Is it purely for power that they have portrayed themselves to history as consummate creators of ignorance? A devotee of power would have better sense I suspect. They are unable to convince Nipper that the Bible actually teaches an earth which does not move nor that the idea is necessary for faith. Yet for them they seemed to think faith rested upon the foundation of an earth at the center of the universe.
I was going to come up with a clever explanation for this but have not and instead find myself annoyed.
Looks like I did repost some of the Galileo material. I'll clean it up shortly and get us back into the post-Galileo era.
Maksukov, my annoyance was not with your repeat but with the bizarre lengths that the resistance to learning went. I am still asking my self why.
I am not writing a full statement, just a couple notes to invite thoughts. It is a revolution in thought to shift from using reason as primary and mistrusting observation to accepting that reason can lead us astray.People were slow to accept that reality may be different than reason says it should be.
Is there a connection to the fact that timing overlaps the period of witch hysteria?
Are both witch hysteria and fearing objective investigation tied to political instability?
Shall we call it superstitious fear. It seems possible that some of these people actual thought the telescope was tricking people.
Besides, obviously the earth is stable, anybody saying different is doing crazy talk to make people crazy.
The scientific revolution dawned at the same time as the Reformation. So Christianity was shattered by civil war. Extremism was everywhere because it was an existential crisis. The resistance was the old Kuhnian tension of the pending paradigm shift.
VI. THE RETREAT OF THE CHURCH AFTER ITS VICTORY OVER GALILEO.
Any history of the victory of astronomical science over dogmatic theology would be incomplete without some ac- count of the retreat made by the Church from all its former positions in the Galileo case.
The retreat of the Protestant theologians was not difficult. A little skilful warping of Scripture, a little skillful use of that time-honoured phrase, attributed to Cardinal Baronius, that the Bible is given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how men go to heaven, and a free use of explosive rhet- oric against the pursuing army of scientists, sufficed.
But in the older Church it was far less easy. The re- treat of the sacro-scientific army of Church apologists lasted through two centuries.
In spite of all that has been said by these apologists, there no longer remains the shadow of a doubt that the papal infallibility was committed fully and irrevocably against the double revolution of the earth. As the documents of Gali- leo's trial now published show, Paul V, in 1616, pushed on with all his might the condemnation of Galileo and of the works of Copernicus and of all others teaching the motion of the earth around its own axis and around the sun. So, too, in the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and in all the proceedings which led up to it and which followed it, Urban VIll was the central figure. Without his sanction no action could have been taken.
True, the Pope did not formally sign the decree against the Copernican theory then; but this came later. In 1664 Alexander VII prefixed to the Index containing the con- demnations of the works of Copernicus and Galileo and '' all books which affirm the motion of the earth " a papal bull signed by himself, binding the contents of the Index upon the consciences of the faithful. This bull confirmed and ap- proved in express terms, finally, decisively, and infallibly, the condemnation of " all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun."*
* See Rev. William with. Roberts, The Pontifical Decrees against the Doctrine
The position of the mother Church had been thus made especially difficult ; and the first important move in retreat by the apologists was the statement that Galileo was con- demned, not because he affirmed the motion of the earth, but because he supported it from Scripture. There was a slight appearance of truth in this. Undoubted!y Galileo's letters to Castelli and the grand duchess, in which he at- tempted to show that his astronomical doctrines were not opposed to Scripture, gave a new stir to religious bigotry. For a considerable time, then, this quibble served its pur- pose ; even a hundred and fifty years after Galileo's con- demnation it was renewed by the Protestant Mallet du Pan, in his wish to gain favour from the older Church.
But nothing can be more absurd, in the light of the origi- nal documents recently brought out of the Vatican archives, than to make this contention now. The letters of Gali- leo to Castelli and the Grand-Duchess were not published until after the condemnation; and, although the Archbishop of Pisa had endeavoured to use them against him, they were but casually mentioned in 1616, and entirely left out of view in 1633. What was condemned in 1616 by the Sacred Con- gregation held in the presence of Pope Paul V, as ''absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because absolutely contrary to Holy Scripture,'' was the proposition that '' the sun is the cen- tre about which the earth revolves " ; and what was condemned as ''absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theologic point of viezv, at least, opposed to the true faith,'' was the proposition that " the earth is not the centre of the universe and immovable, but has a diurnal motion."
And again, what Galileo was made, by express order of Pope Urban, and by the action of the Inquisition under threat of torture, to abjure in 1633, was " the error and heresy of the movement of the earth."
What the Index condemned under sanction of the bull issued by Alexander VII in 1664 was, ''all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun
Not one of these condemnations was directed against Galileo ''for reconciling his ideas with Scripture."
Having been dislodged from this point, the Church apol- ogists sought cover under the statement that Galileo was condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy and want of respect toward the Pope.
There was a slight chance, also, for this quibble: no doubt Urban VIII, one of the haughtiest of pontiffs, was in- duced by Galileo's enemies to think that he had been treated with some lack of proper etiquette: first, by Galileo's adhe- sion to his own doctrines after his condemnation in 1616; and, next, by his supposed reference in the Dialogue of 1632 to the arguments which the Pope had used against him.
But it would seem to be a very poor service rendered to the doctrine of papal infallibility to claim that a decision so immense in its consequences could be influenced by the personal resentment of the reigning pontiff.
Again, as to the first point, the very language of the various sentences shows the folly of this assertion ; for these sentences speak always of "heresy," and never of ''con- tumacy." As to the last point, the display of the original documents settled that forever. They show Galileo from first to last as most submissive toward the Pope, and patient under the papal arguments and exactions. He had, indeed, expressed his anger at times against his traducers ; but to hold this the cause of the judgment against him is to de- grade the whole proceedings, and to convict Paul V, Urban
* For the original trial documents, copied^ carefully from the Vatican manu- scripts, see the Roman Catholic authority, L'Epinois, especially p. 35, where the principal document is given in its original Latin ; see also Gebler, Die Aden des Galilei' schen Processes, for still more complete copies of the same documents. For minute information regarding these documents and their publication, see Favaro, Miscellanea Galileana Inedita, forming vol. xxii, part iii, of the Memoirs of the Venetian Institute for 1887, and especially pp. 891 and following.
VIII, Bellarmin, the other theologians, and the Inquisition, of direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely different rea- sons for their conduct. From this position, therefore, the assailants retreated."
The next rally was made about the statement that the persecution of Galileo was the result of a quarrel between Aristotelian professors on one side and professors favouring the experimental method on the other. But this position was attacked and carried by a very simple statement. If the divine guidance of the Church is such that it can be dragged into a professorial squabble, and made the tool of a faction in bringing about a most disastrous condemnation of a proved truth, how did the Church at that time differ from any human organization sunk into decrepitude, managed nominally by simpletons, but really by schemers? If that argument be true, the condition of the Church was even worse than its enemies have declared it ; and amid the jeers of an unfeeling world the apologists sought new shelter.
The next point at which a stand was made was the asser- tion that the condemnation of Galileo was " provisory " ; but this proved a more treacherous shelter than the others. The wordinof of the decree of condemnation itself is a sufficient answer to this claim. When doctrines have been solemnly declared, as those of Galileo were solemnly declared under sanction of the highest authority in the Church, " contrary to the sacred Scriptures," " opposed to the true faith," and "false and absurd in theology and philosophy " — to say that such declarations are *' provisory " is to say that the truth held by the Church is not immutable ; from this, then, the apologists retreated.
Still another contention was made, in some respects more curious than any other : it was, mainly, that Galileo "was no more a victim of Catholics than of Protestants ; for they
* The invention of the " contumacy " quibble seems due to Monsignor Marini, who appears also to have manipulated the original documents to prove it. Even Whewell was evidently somewhat misled by him, but Whewell wrote before L'Epi- nois had shown all the documents, and under the supposition that Marini was an honest man.
more than the Catholic theologians impelled the Pope to the action taken."
But if Protestantism could force the papal hand in a matter of this magnitude, involving vast questions of belief and far-reaching questions of policy, what becomes of "in- errancy " — of special protection and guidance of the papal authority in matters of faith ?
While this retreat from position to position was going on, there was a constant discharge of small-arms, in the shape of innuendoes, hints, and sophistries : every effort was made to blacken Galileo's private character : the irregularities of his early life were dragged forth, and stress was even laid upon breaches of etiquette ; but this succeeded so poorly that even as far back as 1850 it was thought necessary to cover the retreat by some more careful strategy.
This new strategy is instructive. The original docu- ments of the Galileo trial had been brought during the Napoleonic conquests to Paris; but in 1846 they were re- turned to Rome by the French Government, on the express pledge by the papal authorities that they should be pub- lished. In 1850, after many delays on various pretexts, the long-expected publication appeared. The personage charged with presenting them to the world was Monsignor Marini. This ecclesiastic was of a kind with^hich has too often afflicted both the Church and the world at large. Despite the solemn promise of the papal court, the wily Marini became the in- strument of the Roman authorities in evading the promise. By suppressing a document here, and interpolating a state- ment there, he managed to give plausible standing-ground for nearly every important sophistry ever broached to save the infallibility of the Church and destroy the reputation of Galileo. He it was who supported the idea that Galileo was " condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy."
The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed use- ful in covering the retreat of the Church apologists. Aided by him, such vigorous writers as Ward were able to throw
* See the Rev. A. M. Kirsch on Professor Huxley and Evolution, in The Amer- ican Catholic Quarterly, October, 1877. The article is, as a whole, remarkably fair-minded, and in the main just, as to the Protestant attitude, and as to the causes underlying the whole action against Galileo.
up temporary intrenchments between the Roman authori- ties and the indignation of the world.
But some time later came an investigator very different from Monsignor Marini. This was a Frenchman, M. L'Epi- nois. Like Marini, L'Epinois was devoted to the Church ; but, unlike Marini, he could not lie. Having obtained ac- cess in 1867 to the Galileo documents at the Vatican, he published several of the most important, without suppres- sion or pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to be made.
And now came the most desperate effort of all. The apologetic army, reviving an idea which the popes and the Church had spurned for centuries, declared that the popes as popes had never condemned the doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo ; that they had condemned them as men simply ; that therefore the Church had never been committed to them ; that the condemnation was made by the cardinals of the Inquisition and Index ; and that the Pope had evidently been restrained by interposition of Providence from signing their condemnation. Nothing could show the desperation of the retreating party better than jugglery like this. The fact is, that in the official account of the condemnation by Bellarmin, in 1616, he declares distinctly that he makes this condemnation "in the name of His Holiness the Pope.""^
Again, from Pope Urban downward, among the Church authorities of the seventeenth century the decision was al- ways acknowledged to be made by the Pope and the Church. Urban VIII spoke of that of 1616 as made by Pope Paul V and the Church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself and the Church. Pope Alexander, VII in 1664, in his bull Speai- latores, solemnly sanctioned the condemnation of all books affirming the earth's movement. f
When Gassendi attempted to raise the point that the de-
* See the citation from the Vatican manuscript given in Gebler, p. 78.
For references by Urban VIII to the condemnation as made by Pope Paul V see pp. 136, 144, and elsewhere in Martin, who much against his will is forced to allow this. See also Roberts, Pontifical Decrees against the Earth's Movement, and St. George Mivart's article, as above quoted ; also Reusch, Index der verbo- tenen Bucher^ Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, pp. 29 et seq.
cision against Copernicus and Galileo was not sanctioned by the Church as such, an eminent theological authority, Father Lecazre, rector of the College of Dijon, publicly contra- dieted him, and declared that it *' was not certain cardinals, but the supreme authority of the Church," that had con- demned Galileo ; and to this statement the Pope and other Church authorities gave consent either openly or by silence. When Descartes and others attempted to raise the same point, they were treated with contempt. Father Castelli, who had devoted himself to Galileo, and knew to his cost just what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for granted, in his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the Church. Cardinal Querenghi, in his let- ters ; the ambassador Guicciardini, in his dispatches; Po- lacco, in his refutation ; the historian Viviani, in his biog- raphy of Galileo— all writing under Church inspection and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the Church condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome. The Inquisition itself, backed by the greatest the- ologian of the time (Bellarmin), took the same view. Not only does he declare that he makes the condemnation ** in the name of His Holiness the Pope," but we have the Roman Index, containing the condemnation for nearly two hundred years, prefaced by a solemn bull of the reigning Pope bind- ing this condemnation on the consciences of the whole Church, and declaring year after year that '' all books which affirm the motion of the earth" are damnable. To attempt to face all this, added to the fact that Galileo was required to abjure "the heresy of the movement of the earth" by written order of the Pope, was soon seen to be impossible. Against the assertion that the Pope was not responsible we have all this mass of testimonv, and the bull of Alexander VII in 1664.
This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest Catholics themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergyman in England, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth, published a book entitled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth! s Move- inent, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. This Catholic clergyman showed from the original record that Pope Paul V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doc- trine of the earth's movement, and ordering Galileo to give up the opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed on, directed, and promulgated the final condemna- tion, making himself in all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that Pope Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull attached to the Index, condemning "all books which afiirm the motion of the earth," had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the earth's movement. He also confessed that under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the Church, and especially by Sixtus V and Pius IX, there was no escape from this conclusion.
Various theologians attempted to evade the force of the .argument. Some, like Dr. Ward and Bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties; some, like Dr. Jeremiah Murphy, comforted themselves with declamation. The only result was, that in 1885 came another edition of the Rev. Mr. Roberts's work, even more cogent than the first ; and, besides this, an essay by that eminent Catholic, St. George Mivart, acknowledging the Rev. Mr. Roberts's position to be impregnable, and declaring virtually that the Almighty allowed Pope and Church to fall into complete error regarding the Copernican theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside their province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests with scientific investigators alone.*
In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far as fair-minded men are concerned.
In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the embarrassment of militant theology in the nine- teenth century.
The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days when he was hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of his sermons before the Univer- sity of Oxford he spoke as follows :
" Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is sta- tionary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. How can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very truth till we know what motion is ? If our idea of motion is but an accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is true and both are true : neither true philosophically ; both true for certain practical purposes in the system in which they are respectively found."
In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or any real foundation for it ? Sim- ply to save an outworn system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to be born.
The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the Dublin Review y as is understood, by one of Newman's associates. This argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the charge of deception against the Almighty himself. It is as follows : " But it may well
* For this crushing answer by two eminent Roman Catholics to the sophistries cited — an answer which does infinitely more credit to the older Church than all the perverted ingenuity used in concealing the truth or breaking the force of it — see Roberts and St. George Mivart, as already cited.
be doubted whether the Church did retard the progress of scientific truth. What retarded it was the circumstance that God has thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. But it is God who did this, not the Church ; and, moreover, since he saw fit so to act as to retard the progress of scientific truth, it would be little to her dis- credit, even if it were true, that she had followed his ex- ample."
Maksutov wrote:This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest Catholics themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergyman in England, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth, published a book entitled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth! s Move- inent, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. This Catholic clergyman showed from the original record that Pope Paul V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doc- trine of the earth's movement, and ordering Galileo to give up the opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed on, directed, and promulgated the final condemna- tion, making himself in all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that Pope Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull attached to the Index, condemning "all books which afiirm the motion of the earth," had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the earth's movement. He also confessed that under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the Church, and especially by Sixtus V and Pius IX, there was no escape from this conclusion.
Various theologians attempted to evade the force of the .argument. Some, like Dr. Ward and Bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties; some, like Dr. Jeremiah Murphy, comforted themselves with declamation. The only result was, that in 1885 came another edition of the Rev. Mr. Roberts's work, even more cogent than the first ; and, besides this, an essay by that eminent Catholic, St. George Mivart, acknowledging the Rev. Mr. Roberts's position to be impregnable, and declaring virtually that the Almighty allowed Pope and Church to fall into complete error regarding the Copernican theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside their province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests with scientific investigators alone.*
In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far as fair-minded men are concerned.
In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the embarrassment of militant theology in the nine- teenth century.
The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days when he was hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of his sermons before the Univer- sity of Oxford he spoke as follows :
" Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is sta- tionary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. How can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very truth till we know what motion is ? If our idea of motion is but an accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is true and both are true : neither true philosophically ; both true for certain practical purposes in the system in which they are respectively found."
In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or any real foundation for it ? Sim- ply to save an outworn system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to be born.
The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the Dublin Review y as is understood, by one of Newman's associates. This argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the charge of deception against the Almighty himself. It is as follows : " But it may well
* For this crushing answer by two eminent Roman Catholics to the sophistries cited — an answer which does infinitely more credit to the older Church than all the perverted ingenuity used in concealing the truth or breaking the force of it — see Roberts and St. George Mivart, as already cited.
be doubted whether the Church did r***** the progress of scientific truth. What r******* it was the circumstance that God has thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. But it is God who did this, not the Church ; and, moreover, since he saw fit so to act as to r***** the progress of scientific truth, it would be little to her dis- credit, even if it were true, that she had followed his ex- ample."
*****Poster's note: the board software censors a perfectly legimate word here: r-e-t-a-r-d. It is used in an appropriate and not hurtful way. Oh well.
This argument, like Mr. Gosse's famous attempt to rec- oncile geology to Genesis — by supposing that for some in- scrutable purpose God deliberately deceived the thinking world by giving to the earth all the appearances of develop- ment through long periods of time, while really creating it in six days, each of an evening and a morning — seems only to have awakened the amazed pity of thinking men. This, like the argument of Newman, was a last desperate effort of Anglican and Roman divines to save something from the wreckage of dogmatic theology.*
All these well-meaning defenders of the faith but wrought into the hearts of great numbers of thinking men the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they simply attached Christian- ity by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin
* For the quotation from Newman, see his Sermons on the Theory of Religious Beliefs sermon xiv, cited by Bishop Goodwin in Contemporary Review for January, 1892. For the attempt to take the blame off the shoulders of both Pope and car- dinals and place it upon the Almighty, see the article above cited, in the Dublin Revieza, September, 1865, p. 419, and July, 1871, pp. i57 ^i ^eq. For a good sum- mary of the various attempts, and for replies to them in a spirit of judicial fairness, see Th. Martin, Vie de Galilee, though there is some special pleading to save the infallibility of Pope and Church. The bibliography at the close is very valuable- For details of Mr. Gosse's theory, as developed in his Omphalos, see the chapter on Geology in this work. As to a still later attempt, see Wegg-Prosser, Galileo and his Judges, London, 1889, the main thing in it being an attempt to establish, against the honest and honourable concessions of Catholics like Roberts and Mivart^ sundry far-fetched and wire-drawn distinctions between dogmatic and disciplinary bulls— an attempt which will only deepen the distrust of straightforward reasoners. The author's point of view is stated in the words, " I have maintained that the Church has a right to lay her restraining hand on the speculations of natural science " (p. 167).
to these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they have had their way, the advance of knowledge would have ingulfed both together.
On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this : Copernicus, escaping persecution only by death ; Giordano Bruno, burned alive as a monster of im- piety ; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, accused of "throwing Christ's king- dom into confusion with his silly fancies " ; Newton, bitterly attacked for " dethroning Providence," gave to religion stronger foundations and more ennobling concep- tions.
Under the old system, that princely astronomer, Al- phonso of Castile, seeing the inadequacy of the Ptolemaic theory, yet knowing no other, startled Europe with the blas- phemy that, if he had been present at creation, he could have suggested a better order of the heavenly bodies. Under the new system, Kepler, filled with a religious spirit, exclaimed, " I do think the thoughts of God." The difference in religious spirit between these two men marks the conquest made in this long struggle by Science for Religion.*
Nothing is more unjust than to cast especial blame for all this resistance to science upon the Roman Church. The Protestant Church, though rarely able to be so severe, has been more blameworthy. The persecution of Galileo and his compeers by the older Church was mainly at the begin- ning of the seventeenth century ; the persecution of Robert- son Smith, and Winchell, and Woodrow, and Toy, and the young professors at Beyrout, by various Protestant authori- ties, was near the end of the nineteenth century. Those earlier persecutions by Catholicism were strictly in accord- ance with principles held at that time by all religionists, Catholic and Protestant, throughout the world ; these later persecutions by Protestants were in defiance of principles which all Protestants to-day hold or pretend to hold, and none make louder claim to hold them than the very sects
* As a pendant to this ejaculation of Kepler may be cited the words of Lin- naeus : '' Deum dmnipotentem a tergo transeunteni vidi et obstupui"
which persecuted these eminent Christian men of our day, men whose crime was that they were intelligent enough to accept the science of their time, and honest enough to acknowledge it.
Most unjustly, then, would Protestantism taunt Catholi- cism for excluding knowledge of astronomical truths from European Catholic universities in the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, while real knowledge of geological and biological and anthropological truth is denied or pitifully diluted in so many American Protestant colleges and uni- versities in the nineteenth century.
Nor has Protestantism the right to point with scorn to the Catholic Index and to lay stress on the tact that nearly every really important book in the last three centuries has been forbidden by it, so long as young men in so many American Protestant universities and colleges are nursed with " ecclesiastical pap " rather than with real thought, and directed to the works of " solemnly constituted im- postors," or to sundry " approved courses of reading," while they are studiously kept aloof from such leaders in modern thought as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Draper, and Lecky.
It may indeed be justly claimed by Protestantism that some of the former strongholds of her bigotry have be- come liberalized ; but, on the other hand, Catholicism can point to the fact that Pope Leo XIII, now happily reign- ing, has made a noble change as regards open dealing with documents. The days of Monsignor Marini, it may be hoped, are gone. The Vatican Library, with its masses of historical material, has been thrown open to Protestant and Catholic scholars alike, and this privilege has been freely used by men representing all shades of religious thought.
As to the older errors, the whole civilized world was at fault, Protestant as well as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion ; it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter de- fiance of the words and works of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion. Justly is it said by one of the most eminent among contemporary Anglican divines, that " it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a conflagration that theologians have so often been foes of light."*
* For an exceedingly striking statement, by a Roman Catholic historian of genius, as to the popular demand for persecution and the pressure of the lower strata in ecclesiastical organizations for cruel measures, see Balmes's Le Protestan- t'sme compare au Catholicisme, etc., fourth edition, Paris, 1855, vol. ii. Archbishop Spaulding has something of the same sort in his Miscellanies. L'Epinois, Galilee, pp. 22 ei seq., stretches this as far as possible to save the reputation of the Church in the Galileo matter. As to the various branches of the Protestant Church in England and the United States, it is a matter of notoriety that the smug, well-to- do laymen, whether elders, deacons, or vestrymen, are, as a rule, far more prone to heresy-hunting than are their better educated pastors. As to the cases of Messrs. Winchell, Woodrow, Toy, and the professors at Beyrout, with details, see the chapter in this series on The Fall of Maft and Anthropology. Among Protestant historians who have been recently allowed full and free examination of the treas- ures in the Vatican Library, and even those involving questions between Catholi- cism and Protestantism, are Von Sybel, of Berlin, and Philip SchafT, of New York. It should be added that the latter went with commendatory letters from eminent prelates of the Catholic Church in Europe and America. For the closing citation, see Canon Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 432.
Few things in the evolution of astronomy are more sug- gestive than the struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine regarding comets — the passage from the conception of them as fire-balls flung by an angry God for the purpose of scaring a wicked world, to a recognition of them as natural in origin and obedient to law in movement. Hardly anything throws a more vivid light upon the dan- ger of wresting texts of Scripture to preserve ideas which observation and thought have superseded, and upon the folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against scientific dis- covery."
Out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs re- garding comets, meteors, and eclipses ; all these were held to be signs displayed from heaven for the warning of man- kind. Stars and meteors were generally thought to presage happy events, especially the births of gods, heroes, and great men. So firmly rooted was this idea that we con- stantly find among the ancient nations traditions of lights in the heavens preceding the birth of persons of note. The sacred books of India show that the births of Crishna and of Buddha were announced by such heavenly lights. The
* The present study, after its appearance in the Popular Science Monthly as a " new chapter in the Warfare of Science," was revised and enlarged to nearly its present form, and read before the American Historical Association, among whose papers it was published, in 1887, under the title of A History of the Doctrine of Comets.
sacred books of China tell of similar appearances at the births of Yu, the founder of the first dynasty, and of the in- spired sage, Lao-tse. According to the Jewish legends, a star appeared, and was seen by the Magi of Egpyt, who informed the king ; and when Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east. The Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions. A heavenly light accompanied the birth of Esculapius, and the births of va- rious Ccesars were heralded in like manner.
The same conception entered into our Christian sacred books. Of all the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the cradle of Jesus of Nazareth, none ap- peals more directly to the highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the evangelists, in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the manger where the Galilean peasant-child— the Hope of Mankind, the Light of the World— was lying in poverty and helplessness.