The Popes and Science. James Joseph Walsh
existence; but we have definite records of salaries paid out of the Papal revenues to professors of law and medicine about the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.
Down in the South of France, at Avignon itself, the Popes had for one of their chamberlains the famous Guy de Chauliac, who is always spoken of as the Father of Modern Surgery. One of the Popes of the Avignon period founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier, the foundation being sufficient to support twelve medical students, and by adding the prestige of the Pope's patronage to the reputation of the University, greatly encouraged attendance at it.
Another of the Popes of the Avignon period, Pope John XXII., who is said by President White to have been most bitter in opposition to every form of science, actually helped in the foundation of two medical schools. One of these was at Cahors, his birthplace, and the other was at Perugia, at that time in the Papal States. In founding the medical school at Perugia, Pope John insisted that its standards must be as high as those of Paris and Bologna, and required that the first teachers there should be graduates from Paris or Bologna, where were the two greatest medical schools of the time. Seven years of study, three in the undergraduate department and four in the graduate schools, were to be required, according to this bull of foundation (given in full in the appendix), before the degree of Doctor of Medicine could be conferred. If it is recalled that this standard of three years of undergraduate work and four in the graduate school, or at least of seven years of University work, is the ideal toward which our universities are struggling, and, it must be said, not with the entire success we would like, at the beginning of the twentieth century, then, it is surprising to think that the president of a modern university, deeply interested in education in all its features and himself a professor of history, should know so little of, and be so lacking in sympathy with these men who laid the deep foundations of our modern education.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the relation of the Popes to medicine remains to be mentioned. If they really were the bitter opponents of things medical that Dr. White would have us believe, then we should expect that either there were no such officials as Papal physicians, or else that the men who occupied these posts were the veriest charlatans, who knew very little of medicine, and certainly did nothing to develop the science. As a matter of fact, there is no list of physicians connected by any common bond in history who are so gloriously representative of scientific progress in medicine as the Papal physicians. The faculty of no medical school presents such a list of great names as those of the men who were chosen to be the official medical attendants of the Popes, and who were thus given a position of prominence where their discoveries in medicine had a vogue they otherwise could not have attained. The list of the Royal physicians of any reigning house of Europe for the last seven centuries looks trivial beside the roll of Papal physicians. Could the Popes possibly have done anything more than this for medicine, or shown their interest in its progress, or made people realize better, that while prayer might be of service, every possible human means must be taken to secure, maintain and recover health.
To read even the headings of Dr. White's chapter on from Miracles to Medicine, in which he tells of how "the medieval miracles of healing checked medical science," how "pastoral medicine held back scientific effort," how "there was so much theological discouragement of medicine," and finally, how "the study of Anatomy was considered a sin against the Holy Ghost," in the light of this plain, matter-of-fact story of the wonderful development of medical science in the ecclesiastically founded and ruled universities of the thirteenth century, makes one realize into what a farcical state of mind as regards the realities of history such writers have forced themselves, and unfortunately have led many readers, by their excursions into the history of medicine and science. Probably there was never a more pretentious exhibition of ignorance of the facts of history than is displayed by these expressions and by the whole drift of this chapter. Dr. White would have us believe that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were so backward in medicine and surgery that they practically have no history in these departments, or so little as not to be worth talking about. The simple facts show us that this is one of three or four great periods in human history in which there was the most wonderful development of medicine and surgery.
As we shall see in the course of this book, there was no bull or any other document issued by the Popes forbidding dissection or hampering the development of anatomy in any way. As a matter of fact, the ecclesiastics, instead of being behind their age in liberality of spirit with regard to the use of the human body after death for anatomical purposes, were always ahead of it. There has always existed a popular horror of dissection, and this has manifested itself from the earliest times in history down to and within the last half century, in refusal to enact such secular legislation as would properly provide for the practice of dissection. This was as true in the United States until within the memory of men still alive as it had always been hitherto in European history. Dissection came to be allowed so freely in the medieval universities founded under ecclesiastical influence and ruled by ecclesiastics, as the result of the intelligent realization on the part of churchmen that the study of the human body was necessary for a proper recognition and appreciation of the causes of the ills to which flesh is heir. They realized that the only way to lay the foundation of exact medical knowledge was not only to permit, but to encourage the practice of dissection, and accordingly this was done at everyone of a dozen medical schools of Italy during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and nowhere more so than at the Papal University at Rome itself during the sixteenth century, at a time when, if we would believe Dr. White, the Church authorities were doing everything in their power to prevent dissection.
None of the other sciences allied to medicine were hampered in any way, but, on the contrary, fostered and encouraged; and the devoted students of science were prominent churchmen, some of whom were honored with the title of saint after their deaths. In spite of declarations to the contrary, chemistry was not forbidden by a Papal decree or other document, though the practice of certain alchemists of pretending to make gold and silver out of baser metals and thus cheating people was condemned, just as we condemn the corresponding practice of selling "gold bricks" at the present time. As will be made very clear, the Pope who issued the decree that forbids such sharp practices was a distinguished and discriminating patron of medical education at the beginning of the fourteenth century, doing more for it than any ruler for three centuries after his time; yet in doing so he was only carrying out the policy which had been maintained by the Popes before his time and was to continue ever afterwards.
Strange as it may appear when we recall how much has been said with regard to Papal, and Church, and theological opposition to science, the story that we have just told with regard to the Papal relations to medicine and medical schools must be retold with regard to science in every department, and the scientific studies at the great medieval universities. Most people will find it even more difficult to accept this than to reach a calm consideration of the Papal relations to the medical sciences. Medicine is supposed to be the sort of practical subject that, in spite of prejudice, the ecclesiastical authorities could not neglect and were not able to suppress. Science in general, however, is supposed to be so distinctly opposed to what was at least considered religious truth, that the Church could not very well do anything else than prevent its development, or at least hamper its progress to such an extent that it was only with the lifting of the ecclesiastical incubus in our own day, that any great scientific advances came in the physical sciences. This is an entirely false impression emphasized by the ridiculous intolerance of writers who knew practically nothing of the real history of science in the Middle Ages, wrote their own prejudices large into the story of the times, and did great positive harm to the cause of truth by a pretense of knowledge they did not have, but which so many confidingly believed them to possess.
But it will at once be said, what of Galileo? Does not his case show the anti-scientific temper of churchmen? Nearly half a century ago, Cardinal Newman in his Apologia characteristically observed that this very case sufficed to prove that the Church did not set herself against scientific progress, for this is the "one stock argument" to the contrary, "the exception which proves the rule." Commenting upon the Galileo incident, Professor Augustus de Morgan, in his article on the Motion of the Earth in the English Encyclopedia, has expressed exactly the same conclusion. He is an authority not likely to be suspected of Catholic sympathy. He says:
"The Papal power must upon the whole have been moderately used in matters of philosophy, if we may judge