So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio echoing afar through the German universities, in public disquisitions, dissertations, and sermons. The great Bible commentators, both Catholic and Protestant, generally agreed in accepting them.
But, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as time went on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in 1692 Wedelius, Professor of Medicine at Jena, chose as the subject of his inaugural address The Physiology of the Destruction of Sodom and of the Statue of Salt.
It is a masterly example of "sanctified science." At great length he dwells on the characteristics of sulphur, salt, and thunderbolts; mixes up scriptural texts, theology, and chemistry after a most bewildering fashion; and finally comes to the conclusion that a thunderbolt, flung by the Almighty, calcined the body of Lot's wife, and at the same time vitrified its particles into a glassy mass looking like salt.(437)
(437) For Zvallart, see his Tres-devot Voyage de Ierusalem, Antwerp,
1608, book iv, chapter viii. His journey was made twenty years before.
For Father Boucher, see his Bouquet de la Terre Saincte, Paris, 1622,
pp. 447, 448. For Heidmann, see his Palaestina, 1689, pp. 58-62. For
Belon's credulity in matters referred to, see his Observations de
Plusieurs Singularitez, etc., Paris, 1553, pp. 141-144; and for the
legend of the peas changed into pebbles, p. 145; see also Lartet in De
Luynes, vol. iii, p. 11. For Rauwolf, see the Reyssbuch, and Tobler,
Bibliographia. For a good acoount of the influence of Montaigne in
developing French scepticism, see Prevost-Paradol's study on Montaigne
prefixed to the Le Clerc edition of the Essays, Paris, 1865; also the
well-known passages in Lecky's Rationalism in Europe. For Quaresmio
I have consulted both the Plantin edition of 1639 and the superb new
Venice edition of 1880-'82. The latter, though less prized by book
fanciers, is the more valuable, since it contains some very interesting
recent notes. For the above discussion, see Plantin edition, vol. ii,
pp. 758 et seq., and Venice edition, vol. ii, pp. 572-574. As to the
effect of Quaresmio on the Protestant Church, see Wedelius, De Statua
Salis, Jenae, 1692, pp.6, 7, and elsewhere. For Eugene Roger, see his La
Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664; the map, showing various sites referred to,
is in the preface; and for basilisks, salamanders, etc., see pp. 89-92,
139, 218, and elsewhere.
Not only were these views demonstrated, so far as theologico-scientific reasoning could demonstrate anything, but it was clearly shown, by a continuous chain of testimony from the earliest ages, that the salt statue at Usdum had been recognised as the body of Lot's wife by Jews, Mohammedans, and the universal Christian Church, "always, everywhere, and by all."
Under the influence of teachings like these—and of the winter rains—new wonders began to appear at the salt pillar. In 1661 the Franciscan monk Zwinner published his travels in Palestine, and gave not only most of the old myths regarding the salt statue, but a new one, in some respects more striking than any of the old—for he had heard that a dog, also transformed into salt, was standing by the side of Lot's wife.
Even the more solid Benedictine scholars were carried away, and we find in the Sacred History by Prof. Mezger, of the order of St. Benedict, published in 1700, a renewal of the declaration that the salt statue must be a "PERPETUAL memorial."
But it was soon evident that the scientific current was still working beneath this ponderous mass of theological authority. A typical evidence of this we find in 1666 in the travels of Doubdan, a canon of St. Denis. As to the Dead Sea, he says that he saw no smoke, no clouds, and no "black, sticky water"; as to the statue of Lot's wife, he says, "The moderns do not believe so easily that she has lasted so long"; then, as if alarmed at his own boldness, he concedes that the sea MAY be black and sticky in the middle; and from Lot's wife he escapes under cover of some pious generalities. Four years later another French ecclesiastic, Jacques Goujon, referring in his published travels to the legends of the salt pillar, says: "People may believe these stories as much as they choose; I did not see it, nor did I go there." So, too, in 1697, Morison, a dignitary of the French Church, having travelled in Palestine, confesses that, as to the story of the pillar of salt, he has difficulty in believing it.
The same current is observed working still more strongly in the travels of the Rev. Henry Maundrell, an English chaplain at Aleppo, who travelled through Palestine during the same year. He pours contempt over the legends of the Dead Sea in general: as to the story that birds could not fly over it, he says that he saw them flying there; as to the utter absence of life in the sea, he saw small shells in it; he saw no traces of any buried cities; and as to the stories regarding the statue of Lot's wife and the proposal to visit it, he says, "Nor could we give faith enough to these reports to induce us to go on such an errand."
The influence of the Baconian philosophy on his mind is very clear; for, in expressing his disbelief in the Dead Sea apples, with their contents of ashes, he says that he saw none, and he cites Lord Bacon in support of scepticism on this and similar points.