History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on natural history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious teachings of Nature. Thus from the book On Bees, the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre, we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war on them out of natural hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the demons who dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail and vex mankind—whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes of such demonic warfare on mortals. In like manner his fellow-Dominican, the inquisitor Nider, in his book The Ant Hill, teaches us that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to have horns and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of atrocious heretics, like Wyclif and the Hussites, who bark and bite against the truth; while the ants of India, which dig up gold out of the sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of it, symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out the gold of Holy Scripture and hoard it in their books to no purpose.

This pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art, and especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles overhanging the walls, in the grotesques clambering about the towers or perched upon pinnacles, in the dragons prowling under archways or lurking in bosses of foliage, in the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the stalls of the choir, stained into the windows, wrought into the tapestries, illuminated in the letters and borders of psalters and missals, these marvels of creation suggested everywhere morals from the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the Exempla.(14)

(14) For the Physiologus, Bestiaries, etc., see Berger de Xivrey,
Traditions Teratologiques; also Hippeau's edition of the Bestiare de
Guillaume de Normandie, Caen, 1852, and such medieaval books of Exempla
as the Lumen Naturae; also Hoefer, Histoire de la Zoologie; also
Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation Francaise, Paris, 1885, vol i, pp.
368, 369; also Cardinal Pitra, preface to the Spicilegium Solismense,
Paris, 1885, passim; also Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie; and for
an admirable summary, the article Physiologus in the Encyclopedia
Britannica. In the illuminated manuscripts in the Library of Cornell
University are some very striking examples of grotesques. For admirably
illustrated articles on the Bestiaries, see Cahier and Martin, Melanges
d'Archeologie, Paris, 1851, 1852, and 1856, vol. ii of the first series,
pp. 85-232, and second series, volume on Curiosities Mysterieuses, pp.
106-164; also J. R. Allen, Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain
and Ireland (London, 1887), lecture vi; for an exhaustive discussion of
the subject, see Das Thierbuch des normannischen Dichters Guillaume le
Clerc, herausgegeben von Reinisch, Leipsic, 1890; and for an Italian
examlpe, Goldstaub and Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius,
Halle, 1892, where is given, on pp. 369-371, a very pious but very
comical tradition regarding the beaver, hardly mentionable to ears
polite. For Friar Bartholomew, see (besides his book itself) Medieval
Lore, edited by Robert Steele, London, 1893, pp. 118-138.

Here and there among men who were free from church control we have work of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd Allatif made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which showed a truly scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II attempted to promote a more fruitful study of Nature; but one of these men was abhorred as a Mussulman and the other as an infidel. Far more in accordance with the spirit of the time was the ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book on the topography of Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals of the island, and rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate moral. For example, he says that in Ireland "eagles live for so many ages that they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints, having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which they are borne were scorched."

In one of the great men of the following century appeared a gleam of healthful criticism: Albert the Great, in his work on the animals, dissents from the widespread belief that certain birds spring from trees and are nourished by the sap, and also from the theory that some are generated in the sea from decaying wood.

But it required many generations for such scepticism to produce much effect, and we find among the illustrations in an edition of Mandeville published just before the Reformation not only careful accounts but pictured representations both of birds and of beasts produced in the fruit of trees.(15)

(15) For Giraldus Cambrensis, see the edition in the Bohn Library,
London, 1863, p. 30; for the Abd Allatif and Frederick II, see Hoefer,
as above; for Albertus Magnus, see the De Animalibus, lib. xxiii; for
the illustrations in Mandeville, see the Strasburg edition, 1484;
for the history of the myth of the tree which produces birds, see Max
Muller's lectures on the Science of Language, second series, lect. xii.

This general employment of natural science for pious purposes went on after the Reformation. Luther frequently made this use of it, and his example controlled his followers. In 1612, Wolfgang Franz, Professor of Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world his sacred history of animals, which went through many editions. It contained a very ingenious classification, describing "natural dragons," which have three rows of teeth to each jaw, and he piously adds, "the principal dragon is the Devil."

Near the end of the same century, Father Kircher, the great Jesuit professor at Rome, holds back the sceptical current, insists upon the orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the ark sirens and griffins.

Yet even among theologians we note here and there a sceptical spirit in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth century Eugene Roger published his Travels in Palestine. As regards the utterances of Scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his work with a map showing, among other important points referred to in biblical history, the place where Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise, the spot where Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel, the steep place down which the swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea, the position of the salt statue which was once Lot's wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "the exact spot where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes."