The Freedom of Science

It is true, the Church then owned much property. But it is just as true that she was ever ready to support science and colleges out of this property. Pope and clergy were also taking incessant pains to make it possible for poor students to attend the university, not only for theological students, but for those of all the faculties, to give an opportunity to rich and poor alike to enjoy the advantages of higher education. Stipends and legacies of this kind are numerous. Even in our own days many a son of an alma mater owes the stipend he enjoys to endowments made by the Church. In the course of time there were established at most of the universities so-called colleges for the purpose of offering shelter and maintenance to poor students.

These colleges contributed essentially to the flourishing condition of the university. Thus Albrecht v. Langenstein suggested, at the founding of Vienna university, to the Duke, Albrecht of Austria, the establishment of such colleges, inasmuch as the continuance of the university was dependent on them, and stated that Paris owed its prosperity to them (Denifle, 624).

The Popes set here the best example. Zoen, Bishop of Avignon, had provided in his testament that eight students from the province of Avignon should be maintained at Bologna by his successors from their estates at Bologna. These estates, however, were sold later on. John XXII. then interfered in favour of the students injured thereby and annulled the deed of purchase. The income was set aside and increased to an amount sufficient for thirty scholars; later on the Pope endeavoured to raise their number to fifty. At the same celebrated academy, which, next to Paris, had long been a beacon of science sought from near and afar, Urban V. founded a home for poor students and directed the appropriation of 4,000 gold ducats a year for it. From June 16, 1367, to June 15, 1368, the home received an appropriation of 5,908 ducats in gold and 155 baskets of cereals. His successor, Gregory XI., set himself to the task of completing the work begun. Out of the income of the Church he ordered appropriated in the future 1,500 ducats a year for thirty students, of whom one half were to study Canon Law, the other half Civil Law. He then decreed the purchase of a home for 4,500 ducats in gold, and ordered to pay out immediately 4,000 florins in gold for the next school year. Besides the college named, Urban V. had founded one at Montpellier for medical students, and another, which had its seat at first at Trets, later at Monosque. During his pontificate this Pope maintained no less than 1,000 students at various institutions. Toulouse also had several colleges for poor students, founded by high princes of the Church. In the year 1359 Innocent VI. devoted his own home at Toulouse with all its possessions and its entire income to twenty poor students, ten of whom were to study Canon Law and ten Civil Law. For their further maintenance he ordered given to them, besides other things, 25,000 florins in gold “manualiter” (Denifle, 213 seq., 308 seq., 339).

Finally, nearly all universities, whether they owed their existence to ecclesiastical or civil power, received many and far-reaching privileges from the Popes. Not the least one was for clerical students the dispensation to free them from the requirement of residence for the enjoyment of their benefices, which made it possible for them to study in remote university towns, where they were free to study not only theology, but other sciences as well. This dispensation was quite common. Furthermore, the Popes protected in the most energetic way the universities in their privileges and freedom every time they were applied to for aid.

This happened, for instance, at Bologna. The students there had their free guilds. The municipal authorities began to restrict their privileges by forbidding native students under heavy penalties to study outside of Bologna, which was later on extended to the alien students. The professors sided with the city. Honorius III.in 1220 called upon the latter to repeal those statutes; if they wanted to confine the students to the city, it should be done by clemency, not with severity and coercion. The city relented. But we see again in 1224 the students appeal, for the third time since 1217, to the Pope, begging for protection. The tension had grown; the city was actually beginning to use force. Honorius sharply rebuked the city for this action, threatening excommunication if the authorities continued to suppress freedom. The city yielded completely, and the freedom of the students was saved, thanks to their protector. Later on the Popes had to interfere again. Clement V. had already ordered the Bishops to protect the students at Bologna. His successor, John XXII., received complaints that privileges of students in Italy were being violated by authorities and citizens of the city. Against the Podesta of Bologna especially complaints were made. The Pope, in 1321 and 1322, bade the Bishops and Archbishops to take measures against those who directe et indirecte impedire dieuntur, ne ad praedictum studium valeant declinare contra apostolica et imperialia privilegia. He appointed at Bologna a special protector and conservator of the university. Some years after, when the Podesta declined to take the juramentum de observandis statutis ejusdem studiis factis et faciendis, he was commanded to take the oath.

At Orleans there was a flourishing law school; especially its jus civile was famous. Professors and students were granted by Clement V. the privilege of an autonomous university with the right of free corporation, with the power to suspend lectures in case they could get no satisfaction for any wrong done them. These privileges were a thorn in the eye of the city; its citizens even allowed violence to be done the university. Then Philip the Fair interfered, but in a way which indicates that he did not know sufficiently the university life of the Middle Ages. Moreover, he annulled the granted free fellowship, and put professors and the students under civil supervision. But this was not tolerated in those days. The king had at the same time given many privileges, but they were disregarded. In 1316 professors and students left Orleans and the university ceased to exist. The first act of John XXII. upon ascending the Papal throne was to restore this school, the French king himself having begged his support in the matter. The king's suggestion to take the privilege of free fellowship from the professors and students was rejected by the Pope. The Pope reaffirmed all privileges granted to the university, whereupon the professors and students returned, to inaugurate the most brilliant epoch of their college.

Considering these facts, one may subscribe to the judgment of Denifle which he pronounces at the conclusion of his thorough treatise on the universities of the Middle Ages: “So far as the foundation of the universities can be spoken of, its merit belongs to the Popes, to secular rulers, clergy, and laity. But that the lion's share belongs to the Popes every one must admit who has followed my presentment, which is exclusively based on documents, and who examines history with impartiality” (Ib. 792 seq.). Even Kaufmann, who is very unfavourably disposed towards the Church, cannot deny that “numerous Popes have shown warm interest for the fostering of sciences during those centuries, and were for the most part themselves prominent representatives of science” (Ib. 403).

That the mediæval universities in some points, though not in all, were inferior to modern universities, was not their fault. No good judge of human conditions could expect it to be otherwise. The experience and efficiency of the mature man is not attained at once, but only after the exertions and experiments made by him during the period of youth and development. At a time when all the experiences in the field of school legislation, which are the property of the present day, had yet to be collected, when the relation between lower and higher schools had not been regulated in all respects, at that time it was not possible to be in the position we are in to-day. Future critics of our times will see in our present educational systems many gross defects, which often are not hidden even to our own eyes. But it would be arrogance for them to belittle our efforts, the fruits of which they will once enjoy without any merit on their part. The university of yore conformed to the educational purposes of that period; it was the focus of intellectual life, perhaps to a larger degree than is the case to-day. This suffices. Moreover, the number of professors was quite considerable, that of the students even more so. In Bologna in 1388 the number of professors was 70, not including the theologians, among them 39 jurists; in Piacenza there were from the years 1398 to 1402 71 professors; among them were 27 teachers of Roman law and 22 teachers of medicine (Denifle, 209, 571).

In regard to the zeal displayed by the Church in promoting universities, it might be objected that she was caring in the first place for theology, not for the other sciences, and that the universities then had chiefly been established for theological students. This, however, is not the case. The universities especially favoured by the Popes were first of all law schools, chiefly of civil law, or medical schools. Those at Bologna, Padua, Florence, and Orleans were principally law schools; in Italy, in general, chief attention was paid to jurisprudence, particularly to Roman law. Montpellier was essentially a medical college; it attained during the thirteenth century preponderance even over Salerno. The assertion has been made that the vigorous life at this medical college was owing to its independence of Rome (Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, 1, 655. Cfr. Denifle, 342). But Denifle has proved that “clerical organs have been the moving spirits of the medical college at Montpellier.”

Nor did the Papal charter deeds exclude any profane science. The common formula, which always prevails, authorizes to teach indiscriminately in jure canonico et civili necnon in medicina et qualibet alia licita facultate. Only one science was frequently excepted, and that was just theology. Of the forty-six high schools that had been established up to the year 1400, about twenty-eight, therefore nearly two-thirds, excluded by their charter the teaching of theology. At first a number of universities sprang up merely as law schools, others as medical schools, and there was then no need to include the science of theology in the schedule of studies. Furthermore, Paris was ever since the twelfth century looked upon as the home and the natural place for theology (Denifle, 703 f.). Hence the benevolence of the Church towards the universities was not merely determined by selfish interest.

Or was it, nevertheless? May the Church not have bestowed so much care on the homes of science in order to increase her own influence thereby, and also with an eye to the future? This assertion has been made. But this assertion is an injustice and it is against the testimony of history. The Popes very often issued their charter deeds only then, when request was made by worldly rulers and by the cities themselves. Hence there was no hurried self-assertion. And the Church has never denied the right to worldly powers to found their own high schools. The theologians of the thirteenth century expressedly declared it to be the duty of princes to provide for institutions of learning (Cfr. Thomas of Aquin, De regimine principum, I, 13; Op. contra impug. relig. 3).

Thus up to the year 1400 nine high schools had received no charters at all, ten only imperial charters or charters from their local sovereigns. If the Popes had cared only about their influence, why then did they treat such colleges with the same benevolence? Spain's first college was founded at Paleneia in the years 1212-1214 by Alfonso VIII.without asking the Pope. When soon afterwards it was in trouble it was Honorius III. who aided Alfonso's successor in restoring it, by assigning some ecclesiastical income to its professors. When the college was nearly wrecked and Rome once more applied to for help, Urban IV. lent an aiding hand because he did not want ut lucerna tanta claritatis in commune mutorum dispendium sic extincta remaneat. Frederick II. had founded a university of his own. When it failed it was Clement IV. who urged King Charles of Anjou to re-establish it. In eodem regno facias et jubeas hujusmodi studium reformari (Denifle, 478, 459). This is not the language and action of one who is only ruled by the passion to spread his own influence, and not guided by benevolence for science.

But it is true, in supporting the higher schools the Church did not aim at science as its ultimate object; it was her view that science should serve the material welfare of man, but still more the highest ethical and religious purpose of life. This in general was the conception of the entire Middle Ages. At that time it would have been considered curious to seek a science ultimately for its own sake.

And the universities repaid the Church by gratitude and devotion. The effort has been made to demonstrate that the modern separation of science from religion had already begun in the Middle Ages, and had showed itself everywhere; this tendency for autonomy “appeared at first only timidly and in manifold disguises” (Kaufmann, 14). How easy it is to find such disguises may be shown by an example. The university of Paris had after the death of St. Thomas asked for his remains. Kaufmann holds that the notion of the autonomy of science had found sharp expression in the memorandum wherein the university stated the motive of its request. Now how does this harmless document sound? “Quoniam omnino est indecens et indignum ut alia ratio aut locus quam omnium studiorum nobilissima Parisiensis civitas quae ipsum prius educavit nutrivit et fovit et post modum ad eodem doctrinae monumenta et ineffabilia fomenta suscepit ossa … habeat… Si enim Ecclesia merito ossa et reliquias Sanctorum honorat nobis non sine causa videtur honestum et sanctum tanti doctoris corpus in perpetuum penes nos habere in honore.” Evidently the university requests the relic for itself, or rather for the Parisiensis civitas, not in opposition to the Church, but in opposition to other cities, altera natio aut locus. I wonder if the Parisian admirers of St. Thomas ever dreamed that they would one day be put in the light of forerunners of liberal science, because of their pious application for the bones of their great teacher? This is tantamount to carrying one's own idea into the fact. Denifle, probably the most competent judge of the affairs of mediæval universities, writes as follows: “If we weigh the different acts which suggest themselves to us in these various foundations, and if we compare them with one another, there is revealed to us, in the realm of history of the foundation of mediæval universities, a wonderful harmony between Church and State, between the spiritual and material. This is the reason why the universities of the Middle Ages appear to us as the highest civil as well as the highest ecclesiastical teaching institutions. Fundamentally, they are the product of the Christian spirit which penetrated the whole, wherein Pope and Prince, clergy and laity, each held the proper position” (l. c. p. 795).

One consequence of this relation between the universities and the Church was that “they attained their greatest prosperity as long as the unity of Church and faith remained unimpaired, and that, at the time of the Reformation, they all sided with the Church with the exception of two, Wittenberg and Erfurt. Torn away from their ecclesiastical and established basis only by violent means, they were led to the new doctrine, but really succumbed to it only when their freedom had been curtailed and they had been reduced to state institutions” (Janssen, l. c. p. 91). They had been, as the learned Wimpheling wrote at the close of the sixteenth century, “the most favoured daughters of the Church, who tried to repay by fidelity and attachment what they owed to their Mother” (De arte impressoria, apud Janssen, l. c. 91).

A False Progress

Hence history cannot subscribe to the accusation that the Church is the enemy of progress. How then does it happen that this accusation is made so frequently? The idea suggests itself that there may be here a different meaning given to the word “progress,” that the Church opposes a certain kind of progress which her enemies call “the” progress. And this is the actual fact. If we examine the proofs which are to show the hostile attitude of the Church, we meet at every step Galileo, the Copernican system, the Syllabus, and Index. But this appears only on the surface, which hides beneath it something that is easily overlooked by the cursory glance. And this is the precise definition of scientific and civilized progress. Progress has ever been an ideal of powerful attraction. The noblest and best of men have ever displayed the most earnest endeavour onward and upward. In our times, however, this ideal comes forward differently garbed, in the name of the new view of the world, and resolutely censures as reactionary everything that will oppose it. What is this definition?

Since the theory of evolution of Lamarck and Darwin entered biology, it has also more and more invaded other branches of science. The principle is now that everywhere, in the organic or inorganic world and in the whole province of human life there is a gradual growth and change – nothing permanent, nothing definite and absolute. Uninterrupted evolution hitherto; hereafter restless development; especially in the greatest good belonging to human life, thought, philosophy, and chiefly religion. Here, too, there are no forms nor dogmas which evolution in its continual development does not evolve and elevate. This idea of evolution is supplemented by subjectivism with its relativism of truth: all views, especially philosophical and religious “Truths,” are no longer the reproduction of objectively existing things, but a creation of the subject, of his inner experience and feeling; hence each age must proceed to new thought of its own.

“The methods of scientific research,” we are told, “are determined by the idea of evolution, and this applies not only to natural sciences but also to the so-called intellectual sciences, – history, philology, philosophy, and theology. The idea of evolution influences and dominates all our thoughts; without it progress in the field of scientific knowledge is quite impossible.” We read, for instance, in the modern history of philosophy: “The rise and fall of a system is a necessary part of universal history; it is conditioned by the character of its time, the system being the understanding of that time, while this understanding of the time is conditioned by the fact that the time has changed.” At Roscellin's time the nominalists were intellectually inferior; but where there is question of undermining the militant Church of the Middle Ages the nominalists will be considered to have been the greater philosophers. In this the realists “by the futility of their struggle proved that the time for nominalism had arrived, hence that whoever favours it understands the time better; that is, more philosophically. After the beginning of the Renaissance we notice an attempt at philosophizing in such a way as to ignore the existence of divine wisdom taught by Christianity. The pre-Christian sages had done so: to philosophize in their spirit was therefore the task of the time, and those who had a better understanding of the time philosophized that way better than by the scholastic method; though their method may appear reactionary to unphilosophical minds” (J. E. Erdmann, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philosophie, 3d ed., I (1878), 4, 262, 434, 502). This is a frank denial of any truth in philosophy: the more neological and modern a thing is, the more truth there is in it! Realism was right in Roscellin's time, but a later period had to sweep it away. The Christian religion was right for the Middle Ages, but when the Greek authors began to be read again it was no longer modern.

Apostasy from the faith is considered a mark of progress. “Italian natural philosophy,” we are told, “reached its pinnacle with Brunoand Campanella, of whom the former, though the older, appears to be more progressive on account of his freer attitude towards the Church” (R. Falkenburg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 5th ed. (1905), page 30, seq.). Hence evidently further development of Christianity, too, is demanded. According to subjectivistic views it was hitherto only an historical product of the human intellect: hence “onward to new and higher forms corresponding to modern thought and feeling, onward to a new Christianity without dogmas and authority!” “Break up those old tablets,” spoke Zarathustra.

Such is progress in thought and science, for which the way must be opened. That the immutable dogmas of Christianity, that the task of the Catholic Church to preserve revelation intact, are incompatible with it, that the Church appears reactionary, and as an obstacle to this progress, is now self-evident. Here we have the deeper contrast between progress, in the anti-Christian sense, and the essence of Christianity in general, and, especially, of the Catholic Church.

“It is frankly admitted that the issue is the struggle between the two views of the world – between the Christian, conservative dogmatism and the anti-dogmatic evolutionary philosophy” (Neue Freie Presse, Jun. 7, 1908). Faith according to its very essence is immutable and stationary, science is essentially progressive: they had therefore to part in a manner which could not be kept a secret. “A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction, it must repudiate all improvement in itself” (J. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, VI). “The great opposition between the rigid dogmatism of the Roman Catholic Church and the ever progressing modern science cannot be removed” (Academicus, l. c. 362). So say the opponents of the Church.

There is no error, says St. Augustine, which does not contain some truth, especially when it is able to rule the thought of many. Hence its capacity to deceive. The same is true in the present case.

There is evolution and progress in everything, or at least there should be. The individual gradually develops from the embryo into a perfect form, though it becomes nothing else than what it had formerly been in its embryonic state. Mankind advances rapidly in civilization; we no longer ride in the rumbling stage-coach but in a comfortable express train, and the tallow candle has been replaced by the electric light. Thus we demand progress also in knowledge and science, and even in religion. Many things that were obscure to older generations have become clear to us; we have corrected many an error, made many discoveries which were unknown to our ancestors. Many doctrines of faith, also, appear to our eyes in sharper outlines than before; of many we have a deeper understanding, discovered new relations, meanings, and deductions. Thus there is progress and development everywhere.

But it would be erroneous to conclude from all this that there cannot be any stable truths and dogmas, that progress to new and different views and doctrines is necessary. By the same right we might conclude that the main principles of the Copernican system cannot be immutable, because they would hinder the progress of science. Progress certainly does not consist in throwing away all certainty acquired, in order to begin anew. Or does it really belong to progress in astronomy to again give up Copernicus, to go back to Ptolemy and let the sun and all the stars revolve again around the earth? Does not progress rather consist in our studying these astronomical results more closely, in building up the details, and, first of all, in trying to solve new problems?