History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

Another weapon was also used upon the battlefields of science in that time with much effect. The Arabs had made many noble 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 assembled 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 class 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 noble 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 multitude 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.