The Popes and Science Part 29

Professor Draper seems to have known nothing of the fine hospitals and foundling inst.i.tutions and the great surgery of the later Middle Ages, but he thinks he knows enough to be quite sure that any such developments were impossible. Certain incidents that he accepts as historical showed him what fools the Popes and all near them were in matters of science, and, therefore, it would be quite impossible that they could have any sympathy for scientific progress and quite easy to understand their opposition. It is from conclusions and a.s.sumptions in history that we need to be saved. A hundred years ago it used to be said with pride that if you gave a zoologist a single bone he could reconstruct the entire animal for you. We know that such reconstruction worked much harm to science. Many of the animals possess structures that even important portions of their anatomy in other parts of the body would give no hint of. History that is built up from single incidents is likely to be even more false because human conduct is much more complex than any animal body. What could be expected of the zoologist's reconstruction, however, if the original bone handed to him was fact.i.tious, what a curious result might be expected from his deduced skeleton.

This is what happened with Professor Draper's reconstruction of history from certain incidents that he accepted. The story of the Papal Bull against Halley's comet seemed enough to him to make it quite clear that for centuries the Popes must have been buried in the profoundest ignorance of science,--but then the story of the Papal Bull against Halley's comet is all a modern invention. Draper said: "But when Halley's comet came in 1456 so tremendous was its apparition that it was necessary for the Pope himself to interfere. He exorcised and expelled it from the skies. It slunk away into the abysses of s.p.a.ce terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus III, and did not venture back again for seventy-five years!" Of course this bit of supposed information is all nonsense; Calixtus did no such thing, and just at that time the Popes were encouraging Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in his great mathematical work and astronomical speculations, were inviting Regiomonta.n.u.s, "the Father of modern astronomy," down to Rome to do his work there and help in the correction of the calendar, while Cardinal Bessarion, one of the most intimate friends of the Pope at this time, was encouraging Purbach at Vienna and Regiomonta.n.u.s to translate Ptolemy and providing them with ma.n.u.scripts and putting them in touch with Greek science in every way.

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Halley's comet is a favorite reference with Professor Draper. How well his readers must have remembered all about it! He says, for instance, on page 320:

"The step that European intellect had made between 1456 and 1759 was ill.u.s.trated by Halley's comet. When it appeared in the former year, it was considered as the harbinger of the vengeance of G.o.d, the dispenser of the most dreadful of his retributions, war, pestilence, famine. By order of the Pope, all the church-bells in Europe were rung to scare it away, the faithful were commanded to add each day another prayer; and, as their prayers had often in so marked a manner been answered in eclipses and droughts and rains, so on this occasion it was declared that a victory over the comet had been vouchsafed to the Pope. But, in the meantime, Halley, guided by revelations of Kepler and Newton, had discovered that its motions, so far from being controlled by the supplications of Christendom, were guided in an elliptic orbit by destiny. Knowing that Nature had denied to him an opportunity of witnessing the fulfilment of his daring prophecy, he besought the astronomers of the succeeding generation to watch for its return in 1759, and in that year it came."

All this is of course mere persiflage once it is known that the story of the Papal Bull against the comet has no foundation in history. It is the sort of nonsense that a great many serious men permit themselves to indulge in when they think they are convicting some past century of sublime foolishness. Not infrequently they make themselves out just as absurd as they would like to present the men of former generations, because they show how credulous a modern scholar can be when his prejudices influence him. Unfortunately such pa.s.sages have a particularly lamentable effect upon young minds. For them ridicule means much more than argument. For a young man to be ridiculous seems the worst thing that can possibly happen and when anything is made ridiculous for him he loses his respect for it. Ridicule is, as is well known, an extremely dangerous argument, however. Professor Draper and, indeed, many another teacher of history and, above all, lecturer and writer on the history of science, have made themselves supremely ridiculous by their ready acceptance of a legend for which there is not the slightest authority. It was made up to serve the purpose of exhibiting Papal ignorance and superst.i.tion, but it so happens that in serious history the Popes of the time when this is supposed to have occurred are among the most intelligent and scholarly men of history.

It seems worth while to go over the list of Popes who came during the twenty years just before and after the date given for the issuance of this supposed bull. Eugene IV, elected Pope in 1431, {512} whatever may have been his faults of lack of tact, was scholarly and unselfish.

At an early age he distributed what was really an immense fortune in his time to the poor, and entered the monastery. When political troubles drove him from Rome he resided at Florence and the presence of the Papal Court there did much to foster the humanistic movement which was just then beginning. It was he who consecrated the beautiful church just finished by Brunelleschi. His successor in 1447 was Pope Nicholas V, a man of wide education and deep interest in the revival of cla.s.sical literature and Christian antiquities. He was the founder of the Vatican Library and brought Fra Angelico to Rome for the great decorative work at the Vatican. Pope Calixtus III, who succeeded Nicholas in 1455, was a man of cultivated mind, scholarly tastes and shared with his predecessor the honor of having founded the Vatican Library. He encouraged the Greek scholars in Italy and added greatly to the collections of precious ma.n.u.scripts. His desire to prevent the further destruction of Greek culture by the Turks who had just captured Constantinople, led him to devote himself mainly to the fulfilment of a vow that he had made to wrest Constantinople from the Moslem. To his influence is largely due the victory gained by the Christians at Belgrade at this time which prevented the further spread of Mohammedan power. Pope Calixtus had the Angelus Bell rung every day at noon to implore the aid of the heavenly powers against the Turks.

There is absolutely no question of any reference in this matter to the comet, but here is where the story comes in.

Pope Calixtus' successor was the famous Renaissance scholar AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini. He was just beginning some of the reforms, the need of which had been pointed out by his friend, the scholarly Nicholas of Cusa, when his death occurred as a consequence of his fatigue in journeys undertaken to rouse the Christians of the West against the Turks so as to preserve Christian civilization. His successor was Pope Paul II. He found it necessary to suppress some of the academies of Rome whose privileges were being abused by fostering a pagan att.i.tude toward philosophy and religion, and in revenge Platina wrote a bitter biography of him, but no one has ever doubted of his scholarliness. He built the Palace of St. Marco in Rome, now known as the Venezia, and organized relief work among the poor while encouraging printing, protecting universities, and showing himself a judicious collector of works of ancient art.

Professor Draper's summaries of periods of history are amusing {513} caricatures of the reality. I know no easier way to make a comic history of progress in Europe, so-called, than to take a series of excerpts from Draper's book and string them together. He ignores completely the wonderful work done for scholars.h.i.+p, he knows nothing apparently of the great series of books printed for us during the Renaissance, usually in magnificent editions, which preserve scholarly works of the Middle Ages, he utterly neglects the painting, the architecture, the sculpture, even the great engineering feats in the making of bridges and constructive work of all kinds, and then in order to explain why there was nothing done by mankind puts all the blame on the Church. As I have said before, in a period in which even well-read men knew nothing about the Middle Ages, self-complacency tempted them to conclude that such a gap in their knowledge could only be because there was nothing to know about them. They looked for some reason for the absence of accomplishment that made this blank in human history. With their feelings, the Church was just the one that must be responsible. Progress would surely have been made only that some factor was keeping it back.

Professor Draper makes an especially strong appeal to American readers by contrasting all the accomplishments of our material civilization here in the United States, with the results in Mexico and in South America. Our progress has been all beneficent, while the influence of the Spaniard was everywhere absolutely maleficent. He seems to forget all about our treatment of the Indian, with its awful injustice. He proclaims our increase in wealth as the surest sign of our intellectual superiority. He says: [Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: Page 289.]

"Let us contrast with this the results of the invasion of Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards, who in those countries overthrew a wonderful civilization, in many respects superior to their own, a civilization that had been accomplished without iron and gunpowder--a civilization resting on an agriculture that had neither horse, nor ox, nor plow. The Spaniards had a clear base to start from, and no obstruction whatever in their advance. They ruined all that the aboriginal children of America had accomplished. Millions of those unfortunates were destroyed by their cruelty. Nations that for many centuries had been living in contentment and prosperity, under inst.i.tutions shown by their history to be suitable to them, were plunged into anarchy; the people fell into a baneful superst.i.tion, and a greater part of their land and other property found its way into the possession of the Roman Church."

Place beside that a paragraph from the late lamented Professor Bourne of Yale, who having made special studies in {514} Spanish-American culture and education, as well as in its intellectual life, contrasts it quite unfavorably with what was accomplished in the English colonies. Professor Bourne was, like Draper, a professor at an American university, but he had made special studies in the subject, and knew something about it. Professor Draper talked out of the depths of his a.s.sumption of knowledge; Professor Bourne out of an intimate acquaintance that had been obtained by years of serious research work.

Professor Bourne said:

"Both the Crown and the Church were solicitous for education in the Spanish colonies, and provisions were made for its promotion on a far greater scale than was possible or even attempted in the English colonies. The early Franciscan missionaries built a school beside each church, and in their teaching abundant use was made of signs, drawings, and paintings. The native languages were reduced to writing, and in a few years Indians were learning to read and write.

Pedro de Gante, a Flemish lay brother, and a relative of Charles V, founded and conducted in the Indian quarter in Mexico a great school, attended by over a thousand Indian boys, which combined instruction in elementary and higher branches, the mechanical and fine arts. In its workshops the boys were taught to be tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and painters."

Sir Sidney Lee, the editor of the "National Dictionary of Biography of England," and the author of a series of works on Shakespeare, which has gained for him recognition as probably the best living authority on the history of the Elizabethan times, without deliberate intent, answered Draper almost directly, in the following paragraphs from his work, "The Call of The West," which appeared originally in _Scribner's Magazine_, but has since been published in book form. Since Mr. Lee cannot be suspected of national or creed affinities with the Spaniards, and his knowledge of the subject is unquestionable, his direct contradictions of Draper are all the more weighty:

"Especially has theological bias justified neglect or facilitated misconception of Spain's role in the sixteenth century drama of American history. Spain's initial adventures in the New World are often consciously or unconsciously overlooked or underrated, in order that she may figure on the stage of history as the benighted champion of a false and obsolete faith, which was vanquished under a divine protecting Providence by English defenders of the true religion. Many are the hostile critics who have painted sixteenth century Spain as the avaricious acc.u.mulator of American gold and silver, to which she had no right, as the monopolist of American trade, of which she robbed others, and as the oppressor and exterminator of the weak and innocent aborigines of the new continent, who deplored her presence among {515} them. Cruelty in all its hideous forms is, indeed, commonly set forth as Spain's only instrument of rule in her sixteenth century empire. On the other hand, the English adventurer has been credited by the same pens with a touching humanity, with the purest religious aspirations, with a romantic courage which was always at the disposal of the oppressed native.

"No such picture is recognized when we apply the touchstone of the oral traditions, printed books, maps, and ma.n.u.scripts concerning America which circulated in Shakespeare's England. There a predilection for romantic adventure is found to sway the Spaniards in even greater degree than it swayed the Elizabethan Englishman.

Religious zeal is seen to inspirit the Spaniards more constantly and conspicuously than it stimulated his English contemporary. The motives of each nation are barely distinguishable one from another.

Neither deserves to be credited with any monopoly of virtue or vice.

Above all, the study of contemporary authorities brings into a dazzling light, which illumes every corner of the picture, the commanding facts of the Spaniard's priority as explorer, as scientific navigator, as conqueror, as settler."

When an Englishman will admit this much in a comparison of his own countrymen with the Spaniards, it is easy to understand how great must be the actual historical contrast between the settlers of Spanish and English America.

Professor Draper's philosophy of history is, indeed, something to make one pause. He says on page 291, "The result of the Crusades had shaken the faith of all Christendom." As a matter of easily ascertainable history, the faith of Christendom was never so strong as during the century immediately following the Crusades. This was the thirteenth century, with the glorious Gothic cathedrals; the great Latin hymns; the magnificent musical development; the wondrous tribute of painting to religion, from Cimabue and Duccio to Giotto and Orcagna, and of sculpture from the Pisani to the great designers of some of the doors of the baptistry of Florence, of the finest arts and crafts in gold and silver, in woodwork, in needle-work, in illuminated books--all precious tributes to religious belief. In the hundred years after the Crusades, the Popes secured a position of influence in Europe greater than they had ever had before or have ever enjoyed since, which they used to secure the foundation of hospitals everywhere throughout Europe, the establishment of universities, the organization of religious orders for teaching and nursing purposes, and the finest development of social life and social happiness that the world had ever known.

According to Professor Draper, the removal of the Papal Court to Avignon in France gave opportunity for "the memorable intellectual movement that soon manifested itself in the great commercial {516} cities of Upper Italy." For him the earlier Renaissance begins with the fourteenth century, the thirteenth is entirely neglected, and a period that is really one of decadence is proclaimed a triumphant era of progress, because forsooth the removal from Rome of the Papacy and the abandonment by some of Christianity itself, gives him an opportunity to explain, thus from his prejudiced point of view, how the first stirrings of the Renaissance began. Verily indeed Professor Draper has written a joke book of history. Everything is along the same line. It is very rare, indeed, that by some chance he states a genuine historical truth, and when he does he usually disfigures it in some way or other. For him the Moors are the source of chivalry, of respect for women(!), and of the n.o.ble sentiment of personal honor.

Everything else that is of any value in Christendom, must be referred to some source not Christian, lest by any chance religion should seem to have done any good in the world. _And let us not forget that this book was taken seriously, and not by the ignorant, but by university men, college graduates, professors, and teachers in many parts of the country._

Above all Professor Draper can scarcely be too bitter in his denunciation of the way that the poor were imposed upon, their ignorance encouraged, their rights refused, and all opportunities denied them. All this was due, according to Professor Draper, to the tyranny of the Church. President Woodrow Wilson, after making a special study of that subject, suggested in a pa.s.sage in his book, which may be found in "The New Freedom," exactly the opposite of this.

He knew something of the subject. Professor Draper was quite sure that he knew all about it, and that no good could have possibly come out of the Church. President Wilson's expressions are interesting to those who do not know them:

"The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under the aristocratic systems which then prevailed, was that the men who were efficient instruments of government were drawn from the Church--from that great Church, that body we now distinguish from other Church bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become a Pope of Christendom, and every chancellory in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and accomplished men--the priesthood of that great and then dominant Church; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open channels of the Roman Catholic priesthood."

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The greatest surprise is to be found in Professor Draper's ignorance of the history of his own profession. He says, "It had always been the policy of the Church to discourage the physician and his art; he interfered too much with the gifts and profits of the shrines."

Professor Draper apparently knew nothing of the magnificent medical schools attached to the universities in the medieval period, whose professors wrote great medical and surgical text-books, which have come down to us, and whose faculties required a far higher standard of medical education than was demanded in America in Professor Draper's own day. For about 1871 anyone who wished might enter an American medical school practically anywhere in the country, without any preliminary education, and having taken two terms of ungraded lectures, that is, having listened to the same set of lectures two years in succession, might receive his degree of doctor of medicine.

In the Middle Ages he could enter the medical school only after having completed three years of preliminary work in the undergraduate department, and then he was required to give four years to the study of medicine, and spend a year as a.s.sistant with another physician before he was allowed to practise for himself. This is the standard to which our university medical schools gradually climbed back at the beginning of the twentieth century--a full generation after Draper's time.

We know now that in those earlier centuries they had thorough clinical teaching in the hospitals, that is, physicians learned to practise medicine at the bedside of the patient, and not merely out of books and by theoretic lectures. Clinical teaching had not developed in Professor Draper's day to any extent. The medieval hospitals had trained nurses and magnificent quarters, while the trained nurse was only introduced into America in 1871, and our hospitals at that time were almost without exception a disgrace to civilization, according to our present standards of hospital construction. Our surgery was most discouraging, because there were so many deaths in the unclean hospital conditions. The medieval hospital surgeons operating under anesthesia, boasted of getting union by first intention, and were in many ways doing better work than their colleagues of 1870, Professor Draper's own time, before Lister's great discovery. Of all this Professor Draper had no inkling.

Draper's position is very like that of the specialist at all times.

Dean West of Princeton once said, I believe, that a specialist is a man who knows so much more about one thing than he knows about anything else that he is inclined to think that he knows more about that than anyone else does. To which I once ventured {518} to add that the specialist is also a man who thinks because of his recognized attainments in one line, that if, for any reason, he should pay any serious attention to any other subject he would know more about that than anyone else does. Draper's views on universal history correspond exactly to such a definition. He jumped to conclusions in a way that he would surely have resented most bitterly and quite properly in anyone who attempted after slight acquaintance with his own department of science to express ultimate conclusions with regard to it, but he himself with the most scanty information gleaned only for the purpose of confirming some preconceived ideas, gathered entirely from secondary authorities without even an attempt to confirm his views by consultation of original doc.u.ments, proceeded to tell the world just what it ought to think about questions of all kinds that have sometimes occupied historians for centuries and are by no means clear even yet.

Above all, he failed to realize the relations of whatever knowledge he had to the other facts of history. Deeply interested in science himself to the exclusion of nearly everything else, he could not understand how any generation and scarcely how any individual could live a deeply intellectual life without an absorbing interest in physical science. He seems to have had no conception of the fact that physical science is only a pa.s.sing phase of man's interest, and that interests in philosophy, in art, in poetry, in literature are not only quite equal to science as a mental discipline, but must probably be considered to surpa.s.s it. Nothing can be so narrow as physical science pursued alone,--as Draper himself furnishes the best possible proof, but of this he seems to have had no hint. Fortunately humanity has drawn away from that exaggerated idea of the value of physical science as ultimate truth and we are able to judge a little more dispa.s.sionately.

Professor Draper's prestige, and the fact that his book was published in the International Scientific Series, led a great many people to read it, and it found its way into many of the public libraries of the country, on whose shelves it may still be found. Many of its readers thought it could never be effectively answered. Scientists were affected by it, or at least those interested in science, and it represented one phase of that p.r.o.nounced opposition to religion which characterized what has been so well called the "silly seventies."

And if the seriously educated were willing to accept the ignorant and prejudiced views of Professor Draper, what was to be expected of the general reader? What has helped the position of the Church {519} in this country during the past generations is knowledge, and ever more knowledge. When those who are not of the fold know even a little of the history of the Church, know a reasonable amount of the other side of controversial problems, and, above all, when they have been brought into personal touch with the Church itself, her pastors and the hierarchy and religious men and women, prejudice disappears and understanding grows. We still have the monks and nuns of the olden time with us, but no one who knows them personally ever thinks for a moment of lazy monks and idle nuns. After a man has met scholarly Catholic clergymen, he has quite a different view of the relations of the Church to education. That is all that the Church has ever needed--to be known in order to be appreciated. Nothing emphasizes this so much as the change that has come over the opinions of those outside the Church as a result of growth in knowledge of the Church and her inst.i.tutions during the generation that separates us from the writing of Professor Draper's book.