custom a generation ago for nearly everyone in English-speaking
countries to assume, that because we knew very little about science in
the medieval period it must be because there was very little to know.
We have learned the fallacy of that supposition to our cost, by the
republication of the great text-books of medicine and surgery of the
medieval period and by the deeper study of such great scholars as
Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. Even the scanty
records that we have show us the Popes following the same sort of
policy with regard to education and science as at the present time.
Men who collected scientific information for academic or popular
diffusion, as Isidore of Seville, Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquin,
were not infrequently raised to ecclesiastical dignities during life
and placed among the saints after death. Occasionally a distinguished
scientist like Gerbert, who became Pope Sylvester II, or Petrus
Hispanus the well-known physician, who became Pope John XXI, were even
made Popes. It is easy to understand that their attitude as Supreme
Pontiffs towards science would be not only not one of opposition but
of sympathy and helpful patronage.
While as I have said astronomy as a formal science practically did not
develop until the Renaissance, there were a series of important
discussions of the relations of the earth to the other heavenly bodies
and of the size and shape of the earth itself among the professors of
the medieval universities, and the perfect freedom with which these
discussions were carried on shows how unshackled {471} was human
thought. Albertus Magnus discussed the antipodes, dismissed the notion
that if there were men on the other side of the earth they would
surely fall off by the thoroughly Socratic remark that we ourselves
were on the other side from them yet did not fall off, and understood
and taught very definitely the rotundity of the earth and other
doctrines that are usually supposed to be much more recent, and that
are often said to have brought their holders into ecclesiastical
odium. Far from this, Albert was always in high favor and was made a
bishop and canonized as a saint after his death.
Roger Bacon studied light, declared that it moved with a definite
velocity and gathered and made good use in his teaching of an immense
amount of information in the departments of knowledge that we now call
astronomy and geography. Humboldt declared that it was a passage from
Roger Bacon which more than anything else, even the Toscanelli
letters, roused Columbus to his life purpose of sailing westwards.
Roger Bacon's books, the one with the paragraph now famous because of
its connection with Columbus among the number, were issued at the
request of the Pope and it seems very probable that we would have had
no idea of his marvellous anticipation of many modern scientific
truths only for the definitely expressed wish of the Pope to know the
English Franciscan's thought. We have just celebrated the seventh
centenary of Roger Bacon's birth, and this has brought home to us how
much of a loss to the history of human culture would have been the
missing of Bacon's works. Bacon's difficulties in life were with his
Order and were personal matters not directly connected with his
science.
With the beginning of the Renaissance the stimulating effect of the
study of Greek science on the men of the fifteenth century was exerted
and one of those who was most deeply touched by the Greek spirit was
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, or Cusanus, as he is called from the Latin
name of his birthplace. He wrote a series of books touching many
matters in science and treating various phases of mathematics. He
dwelt particularly on certain problems relating to geography and
astronomy. I have summed up his scientific career in a chapter of "Old
Time Makers of Medicine" (N. Y., 1911). He taught the rotundity of the
earth and that the earth was the same sort of a body as the other
stars in the heavens, that it was not and could not be the centre of
the universe and that it had a movement of its own. Far from such
revolutionary teaching leading to his persecution or bringing him
under the suspicion {472} of the ecclesiastical authorities he was, on
the contrary, looked up to for his scholarship, received successive
ecclesiastical preferments, became Bishop of Brixen and then Papal
Legate to Germany for the reform of abuses, and finally a Cardinal. He
did much to encourage interest in mathematical, geographical and
astronomical science, provided opportunities for students, encouraged
Puerbach and Regiomontanus in their significant pioneer work in
mathematics and astronomy, and generally showed himself the
enlightened patron of every movement related to the physical sciences,
and all the workers with the experimental method.
The first epoch-making astronomer who was brought into intimate
relations with the Pope of whom we have definite knowledge was
Regiomontanus. He is deservedly known as the Father of Modern
Astronomy for his initiation of series of calculations and
publications with regard to the heavens and his establishment at
Nuremburg of a regular observatory. He was summoned to Rome to direct
the calculations for the correction of the calendar, but unfortunately
died there at the early age of forty. His invitation to Rome for this
purpose came within the same decade when, if we were to trust certain
modern historians of the relations of the Popes to science, Pope
Calixtus III issued his supposed bull against Halley's comet. The bull
has never been found. The attitude of the Popes towards science is
much better illustrated by the invitation to Regiomontanus and the
encouragement of astronomical research thus afforded than by the
fictitious bull against the comet. The supposed bull has, however,
played a large role in convincing a number of people of Church
opposition to science, some of them being professors of science who
knew nothing about the almost simultaneous appointment of
Regiomontanus as Papal Astronomer.
Toscanelli, over the question of whose influence on Columbus an as yet
unsettled controversy is waged, was a lifelong friend of Nicholas of
Cusa, they had been schoolmates at College and undoubtedly the great
cardinal doctor of laws or of decrees as they said at that time, owed
much of his progressive advanced views on scientific subjects to his
Florentine friend "the doctor of physic, Paul Toscanelli." Cusanus at
the height of his fame dedicated his book on Geometrical
Transformations "to Paul the Florentine physician." Regiomontanus, as
well as Cusa, often sought Toscanelli's opinion on abstruse questions
of mathematics and quoted him with confidence. The intimate relations
of Cusanus and Regiomontanus with the Popes of the middle of the
fifteenth century are very well known. Toscanelli's services to
astronomy are only {473} less famous than those to cosmography. A
series of his careful and painstaking observations and calculations of
the orbits of the comets of 1433, 1449-50, of Halley's comet of 1456
and of the comets of 1457 and 1472 are preserved in manuscript. They
demonstrate his profound and successful interest in astronomical
subject and it is easy to see that they must have cost him, as indeed
he tells in his letters, many a night's watching of the stars. The
relations between the ecclesiastical authorities and Toscanelli are
very well illustrated by that well-known monument to his astronomical
skill which still interests visitors so much in the Cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiore at Florence. This is the gnomon arranged in the dome
of the Cathedral by the shadow of which it is said that he could
determine midday to within half a second. The use of the Cathedral for
this purpose is interesting testimony to the cordial relations of
science and religion at this time. It may be said in passing that
Toscanelli's gnomon was later improved by Cardinal Ximenes of Spain,
showing that these cordial ecclesiastical relations with science were
not confined to Italy.
While Toscanelli was making his observations Antoninus of Florence was
for some thirteen years the Archbishop of the city and was one of the
learned members of the Dominican Order at this time, who had made his
novitiate among the Dominicans with Fra Angelico and Fra Bartholomeo
the great Renaissance painters. Antoninus was greatly influenced
evidently by his associations with Toscanelli and formed one of a
group of men containing the Florentine physician astronomer, Cardinal
Cusanus and Regiomontanus, himself afterwards a bishop, who were on
terms of intimate relationship at least in scholarly matters at this
period. Archbishop Antoninus, who is the author of a _Summa Theologica
Moralis_ of which no less than fifteen editions were printed after his
death, wrote also a series of histories in which he shows this
influence by insisting that comets are celestial bodies like the
others in the heavens and had no effect on the physical or moral
conditions of the world and, quite contrary to popular beliefs, were
not responsible for war or pestilence nor prophetic of evil to
mankind. There had been a number of brilliant comets in the heavens
about this time and there was consequently a widespread interest in
them and much popular superstition with regard to them. Antoninus was
on terms of familiar intimacy with Pope Eugene IV, who insisted on his
becoming Archbishop of Florence, though Antoninus would have preferred
to have remained a simple Dominican and keep his leisure for his
scholarly work. When the Pope felt his end {474} approaching he called
Antoninus to Rome to administer the last rites of the Church to him
and be by his side during his last hours. Antoninus was frequently
consulted by Pope Eugene's successors, Nicholas V and Pius II, both of
whom were among the scholarly patrons of learning and art at this
time. Some fifty years after his death Antoninus was canonized by Pope
Hadrian VI, the scholarly Pope from Utrecht in Holland. His whole
career then shows clearly the relations of the ecclesiastics and
particularly the Popes of the time to science in a most favorable
light.
The relationship with the rising science of the Renaissance period
thus initiated was continued during the following century. At the end
of the fifteenth century Copernicus studied for ten years in Italy and
felt so thoroughly the interest of Italians in advances in science as
well as scholarship that when some years later he came to formulate
his great new hypothesis of the heavens, he sent an abstract of his
theory to some of the Roman teachers with whom he had become intimate
during his stay and it was taught publicly in the city to crowded
audiences. This may well seem surprising to many whose only knowledge
of the relations of the Popes to astronomy is the Galileo incident,
but it must not be forgotten that Copernicus' great work in which he
elaborated his theory, was dedicated, with permission, to the Pope,
and not only received no censure until Galileo's time, nearly a
century later, but was welcomed as a great contribution to science and
thought. It was looked upon as a theory, to be discussed as any other.
When Galileo, at the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, insisted on teaching it as absolute science, it must not be
forgotten that there were no astronomers in Europe who looked upon
Copernicanism as an accepted scientific doctrine. Even the reasons
advanced by Galileo for its acceptance have all since been rejected.
Owing to the discussions of it far and wide in the time of Galileo,
certain expressions in Copernicus' great work were required by the
Church authorities to be corrected so that his explanation of the
heavens should be presented as the theory that it was and not as an
absolute doctrine of science.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century the necessity for the
correction of the calendar became more urgently manifest and Pope
Gregory XIII invited Father Clavius, S.J., to take up the subject. At
this time also, as is described by Pope Leo XIII in his _Motu Proprio_
of 1891, "Gregory XIII [nearly half a century before the condemnation
of Galileo] ordered a tower to be erected in a convenient part of the
Vatican buildings and to be fitted out with {475} the greatest and
best instruments of the time. There he held the meetings of the
learned men to whom the reform of the calendar had been entrusted. The
tower stands to this day a witness to the munificence of its founder.
It contains a meridian line by Ignazio Danti of Perugia, with a round
marble plate in the centre, adorned with scientific designs. When
touched by the rays of the sun that are allowed to enter from above,
the designs demonstrate the error of the old reckoning and the
correctness of the reform." It was evidently the intention of the Pope
that there should be, as a permanent institution in Rome, an
astronomical observatory fully equipped and supported by the revenues
of the Holy See and with a prominent scientist at its head. This
purpose has been constantly kept in mind by the Popes ever since,
though not long after Gregory's time, but not at all because of any
opposition to science, the observatory founded by him came for more
than a century not to be used for the purpose intended because its
place was supplied by another Roman institution directly under the
patronage of the Popes.
This was the Roman College, the great central school of the Jesuits,
in the capital of Christendom. That Order was scarcely fifty years in
existence in Pope Gregory XIII's time, yet it was to a member of it
that the Pope turned for expert scientific direction in the correction
of the calendar. During the next three centuries science as patronized
by the Popes in Rome was mainly in the hands of the Jesuits. When it
is recalled that this Order is directly under the control of the Pope,
the professed members taking a special vow of obedience to him, it
will be understood that the Jesuit policy with regard to science must
be taken as representing the Papal position in its regard. If it is
further recalled that Poggendorff in his Biographical Lexicon of Men
Eminent in Science gives the names of some 500 Jesuits, though the
Order was not in a position to do any work in science until 1550, it
will be readily appreciated that the Popes acted wisely to encourage
an institute so prolific in _eminent_ scientists in its scientific
work at the Roman College, rather than maintain a separate scientific
department at the Vatican. The second institution would only have been
unnecessary duplication of staffs and the connection between teaching
and research at the Roman College was better for both functions.
Father Christopher Clavius, to whom more than to any other is due the
Gregorian reform of the calendar, a magnificent practical application
of astronomy and mathematics, is an excellent example {476} of the men
who were near the Popes as counsellors and scientific advisers just
before Galileo's time. Indeed Galileo and he were on the most friendly
terms until his death in 1612. The circle of his friends included such
men as Kepler, Tycho-Brahe and other great scientists of his time and
he was called "the Euclid of the sixteenth century." His works were
published at Mainz, in five huge folio volumes in a collective
edition. The third of these is a commentary upon the _Sphaera_ of John
Holywood (Joannes de Sacro Bosco, the great medieval mathematician)
and a dissertation upon the Astrolabe. The fourth volume contains a
very full discussion of Gnomonics, that is, the art of constructing
instruments of all kinds for determining the time by means of the sun.
The fifth volume contains his papers with regard to the reform of the
calendar. Most of these books were issued in many editions before and
after his death, and their publication over and over again shows very
clearly how much the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were interested in scientific subjects and how often and quite
properly they looked to great clerical teachers as their leaders in
science.
Just about the time that the Galileo matter was disturbing scientific
and ecclesiastical circles at Rome, Father Scheiner, the Jesuit
mathematician and astronomer became Professor of Mathematics in the
Roman College. He is the inventor of the pantograph or copying
instrument for drawings, and, being of an ingenious inventive
disposition, constructed a number of instruments for astronomical
investigation. He studied the sun carefully through colored glasses in
a helioscope and then conceived the idea of projecting the sun's image
on a screen in order to study its surface. Kepler used this same
method, but Scheiner is said to have the right of priority in it. In
March, 1611, he discovered by this method spots on the sun and while
the priority of discovery was disputed by Galileo, three men,
Fabricius, Galileo and Scheiner, seem all to have done their work
independently in this matter, Fabricius being probably the first in
time. For nearly a score of years Father Scheiner continued his
observations on the sun and published his great work, which in the
fashion of the day was called by the somewhat fantastic title, _Rosa
Ursina_. He had the true scientific spirit and devoted himself to
other subjects besides astronomy. He made important researches on the
eye, showing that the retina is the seat of vision, and devised the
optical experiment which bears his name.
One of Clavius' pupils was Father Matteo Ricci, S.J., founder of the
Catholic missions of China, who in the midst of his successful {477}
studies of mathematics and astronomy at the Roman College asked, at
the age of twenty-five, to be sent on the missions in farthest Asia
and was allowed to go the following year. He was selected to found
missions in China and succeeded in breaking through the Oriental
reserve and contempt for everything Occidental of the Chinese, and
thus gained a foothold for Christianity in the country. It was Father
Ricci's learning, particularly in cosmology, mathematics, astronomy
and geography, that attracted the attention of the Chinese. He
introduced astronomical studies at Pekin and brought over a series of
instruments for an observatory which were so well thought of that they
were preserved until our own time and some of them are said to have
been taken from the Chinese capital by the allied troops, after the
capture of the city following the Boxer Rebellion. He not only taught
the Chinese European science, but he sent back to Europe true accounts
of China and, above all, encouraged scientific studies among the
missionaries. The example he thus set has always been followed and
there has scarcely been a generation since when some Christian
missionary has not been making original observations in natural
history and collecting curious specimens to be sent home to scientists
in Europe, while at the same time faithfully pursuing his missionary
work.
Early in the seventeenth century, indeed just at the time when the
Galileo case was most prominent at Rome, Father Athanasius Kircher was
summoned to Rome and began his scientific work there, which included
contributions to every department of physical and even some of the
biological sciences. For some five years about the middle of the
seventeenth century Father Kircher devoted himself to astronomy and
the result was the publication, in 1656, of an astronomical treatise
called _Iter Celeste_. A second volume on astronomy appeared in 1660.
Anyone who is inclined to think that these contributions of the great
professor of science at the Roman College were only reviews of the
passing scientific opinions of the time, is not fully acquainted with
Father Kircher's work. He never failed to illuminate anything that he
set himself to study. His book on astronomy is of course a text-book,
but it is magnificently illustrated; it is a very large work which
shows the author's familiarity with the scientific literature of the
time, but at the same time reveals his own scientific genius. Father
Kircher was encouraged in every way by the Popes and high
ecclesiastics of Rome and by his own Order, and his great text-books
are among the bibliographic treasures of the history of science. Some
idea of {478} his industry may be gathered from the fact that he wrote
altogether some forty volumes folio on scientific subjects. He made
many original observations, invented a number of valuable scientific
instruments that are still in use, among others the vernier and magic
lantern, and was productively occupied with nearly every branch of
science in his time.
During the eighteenth century, before the suppression of the Jesuits,
another distinguished mathematician and astronomer, famous throughout
Europe, was working at the Roman College. This was Father Boscovitch,
to whom we owe the plans for the erection of an observatory above the
great pillars of the Church of the Gesu at Rome, which were not
destined to be executed until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Boscovitch is famous for a series of important works in mathematics
and astronomy. He wrote books on Sun Spots, the Transit of Mercury,
the Aurora Borealis, the Figure of the Earth, the Various Effects of
Gravity, the Aberration of the Fixed Stars, and other astronomical
problems. Pope Benedict XIV commissioned him and his brother Jesuit,
Father Le Maire, to carry out several precise meridian arc
measurements. He is the inventor of the rock crystal prismatic
micrometer, the ring micrometer. After the suppression of the Jesuits
Father Boscovitch was made Director of Optics for the Marine, a post
created for him in order to secure his services for France.
During the second period of the history of the Vatican Observatory at
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the upper story of the Gregorian tower was fitted up with
meteorological and magnetic instruments with a seismograph, a Dolland
telescope, a small transit instrument and a pendulum clock and a
series of very careful observations on a number of subjects made. From
1800 to 1821 Gilii made an uninterrupted series of meteorological
observations, reading the instruments twice a day, at 6 a.m. and 2
p.m. The observations are published for seven years and the rest are
preserved as manuscripts in the Vatican Library. There are also
deposited astronomical observations of eclipses, comets, Jupiter's
satellites and of a transit of Mercury. Gilii laid down the meridian
line in front of St. Peter's with the obelisk as a gnomon and the
readings of the seasons by the length of the shadow. To him are due
also the bronze marks on the floor of St. Peters, giving the
comparative lengths of the greatest churches of the world. It was he
who placed the first lightning rod on the cupola of St. Peter's. The
{479} heavens, the weather, the lightning are supposed often to be set
by religiously inclined persons particularly under the care of
Providence, to be influenced by prayer, yet these are exactly the
three departments of science that were faithfully followed in their
detailed scientific aspects during all the centuries by the Papal
Astronomers under the patronage and with the approval of the Popes,
with the avowed purpose of discovering the natural laws under which
they occur.
Two of the distinguished teachers of mathematics and astronomy of the
end of the eighteenth century at Rome were Father Thomas Leseur,
professor at the Sapienza, and Professor Franz Jacquier, professor at
the Roman College, who wrote a commentary on Isaac Newton's
_Principia_ which did much to popularize Newton's work.