The Popes and Science / The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time

by James J. Walsh

Analogous Examples.--Should we be surprised, then, if men so occupied failed to add much to the world's store of scientific knowledge? Though it were admitted, as it cannot be in its entirety, that they left physical science just where they found it, could not an explanation be discovered that would exonerate them from all blame? To justify such an apology, we do not even need to transport ourselves in spirit back to their time, a process which, however, strict fairness would demand. But in our own era we can think easily of dozens and hundreds of men of highest respectability and most beneficent accomplishment, men of books and men of affairs, jurists, statesmen, historians and others, who have [{486}] themselves done little or nothing for the onward march of Science. That the careers of these men are profitless, who shall allege?

Again, the present writer has often thought of the almost parallel example of the ancient Romans. It makes their history but little less illustrious to learn that this conquering people did nothing for Science's advance. Till Pliny of the first century after Christ, what Roman was a scientist? They were a nation of soldiers, statesmen, orators and jurists, and for seven hundred years they pursued through such avenues their triumphant course. Yet what writer of to-day rises to charge them with a cardinal sin, because Science remained at a standstill among them for seven full centuries? With these seven centuries can we not properly compare the later seven in which the Christian Fathers were the teachers of the civilized world?

Heritage from the Greeks.--Objection will be made, no doubt, that the Fathers began their career with fairer start than the Romans, forasmuch as they were the direct heirs of the astronomy and physics of ancient Hellas. And they will be incriminated with having abused their precious heritage, by not merely letting it lie fallow but by raising every possible obstruction to its further cultivation. Such is the tenor of Andrew D. White's accusations against them.

This well-known writer smiles at the puerilities of patristic science. He cites from among them Cosmas of Egypt as having propounded a perfectly childish theory of the structure of the earth and grafted it on the science of theology. The ready answer to this particular charge is that Cosmas' conception of the universe belonged to cosmogony and not theology, and further that it had no influence on subsequent thought. Returning to the general arraignment, White rebukes the Fathers for having clung so tenaciously to false opinions regarding the shape of the earth, the motion of the heavens, and the nature of the firmament. And, most seriously of all, he charges the Fathers with indifference and even hostility to the study of science itself.

In a few short paragraphs it is impossible to give an adequate rejoinder to these damaging complaints. But they demand some sort of reply, however inadequate it be, as emanating from an American scholar and statesman of high rank, and embodied in a work that has free and wide circulation among our college students.

Defence of Their Doctrine.--The first palliation for the reputed offence of the Fathers is that whatever false science they retail, was practically all of it derived from the very sources which it is the fashion of the day to laud in the highest degree. As far as was consistent with their faith, the Christian Fathers were the pupils of the Greeks. It was the latter and not the patristic writers who invented the false theories of a solid firmament and a motionless earth. If Europe and Arabia down to the Renaissance believed in the Geocentric system, it was because they trusted Ptolemy the Greek, till then admittedly the greatest of astronomers. And a similar ancestry could be traced, we venture to say, for all or the major part of their scientific errors as far as these may have extended.

Restrictions Made by the Fathers.--But if the Fathers were in [{487}] general the heirs of the Greeks, they were not guilty of the mistake of accepting the inheritance in its entirety. To a large extent they could discern the chaff from the wheat, and were actually at pains to make the separation. It ought to be known that the scientific literature of the Grecians is teeming with the wildest and vainest of speculations regarding all matters within the scope of astronomical science. Here as elsewhere, the Greeks speculated endlessly, contradictorily, emptily, and almost aimlessly. In unfounded speculation they discoursed on all manner of astronomical subjects, the shape and size and distance of the sun, its nature and that of the moon and stars, and so on almost indefinitely, with scarcely any agreement or concomitance of opinion. There were almost as many diverse opinions as there were men.

To this motley assemblage of groundless and conflicting theories the Fathers had full access through the medium of Plutarch, the Greek compiler. Eusebius, for example, the Father of Church History, quotes Plutarch on just these topics for over thirty pages. If Eusebius and the other Fathers grew impatient with all this ill-assorted mass of soi-disant science, shall we charge them as Dr. White does with having been false to the interest of science? Should we not rather maintain that they helped save science from its enemies?

Opposition to Science.--It is only in the light of these indisputable facts that we can understand the sayings of the Fathers in which, as quoted by White, they upbraid science for its inutility. Be it noted in passing that White is wont to quote them not literally but freely, and apart from their context. Lactantius, Eusebius, Augustine, and Basil, these are the four whom he selects as representative. They are truly representative, and indeed any one of them might stand for all.

Let Eusebius be our particular choice, for he discusses astronomy more completely than the others. White alleges (Warfare, Vol. I, p. 91) that Eusebius endeavored to bring scientific studies into contempt, and quotes him as saying, "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them [scientific investigators], but through contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things."