Lactantius, four centuries before, had laughed at the antipodes in a manner which seems to be ridicule thrown on the idea of the earth's roundness. Ptolemy, without reference to the antipodes, describes the extent of the inhabited part of the globe in a way which shows that he could have had no objection to men turned opposite ways. Probably, in the eighth century, the roundness of the earth was matter of thought only to astronomers. It should always be remembered, especially by those who affirm persecution of a true opinion, that but for our knowing from Lactantius that the antipodal notion had been matter of assertion and denial among theologians, we could never have had any great confidence in Virgil really having maintained the simple theory of the existence of antipodes. And even now we are not entitled to affirm it as having historical proof: the evidence
goes to Virgil having been charged with very absurd notions, which it seems more likely than not were the absurd constructions which ignorant contemporaries put upon sensible opinions of his.
One curious part of this discussion is that neither side has allowed Pope Zachary to produce evidence to character. He shall have been an Urban, say the astronomers; an Urban he ought to have been, say the theologians. What sort of man was Zachary? He was eminently sensible and conciliatory; he contrived to make northern barbarians hear reason in a way which puts him high among that section of the early popes who had the knack of managing uneducated swordsmen. He kept the peace in Italy to an extent which historians mention with admiration. Even Bale, that Maharajah of pope-haters, allows himself to quote in favor of Zachary, that "multa Papalem dignitatem decentia, eademque præclara (scilicet) opera confecit."[[11]] And this, though so willing to find fault that, speaking of Zachary putting a little geographical description of the earth on the portico of the Lateran Church, he insinuates that it was intended to affirm that the Pope was lord of the whole. Nor can he say how long Zachary held the see, except by announcing his death in 752, "cum decem annis pestilentiæ sedi præfuisset."[[12]]
There was another quarrel between Virgil and Boniface which is an illustration. An ignorant priest had baptized "in nomine Patria, et Filia et Spiritua Sancta." Boniface declared the rite null and void: Virgil maintained the contrary; and Zachary decided in favor of Virgil, on the ground that the absurd form was only ignorance of Latin, and not heresy. It is hard to believe that this man deposed a priest for asserting the whole globe to be inhabited. To me the little information that we have seems
to indicate—but not with certainty—that Virgil maintained the antipodes: that his ignorant contemporaries travestied his theory into that of an underground cosmos; that the Pope cited him to Rome to explain his system, which, as reported, looked like what all would then have affirmed to be heresy; that he gave satisfactory explanations, and was dismissed with honor. It may be that the educated Greek monk, Zachary, knew his Ptolemy well enough to guess what the asserted heretic would say; we have seen that he seems to have patronized geography. The description of the earth, according to historians, was a map; this Pope may have been more ready than another to prick up his ears at any rumor of geographical heresy, from hope of information. And Virgil, who may have entered the sacred presence as frightened as Jacquard, when Napoleon I sent for him and said, with a stern voice and threatening gesture, "You are the man who can tie a knot in a stretched string," may have departed as well pleased as Jacquard with the riband and pension which the interview was worth to him.
A word more about Baronius. If he had been pope, as he would have been but for the opposition of the Spaniards, and if he had lived ten years longer than he did, and if Clavius, who would have been his astronomical adviser, had lived five years longer than he did, it is probable, nay almost certain, that the great exhibition, the proceeding against Galileo, would not have furnished a joke against theology in all time to come. For Baronius was sensible and witty enough to say that in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit intended to teach how to go to Heaven, not how Heaven goes; and Clavius, in his last years, confessed that the whole system of the heavens had broken down, and must be mended.
The manner in which the Galileo case, a reality, and the Virgil case, a fiction, have been hawked against the Roman see are enough to show that the Pope and his adherents have not cared much about physical philosophy. In truth, orthodoxy has always had other fish to fry. Physics, which
in modern times has almost usurped the name philosophy, in England at least, has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honors of persecution which belong to the real owner of the name. But the bishops, etc. of the Middle Ages knew that the contest between nominalism and realism, for instance, had a hundred times more bearing upon orthodoxy than anything in astronomy, etc. A wrong notion about substance might play the mischief with transubstantiation.
The question of the earth's motion was the single point in which orthodoxy came into real contact with science. Many students of physics were suspected of magic, many of atheism: but, stupid as the mistake may have been, it was bona fide the magic or the atheism, not the physics, which was assailed. In the astronomical case it was the very doctrine, as a doctrine, independently of consequences, which was the corpus delicti: and this because it contradicted the Bible. And so it did; for the stability of the earth is as clearly assumed from one end of the Old Testament to the other as the solidity of iron. Those who take the Bible to be totidem verbis dictated by the God of Truth can refuse to believe it; and they make strange reasons. They undertake, a priori, to settle Divine intentions. The Holy Spirit did not mean to teach natural philosophy: this they know beforehand; or else they infer it from finding that the earth does move, and the Bible says it does not. Of course, ignorance apart, every word is truth, or the writer did not mean truth. But this puts the whole book on its trial: for we never can find out what the writer meant, until we otherwise find out what is true. Those who like may, of course, declare for an inspiration over which they are to be viceroys; but common sense will either accept verbal meaning or deny verbal inspiration.