because of his violation of his vow of poverty Roger Bacon fell under the ban of his order. He was ordered to be confined to his cell in the monastery and to be fed on bread and water for a considerable period. It must not be forgotten that this was within a century after the foundation of the Franciscans, and to an ardent son of St. Francis the living on bread and water would not be a very difficult thing at this time, since his ordinary diet would, at least during certain portions of the year, be scarcely better than this. There is no account of how Roger Bacon took his punishment. He might easily have left his order. There were many others at that time who did. He wished to remain as a faithful son of St. Francis, and seems to have accepted his punishment with the idea that his example would influence others of the order to submit to the enforcement of the regulation with regard to poverty, which superiors now thought so important, if the original spirit of St. Francis was to be regained.

It is sometimes said that Friar Bacon indulged in scientific speculations which seemed subversive of Christian mysteries, and that this was one reason for his punishment. Recently he has been declared the first of the modernists since he attempted to rationalize religious mysteries. Whatever truth there may be in this, of one thing we are certain, that before his death Bacon deeply regretted some of his expressions and theories, and did not hesitate to confess humbly that he was sorry to have even seemed to hint at supposed science contrary to religious truth.

Of course, it may well be said, even after all these communities of interest between the medieval and the modern teaching of the general principles of science have been pointed out, that the universities of the Middle Ages did not present the subjects under discussion in a practical way, and their teaching was not likely to lead to directly beneficial results in applied science. It might well be responded to this, that it is not the function of a university to teach applications of science, but only the great principles, the broad generalizations that underlie scientific thinking, leaving details to be filled in in whatever form of practical work the man may take up. Very few of those, however, who talk about the purely speculative character of medieval teaching, have manifestly ever made it their business to know anything about the actual facts of old-time university teaching by definite knowledge, but have rather allowed themselves to be guided by speculation and by inadequate second-hand authorities, whose dicta they have never taken the trouble to substantiate by a glance at contemporary authorities on medieval matters, much less by reading the old scholastics themselves.

How much was accomplished in applied science during the Middle Ages, that is, in those departments of science which are usually supposed to have been least cultivated, since educators are prone to ridicule the over-emphasis of speculation in education and the constant preoccupation of mind of the scholars of these generations with merely theoretic questions, may be appreciated from any history of the arts and architecture during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Some of the most difficult problems in mechanics as applied to the structural work of cathedrals, palaces, castles, fortresses, and bridges, were solved with a success that was only equaled by the audacity with which they were attempted. Men hesitated at nothing. There is no problem of mechanical engineering as applied to structural work which these men did not find an answer for in their wonderful buildings. This has been very well brought out by Prince Kropotkin in certain chapters of his book, Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, [Footnote 41] in which he treats of mutual aid in the medieval cities. He says:

[Footnote 41: New York, McClure, Philips & Co., 1902.]

"At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were small clusters of miserable huts, adorned with but low clumsy churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain. The crafts and arts had risen to a degree of perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all directions the Northern Seas and the Southern Mediterranean; one effort more and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of land, well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread; the methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud."

The period for which Prince Kropotkin is thus enthusiastic in the matter of applied science, is all before the date usually given as the beginning of the Renaissance–the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The three centuries and a half from the beginning of the eleventh century represent just the time of the rise of scholasticism and the beginning of its decline. Few periods of history are so maligned as regards their intellectual feebleness, and in nothing is that quality supposed to be more marked than in applied science; yet here is what a special student of the time says of this very period in this particular department.

Kropotkin has shown just what were the limitations of scientific progress in the Middle Ages while emphasizing how much these wonderful generations accomplished. In this I am inclined to the opinion that he does not allow as much to the Middle Ages as he should. I have been able to point out, I think, in this chapter many evidences of important principles in science that were fully reached during the Middle Ages. Because of his more conservative opinion in this matter, however, Kropotkin's opinion should carry all the more weight with those who are now called upon to realize for the first time, how much these despised generations accomplished in matters that were to prove a precious heritage for subsequent generations, and the foundation-stones of that great edifice of science which has been built up in more recent years. Kropotkin says:

"True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at the present time in mechanical sciences; it had accustomed the explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It had inductive science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and the powers of induction; and it had laid the foundations of both mechanical and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which characterized Nuremberg."

"But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries it lived?"

We are prone to think of evolution in human affairs as being the ruling principle. As a consequence of this, we are apt to consider that since intervening periods between the nineteenth century and the Middle Ages were lacking in education, in applied science, and in interest in physical science to a great degree, beyond doubt, then, the Middle Ages must have been still more lacking in these desirable qualities of education and human knowledge. This is the sort of deduction that greets one constantly in so-called histories of education, and especially in such supposed contributions to the history of the relationship of science to religion or theology as have been made here in America. This deduction, as I have said before, is made by men who are the first to asperse the medieval scholars for having used deduction too freely, and who are ever ready to praise induction. The induction in this matter–that is, the story of the actual history of science in the Middle Ages–is the direct contradiction of the deduction from false principles. Intervening centuries not only failed to progress beyond the Middle Ages, but some of them were far behind the achievements of that unfortunately despised period. Once more Prince Kropotkin has touched this matter very suggestively. After describing the achievements of applied science in the Middle Ages, he says:

"Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or thirteenth. The prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject state, the cities were depopulated, labor was brought into slavery, art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying."

In the meantime the reformation so-called had come, and had carried away with it in its course nearly everything precious that men had gained during the four centuries immediately preceding. Art, education, science, liberty, democracy–everything worth while had been hurt; most of them had been ruined for the time. Even the nineteenth century did not succeed in bringing us back to a level with the earlier centuries in all the intellectual and esthetic accomplishments.

Another striking evidence of the deep interest of these generations in science of all kinds and in details of information with regard to which they are generally said to have been quite incurious, was the publication of the famous encyclopedia, the first work of its kind ever issued, which was written about the middle of the thirteenth century by Vincent of Beauvais. It is only when a generation actually calls for it, and when the want of it has been for a good while felt, that such a work is likely to be undertaken. This immense literary undertaking was completed under the patronage of King Louis IX. by Vincent, a Dominican friar, who died at the beginning of the last quarter of the thirteenth century. His Majus Speculum is not the first book of general information, but it is the first deserving the name of Encyclopedia in the full sense of the word that we have. It is divided into three parts–the Speculum Naturale, Doctrinale, and Historiale. The only one which interests us here is the Speculum Naturale, which fills a huge folio volume of nearly a thousand pages, closely printed in double columns. It is divided into 32 books and some 4,000 chapters. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica says of it:–

"It was, as it were, the great temple of medieval science, whose floor and walls are inlaid with an enormous mosaic of skilfully arranged passages from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even Hebrew authors. To each quotation, as he borrows it, Vincent prefixes the name of the book and the author from which it is taken, distinguishing, however, his own remarks by the word 'actor.'"

The interest aroused by Vincent's compilation outside of professional and educational circles strictly so-called, can be very well appreciated from the fact that, besides King Louis's interest, his Queen Margaret, their son Philip and son-in-law, King Theobald V., of Champagne and Navarre, were, according to tradition, among those who encouraged him in the work and aided him in bearing the expenses of it. It is rather curious to find that the method of compilation was nearly the same as that employed at the present day. Young men, mainly members of Vincent's own order of the Dominicans, were engaged in collecting the material, collating references, and verifying quotations. The main burden of the work, however, fell upon Vincent himself, and he accordingly deserves the reputation for wonderful industry which he has enjoyed. Much as he wrote, however, it does not exceed much in amount what was written by others of the great scholastics, and theirs was original material and not merely the collection of information.

If we had no other evidence of interest in nature and in natural science than this great work of Vincent of Beauvais, it would be ample to show the absurdity of the general impression that exists in the minds of most scientists, and, unfortunately, also in the minds of many educators, with regard to the barrenness of interest of the Middle Age in natural phenomena. It might easily be imagined that this work of Vincent would have very little of interest for a modern scientist. Any such anticipation is entirely due, however, to the false impression that exists with regard to the supposed ridiculously absurd views in matters of science entertained by the medieval scholars. Those who do not take their opinions on theory, but actually consult the books with regard to which they are ready to express themselves, have no such opinion. There has been much more interest in this class of books and in the scientific side of the literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries during the last few years, and the consequence has been a complete reversal of opinions with regard to them, among German and French scholars.

An excellent example of this is to be noted in Dr. Julius Pagel, who, in his chapter on Medicine in the Middle Ages, in Puschmann's Handbook of the History of Medicine, says: "There were three writers whose works were even more popular than those of Albertus Magnus. These three were: Bartholomew the Englishman, Thomas of Cantimprato, and Vincent of Beauvais, the last of whom must be considered as one of the most important contributors to the generalization of scientific knowledge, not alone in the thirteenth, but in the immediately succeeding centuries. His most important work was really an encyclopedia of the knowledge of his time. It was called the Greater Triple Mirror, and there is no doubt that it reflected very thoroughly the knowledge of his period. He had the true scientific spirit, and constantly cites the authorities from whom his information was derived. He cites hundreds of authors, and there is scarcely a subject that he does not touch on. One book of his work is concerned with human anatomy, and the concluding portion of it is an abbreviation of history carried down to the year 1250."

It might be considered that such a compend of information would be very dry-as-dust reading and that it would be fragmentary in character and little likely to be attractive except to a serious student. Dr. Pagel's opinion does not agree with this a priori impression. He says with regard to Vincent's work: "The language is clear, readily intelligible, and the information is conveyed usually in an excellent, simple style. Through the introduction of interesting similes the contents do not lack a certain taking quality, so that the reading of the work easily becomes absorbing." This is, I suppose, almost the last thing that might be expected of a scientific teacher in the thirteenth century, because, after all, Vincent of Beauvais must be considered as one of the schoolmen, and they are supposed to be eminently arid, but evidently, since we must trust this testimony of a discerning modern German physician, only by those who have not taken the trouble to read them.

Vincent of Beauvais was not the only one to occupy himself with work of an encyclopedic character during the thirteenth century. At least two other clergymen gave themselves up to the life-long work of collecting details of information so as to make them available for ready reference in their own times and for succeeding generations. The very fact that three men should have taken up such a task, shows that there must have been a loud call for this sort of writing, and that there must have been a veritable thirst for information among the educated classes of the time. Such books, as we have said, are not created without a demand for them, though they undoubtedly serve in turn to awaken a greater thirst for the information which they purvey. The other two encyclopedists of the time are Thomas Cantipratano and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Englishman.

Thomas of Cantimprato's work was probably published about 1260. Von Töply, in his Studies in Anatomy in the Middle Ages, has the most readily available information with regard to Thomas's work. [Footnote 42] The work of most interest to us is the De Natura Rerum, a single large volume in twenty books. It required some fifteen years of work, and for some fifteen years before he began his work on it Thomas had been writing various historical and biographical works. Thomas's encyclopedic volume contains one book with regard to anatomy, one with regard to human monsters, and books with regard to quadrupeds, birds, marine monsters, fishes, serpents, worms, ordinary trees, aromatic and medicinal plants and the virtues of herbs, and of curative waters of various kinds. Then there are books on precious stones and their cutting, on the seven regions and the humors of the air, on the earth and the seven planets, and on the four elements and the Heavens and eclipses of the sun and moon. When such a work was published for general reading, it is easy to understand that no phase of information with regard to nature failed to be of interest to readers of the thirteenth century. Much that is absurd is contained in the book. But when we compare it with books written in the early part of the eighteenth century, we are apt to wonder rather at how little advance had taken place in the four centuries of interval, than at the ignorance of the medieval writer.

[Footnote 42: Studien zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter von Robert Ritter von Töply, Leipzig und Wien. Franz Deuticke, 1898.]

We have been able, of course, in this limited space to give only a modicum of the evidence for the cultivation of the Physical Sciences at the Medieval Universities, and their records in monumental works still extant; but this will probably be enough to enable those who are interested in the subject to realize its significance and to gather further material if they so wish. The universities were ecclesiastical institutions. Most of them derived their authority to give degrees directly from the Popes. Appeals were frequently made to the Popes with regard to the discipline and the teaching at the universities. Most of the great teachers of physical science were ecclesiastics. Nearly all the students were clerics. Many of those who were most successful in science reached high preferment in the Church. Evidently the pursuit of science did not prejudice their advancement, either in their orders, when they belonged to any of the various religious orders, or in the Church itself. They were the near and dear friends of archbishops, cardinals and Popes. This is entirely contrary to the ordinary impression in the matter; but this is the plain truth, while the contrary opinions are founded on the false assumption of Church opposition to science.

THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY MAN AND SCIENCE

Even after the series of demonstrations which we have given that the great thinkers and teachers at the medieval universities were deeply interested in the problems of what we now call natural or physical science, most people will still not be open to conviction that interest in nature was quite as lively in the Middle Ages as at any subsequent period, even our own. In spite of the fact that the scholastics faced scientific questions in nearly the same mood as we do ourselves, and, curiously enough, anticipated very closely many of the doctrines now current in science, not a few of those who are most interested in the history of education will continue to think that science occupied the minds of the students at the medieval universities very little, and that while the great thinkers may have known something about it, the rank and file of the university men of the time gave scarcely any thought to it. Besides, they will be almost sure to conclude that, whatever they did think was likely to be inept, and in most cases quite ridiculous. Such thoughts are a part of that unfortunate educational tradition which stamps the Middle Ages as neglectful of nature study, as we would call it now, and as lacking in interest in natural phenomena. Nothing could well be less true, and it will require, I think, but the simple tracing of the life and erudition of a single well-known student of these medieval universities, to show how utterly absurd and unfounded is the popular belief.

I have chosen Dante for this purpose, mainly because so much more is known about the personal details of his life than of anyone else, and we are able to glean from his writings and the contemporary comments on them, a good idea of what the general information on scientific subjects of the educated man of his period was. The fact that Dante was a member of the Guild of the Apothecaries in Florence, an association that included also the physicians of the city, has added an adventitious interest to his attractions as one of the few greatest of poets of all time, and has made details of his career and evidence of the breadth of his education and culture of special import, so that I have frequently taken occasion to call the attention of physicians to the honor implied by Dante's fraternal relation to us. His membership in the Guild of the Apothecaries, however, did not call for any special knowledge of science on his part. He had nothing to do with the sale of drugs, much less with the science of medicine. Originally the Italian apothecaries, as the Greek origin of the word indicates, were shop-keepers selling all sorts of things–edible, adorning, or useful for personal service. They sold drugs also, and as some of these were imported from the East, they commonly added to their stock certain other Eastern specialties–perfumes, gems and the like. In this way they soon became wealthy, as a rule, and indeed the name of the rich Florentine family who came eventually to rule their native city–the Medici–is said to be derived from similar connections. It was the sons of these men who became the upper middle classes in Florence. Perhaps one should say they became the upper classes, for Florence had no nobility, in the proper sense of the word, and men made their own positions. Their descendants became the men of culture, until finally the Florentine Guild of the Apothecaries represented the most intelligent class of the population of the city. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, then, most of the artists, the literary men, the architects, the sculptors, were members of the guild. Dante's occupation when he was a peaceful citizen of Florence was, according to tradition, that of architect, and one building designed by him is supposed to be still in existence in Florence.