literature, which had come into Christendom by two routes--the south
of France and Sicily. Favored by the exile of the Popes to Avignon,
and by the Great Schism, it made good its foothold in upper Italy.
The Aristotelian or Inductive philosophy, clad in the Saracenic
costume that Averroes had given it, made many secret and not a few
open friends. It found many minds eager to receive {508} and able to
appreciate it. Among these were Leonardo da Vinci, who proclaimed
the fundamental principle that experiment and observation are the
only reliable foundations of reasoning in science, that experiment
is the only trustworthy interpreter of Nature, and is essential to
the ascertainment of laws. He showed that the action of two
perpendicular forces upon a point is the same as that denoted by the
diagonal of a rectangle, of which they represent the sides, etc."
We must suppose that the scientific readers of this book, for they
were mainly scientists, and it had a place in the International
Scientific Series, agreed with this marvellous exhibition of
ignorance. Here is a man summarizing modern European science and
leaving out all mention of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, the great
medical school of Salerno in the twelfth century, and the great
medical schools of Italy farther north during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. This lack of knowledge of the
history of medicine deserves, above all, to be emphasized because
Draper as a professor in a medical school would naturally be supposed
to know something about his own branch of science.
He attributes all the initiative of modern science to the impulse
derived from the Arabs. This used to be a favorite way of looking at
the history of culture for those who wanted to minimize just as far as
possible all Christian influence. The facts of history are in constant
contradiction with this. Modern European science began at the
University of Salerno. It has often been stated that Arabian influence
must have largely impelled Salerno's work, situated as it was in the
southern part of Italy, but the use of any such expression means that
the writer must forget that this southern part of Italy had been a
Greek colony, was indeed called Magna Graecia and that Greek influence
persisted there, and when the revival came after the Barbarians who
had invaded Italy had gradually been brought by religious influence
into a state where culture and science and civilization were to mean
something for them, the influence of the old Greek authors was first
felt here. Gurlt, in his History of Surgery, emphasizes the fact, for
instance, that the first important modern (or medieval) writers on
surgery, the Four Masters of Salerno, were not influenced by the
Arabs. Their books contain no Arabisms but many Graecisms. They
obtained their inspiration from the old Greeks and carried on the
torch of learning in their own department magnificently as recent
studies of the School of Salerno have shown. They corrected the
polypharmacy of the Arabs and restored natural modes of cure to their
proper place.
{509}
For Professor Draper, until after the Reformation there was
practically no development of medicine. "It had always been the policy
of the Church to discourage the physician and his arts; he interfered
too much with the gifts and profits of the shrines." Professor Draper
either knew nothing of the great series of Papal physicians and
surgeons or else he ignored what they had done deliberately. It seems
reasonably certain that he knew nothing about them, for if he had done
so he would surely have mentioned them in order to minimize the
significance of their work--for that is his way. He is emphatic in his
declaration of the medieval neglect of sanitation and care for the
ailing, and sets it down to the deliberate purpose to secure more
money for prayers. "From cities wreaking with putrefying filth it was
thought that the plague might be staid by the prayers of the priests."
He knows nothing apparently of the well-directed attempts to organize
sanitary control, of the appointment of archiaters or medical
directors in Italian cities, of the recognition of the contagiousness
of tuberculosis, and the effort to control it, and seems even to have
missed the significance of the successful obliteration of leprosy by
segregation methods, for that was one of the greatest triumphs of
preventive medicine ever attained. Leprosy was probably as common in
the thirteenth century in Europe as consumption is now with us or very
nearly so, and yet in two centuries it had been practically
eradicated. Well for us if we shall accomplish as much for our folk
scourge of disease--the White Plague.
Above all, Professor Draper seems to know nothing of the magnificent
hospitals of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries,
beautiful architecturally, well planned for ventilation and the
disposal of waste material, with abundant water supply, with large
open wards, windows high in the wall, tiled floors that could be
thoroughly cleansed and which, alas! were to be replaced hundreds of
years later by the awful hospitals of the first half of the nineteenth
century, which with their small windows, narrow corridors, cell-like
apartments and little doors, were to be more like jails than refuges.
Some of the worst hospitals ever built in modern history had been
erected in Professor Draper's own lifetime. Some of the most beautiful
hospitals in the world had been erected in Italy and other countries
during the later medieval and Renaissance period, before the
Reformation, under religious influence,--but Professor Draper knows
nothing of them. The history of hospitals here in America is as
largely religious as it was in other countries and times.
{510}
Professor Draper seems to have known nothing of the fine hospitals and
foundling institutions 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 assumptions 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 factitious, 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
space 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 Regiomontanus, "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 Regiomontanus to
translate Ptolemy and providing them with manuscripts and putting them
in touch with Greek science in every way.
{511}
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
illustrated by Halley's comet. When it appeared in the former year,
it was considered as the harbinger of the vengeance of God, 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 passages 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 superstition, 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 classical 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 manuscripts. 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 attitude 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 scholarship, 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
institutions shown by their history to be suitable to them, were
plunged into anarchy; the people fell into a baneful superstition,
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 assumption 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 accumulator 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 manuscripts 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 noble 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 passage 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: