History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 67

To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader's that "G.o.d is able even of these stones to raise up seed to Abraham," and goes into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion's statue, with a mult.i.tude of others, winding up with the case, given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.

He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of wisdom."(433)

(433) For Bernard of Breydenbach, I have used the Latin edition, Mentz, 1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also the German edition in the Reyssbuch. For John of Solms, Werli, and the like, see the Reyssbuch, which gives a full text of their travels. For Fabri (Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson; also Tobler, Bibliographia, pp.

53 et seq.; and for texts, see Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the Fratris Fel. Fabri Evagatorium, ed. Ha.s.sler, Stuttgart, 1843, vol. iii, pp. 172 et seq. His book now has been translated into English by the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.

There were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of travellers regarding the salt pillar--so many, in fact, that at a later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for faith.

For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion. Did it happen that one statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot's wife still walked about. Did it happen that a salt column was undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another sign of life. Did a pillar happen to be covered in part by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue from time to time descended into the Dead Sea depths--possibly to satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbours.

Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep. Did more statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery more impressive.

In facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians found wonderful matter for argument.

One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot's wife did really remain in the statue. On one side it was insisted that, as Holy Scripture declares that Lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue. This argument was clinched by citing that pa.s.sage in the Book of Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing as "the monument of an unbelieving SOUL." On the other hand, it was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed into a substance corporeal and mortal. Naturally, to this it would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal, and "with G.o.d all things are possible." Thus were opened long vistas of theological discussion.(434)

(434) For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against the idea that the soul of Lot's wife remained within the salt statue, see Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarius in Pentateuchum, Antwerp, 1697, chap.

xix.

As we enter the sixteenth century the Dead Sea myths, and especially the legends of Lot's wife, are still growing. In 1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites declares that the sea sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs, sometimes the whole body.

In 1555, Gabriel Giraudet, priest at Puy, journeyed through Palestine.

His faith was robust, and his att.i.tude toward the myths of the Dead Sea is seen by his declaration that its waters are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers thrown into them will sink, but that iron and other metals will float; that criminals have been kept in them three or four days and could not drown. As to Lot's wife, he says that he found her "lying there, her back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for I touched her, scratched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she tasted salt."

At the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea that, though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea, the people of the overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters, probably in h.e.l.l; that there was life in the salt statue; and that it was still curious regarding its old neighbours.

Hence such travellers in the latter years of the century as Count Albert of Lowenstein and Prince Nicolas Radziwill are not at all weakened in faith by failing to find the statue. What the former is capable of believing is seen by his statement that in a certain cemetery at Cairo during one night in the year the dead thrust forth their feet, hands, limbs, and even rise wholly from their graves.

There seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs. The idea that there is merit in credulity, with the love of myth-making and miracle-mongering, constantly made them larger. Nor did the Protestant Reformation diminish them at first; it rather strengthened them and fixed them more firmly in the popular mind. They seemed destined to last forever. How they were thus strengthened at first, under Protestantism, and how they were finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific thought, will now be shown.(435)

(435) For Father Anselm, see his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, in H.

Canisius, Thesaurus Monument Eccles., Basnage edition, Amsterdam, 1725, vol. iv, p. 788. For Giraudet, see his Discours du Voyage d'Outre-Mer, Paris, 1585, p. 56a. For Radziwill and Lowenstein, see the Reyssbuch, especially p. 198a.

III. POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.--BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.

The first effect of the Protestant Reformation was to popularize the older Dead Sea legends, and to make the public mind still more receptive for the newer ones.

Luther's great pictorial Bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas of the German people, showed by very striking engravings all three of these earlier myths--the destruction of the cities by fire from heaven, the transformation of Lot's wife, and the vile origin of the hated Moabites and Ammonites; and we find the salt statue, especially, in this and other pictorial Bibles, during generation after generation.

Catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith. About 1517 Francois Regnault published at Paris a compilation on Palestine enriched with woodcuts: in this the old Dead Sea legend of the "serpent Tyrus" reappears embellished, and with it various other new versions of old stories. Five years later Bartholomew de Salignac travels in the Holy Land, vouches for the continued existence of the Lot's wife statue, and gives new life to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters of the Jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the Dead Sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth.

These ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace them among scholars.

In 1581, Bunting, a North German professor and theologian, published his Itinerary of Holy Scripture, and in this the Dead Sea and Lot legends continue to increase. He tells us that the water of the sea "changes three times every day"; that it "spits forth fire" that it throws up "on high" great foul ma.s.ses which "burn like pitch" and "swim about like huge oxen"; that the statue of Lot's wife is still there, and that it shines like salt.

In 1590, Christian Adrichom, a Dutch theologian, published his famous work on sacred geography. He does not insist upon the Dead Sea legends generally, but declares that the statue of Lot's wife is still in existence, and on his map he gives a picture of her standing at Usdum.

Nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs. Just as, under the papal sway, men of science were severely punished for wrong views of the physical geography of the earth in general, so, when Calvin decided to burn Servetus, he included in his indictment for heresy a charge that Servetus, in his edition of Ptolemy, had made unorthodox statements regarding the physical geography of Palestine.(436)

(436) For biblical engravings showing Lot's wife transformed into a salt statue, etc., see Luther's Bible, 1534, p. xi; also the pictorial Electoral Bible; also Merian's Icones Biblicae of 1625; also the frontpiece of the Luther Bible published at Nuremberg in 1708; also Scheuchzer's Kupfer-Bibel, Augsburg, 1731, Tab. lx.x.x. For the account of the Dead Sea serpent "Tyrus," etc., see La Grande Voyage de Hierusalem, Paris (1517?), p. xxi. For De Salignac's a.s.sertion regarding the salt pillar and suggestion regarding the absorption of the Jordan before reaching the Dead Sea, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg, 1593, SS 34 and 35. For Bunting, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg, 1589, pp. 78, 79. For Andrichom's picture of the salt statue, see map, p. 38, and text, p. 205, of his Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, 1613.

For Calvin and Servetus, see Willis, Servetus and Calvin, pp. 96, 307; also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.

Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of new myths. Thus, in his Most Devout Journey, published in 1608, Jean Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself troubled by conflicting stories about the salt statue, but declares himself sound in the faith that "some vestige of it still remains," and makes up for his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror to the region--"crocodiles," which, with the serpents and the "foul odour of the sea," prevented his visit to the salt mountains.

In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions of his Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land. He depicts the horrors of the Dead Sea in a number of striking ant.i.theses, and among these is the statement that it is made of mud rather than of water, that it soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the land about it that not a blade of gra.s.s grows in all that region.

In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant Christopher Heidmann publishes his Palaestina, in which he speaks of a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about the Dead Sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of Lot's wife still exists and gives signs of life.

Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evidences of a healthful and fruitful scepticism begin to appear.

The old stream of travellers, commentators, and preachers, accepting tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows on; but here and there we are refreshed by the sight of a man who really begins to think and look for himself.

First among these is the French naturalist Pierre Belon. As regards the ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of his time. Among a mult.i.tude of similar things, he believed that he saw the stones on which the disciples were sleeping during the prayer of Christ; the stone on which the Lord sat when he raised Lazarus from the dead; the Lord's footprints on the stone from which he ascended into heaven; and, most curious of all, "the stone which the builders rejected." Yet he makes some advance on his predecessors, since he shows in one pa.s.sage that he had thought out the process by which the simpler myths of Palestine were made. For, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a field covered with small pebbles, and of these he says: "The common people tell you that a man was once sowing peas there, when Our Lady pa.s.sed that way and asked him what he was doing; the man answered 'I am sowing pebbles' and straightway all the peas were changed into these little stones."

His ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation myth to the "common people" marks the faint dawn of a new epoch.

Typical also of this new cla.s.s is the German botanist Leonhard Rauwolf.

He travels through Palestine in 1575, and, though devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the old wonders, while he makes thoughtful and careful mention of things in nature that he really saw; he declines to use the eyes of the monks, and steadily uses his own to good purpose.

As we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new thought is yet more evident; a habit of observing more carefully and of comparing observations had set in; the great voyages of discovery by Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and others were producing their effect; and this effect was increased by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, the reasonings of Descartes, and the suggestions of Montaigne.

So evident was this current that, as far back as the early days of the century, a great theologian, Quaresmio of Lodi, had made up his mind to stop it forever. In 1616, therefore, he began his ponderous work ent.i.tled The Historical, Theological, and Moral Explanation of the Holy Land. He laboured upon it for nine years, gave nine years more to perfecting it, and then put it into the hands of the great publishing house of Plantin at Antwerp: they were four years in printing and correcting it, and when it at last appeared it seemed certain to establish the theological view of the Holy Land for all time. While taking abundant care of other myths which he believed sanctified by Holy Scripture, Quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the Dead Sea, but above all to the salt statue; and he divides his chapter on it into three parts, each headed by a question: First, "HOW was Lot's wife changed into a statue of salt?" secondly, "WHERE was she thus transformed?" and, thirdly, "DOES THAT STATUE STILL EXIST?" Through each of these divisions he fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve in the slightest degree from the orthodox opinion. He utterly refuses to compromise with any modern theorists. To all such he says, "The narration of Moses is historical and is to be received in its natural sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this." To those who favoured the figurative interpretation he says, "With such reasonings any pa.s.sage of Scripture can be denied."

As to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses four places, but settles upon the point where the picture of the statue is given in Adrichom's map. As to the continued existence of the statue, he plays with the opposing view as a cat fondles a mouse; and then shows that the most revered ancient authorities, venerable men still living, and the Bedouins, all agree that it is still in being. Throughout the whole chapter his thoroughness in scriptural knowledge and his profundity in logic are only excelled by his scorn for those theologians who were willing to yield anything to rationalism.

So powerful was this argument that it seemed to carry everything before it, not merely throughout the Roman obedience, but among the most eminent theologians of Protestantism.

As regards the Roman Church, we may take as a type the missionary priest Eugene Roger, who, shortly after the appearance of Quaresmio's book, published his own travels in Palestine. He was an observant man, and his work counts among those of real value; but the spirit of Quaresmio had taken possession of him fully. His work is prefaced with a map showing the points of most importance in scriptural history, and among these he identifies the place where Samson slew the thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an a.s.s, and where he hid the gates of Gaza; the cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise; the spot where Balaam's a.s.s spoke; the tree on which Absalom was hanged; the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel; the steep place where the swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea; the spot where the prophet Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the position of the salt statue which was once Lot's wife. He not only indicates places on land, but places in the sea; thus he shows where Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes."

As to the Dead Sea miracles generally, he does not dwell on them at great length; he evidently felt that Quaresmio had exhausted the subject; but he shows largely the fruits of Quaresmio's teaching in other matters.

So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio echoing afar through the German universities, in public disquisitions, dissertations, and sermons. The great Bible commentators, both Catholic and Protestant, generally agreed in accepting them.

But, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as time went on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in 1692 Wedelius, Professor of Medicine at Jena, chose as the subject of his inaugural address The Physiology of the Destruction of Sodom and of the Statue of Salt.

It is a masterly example of "sanctified science." At great length he dwells on the characteristics of sulphur, salt, and thunderbolts; mixes up scriptural texts, theology, and chemistry after a most bewildering fashion; and finally comes to the conclusion that a thunderbolt, flung by the Almighty, calcined the body of Lot's wife, and at the same time vitrified its particles into a gla.s.sy ma.s.s looking like salt.(437)