History of the Intellectual Development of Europe Volume I Part 33

[Sidenote: The evils imputed to the nature of papal election.]

Not until several centuries after these events did public opinion come to the true and philosophical conclusion--the total rejection of the divine claims of the papacy. For a time the evils were attributed to the manner of the pontifical election, as if that could by any possibility influence the descent of a power which claimed to be supernatural and under the immediate care of G.o.d. The manner of election was this. The Roman ecclesiastics recommended a candidate to the College of Cardinals; their choice had to be ratified by the populace of Rome, and, after that, the emperor must give his approval. There were thus to be brought into agreement the machinations of the lower ecclesiastics, the intrigues of the cardinals, the clamours of the rabble of Rome, and the policy of the emperor. Such a system must inevitably break to pieces with its own incongruities. Though we may wonder that men failed to see that it was merely a human device, we cannot wonder that the emperors perceived the necessity of taking the appointments into their own hands, and that Gregory VII. was resolved to confine it to the College of Cardinals, to the exclusion of the emperor, the Roman people, and even of the rest of Christendom--an attempt in which he succeeded.

[Sidenote: Human origin of the papacy.]

No one can study the development of the Italian ecclesiastical power without discovering how completely it depended on human agency, too often on human pa.s.sion and intrigues; how completely wanting it was of any mark of the Divine construction and care--the offspring of man, not of G.o.d, and therefore bearing upon it the lineaments of human pa.s.sions, human virtues, and human sins.

CHAPTER XIII.

DIGRESSION ON THE Pa.s.sAGE OF THE ARABIANS TO THEIR AGE OF REASON.

INFLUENCE OF MEDICAL IDEAS THROUGH THE NESTORIANS AND JEWS.

_The intellectual Development of the Arabians is guided by the Nestorians and the Jews, and is in the Medical Direction.--The Basis of this Alliance is theological._

_Antagonism of the Byzantine System to Scientific Medicine.--Suppression of the Asclepions.--Their Replacement by Miracle-cure.--The resulting Superst.i.tion and Ignorance._

_Affiliation of the Arabians with the Nestorians and Jews._

_1st. The Nestorians, their Persecutions, and the Diffusion of their Sectarian Ideas.--They inherit the old Greek Medicine._

_Sub-digression on Greek Medicine.--The Asclepions.--Philosophical Importance of Hippocrates, who separates Medicine from Religion.--The School of Cnidos.--Its Suppression by Constantine._

_Sub-digression on Egyptian Medicine.--It is founded on Anatomy and Physiology.--Dissections and Vivisections.--The Great Alexandrian Physicians._

_2nd. The Jewish Physicians.--Their Emanc.i.p.ation from Superst.i.tion.--They found Colleges and promote Science and Letters._

_The contemporary Tendency to Magic, Necromancy, the Black Art.--The Philosopher's Stone, Elixir of Life, etc._

_The Arabs originate scientific Chemistry.--Discover the strong Acids, Phosphorus, etc.--Their geological Ideas.--Apply Chemistry to the Practice of Medicine.--Approach of the Conflict between the Saracenic material and the European supernatural System._

[Sidenote: Importance of the influence of the Arabians.]

The military operations of the Arabians, described in Chapter XI., overthrew the Byzantine political system, prematurely closing the Age of Faith in the East; their intellectual procedure gave rise to an equally important result, being destined, in the end, to close the Age of Faith in the West. The Saracens not only destroyed the Italian offshoot, they also impressed characteristic lineaments on the Age of Reason in Europe.

Events so important make it necessary for me to turn aside from the special description of European intellectual advancement, and offer a digression on the pa.s.sage of the Arabians to their Age of Reason. It is impossible for us to understand their action in the great drama about to be performed unless we understand the character they had a.s.sumed.

[Sidenote: Their intellectual progress.]

In a few centuries the fanatics of Mohammed had altogether changed their appearance. Great philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, astronomers, alchemists, grammarians, had arisen among them. Letters and science, in all their various departments, were cultivated.

[Sidenote: Their teachers were the Nestorians and Jews.]

A nation stirred to its profoundest depths by warlike emigration, and therefore ready to make, as soon as it reaches a period of repose, a rapid intellectual advance, may owe the path in which it is about to pa.s.s to those who are in the position of pointing it out, or of officiating as teachers. The teachers of the Saracens were the Nestorians and the Jews.

[Sidenote: Their scientific progress was through medicine.]

It has been remarked that Arabian science emerged out of medicine, and that in its cultivation physicians took the lead, its beginnings being in the pursuit of alchemy. In this chapter I have to describe the origin of these facts, and therefore must consider the state of Greek and Egyptian medicine, and relate how, wherever the Byzantine system could reach, true medical philosophy was displaced by relic and shrine-curing; and how it was, that while European ideas were in all directions reposing on the unsubstantial basis of the supernatural, those of the Saracens were resting on the solid foundation of a material support.

When the Arabs conquered Egypt, their conduct was that of bigoted fanatics; it justified the accusation made by some against them, that they burned the Alexandrian library for the purpose of heating the baths. But scarcely were they settled in their new dominion when they exhibited an extraordinary change. At once they became lovers and zealous cultivators of learning.

[Sidenote: Causes of their union with Nestorians and Jews.]

The Arab power had extended in two directions, and had been submitted to two influences. In Asia it had been exposed to the Nestorians, in Africa to the Jews, both of whom had suffered persecution at the hands of the Byzantine government, apparently for the same opinion as that which had now established itself by the sword of Mohammed. The doctrine of the unity of G.o.d was their common point of contact. On this they could readily affiliate, and hold in common detestation the trinitarian power at Constantinople. He who is suffering the penalties of the law as a heretic, or who is pursued by judicial persecution as a misbeliever, will readily consort with others reputed to cherish similar infidelities. Brought into unison in Asia with the Nestorians, and in Africa with the Alexandrian Jews, the Arabians became enthusiastic admirers of learning.

[Sidenote: Medicine becomes their neutral ground.]

Not that there was between the three parties thus coalescing a complete harmony of sentiment in the theological direction; for, though the Nestorians and the Jews were willing to accept one-half of the Arabian dogma, that there is but one G.o.d, they could not altogether commit themselves to the other, that Mohammed is his Prophet. Perhaps estrangement on this point might have arisen, but fortunately a remarkable circ.u.mstance opened the way for a complete understanding between them. Almost from the beginning the Nestorians had devoted themselves to the study of medicine, and had paid much attention to the structure and diseases of the body of man; the Jews had long produced distinguished physicians. These medical studies presented, therefore, a neutral ground on which the three parties could intellectually unite in harmony; and so thoroughly did the Arabians affiliate with these their teachers, that they acquired from them a characteristic mental physiognomy. Their physicians were their great philosophers; their medical colleges were their foci of learning. While the Byzantines obliterated science in theology, the Saracens illuminated it by medicine.

[Sidenote: Byzantine suppression of medicine.]

[Sidenote: Subst.i.tution of public charities.]

When Constantine the Great and his successors, under ecclesiastical influence, had declared themselves the enemies of worldly learning, it became necessary for the clergy to a.s.sume the duty of seeing to the physical as well as the religious condition of the people. It was unsuited to the state of things that physicians, whose philosophical tendencies inclined them to the pagan party, should be any longer endured. Their education in the Asclepions imparted to them ideas in opposition to the new policy. An edict of Constantine suppressed those establishments, ample provision being, however, made for replacing them by others more agreeable to the genius of Christianity. Hospitals and benevolent organizations were founded in the chief cities, and richly endowed with money and lands. In these merciful undertakings the empress-mother, Helena, was distinguished, her example being followed by many high-born ladies. The heart of women, which is naturally open to the desolate and afflicted, soon gives active expression to its sympathies when it is sanctified by Christian faith. In this, its legitimate direction, Christianity could display its matchless benevolence and charities. Organizations were introduced upon the most extensive and varied scale; one had charge of foundlings, another of orphans, another of the poor. We have already alluded to the parabolani or visitors, and of the manner in which they were diverted from their original intent.

[Sidenote: Gradual fall into miracle-cure.]

But, n.o.ble as were these charities, they laboured under an essential defect in having subst.i.tuted for educated physicians well-meaning but unskilful ecclesiastics. The destruction of the Asclepions was not attended by any suitably extensive measures for insuring professional education. The sick who were placed in the benevolent inst.i.tutions were, at the best, rather under the care of kind nurses than under the advice of physicians; and the consequences are seen in the gradually increasing credulity and imposture of succeeding ages, until, at length, there was an almost universal reliance on miraculous interventions. Fetiches, said to be the relics of saints, but no better than those of tropical Africa, were believed to cure every disorder. To the shrines of saints crowds repaired as they had at one time to the temples of aesculapius.

The worshippers remained, though the name of the divinity was changed.

[Sidenote: Closing of the schools of medicine and philosophy.]

Scarcely were the Asclepions closed, the schools of philosophy prohibited, the libraries dispersed or destroyed, learning branded as magic or punished as treason, philosophers driven into exile and as a cla.s.s exterminated, when it became apparent that a void had been created which it was inc.u.mbent on the victors to fill. Among the great prelates, who was there to stand in the place of those men whose achievements had glorified the human race? Who was to succeed to Archimedes, Hipparchus, Euclid, Herophilus, Eratosthenes? who to Plato and Aristotle? The quackeries of miracle-cure, shrine-cure, relic-cure, were destined to eclipse the genius of Hippocrates, and nearly two thousand years to intervene between Archimedes and Newton, nearly seventeen hundred between Hipparchus and Kepler. A dismal interval of almost twenty centuries parts Hero, whose first steam-engine revolved in the Serapion, from James Watt, who has revolutionized the industry of the world. What a fearful blank! Yet not a blank, for it had its products--hundreds of patristic folios filled with obsolete speculation, oppressing the shelves of antique libraries, enveloped in dust, and awaiting the worm.

[Sidenote: Its deplorable results.]

[Sidenote: Insecurity of the Byzantine system.]

Never was a more disastrous policy adopted than the Byzantine suppression of profane learning. It is scarcely possible now to realize the mental degradation produced when that system was at its height. Many of the n.o.blest philosophical and scientific works of antiquity disappeared from the language in which they had been written, and were only recovered, for the use of later and better ages, from translations which the Saracens had made into Arabic. The insolent a.s.sumption of wisdom by those who held the sword crushed every intellectual aspiration. Yet, though triumphant for a time, this policy necessarily contained the seeds of its own ignominious destruction. A day must inevitably come when so grievous a wrong to the human race must be exposed, and execrated, and punished--a day in which the poems of Homer might once more be read, the immortal statues of the Greek sculptors find worshippers, and the demonstrations of Euclid a consenting intellect. But that unfortunate, that audacious policy of usurpation once entered upon, there was no going back. He who is infallible must needs be immutable. In its very nature the action implied compulsion, compulsion implied the possession of power, and the whole policy insured an explosion the moment that the means of compression should be weak.

[Sidenote: Bigotry of the first Saracens.]

[Sidenote: The n.o.bler policy soon pursued.]

It is said that when the Saracens captured Alexandria, their victorious general sent to the khalif to know his pleasure respecting the library.

The answer was in the spirit of the age. "If the books be confirmatory of the Koran, they are superfluous; if contradictory, they are pernicious. Let them be burnt." At this moment, to all human appearance, the Mohammedan autocrat was on the point of joining in the evil policy of the Byzantine sovereign. But fortunately it was but the impulse of a moment, rectified forthwith, and a n.o.ble course of action was soon pursued. The Arab incorporated into his literature the wisdom of those he had conquered. In thus conceding to knowledge a free and unembarra.s.sed career, and, instead of repressing, encouraging to the utmost all kinds of learning did the Koran take any harm? It was a high statesmanship which, almost from the beginning of the impulse from Mecca, bound down to a narrow, easily comprehended, and easily expressed dogma the exacted belief, and in all other particulars let the human mind go free.

[Sidenote: The true causes of the preceding events.]

In the preceding paragraphs I have criticized the course of events, condemning or applauding the actions and the actors as circ.u.mstances seem to require, herein following the usual course, which implies that men can control affairs, and that the agent is to be held responsible for his deed. We have, however, only to consider the course of our own lives to be satisfied to how limited an extent such is the case. We are, as we often say, the creatures of circ.u.mstances. In that expression there is a higher philosophy than might at first sight appear. Our actions are not the pure and unmingled results of our desires; they are the offspring of many various and mixed conditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary decision there enters much that is altogether involuntary--more, perhaps, than we generally suppose. And, in like manner, those who are imagined to have exercised an irresponsible and spontaneous influence in determining public policy, and thereby fixing the fate of nations, will be found, when we understand their position more correctly, to have been the creatures of circ.u.mstances altogether independent and irrespective of them--circ.u.mstances which they never created, of whose influence they only availed themselves. They were placed in a current which drifted them irresistibly along.

From this more accurate point of view we should therefore consider the course of these events, recognizing the principle that the affairs of men pa.s.s forward in a determinate way, expanding and unfolding themselves. And hence we see that the things of which we have spoken as though they were matters of choice were, in reality, forced upon their apparent authors by the necessity of the times. But, in truth, they should be considered as the presentations of a certain phase of life which nations in their onward course sooner or later a.s.sume. In the individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of action, an appropriate gravity of demeanour, belong to the mature period of life; a change from the wanton wilfulness of youth, which may be ushered in, or its beginning marked, by many accidental incidents: in one perhaps by domestic bereavements, in another by the loss of fortune, in a third by ill health. We are correct enough in imputing to such trials the change of character, but we never deceive ourselves by supposing that it would have failed to take place had those incidents not occurred. There runs an irresistible destiny in the midst of all these vicissitudes.

[Sidenote: Succession of affairs determined by law.]