The Popes and Science

At Louvain he continued his anatomical work, finding it difficult enough to procure human material, but using such as might come to hand. The story is told of his first attempt to get a complete skeleton. A felon had been executed just outside the walls of Louvain, and his remains were, as was the custom at that time, allowed to swing on the gibbet until the birds of the air had eaten his flesh and the wind and rain had bleached his bones. As might be thought, these bones were a great temptation to Vesalius. Finally, one night he and a fellow student stole out of the town and robbed the gibbet of its treasure. In order to accomplish their task–no easy one, because the skeleton was fastened to the beams of the scaffold by iron shackles–they had to remain out all night. They buried it and later removed it piecemeal, and when they had finally assembled the parts again it was exhibited as a skeleton brought from Paris.

Even this story has been made to do duty as showing the ecclesiastical opposition to dissection and the advancement of anatomical knowledge. It is hard to understand, however, why men will not look at such an incident from the standpoint of our own experience in the modern time. There are men still alive in certain states of the Union who recall how much trouble they had to go to as medical students in order to procure a skeleton. If we go back fifty years, nearly every skeleton that physicians had in their offices was obtained in some way almost as surreptitious as that just described, or was purchased through some underhand channel. They were dug up from potter's field, or sometimes procured from complacent prison officials, or occasionally stolen from respectable cemeteries. In this respect Vesalius was not much worse off than were his medical colleagues for nearly three centuries and a half after his time in the northern countries. It was easier to procure such material in Italy.

Vesalius had that precious quality that makes the investigator desire to see and know things for himself. He could not get opportunities for definite anatomical knowledge in the western part of Europe, so he gave up his practice, though Louvain, his native town, was a most promising place, having nearly 200,000 inhabitants and business relations with all the world at the moment, and went down into Italy where he knew that he could pursue his anatomical studies to his heart's content. The tradition of the work that Zerbi and Achillini had done, and especially what Benivieni and Berengar had accomplished within a few decades before this time, was commonly known in all the medical schools of Europe, and many an ardent young anatomist in the West yearned for the opportunities and the incentive that he could obtain down there. Church influence was predominant; the ecclesiastics were the actual rulers of the universities, but medical science, and above all anatomy, was being studied very ardently. Vesalius thus prompted, came and found what he looked for. At the end of ten short years of work down there, he had completed his text-book of anatomy which was to earn for him deservedly the title of Father of Anatomy.

At first Vesalius seems to have spent some time in Venice, where he attracted considerable attention by his thorough, practical anatomical knowledge and independent mode of thinking. After only a short period in Venice, however, he proceeded to Padua, where he spent some months in preparation for his doctor's examination. It is known that, having completed his examination in the early part of December, 1537, he was allowed within a few days to begin the teaching of anatomy, and, indeed, was given the title of professor by the university authorities.

The next six years were spent in teaching at Padua, Bologna and Pisa, and in fruitful investigation. Every opportunity to make dissections was gladly seized, and Vesalius's influence enabled him to obtain a large amount of excellent anatomical material. He began at once the preparations for the publication of an important work on the anatomy of the human body. This was published in 1543 at Basel, at a time when its author was not yet thirty years of age. It is one of the classics of anatomical literature. Even at the present day it is often consulted by those who wish to see the illustrative details of Vesalius's wonderful dissections as given in the magnificent plates that the work contains. It has become one of the most precious of medical books, and is eagerly sought for by collectors.

For ten years more Vesalius devoted himself to his favorite studies in anatomy and physiology, for it must not be forgotten that he was constantly applying his knowledge of form and tissue to function, and came to be looked upon as the leading medical investigator of the world. It is apparently sometimes not realized, however, that Vesalius was no mere laboratory or dissecting room investigator. After the publication of his great work on anatomy he set himself seriously to the application of what he had discovered to practical medicine and surgery. He was an intensely practical man. As a consequence, it was not long before consultations began to pour in on him, and he came to be considered as one of the greatest medical practitioners of his time. Ruling princes in Italy, visitors of distinction, high ecclesiastics–all wished to have Vesalius's opinion when their cases became puzzling. This is a side of his character that many of his modern biographers have missed. Even Sir Michael Foster, whose knowledge of the history of medicine, and especially of physiology, makes one hesitate to disagree with him, seems not to have appreciated Vesalius's interest in practical medicine. A laboratory man himself, he was apparently not able to appreciate why Vesalius should have given up his scientific research in Italy to accept the post of Royal Physician to the Emperor Charles V.

Professor Foster thinks it necessary, then, to find some other reason than the temptation of the importance of the position to account for Vesalius's acceptance of it. He concludes that it was because of discouragement in his purely scientific studies as a consequence of the opposition of the Galenists. Opposition on the part of the old conservative school of medicine there was, and some of it was rather serious. This was not enough, however, to have discouraged Vesalius. Professor Foster goes so far as to wax almost sentimental over the fact that the acceptance of the post of physician to Charles V. ended Vesalius's scientific career; "for though in the years which followed the Father of Anatomy from time to time produced something original, and in 1555 brought out a new edition of his Fabrica, differing chiefly from the first one, so far as the circulation of the blood is concerned, in its bolder enunciation of its doubts about the Galenic doctrines touching the heart, he made no further solid addition to the advancement of knowledge. Henceforward his life was that of a court physician much sought after and much esteemed–a life lucrative and honorable and in many ways useful, but not a life conducive to original inquiry and thought. The change was a great and a strange one. At Padua he had lived amid dissections; not content with the public dissections in the theatre, he took parts, at least, of corpses to his own lodgings and continued his labors there. No wonder that he makes in his Fabrica some biting remarks to the effect that he who espouses science must not marry a wife; he cannot be true to both. A year after his arrival at the Court he sealed his divorce from science by marrying a wife; no more dissections at home, no more dissections indeed at all; at most, some few post-mortem examinations of patients whose lives his skill had failed to save. Henceforth his days were to be spent in courtly duties, in soothing the temporary ailments, the repeated gouty attacks of his imperial master, in healing the maladies of the nobles and others round his throne, and doubtless in giving advice to more humble folk, who were from time to time allowed to seek his aid. Whither his master went, he went too, and we may well imagine that in leisure moments he entertained the Emperor and the Court with his intellectual talk, telling them some of the fairy tales of that realm of science which he had left, and of the later achievements of which news came to him, scantily, fitfully and from afar."

Professor White has gone much farther than Sir Michael Foster. The English physiologist knew too much about the history of medicine in Italy even to hint at any ecclesiastical opposition with regard to Vesalius. President White, however, has no scruples in the matter. This makes an excellent opportunity to write the kind of history that is to be found in his book. Apparently forgetful of the thought that the Emperor Charles V. was not at all likely to take as his body physician a man who had been in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities in Italy, he insists that the reason why Vesalius dedicated his great work on anatomy to the Emperor Charles V. was "to shield himself as far as possible in the battle which he foresaw must come." Later he suggests that it was only the favor of the Emperor saved him from the ecclesiastical authorities.

All that has been said by historians with regard to the reasons for Vesalius's acceptance of the post of physician to the Emperor Charles V. can only have come from men who either did not know or had for the moment forgotten the story of Vesalius's ancestry. The family tradition of having one of its members as physician to the Court of the German Emperor was four generations old when Vesalius accepted the position.

Vesalius's great-grandfather occupied the position of physician-in-ordinary to Marie of Burgundy, the wife of the German Emperor Maximilian I., the distinguished patron of letters in the Renaissance period. He lived to an advanced age as a professor of medicine at Louvain. From this time on Vesalius's family always continued in official medical relation to the Austrian-Burgundy ruling family. His grandfather took his father's place as physician to Mary of Burgundy, and wrote a series of commentaries on the aphorisms of Hippocrates. Vesalius's father was the physician and apothecary to Charles V. for a while, and accompanied the Emperor on journeys and campaigns. What more natural than that his son, having reached the distinction of being the greatest medical scientist alive, should be offered, and as a matter of course accept the post of imperial physician!

The simple facts of the matter are that Vesalius came down into Italy in order to study anatomy, because in that priest-ridden and ecclesiastically-ruled country he could get better opportunities for anatomical study and investigation than anywhere else in Europe. He spent ten years there and then wrote his classical work on anatomy. After that he spent some years applying anatomy to medicine. Then when he had come to be the acknowledged leader of the medical profession of the world, the Emperor Charles V., at that time the greatest ruler in Europe, asked him to become his court physician. Vesalius accepted, as would any other medical investigator that I have ever known, under the same circumstances. His position with Charles V. gave him opportunities to act as consultant for many of the most important personages of Europe, and it must not be forgotten that when the King of France was injured in a tournament Vesalius was summoned all the way from Madrid, and gave a bad prognosis in the case.

In the light of this simple story of Vesalius's life in Italy, and of the reasons for his going there and his departure, it is intensely amusing to read the accounts of this portion of Vesalius's life, written by those who must maintain at all costs the historical tradition that the Church was opposed to anatomy, that the Popes had forbidden dissection, and that the ecclesiastical authorities were constantly on the watch to hamper, as far as possible at least, if not absolutely to prevent, all anatomical investigation, and were even ready to put to death those who violated the ecclesiastical regulations in this matter. Dr. White, for instance, has made a great hero of Vesalius for daring to do dissection. He was only doing what hundreds of others were doing and had been doing in Italy for hundreds of years; but to confess this would be to admit that the Church was not opposed to anatomy or the practice of dissection, and so perforce Vesalius must be a hero as well as the Father of Anatomy. To read Dr. White's paragraph in the History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, one cannot but feel sure that Vesalius must practically have risked death over and over again in order to pursue his favorite practice of dissection and his original researches in anatomy. I would be the last one in the world to wish to minimize in any way Vesalius's merits. He was a genius, a great discoverer–above all an inspiration to methods of study that have been most fruitful in their results, and withal a devout Christian and firm adherent of the Roman Catholic Church. He was not a hero in the matter of dissection, however, for there was no necessity for heroism. Dissection had been practiced very assiduously before his time in all the universities of Italy, especially in Bologna, which was a Papal city from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and also in Rome at the medical college of the Roman University under the very eye of the Popes.

In the light of this knowledge read President White's paragraph with regard to Vesalius:

"From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for real knowledge he risked the most terrible dangers, and especially the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the Church for ages. As we have seen, even such men in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the decretal of Pope Boniface VIII. was universally construed as forbidding all dissection, and as threatening excommunication against those practicing it. Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear; despite ecclesiastical censure, great opposition in his own profession and popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that could give useful results. No peril daunted him. To secure material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets and charnel-houses, braving the fires of the Inquisition and the virus of the plague." (The italics are mine.)

A very interesting commentary on the expressions of Professor White with regard to Vesalius is to be found in a paragraph of Von Töply's article on the History of Anatomy in the second volume of Puschmann's History of Medicine, already quoted. "Out of the fruitful soil so well cultivated in the two preceding centuries, there developed at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Renaissance of anatomy, with all the great and also with all the unpleasant features which belong to the important works of art of that period. One has only to think of Donatello, Mantegna, Michel Angelo, and Verochio to realize these. The Renaissance of anatomy developed in a field of human endeavor which, if it did not owe all, at least owed very much to the art-loving and culture-fostering rulers, Popes and cardinals of the time. Older historians have told the story of the rise of anatomy in such a way that it seemed that the Papal Curia had set itself ever in utter hostility to the development of anatomy. As a matter of fact, the Papal Court placed scarcely any hindrances in its path. On the contrary, the Popes encouraged anatomy in every way."

In the page and a half following this quotation Von Töply has condensed into brief form most of what the Popes did for medicine and the medical sciences, though more especially for anatomy, during the centuries from the sixteenth down to the beginning of the nineteenth. Some excerpts from this, with a running commentary, will form the best compendium of the history of the Papal relations to medical education and will show that they are strikingly different from what has usually been said. Von Töply begins with Paul III., who is known in history more especially for his issuance of the Bull founding the Jesuits. It might ordinarily be presumed by those who knew nothing of this Pope, that the Head of the Church, to whom is due an institution such as the Jesuits are supposed to be, would not be interested to the slightest degree in modern sciences, and would be one of the last ecclesiastical authorities from whom patronage of science could possibly be expected. It was he, however, who founded special departments for anatomy and botany and provided the funds for a salary for a prosector of anatomy at Rome.

After this practically every Pope in this century has some special benefaction for anatomy to his credit. Pope Paul IV. (1555-59) called Columbus to Rome and gave him every opportunity for the development of his original genius in anatomical research. Columbus had succeeded Vesalius at Padua and had been tempted from there to Pisa by the duke who wished to create in that city a university with the most prominent teachers in every department that there was in Italy, yet it was from this lucrative post that Pope Paul IV. succeeded in winning Columbus. Quite apart from what we know of Columbus's career at Rome and his successful investigation on the cadaver of many anatomical problems, perhaps the best evidence of the friendly relations of the Popes to him and to his work is to be found in the fact that, first Columbus himself, and then after his death his sons, in issuing their father's magnificent work De Re Anatomica, dedicated it to the successor of Pope Paul IV., the reigning Pope Pius IV. In the meantime Cardinal Della Rovere had brought Eustachius to Rome to succeed Columbus.

Under Sixtus V., who was Pope from 1585 to 1590, the distinguished writer on medicine, and especially on anatomy, Piccolomini, published his lectures on anatomy with a dedication to that Pope. It is well known that the relations between the professor of anatomy at the Papal Medical School and the Pope were very friendly. As was the case with regard to Colombo or Columbus, so also with Caesalpinus. Columbus was the first to describe the pulmonary circulation. Caesalpinus is generally claimed by the Italians to have made the discovery of the circulation of the blood throughout the body before Harvey. Columbus had been at Pisa and was tempted to come to Rome. Caesalpinus had also been at Pisa until Clement VIII. held out inducements that brought him to Rome. Clement is the last Pope of the century, but Von Töply mentions five Popes in the next century who were in intimate relations with distinguished investigators into medical subjects and whose names are in some way connected with some of the most noteworthy teaching and writing in medical matters during the seventeenth century.

It will be readily seen what a caricature of the life of Vesalius is Prof. White's paragraph, if one compares it with the following paragraph taken from so readily available an historical source as the article on the History of Anatomy, by Prof. Turner, of Edinburgh, in the first volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The distinguished Scotch anatomist who so worthily filled the chair of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh says with regard to Berengar of Carpi, who was the professor of anatomy at Bologna thirty-five years before Vesalius's time, that, "In the annals of medicine Berengar's name will be remembered as one of the most zealous and eminent in cultivating the anatomy of the human body. It was long before the anatomists of the following age could boast of equalling him. His assiduity was indefatigable, and he declares that he dissected above one hundred human bodies." This should be enough, it seems to me, to settle the question that anatomy was permitted very freely before Vesalius's time. Professor Turner's authority in such a matter is above all suspicion. He knew the history of anatomy.

If more evidence be needed, compare with President White's fantastic sketch of Vesalius the following sketch of his great contemporary, Columbus or Colombo, to whose anatomical investigations we owe the discovery of the pulmonary circulation:

"The fame of Columbus as an anatomical teacher was exceedingly great and widespread. Students were attracted to the universities where he professed, from all quarters and in large numbers. He was an ardent student of his favorite science and was imbued with the genius and enthusiasm of an original investigator. He was not satisfied with the critical examination of mere structure, but extended his researches into the more subtle, difficult and important investigation of the physiological function. He has been most aptly styled the Claude Bernard of the sixteenth century. The work of Columbus is a masterpiece of method and purity of style, as well as on account of its richness in facts and observations. He spent over forty years in these studies and researches. He dissected an extraordinary number of human bodies. It must have been an age of remarkable tolerance for scientific investigation, for in a single year he dissected no less than fourteen bodies. He also entered the crypts and catacombs of ancient churches, where the bones of the dead had been preserved and had accumulated century after century, and there, with unwearied care, he handled and compared over a half million of human skulls."

This account was written by Dr. George Jackson Fisher in his "Historical and Bibliographical Notes" for the Annals of Anatomy and Surgery (Brooklyn, 1878-1880). All the material that Dr. Fisher used in his sketch is to be found in Roth's "Life of Vesalius," p. 256. Now, Columbus was a contemporary of Vesalius, and worked with him at Bologna. The years of their lives correspond almost exactly. When Vesalius left Padua to become the royal physician to Charles V., it was Columbus who succeeded him. Later he taught also at Pisa. Then, strange as it may seem for those who have put any faith in Dr. White's excursion into medical science, he was invited to become Professor of Anatomy at the Papal University at Rome, and it was while there that he had as many as three hundred students present at his demonstrations in anatomy and there that he did fourteen dissections in one year. The pretense that there was any ecclesiastical objection to dissection becomes absolutely farcical when one compares the life of Vesalius sketched by President White with a motive, and the life of his contemporary and successor, Columbus, by an unbiased physician, whose only idea was to bring out the facts.

According to Prof. White's opinion, Vesalius dedicated his work to Charles V. to shield himself as far as possible, and after this gave up his anatomical studies in Italy to put himself under the protection of Charles V.

Vesalius's successor, Columbus, did not have to do any such thing. Instead, he went down to Rome, and under the protection of the Popes continued to carry on his anatomical work there.

When Charles V. died, however, according to President White, a new weapon was forged against Vesalius. Vesalius was charged with dissecting a living man. President White hints that "the forces of ecclesiasticism united against the innovators of anatomy, and either from direct persecution or from indirect influences Vesalius became a wanderer." Just what that means I do not know. President White does not say that he was exiled, though that idea is implied. There is a great deal of doubt about this charge of Vesalius having made an autopsy on a living person. Roth discusses various versions. The whole thing seems to be a trumped-up story; but supposing it true, would it not be only proper that a man who made an autopsy on a living person should be brought before the court? He certainly would in our day in any civilized country. Professor Foster, of the University of Cambridge in England, following the lead of President White in this matter, blames the Inquisition for instituting the prosecution. If this were true, no more proof would be needed that the Inquisition was a civil and not a religious institution, since after all the killing of a man by a premature autopsy is a plain case of homicide.

The fact of the matter seems to be that Vesalius, who had not been very well in the unsuitable climate of Madrid, made the trip to the Holy Land, partly for reasons of health, but partly also for reasons of piety. While returning he was shipwrecked on the island of Zante and died from exposure. Vesalius had been born in Brabant, at that time one of the most faithful Catholic countries in Europe. Like most of the other great men of his time, the reformation utterly failed to tempt him from his adhesion to the Catholic Church. His greatest colleagues in anatomy and in medicine were Italians, most of whom were in intimate relations with the Catholic ecclesiastics of the time and continued this intimacy in spite of the disturbing influences that were abroad. Many of these men will be mentioned in our account of the Papal Medical School and of the Papal Physicians during the next two or three centuries. The distinguished anatomists and physicians of France in Vesalius's time were quite as faithful Catholics as he was. Even Paracelsus, the Swiss, whose thorough-going independence of mind would, it might naturally seem, have tempted him to take up with the reformed doctrines, had no sympathy with them at all. He recognized the abuses in the Church, but said that Luther and the so-called reformers were doing much more harm than good, and that until they were gotten rid of no improvement in ecclesiastical matters could be looked for. When Paracelsus came to die he left his money mainly to the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin in his native town of Einsiedeln and for masses for his soul. Since their time most of the distinguished medical scientists have been quite as faithful in their Catholicity as these two great medical colleagues of the Renaissance period. While medicine is supposed to be unorthodox in its tendencies, the really great thinkers in medicine, the men to whose names important discoveries in the science were attached, were not only faithful believers in the doctrines of Christianity, but were much more often than has been thought even devout Catholics.

At the death of Vesalius the Golden Age of the development of anatomy was not at its close, but was just beginning. Eustachius, Caesalpinus, Harvey and Malpighi were during the course of the next century to make anatomy a science in the strict sense of that word. After Vesalius's time the history of anatomy in Italy centers around the Papal Medical School to a great extent. During Vesalius's lifetime his greatest rival became the professor of anatomy there. The anatomical school of Bologna, in connection with that city, became an important focus of anatomical investigation. At this time Bologna was a Papal city. It was in the dominions of the Popes, then, as we shall see, that anatomy was carried on with the most success and with the most ardor. Far from there being any opposition to the development of the science, every encouragement was given to it, and it was the patronage of the Popes and of the higher ecclesiastics that to a great degree made possible the glorious evolution of the science during the next century.

SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF CHEMISTRY

A false impression, exactly corresponding to that with regard to anatomy, has been created and fostered by just the same class of writers as exploited the anatomy question, with reference to the attitude of the Popes and the Church of the Middle Ages toward the study of chemistry. This is founded on a similar misrepresentation of a Papal document. When it was pointed out that this Papal document, like Pope Boniface's bull, had no such purport as was suggested, just the same subterfuge as with regard to anatomy was indulged in. If the Papal document did not forbid chemistry directly, as was said, at least it was so misinterpreted, and chemistry failed to develop because of the supposed Papal opposition. These expressions were used, in spite of the fact that, just as in the case of anatomy, it is not hard to trace the rise and development of chemistry, or its predecessor, alchemy, during the years when it is supposed to be in abeyance. Certainly there was no interruption of the progress of chemical science at the date of the supposed Papal prohibition, nor at any other time, as a consequence of Church opposition.

The similarity of these two history lies is so striking as to indicate that they had their birth in the same desire to discredit the Popes at all cost, and to make out a case of opposition on the part of ecclesiastical authorities to scientific development, whether it actually existed or not. The surprise is, however, that the same form of invention should have been used in both cases. One might reasonably have expected that the ingenuity of writers would have enabled them to find another basis for the story on the second occasion. Still more might it have been expected that when the error with regard to the tenor of the Papal document was pointed out to them, a different form of response would be made in the latter instance. The whole subject indicates a dearth of originality that would be amusing if it were on a less serious matter, and does very little credit either to those who are responsible for the first draft of the story, but still less to those who have swallowed it so readily and given it currency.

The story of the Supposed Papal Prohibition of Chemistry was characteristically told by William J. Cruikshank, M. D., of Brooklyn, New York, in an address bearing the title, "Some Relations of the Church and Scientific Progress," published in The Medical Library and Historical Journal of Brooklyn for July, 1905. The writer called emphatic attention to the fact that chemistry, during the Middle Ages, had come under the particular ban of the ecclesiastical authorities, who effectually prevented its cultivation or development. "The chemist," Dr. Cruikshank says, "was called a miscreant, a sorcerer, and was feared because of his supposed partnership with the devil. He was denounced by Pope and priest and was persecuted to the full extent of Papal power. Pope John XXII. was especially energetic in this direction, and in the year 1317 A.D., issued a bull calling on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who were afflicting the faithful, and he thereupon increased the power of the Inquisition in various parts of Europe for this purpose."

At the suggestion of the editor of the Medical Library and Historical Journal, I answered these assertions of Dr. Cruikshank, pointing out that the Papal document which he mentioned had no such purport as he declared, and that the history of chemistry or alchemy presented no such break as his assertions would demand. Dr. Cruikshank immediately appealed by letter to his authority on the subject, whose words, in the History of the Warfare of Theology with Science in Christendom, though I did not realize it at the time, he had repeated almost literally. In his chapter on From Magic to Chemistry and Physics, Dr. Andrew D. White says: "In 1317, Pope John XXII. issued his bull Spondent pariter, levelled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginning of chemical science. He therefore called on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who thus afflicted the faithful, and he especially increased the power of inquisitors in various parts of Europe for this purpose." It will be seen that, as I have said, Dr. Cruikshank's words are almost a verbatim quotation from this paragraph. It is true that he has strengthened the expressions quite a little and added some trimmings of his own, still I suppose his expressions could be justified if those of President White had a foundation in fact. A little comparison of the two sets of phrases will show how a history lie grows as it passes from pen to pen. Crescit eundo--like rumor, it increases in size as it goes.

In defense of this passage in the History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Dr. White wrote a letter of reply to Dr. Cruikshank, which was incorporated into Dr. Cruikshank's response to my article in the Medical Library and Historical Journal. I presume that this was done with Dr. White's permission. In this letter he admitted that Pope John's decretal had no such significance as he originally claimed for it, but he still maintained his previous opinion, that this decretal, like Boniface's bull for anatomy, had actually prevented, or at least greatly hampered the study of chemistry. To this I replied with a brief story of chemistry in the fourteenth century, and though that article was published more than a year ago, no admission has been made and nothing further has been published on the subject. The material of the reply to Dr. White, to which as yet there has been no answer, is comprised in this chapter.

As I have already hinted, the most surprising thing about this citation of a Papal decree forbidding chemistry, is that it proves on investigation to be founded on just exactly the same sort of misinterpretation of a Papal document as happened with regard to anatomy. The bull of Pope Boniface VIII. forbidding the boiling of bodies and their dismemberment for burial in distant lands, did nothing to hinder the progress of anatomy, had no reference to any preparations required for dissection, and was not misinterpreted in any such sense until the nineteenth century, and then only for the purpose of discrediting the Popes and their relations to science. Pope Boniface's bull, far from being harmful in any way to education or to the people, was really beneficial, and constituted an excellent sanitary regulation which doubtless prevented, on a number of occasions, the carriage of disease from place to place.

The decree of Pope John XXII., which has been falsely claimed to forbid chemistry, was another example of Papal care for Christendom, and not at all the obscurantist document it has been so loudly proclaimed. Pope John learned how much imposition was being practiced on the people by certain so-called alchemists who claimed to be able to make silver and gold out of baser metals. In order to prevent this, within a year after his elevation to the pontificate he issued not a bull, but a very different form of document–a decretal–forbidding any "alchemies" of this kind. The punishment to be inflicted, however, instead of being the penalty of death, as Dr. Cruikshank, Dr. White and many others have declared, or at least let it be understood from their mode of expression, was that the person convicted of pretending to make gold and silver and selling it to other people, should pay into the public treasury an amount equal to the supposed amount of gold and silver that he had made. The money thus paid into the public treasury was to be given to the poor.

The best way to show exactly what Pope John intended by his decree is to quote the decree. It does not occur in the ordinary collection of the bulls of John XXII., for it was not, as we have said, a bull in the canonical sense of the term, but a Papal document of minor importance. There is an important distinction between a decree and a bull, the former being but of lesser significance, usually referring only to passing matters of discipline. The decretal may be found in the Corpus Juris Canonica, Tome II., which was published at Lyons in 1779. It is among the decrees or constitutions known as Extravagantes. [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: The meaning of this term we discussed in the previous chapter on Anatomy in relation to the bull of Boniface and Liber VI. The motto of the publisher of the volume in which it occurs deserves quotation because of its apt application in the present circumstance. It is in Latin: "Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris"–"What you would not have done to yourself, don't do to another." If writers about the Popes were as careful to substantiate accusations against them as fully as they would like any accusations against themselves to be corroborated before being accepted and circulated, we should hear much less of Papal intolerance and of Church opposition to science. Even a dead Pope must be considered as a man whose reputation one should not malign without good reason and substantial proof. I must add that, as with regard to the other Papal documents mentioned, I owe the copy of this decree to Father Corbett, of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pennsylvania, and am indebted to him besides for many helpful suggestions.]

We quote the decree as it is found in Canon Law:

The Crime of Falsification.

"Alchemies are here prohibited and those who practise them or procure their being done are punished. They must forfeit to the public treasury for the benefit of the poor as much genuine gold and silver as they have manufactured of the false or adulterate metal. If they have not sufficient means for this, the penalty may be changed to another at the discretion of the judge, and they shall be considered criminals. If they are clerics, they shall be deprived of any benefices that they hold and be declared incapable of holding others." (See also the Extravagant of the same John which begins with the word 'Providens' and is placed under the same title.) [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: The decree referred to here was issued by John XXII. against the counterfeiting of the money of France. The fact that the two decrees should be considered by canonists as connected in subject shows just what was thought to be the purport of the first, namely, to prevent the debasement of the currency by the admixture of adulterate gold as well as to protect the ignorant from imposition.]

"Poor themselves, the alchemists promise riches which are not forthcoming; wise also in their own conceit they fall into the ditch which they themselves have digged. For there is no doubt that the professors of this art of alchemy make fun of each other because, conscious of their own ignorance, they are surprised at those who say anything of this kind about themselves; when the truth sought does not come to them they fix on a day [for their experiment] and exhaust all their arts; then they dissimulate [their failure] so that finally, though there is no such thing in nature, they pretend to make genuine gold and silver by a sophistic transmutation; to such an extent does their damned and damnable temerity go that they stamp upon the base metal the characters of public money for believing eyes, and it is only in this way that they deceive the ignorant populace as to the alchemic fire of their furnace. Wishing to banish such practices for all time, we have determined by this formal edict that whoever shall make gold or silver of this kind or shall order it made, provided the attempt actually follows, or whoever shall knowingly assist those engaged (actually) in such a process, or whoever shall knowingly make use of such gold or silver either by selling it or giving it for debt, shall be compelled as a penalty to pay into the public treasury, to be used for the poor, as much by weight of genuine gold and silver as there may be of alchemic metal, provided it be proved lawfully that they have been guilty in any of the aforesaid ways; for those who persist in making alchemic gold, or, as has been said, in using it knowingly, let them be branded with the mark of perpetual infamy. But if the means of the delinquents are not sufficient for the payment of the amount stated, then the good judgment of the justice may commute this penalty into some other (as, for example, imprisonment, or another punishment, according to the nature of the case, the difference of individuals, and other circumstances.) Those, however, who in their regrettable folly go so far as not only to sell moneys thus made but even despise the precepts of the natural law, pass the bounds of their art and violate the laws by deliberately coining or casting or having others coin or cast counterfeit money from alchemic gold or silver, we proclaim as coming under this animadversion, and their goods shall be confiscate, and they shall be considered as criminals. And if the delinquents are clerics, besides the aforesaid penalties they shall be deprived of any benefices they shall hold and shall be declared incapable of holding any further benefices." [Footnote 16]

[Footnote 16: The Latin text of this decretal will be found entire in the appendix.]

It is evident that John's decree against "The Crime of Falsification" did not directly forbid chemistry, nor alchemy in the proper sense of the word, nor did it in any way interfere with the study of substances to determine their composition, or the synthesis of materials to produce others, provided there was no pretense of making gold and silver in order to obtain genuine gold and silver from ignorant dupes. There seems to be no doubt that had the famous scheme to obtain gold from sea water, which caused serious loss to so many foolish and even poor people a few years ago, come up during the time of John XXII., he would have prevented it from being so lucrative to its promoters, by publicly denouncing them and promulgating a law for their punishment.

It may be considered that excommunication was not a very severe penalty for such dishonest practices, and that the sharpers who gave themselves to such a profession, which would be about that of the confidence or green goods men of our time, were not likely to be affected much by this merely religious deprivation. It must not be forgotten, however, that in those ages of faith, excommunication became an extremely telling social punishment. It was forbidden that anyone, even nearest and dearest friends, should have anything to do with the one excommunicated until the ban was removed. It was bad enough in a town where everyone belonged to the same church, and all went to church frequently, to be forbidden to go there; it was infinitely worse, however, to have everybody who passed refuse to greet you or have relations of any kind with you. President Hadley, of Yale, said, not long since, that social ostracism is the only effective punishment for such manifest extra legal irregularities, which are yet not so essentially criminal as to bring those guilty of them under legal punishment. The sentence of excommunication was an effective social ostracism–the completest possible. This is an aspect of excommunications usually missed, but well deserving of study by those who resent the use of such an instrument by ecclesiastical authorities. Just as soon as the man repented of what he had done and promised to do so no more, he was received back into the Church, and the ostracism ceased, so long as he did not relapse into his forbidden ways.

When the eminently beneficial character of this Papal document is thus appreciated, it is indeed painful to have to realize, that for its issuance John has been held up more to scorn and ridicule than perhaps has ever been the case for any other single formal document that has ever been issued by an ecclesiastical or political authority. He was simply correcting an abuse in his day, the existence of which we recognize and would like to be able to correct in ours. For this eminently proper exercise of the Papal power, however, his whole character has been called into question, and a distinguished modern educator has used every effort to place him in the pillory of history, as one of the men who have done most to hamper progress in science and education in all world history. The amusing thing is the utter inequality between the document itself and its supposed effects. Of course it had no such effect as President White claims for it, and, indeed, he seems never to have seen the document in its entirety before it was called forcibly to his attention long after his declarations with regard to it were published. The real attitude of Pope John XXII. with regard to education and the sciences, which was exactly the reverse of that predicated of him by his modern colleague in education, will be the subject of the next chapter.

There is another document of John XXII., the bull Super Illius Specula, that has been sometimes quoted, or rather misquoted, and which indeed at first I was inclined to think was the bull referred to by Dr. Cruikshank. This second Papal document, however, was not issued until 1326. It is concerned entirely with the practice of magic. The Pope knew that many people, by pretended intercourse with the devil or with spirits of various kinds, claimed to be able to injure, to obtain precious information, to interpret the future and the past, and to clear up most of the mysteries that bother mankind. We have them still with us–the palmist, the fortune-teller, the fake-spiritist. In order to prevent such impostures, John issued a bull forbidding such practices under pain of excommunication. It is almost needless to say that this Papal document must have effected quite as much good for the people at large as did the previous one forbidding "alchemies," which must have prevented the robbing of foolish dupes who were taken with the idea that the alchemists whom they employed could make gold and silver. Of this second Papal document, this time really a bull, we shall, because President White has given it an even falser construction than the one we have just been discussing, have more to say in the next chapter.

We must return, however, to the decretal Spondent pariter,--the decree supposed to have forbidden chemistry; for as with regard to the bull of Boniface VIII., previously discussed, it seems that it is necessary not only to show that the decree was not actually intended by the Popes to prohibit chemistry, but also it will have to be made clear that it was not misinterpreted so as to hamper chemical investigation. This is indeed a very curious state of affairs in history. First, it is solemnly declared, that certain bulls and Papal documents were directed deliberately against the sciences of anatomy and chemistry by the Head of the Church, who wished to prevent the development of these sciences lest they should lessen his power over his people. Then, when it is shown that the documents in question have no such tenor, but are simple Papal regulations for the prevention of abuses which had arisen, and that they actually did accomplish much good for generations for which they were issued, the reply is not an acknowledgement of error, but an insistence on the previous declaration, somewhat in this form: "Well, the Popes may not have intended it, but these sciences, as a consequence of their decrees, did not develop, and the Popes must be considered as to blame for that." Then, instead of showing that these sciences did not develop, this part is assumed and the whole case is supposed to be proved. Could anything well be more preposterous. And this is history! Nay, it is even the history of science.

When I called attention to the fact that this decretal contained none of the things it was said to, and published the text of it, Dr. White very calmly replied: "Dr. Walsh has indeed correctly printed it, and I notice no flaw in his translation." Instead of conceding, however, that he had been mistaken, he seemed to consider it quite sufficient to add, "I have followed what I found to be the unanimous opinion of the standard historians of chemistry." He did not mention any of the historians, however. I asked him by letter to name some of the standard historians of chemistry who made this declaration, but though I received a courteous reply, it contained no names, and, indeed, avoided the question of chemistry entirely. It is not too much to expect that an historian shall quote his authorities. Dr. White seems to be above this. Some documents that he quotes are distorted, and prove on examination, as we have seen, to have quite a different meaning to that which he gives them. As might be expected, his supposed facts prove to have as little foundation. It will be remembered that he completely ignored or was ignorant of the history of anatomy. He seems to have been just as ignorant of the history of chemistry, in spite of his confident assurance in making far-reaching statements with regard to it. In order to satisfy myself, I went through all of the standard histories of chemistry in German, English and French that are available in the libraries of New York City, and I failed to find a single one of them which contains anything that might be supposed even distantly to confirm President White's assertion.

I may have missed it, and shall be glad to know if I have. I cannot do more than cite certain of them that should have it very prominently, if Dr. White's assertion is to be taken at its face value. Here are some standard historians whom I have searched in vain for the declaration that all of them should have.