Catholic Churchmen in Science Part 3

How many testimonies of this violence which is in love, are daily found? for it not only inflames the younger sort, but it so far exaggerates some persons far gone in years as through the burning heat thereof, they are almost mad Natural diseases are for the most part governed by the complexion of man and therefore invade some more fiercely, others more gently; but Love, without distinction of poor or rich, young or old, seizeth all, and having seized so blinds them as forgetting all rules of reason, they neither see nor hear any snare.

But then the old monk thinks that he has said enough about this subject and apologizes for his digression in another paragraph that should remove any lingering doubt there may be with regard to the genuineness of his monastic character. The personal element in his confession is so naive and so simply straightforward that instead of seeming to be the result of conceit, and so repelling the reader, it rather attracts his {71} kindly feeling for its author. The paragraph would remind one in certain ways of that personal element that was to become more popular in literature after Montaigne had made such extensive use of it.

But of these enough; for it becomes not a religious man to insist too long upon these cogitations, or to give place to such a flame in his heart. Hitherto (without boasting I speak it) I have throughout the whole course of my life kept myself safe and free from it, and I pray and invoke G.o.d to vouchsafe me his Grace that I may keep holy and inviolate the faith which I have sworn, and live contented with my spiritual spouse, the Holy, Catholick Church. For no other reason have I alleaged these than that I might express the love with which all tinctures ought to be moved towards metals, if ever they be admitted by them into true friendship, and by love, which permeates the inmost parts, be converted into a better state

The application of the figure at the end of his long digression is characteristic of the period in which he wrote and to a considerable extent also of the German literary methods of the time.

In this volume on the use of antimony there are in most of the editions certain biographical notes which have sometimes been accepted as authentic, but oftener rejected. According to these, Basil Valentine was born in a town in Alsace, on the southern bank of the Rhine. As a consequence of this, there are several towns that have laid claim to being his birthplace. M. Jean Reynaud, the distinguished French {72} philosophical writer of the first half of the nineteenth century, once said that Basil Valentine, like Ossian and Homer, had many towns claim him years after his death. He also suggested that, like those old poets, it was possible that the writings sometimes attributed to Basil Valentine were really the work not of one man, but of several individuals. There are, however, many objections to this theory, the most forceful of which is the internal evidence of the books themselves and their style and method of treatment. Other biographic details contained in "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony"

are undoubtedly more correct. According to them, Basil Valentine travelled in England and Holland on missions for his Order, and went through France and Spain on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella.

Besides this work, there is a number of other books of Basil Valentine's, printed during the first half of the sixteenth century, that are well-known and copies of which may be found in most of the important libraries. The United States Surgeon General's Library at Washington contains several of the works on medical subjects, and the New York Academy of Medicine Library has some valuable editions of his works. Some of his other well-known books, each of which is a good-sized octavo volume, bear the following descriptive t.i.tles (I give them in English, though, as they are usually to be found, they are in Latin, sixteenth-century {73} translations of the original German): "The World in Miniature: or, The Mystery of the World and of Human Medical Science," published at Marburg, 1609;--"The Chemical Apocalypse: or, The Manifestation of Artificial Chemical Compounds,"

published at Erfurt in 1624;--"A Chemico-Philosophic Treatise Concerning Things Natural and Preternatural, Especially Relating to the Metals and the Minerals," published at Frankfurt in 1676;--"Haliography: or, The Science of Salts: A Treatise on the Preparation, Use and Chemical Properties of All the Mineral, Animal and Vegetable Salts," published at Bologna in 1644;--"The Twelve Keys of Philosophy," Leipsic, 1630.

The great interest manifested in Basil Valentine's work at the Renaissance period can be best realized from the number of ma.n.u.script copies and their wide distribution. His books were not all printed at one place, but, on the contrary, in different portions of Europe. The original edition of "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony" was published at Leipsic in the early part of the sixteenth century. The first editions of the other books, however, appeared at places so distant from Leipsic as Amsterdam and Bologna, while various cities of Germany, as Erfurt and Frankfurt, claim the original editions of still other works. Many of the ma.n.u.script copies still exist in various libraries in Europe; and while there is no doubt that some unimportant additions to the supposed works of Basil Valentine have come {74} from the attribution to him of scientific treatises of other German writers, the style and the method of the princ.i.p.al works mentioned are entirely too similar not to have been the fruit of a single mind and that possessed of a distinct investigating genius setting it far above any of its contemporaries in scientific speculation and observation.

The most interesting feature of all of Basil Valentine's writings that are extant is the distinctive tendency to make his observations of special practical utility. His studies in antimony were made mainly with the idea of showing how that substance might be used in medicine.

He did not neglect to point out other possible uses, however, and knew the secret of the employment of antimony in order to give sharpness and definition to the impression produced by metal types. It would seem as though he was the first scientist who discussed this subject, and there is even some question whether printers and type founders did not derive their ideas in this matter from Basil Valentine, rather than he from them. Interested as he was in the trans.m.u.tation of metals, he never failed to try to find and suggest some medicinal use for all of the substances that he investigated. His was no greedy search for gold and no acc.u.mulation of investigations with the idea of benefiting only himself. Mankind was always in his mind, and perhaps there is no better demonstration of his fulfilment of the character of the monk than this constant {75} solicitude to benefit others by every bit of investigation that he carried out. For him with medieval n.o.bleness of spirit the first part of every work must be the invocation of G.o.d, and the last, though no less important than the first, must be the utility and fruit for mankind that can be derived from it.

{76}

{77}

IV.

LINACRE: SCHOLAR, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST.

{78}

Linacre, as Dr. Payne remarks, "was possessed from his youth till his death by the enthusiasm of learning. He was an idealist devoted to objects which the world thought of little use." Painstaking, accurate, critical, hypercritical perhaps, he remains to-day the chief literary representative of British Medicine. Neither in Britain nor in Greater Britain have we maintained the place in the world of letters created for us by Linacre's n.o.ble start. Quoted by Osler in _AEquanimitas_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THOMAS LINACRE]

{79}

IV.

LINACRE: SCHOLAR, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST.

Not long ago, in one of his piquant little essays, Mr. Augustine Birrell discussed the question as to what really happened at the time of the so-called Reformation in England. There is much more doubt with regard to this matter, even in the minds of non-Catholics, than is usually suspected. Mr. Birrell seems to have considered it one of the most important problems, and at the same time not by any means the least intricate one, in modern English history. The so-called High Church people emphatically insist that there is no break in the continuity of the Church of England, and that the modern Anglicanism is a direct descendant of the old British Church. They reject with scorn the idea that it was the Lutheran movement on the Continent which brought about the changes in the Anglican Church at that time.

Protestantism did not come into England for a considerable period after the change in the const.i.tution of the Anglican Church, and when it did come its tendencies were quite as subversal of the authority of the Anglican as of the Roman Church, Protestantism is the mother of Nonconformism in England. It can be seen, then, that the question as to what did really take place in the time {80} of Henry VIII and of Edward VI is still open. It has seemed to me that no little light on this vexed historical question will be thrown by a careful study of the life of Dr. Linacre, who, besides being the best known physician of his time in England, was the greatest scholar of the English Renaissance period, yet had all his life been on very intimate terms with the ecclesiastical authorities, and eventually gave up his honors, his fortune, and his profession to become a simple priest of the old English Church.

Considering the usually accepted notions as to the sad state of affairs supposed to exist in the Church at the beginning of the sixteenth century, this is a very remarkable occurrence, and deserves careful study to determine its complete significance, for it tells better than anything else the opinion of a distinguished contemporary.

Few men have ever been more highly thought of by their own generation.

None has been more sincerely respected by intimate friends, who were themselves the leaders of the thought of their generation, than Thomas Linacre, scholar, physician and priest; and his action must stand as the highest possible tribute to the Church in England at that time.

How unimpaired his practical judgment of men and affairs was at the time he made his change from royal physician to simple priest can best be gathered from the sagacity displayed in the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians, an inst.i.tution he was endowing with the {81} wealth he had acc.u.mulated in some twenty years of most lucrative medical practice. The Royal College of Physicians represents the first attempt to secure the regulation of the practice of medicine in England, and, thanks to its founder's wonderful foresight and practical wisdom, it remains down to our own day, under its original const.i.tution, one of the most effective and highly honored of British scientific foundations. No distinction is more sought at the present time by young British medical men, or by American or even Continental graduates in medicine, than the privilege of adding to their names the letters "F.R.C.P.(Eng.)," Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of England. The College worked the reformation of medical practice in England, and its methods have proved the suggestive formulae for many another such inst.i.tution and for laws that all over the world protect, to some extent at least, the public from quacks and charlatans.

Linacre's change of profession at the end of his life has been a fruitful source of conjecture and misconception on the part of his biographers. Few of them seem to be able to appreciate the fact, common enough in the history of the Church, that a man may, even when well on in years, give up everything to which his life has been so far directed, and from a sense of duty devote himself entirely to the attainment of "the one thing necessary." Linacre appears only to have done what many another in the history of {82} the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries did without any comment; but his English biographers insist on seeing ulterior motives in it, or else fail entirely to understand it. The same action is not so rare even in our own day that it should be the source of misconception by later writers.

Dr. S. Weir Mitch.e.l.l has, in the early part of _Dr. North and His Friends_, a very curious pa.s.sage with regard to Linacre. One of the characters, St. Clair, says: "I saw, the other day, at Owen's, a life of one Linacre, a doctor, who had the luck to live about 1460 to 1524, when men knew little and thought they knew all. In his old age he took for novelty to reading St. Matthew. The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters were enough. He threw the book aside and cried out, 'Either this is not the Gospel, or we are not Christians.' What else could he say?" St. Clair uses the story to enforce an idea of his own, which he states as a question, as follows: "And have none of you the courage to wrestle with the thought I gave you, that Christ could not have expected the ma.s.s of men to live the life He pointed out as desirable for the first disciples of His faith?"

Dr. Mitch.e.l.l's anecdote is not accepted by Linacre's biographers generally, though it is copied by Dr. Payne, the writer of the article on Linacre in the (English) _Dictionary of National Biography_, who, however, discredits it somewhat. The story is founded on Sir John Cheke's {83} account of the conversion of Linacre. It is very doubtful, however, whether Linacre's deprecations of the actions of Christians had reference to anything more than the practice of false swearing so forcibly denounced in the Scriptures, which had apparently become frequent in his time. This is Selden's version of the story as quoted by Dr. Johnson, who was Linacre's well-known biographer. Sir John Cheke in his account seems to hint that this chance reading of the Scriptures represented the first occasion Linacre had ever taken of an opportunity to read the New Testament. Perhaps we are expected to believe that, following the worn-out Protestant tradition of the old Church's discouraging of the reading of the Bible, and of the extreme scarcity of copies of the Book, this was the first time he had ever had a good opportunity to read it. This, of course, is nonsense.

Linacre's early education had been obtained at the school of the monastery of Christ Church at Canterbury, and the monastery schools all used the New Testament as a text-book, and as the offices of the day at which the students were required to attend contain these very pa.s.sages from Matthew which Linacre is supposed to have read for the first time later in life, this idea is preposterous. Besides, Linacre, as one of the great scholars of his time, intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, of Dean Colet, and Erasmus, can scarcely be thought to find his first copy of the Bible only when advanced in years. This is {84} evidently a post-Reformation addition, part of the Protestant tradition with regard to the supposed suppression of the Scriptures in pre-Reformation days, which every one acknowledges now to be without foundation.

Linacre, as many another before and since, seems only to have realized the true significance of the striking pa.s.sages in Matthew after life's experiences and disappointments had made him take more seriously the clauses of the Sermon on the Mount. There is much in fifth, sixth, and seventh Matthew that might disturb the complacent equanimity of a man whose main objects in life, though pursued with all honorable unselfishness, had been the personal satisfaction of wide scholarship and success in his chosen profession.

With regard to Sir John Cheke's story, Dr. John n.o.ble Johnson, who wrote the life of Thomas Linacre, [Footnote 7] which is accepted as the authoritative biography by all subsequent writers, says: "The whole statement carries with it an air of invention, if not on the part of Cheke himself, at least on that of the individual from whom he derives it, and it is refuted by {85} Linacre's known habits of moderation and the many ecclesiastical friendships which, with a single exception, were preserved without interruption until his death.

It was a most frequent mode of silencing opposition to the received and established tenets of the Church, when arguments were wanting, to brand the impugner with the opprobrious t.i.tles of heretic and infidel, the common resource of the enemies to innovation in every age and country."

[Footnote 7: "The Life of Thomas Linacre," Doctor in Medicine, Physician to King Henry VIII, the Tutor and Friend of Sir Thomas More and the Founder of the College of Physicians in London By John n.o.ble Johnson, M D., late Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London. Edited by Robert Graves, of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law London: Edward Lumley, Chancery Lane 1835.]

The interesting result of the reflections inspired in Linacre by the reading of Matthew was, as has been said, the resignation of his high office of Royal Physician and the surrender of his wealth for the foundation of chairs in Medicine and Greek at Oxford and Cambridge.

With the true liberal spirit of a man who wished to accomplish as much good as possible, his foundations were not limited to his own University of Oxford. After these educational foundations, however, his wealth was applied to the endowment of the Royal College of Physicians and its library, and to the provision of such accessories as might be expected to make the College a permanently useful inst.i.tution, though left at the same time perfectly capable of that evolution which would suit it to subsequent times and the development of the science and practice of medicine.

It is evident that the life of such a man can scarcely fail to be of personal as well as historic interest.

{86}

Thomas Linacre was born about 1460--the year is uncertain--at Canterbury. Nothing is known of his parents or their condition, though this very silence in their regard would seem to indicate that they were poor and obscure. His education was obtained at the school of the monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, then presided over by the famous William Selling, the first of the great students of the new learning in England. Selling's interest seems to have helped Linacre to get to Oxford, where he entered at All Souls' College in 1480. In 1484 he was elected a Fellow of the College, and seems to have distinguished himself in Greek, to which he applied himself with special a.s.siduity under Cornelio Vitelli. Though Greek is sometimes spoken of as having been introduced into Western Europe only at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Linacre undoubtedly laid the foundation of that remarkable knowledge of the language which he displayed at a later period of his life, during his student days at Oxford in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.

Linacre went to Italy under the most auspicious circ.u.mstances. His old tutor and friend at Canterbury, Selling, who had become one of the leading ecclesiastics of England, was sent to Rome as an Amba.s.sador by Henry VII. He took Linacre with him. A number of English scholars had recently been in Italy and had attracted attention by their geniality, by their thorough-going devotion to scholarly studies, {87} and by their success in their work. Selling himself had made a number of firm friends among the Italian students of the New Learning on a former visit, and they now welcomed him with enthusiasm and were ready to receive his protege with goodwill and provide him with the best opportunities for study. As a member of the train of the English amba.s.sador, Linacre had an entree to political circles that proved of great service to him, and put him on a distinct footing above that of the ordinary English student in Italy.

Partly because of these and partly because of his own interesting and attractive personal character, Linacre had a number of special opportunities promptly placed at his disposal. Church dignitaries in Rome welcomed him and he was at once received into scholarly circles wherever he went in Italy. Almost as soon as he arrived in Florence, where he expected seriously to take up the study of Latin and Greek, he became the intimate friend of the family of Lorenzo de' Medici, who was so charmed with his personality and his readily recognizable talent that he chose him for the companion of his son's studies and received him into his own household.

Politian was at this time the tutor of the young de' Medici in Latin, and Demetrius Chalcondylas the tutor in Greek. Under these two eminent scholars Linacre obtained a knowledge of Latin and Greek such as it would have been impossible to have obtained under any other {88} circ.u.mstances, and which with his talents at once stamped him as one of the foremost humanistic scholars in Europe. While in Florence he came in contact with Lorenzo the Magnificent's younger son, who afterwards became Leo X. The friendship thus formed lasted all during Linacre's lifetime, and later on he dedicated at least one of his books to Alexander de' Medici after the latter's elevation to the papal throne.

It is no wonder that Linacre always looked back on Italy as the Alma Mater--the fond mother in the fullest sense of the term--to whom he owed his precious opportunities for education and the broadest possible culture. In after-life the expression of his feelings was often tinged with romantic tenderness. It is said that when he was crossing the Alps, on his homeward journey, leaving Italy after finishing his years of apprenticeship of study, standing on the highest point of the mountains from which he could still see the Italian plains, he built with his own hands a rough altar of stone and dedicated it to the land of his studies--the land in which he had spent six happy years--under the fond t.i.tle of _Sancta Mater Studiorum_.

At first, after his return from Italy, Linacre lectured on Greek at Oxford. Something of the influence acquired over English students and the good he accomplished may be appreciated from the fact that with Grocyn he had such students as More and the famous Dean Colet. Erasmus also was attracted from the Netherlands and {89} studied Greek under Linacre, to whom he refers in the most kindly and appreciative terms many times in his after life. Linacre wrote books besides lecturing, and his work on certain fine points in the grammar of cla.s.sical Latinity proved a revelation to English students of the old cla.s.sical languages, for nothing so advanced as this had ever before been attempted outside Italy. In one of the last years of the fifteenth century Linacre was appointed tutor to Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII, to whom it will be remembered that Catherine of Aragon had been betrothed before her marriage with Henry. Arthur's untimely death, however, soon put an end to Linacres' tutorship.

As pointed out by Einstein, the reputation of Grocyn and Linacre was not confined to England, but soon spread all over the Continent. After the death of the great Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, who had no worthy successors in the Italian peninsula, these two men became the princ.i.p.al European representatives of the New Learning.

There were other distinguished men, however, such as Vives, the Spaniard; Lascaris, the Greek; Buda, or Budaeus, the Frenchman, and Erasmus, whom we have already mentioned--all of whom joined at various times in praising Linacre.

Some of Linacre's books were published by the elder Aldus at Venice; and Aldus is even said to have sent his regrets on publishing his edition of Linacre's translation of "The Sphere {90} of Proclus," that the distinguished English humanist had not forwarded him others of his works to print. Aldus appreciatively added the hope that the eloquence and cla.s.sic severity of style in Linacre's works and in those of the English humanists generally "might shame the Italian philosophers and scholars out of their uncultured methods of writing."

Augusta Theodosia Drane (Mother Raphael), in her book on "Christian Schools and Scholars," gives a very pleasant picture of how Dean Colet, Eramus, and More used at this time to spend their afternoons down at Stepney (then a very charming suburb of London), of whose parish church Colet was the vicar. They stopped at Colet's house and were entertained by his mother, to whom we find pleasant references in the letters that pa.s.sed between these scholars. Linacre was also often of the party, and the conversations between these greatest students and literary geniuses of their age would indeed be interesting reading, if we could only have had preserved for us, in some way, the table-talk of those afternoons. Erasmus particularly was noted for his wit and for his ability to turn aside any serious discussions that might arise among his friends, so as to prevent anything like unpleasant argument in their friendly intercourse. A favorite way seems to have been to insist on telling one of the old jokes from a cla.s.sic author whose origin would naturally be presumed to be much later than the date the New Learning had found for it.

{91}

Dean Colet's mother appears to have been much more than merely the conventional hostess. Erasmus sketches her in her ninetieth year with her countenance still so fair and cheerful that you would think she had never shed a tear. Her son tells in some of his letters to Erasmus and More of how much his mother liked his visitors and how agreeable she found their talk and witty conversation. They seem to have appreciated her in turn, for in Mother Raphael's chapter on English Scholars of the Renaissance there is something of a description of her garden, in which were to be found strawberries, lately brought from Holland, some of the finer varieties of which Mrs. Colet possessed through Erasmus's acquaintance in that country. Mrs. Colet also had some of the damask roses that had lately been introduced into England by Linacre, who was naturally anxious that the mother of his friend should have the opportunity to raise some of the beautiful flowers he was so much interested in domesticating in England.

It is a very charming picture, this, of the early humanists in England, and very different from what might easily be imagined by those unfamiliar with the details of the life of the period. Linacre was later to give up his worldly emoluments and honors and become a clergyman, in order to do good and at the same time satisfy his own craving for self-abnegation. More was to rise to the highest positions in England, and then for conscience' sake was to suffer death {92} rather than yield to the wishes of his king in a matter in which he saw principle involved. Dean Colet himself was to be the ornament of the English clergy and the model of the scholar clergyman of the eve of the Reformation, to whom many generations were to look back as a worthy object of reverence. Erasmus was to become involved first with and then against Luther, and to be offered a cardinal's hat before his death. His work, like Newman's, was done entirely in the intellectual field. Meantime, in the morning of life, all of them were enjoying the pleasures of friendly intercourse and the charms of domestic felicity under circ.u.mstances that showed that their study of humanism and their admiration for the cla.s.sics impaired none of their sympathetic humanity or their appreciation of the innocent delights of the present.