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Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science




What, then, is that sacred, that revealed science, declared by
the Fathers to be the sum of all knowledge?

It likened all phenomena, natural and spiritual, to human acts.
It saw in the Almighty, the Eternal, only a gigantic man.

THE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY. As to the earth, it affirmed that it is
a flat surface, over which the sky is spread like a dome, or, as
St. Augustine tells us, is stretched like a skin. In this the sun
and moon and stars move, so that they may give light by day and
by night to man. The earth was made of matter created by God out
of nothing, and, with all the tribes of animals and plants
inhabiting it, was finished in six days. Above the sky or
firmament is heaven; in the dark and fiery space beneath the
earth is hell. The earth is the central and most important body
of the universe, all other things being intended for and
subservient to it.

As to man, he was made out of the dust of the earth. At first he
was alone, but subsequently woman was formed from one of his
ribs. He is the greatest and choicest of the works of God. He was
placed in a paradise near the banks of the Euphrates, and was
very wise and very pure; but, having tasted of the forbidden
fruit, and thereby broken the commandment given to him, he was
condemned to labor and to death.

The descendants of the first man, undeterred by his punishment,
pursued such a career of wickedness that it became necessary to
destroy them. A deluge, therefore, flooded the face of the earth,
and rose over the tops of the mountains. Having accomplished its
purpose, the water was dried up by a wind.

From this catastrophe Noah and his three sons, with their wives,
were saved in an ark. Of these sons, Shem remained in Asia and
repeopled it. Ham peopled Africa; Japhet, Europe. As the Fathers
were not acquainted with the existence of America, they did not
provide an ancestor for its people.

Let us listen to what some of these authorities say in support of
their assertions. Thus Lactantius, referring to the heretical
doctrine of the globular form of the earth, remarks: "Is it
possible that men can be so absurd as to believe that the crops
and the trees on the other side of the earth hang downward, and
that men have their feet higher than their heads? If you ask them
how they defend these monstrosities, how things do not fall away
from the earth on that side, they reply that the nature of things
is such that heavy bodies tend toward the centre, like the spokes
of a wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from
the centre to the heavens on all sides. Now, I am really at a
loss what to say of those who, when they have once gone wrong,
steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one absurd opinion
by another." On the question of the antipodes, St. Augustine
asserts that "it is impossible there should be inhabitants on the
opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by
Scripture among the descendants of Adam." Perhaps, however, the
most unanswerable argument against the sphericity of the earth
was this, that "in the day of judgment, men on the other side of
a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air."

It is unnecessary for me to say any thing respecting the
introduction of death into the world, the continual interventions
of spiritual agencies in the course of events, the offices of
angels and devils, the expected conflagration of the earth, the
tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the dispersion of
mankind, the interpretation of natural phenomena, as eclipses,
the rainbow, etc. Above all, I abstain from commenting on the
Patristic conceptions of the Almighty; they are too
anthropomorphic, and wanting in sublimity.

Perhaps, however, I may quote from Cosmas Indicopleustes the
views that were entertained in the sixth century. He wrote a work
entitled "Christian Topography," the chief intent of which was to
confute the heretical opinion of the globular form of the earth,
and the pagan assertion that there is a temperate zone on the
southern side of the torrid. He affirms that, according to the
true orthodox system of geography, the earth is a quadrangular
plane, extending four hundred days' journey east and west, and
exactly half as much north and south; that it is inclosed by
mountains, on which the sky rests; that one on the north side,
huger than the others, by intercepting the rays of the sun,
produces night; and that the plane of the earth is not set
exactly horizontally, but with a little inclination from the
north: hence the Euphrates, Tigris, and other rivers, running
southward, are rapid; but the Nile, having to run up-hill, has
necessarily a very slow current.

The Venerable Bede, writing in the seventh century, tells us that
"the creation was accomplished in six days, and that the earth is
its centre and its primary object. The heaven is of a fiery and
subtile nature, round, and equidistant in every part, as a canopy
from the centre of the earth. It turns round every day with
ineffable rapidity, only moderated by the resistance of the seven
planets, three above the sun--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars-- then the
sun; three below--Venus, Mercury, the moon. The stars go round in
their fixed courses, the northern perform the shortest circle.
The highest heaven has its proper limit; it contains the angelic
virtues who descend upon earth, assume ethereal bodies, perform
human functions, and return. The heaven is tempered with glacial
waters, lest it should be set on fire. The inferior heaven is
called the firmament, because it separates the superincumbent
waters from the waters below. The firmamental waters are lower
than the spiritual heaven, higher than all corporeal beings,
reserved, some say, for a second deluge; others, more truly, to
temper the fire of the fixed stars."

Was it for this preposterous scheme--this product of ignorance
and audacity--that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be
given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who
appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these
writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and
taught us to look upon them all with contempt.

Of this presumptuous system, the strangest part was its logic,
the nature of its proofs. It relied upon miracle-evidence. A fact
was supposed to he demonstrated by an astounding illustration of
something else! An Arabian writer, referring to this, says: "If a
conjurer should say to me, 'Three are more than ten, and in proof
of it I will change this stick into a serpent,' I might be
surprised at his legerdemain, but I certainly should not admit
his assertion." Yet, for more than a thousand years, such was the
accepted logic, and all over Europe propositions equally absurd
were accepted on equally ridiculous proof.

Since the party that had become dominant in the empire could not
furnish works capable of intellectual competition with those of
the great pagan authors, and since it was impossible for it to
accept a position of inferiority, there arose a political
necessity for the discouragement, and even persecution, of
profane learning. The persecution of the Platonists under
Valentinian was due to that necessity. They were accused of
magic, and many of them were put to death. The profession of
philosophy had become dangerous--it was a state crime. In its
stead there arose a passion for the marvelous, a spirit of
superstition. Egypt exchanged the great men, who had made her
Museum immortal, for bands of solitary monks and sequestered
virgins, with which she was overrun.



CHAPTER III.

CONFLICT RESPECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNITY OF GOD.--THE FIRST
OR SOUTHERN REFORMATION.

The Egyptians insist on the introduction of the worship of the
Virgin Mary--They are resisted by Nestor, the Patriarch of
Constantinople, but eventually, through their influence with the
emperor, cause Nestor's exile and the dispersion of his
followers.

Prelude to the Southern Reformation--The Persian attack; its
moral effects.

The Arabian Reformation.--Mohammed is brought in contact with the
Nestorians--He adopts and extends their principles, rejecting the
worship of the Virgin, the doctrine of the Trinity, and every
thing in opposition to the unity of God.--He extinguishes
idolatry in Arabia, by force, and prepares to make war on the
Roman Empire.--His successors conquer Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor,
North Africa, Spain, and invade France.

As the result of this conflict, the doctrine of the unity of God
was established in the greater part of the Roman Empire--The
cultivation of science was restored, and Christendom lost many of
her most illustrious capitals, as Alexandria, Carthage, and,
above all, Jerusalem.


THE policy of the Byzantine court had given to primitive
Christianity a paganized form, which it had spread over all the
idolatrous populations constituting the empire. There had been an
amalgamation of the two parties. Christianity had modified
paganism, paganism had modified Christianity. The limits of this
adulterated religion were the confines of the Roman Empire. With
this great extension there had come to the Christian party
political influence and wealth. No insignificant portion of the
vast public revenues found their way into the treasuries of the
Church. As under such circumstances must ever be the case, there
were many competitors for the spoils--men who, under the mask of
zeal for the predominant faith, sought only the enjoyment of its
emoluments.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. Under the early emperors, conquest had
reached its culmination; the empire was completed; there remained
no adequate objects for military life; the days of
war-peculation, and the plundering of provinces, were over. For
the ambitious, however, another path was open; other objects
presented. A successful career in the Church led to results not
unworthy of comparison with those that in former days had been
attained by a successful career in the army.

The ecclesiastical, and indeed, it may be said, much of the
political history of that time, turns on the struggles of the
bishops of the three great metropolitan cities--Constantinople,
Alexandria, Rome--for supremacy: Constantinople based her claims
on the fact that she was the existing imperial city; Alexandria
pointed to her commercial and literary position; Rome, to her
souvenirs. But the Patriarch of Constantinople labored under the
disadvantage that he was too closely under the eye, and, as he
found to his cost, too often under the hand, of the emperor.
Distance gave security to the episcopates of Alexandria and Rome.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. Religious disputations in the East have
generally turned on diversities of opinion respecting the nature
and attributes of God; in the West, on the relations and life of
man. This peculiarity has been strikingly manifested in the
transformations that Christianity has undergone in Asia and
Europe respectively. Accordingly, at the time of which we are
speaking, all the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire exhibited
an intellectual anarchy. There were fierce quarrels respecting
the Trinity, the essence of God, the position of the Son, the
nature of the Holy Spirit, the influences of the Virgin Mary. The
triumphant clamor first of one then of another sect was
confirmed, sometimes by miracle-proof, sometimes by bloodshed. No
attempt was ever made to submit the rival opinions to logical
examination. All parties, however, agreed in this, that the
imposture of the old classical pagan forms of faith was
demonstrated by the facility with which they had been overthrown.
The triumphant ecclesiastics proclaimed that the images of the
gods had failed to defend themselves when the time of trial came.

Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the
southern European races, the Semitic have maintained the unity of
God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author has
suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys,
islands, and rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a
multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable
ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God.

Political reasons had led the emperors to look with favor on the
admixture of Christianity and paganism, and doubtless by this
means the bitterness of the rivalry between those antagonists was
somewhat abated. The heaven of the popular, the fashionable
Christianity was the old Olympus, from which the venerable Greek
divinities had been removed. There, on a great white throne, sat
God the Father, on his right the Son, and then the blessed
Virgin, clad in a golden robe, and "covered with various female
adornments;" on the left sat God the Holy Ghost. Surrounding
these thrones were hosts of angels with their harps. The vast
expanse beyond was filled with tables, seated at which the happy
spirits of the just enjoyed a perpetual banquet.

If, satisfied with this picture of happiness, illiterate persons
never inquired how the details of such a heaven were carried out,
or how much pleasure there could be in the ennui of such an
eternally unchanging, unmoving scene, it was not so with the
intelligent. As we are soon to see, there were among the higher
ecclesiastics those who rejected with sentiments of horror these
carnal, these materialistic conceptions, and raised their
protesting voices in vindication of the attributes of the
Omnipresent, the Almighty God.

EGYPTIAN DOCTRINES. In the paganization of religion, now in all
directions taking place, it became the interest of every bishop
to procure an adoption of the ideas which, time out of mind, had
been current in the community under his charge. The Egyptians had
already thus forced on the Church their peculiar Trinitarian
views; and now they were resolved that, under the form of the
adoration of the Virgin Mary, the worship of Isis should be
restored.

THE NESTORIANS. It so happened that Nestor, the Bishop of
Antioch, who entertained the philosophical views of Theodore of
Mopsuestia, had been called by the Emperor Theodosius the Younger
to the Episcopate of Constantinople (A.D. 427). Nestor rejected
the base popular anthropomorphism, looking upon it as little
better than blasphemous, and pictured to himself an awful eternal
Divinity, who pervaded the universe, and had none of the aspects
or attributes of man. Nestor was deeply imbued with the doctrines
of Aristotle, and attempted to coordinate them with what he
considered to be orthodox Christian tenets. Between him and
Cyril, the Bishop or Patriarch of Alexandria, a quarrel
accordingly arose. Cyril represented the paganizing, Nestor the
philosophizing party of the Church. This was that Cyril who had
murdered Hypatia. Cyril was determined that the worship of the
Virgin as the Mother of God should be recognized, Nestor was
determined that it should not. In a sermon delivered in the
metropolitan church at Constantinople, he vindicated the
attributes of the Eternal, the Almighty God. "And can this God
have a mother?" he exclaimed. In other sermons and writings, he
set forth with more precision his ideas that the Virgin should be
considered not as the Mother of God, but as the mother of the
human portion of Christ, that portion being as essentially
distinct from the divine as is a temple from its contained deity.

PERSECUTION AND DEATH OF NESTOR. Instigated by the monks of
Alexandria, the monks of Constantinople took up arms in behalf of
"the Mother of God." The quarrel rose to such a pitch that the
emperor was constrained to summon a council to meet at Ephesus.
In the mean time Cyril had given a bribe of many pounds of gold
to the chief eunuch of the imperial court, and had thereby
obtained the influence of the emperor's sister. "The holy virgin
of the court of heaven thus found an ally of her own sex in the
holy virgin of the emperor's court." Cyril hastened to the
council, attended by a mob of men and women of the baser sort. He
at once assumed the presidency, and in the midst of a tumult had
the emperor's rescript read before the Syrian bishops could
arrive. A single day served to complete his triumph. All offers
of accommodation on the part of Nestor were refused, his
explanations were not read, he was condemned unheard. On the
arrival of the Syrian ecclesiastics, a meeting of protest was
held by them. A riot, with much bloodshed, ensued in the
cathedral of St. John. Nestor was abandoned by the court, and
eventually exiled to an Egyptian oasis. His persecutors tormented
him as long as he lived, by every means in their power, and at
his death gave out that "his blasphemous tongue had been devoured
by worms, and that from the heats of an Egyptian desert he had
escaped only into the hotter torments of hell!"

The overthrow and punishment of Nestor, however, by no means
destroyed his opinions. He and his followers, insisting on the
plain inference of the last verse of the first chapter of St.
Matthew, together with the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth verses of
the thirteenth of the same gospel, could never be brought to an
acknowledgment of the perpetual virginity of the new queen of
heaven. Their philosophical tendencies were soon indicated by
their actions. While their leader was tormented in an African
oasis, many of them emigrated to the Euphrates, and established
the Chaldean Church. Under their auspices the college of Edessa
was founded. From the college of Nisibis issued those doctors who
spread Nestor's tenets through Syria, Arabia, India, Tartary,
China, Egypt. The Nestorians, of course, adopted the philosophy
of Aristotle, and translated the works of that great writer into
Syriac and Persian. They also made similar translations of later
works, such as those of Pliny. In connection with the Jews they
founded the medical college of Djondesabour. Their missionaries
disseminated the Nestorian form of Christianity to such an extent
over Asia, that its worshipers eventually outnumbered all the
European Christians of the Greek and Roman Churches combined. It
may be particularly remarked that in Arabia they had a bishop.

THE PERSIAN CAMPAIGN. The dissensions between Constantinople and
Alexandria had thus filled all Western Asia with sectaries,
ferocious in their contests with each other, and many of them
burning with hatred against the imperial power for the
persecutions it had inflicted on them. A religious revolution,
the consequences of which are felt in our own times, was the
result. It affected the whole world.

We shall gain a clear view of this great event, if we consider
separately the two acts into which it may be decomposed: 1. The
temporary overthrow of Asiatic Christianity by the Persians; 2.
The decisive and final reformation under the Arabians.

1. It happened (A.D. 590) that, by one of those revolutions so
frequent in Oriental courts, Chosroes, the lawful heir to the
Persian throne, was compelled to seek refuge in the Byzantine
Empire, and implore the aid of the Emperor Maurice. That aid was
cheerfully given. A brief and successful campaign restored
Chosroes to the throne of his ancestors.

But the glories of this generous campaign could not preserve
Maurice himself. A mutiny broke out in the Roman army, headed by
Phocas, a centurion. The statues of the emperor were overthrown.
The Patriarch of Constantinople, having declared that he had
assured himself of the orthodoxy of Phocas, consecrated him
emperor. The unfortunate Maurice was dragged from a sanctuary, in
which he had sought refuge; his five sons were beheaded before
his eyes, and then he was put to death. His empress was inveigled
from the church of St. Sophia, tortured, and with her three young
daughters beheaded. The adherents of the massacred family were
pursued with ferocious vindictiveness; of some the eyes were
blinded, of others the tongues were torn out, or the feet and
hands cut off, some were whipped to death, others were burnt.

When the news reached Rome, Pope Gregory received it with
exultation, praying that the hands of Phocas might be
strengthened against all his enemies. As an equivalent for this
subserviency, he was greeted with the title of "Universal
Bishop." The cause of his action, as well as of that of the
Patriarch of Constantinople, was doubtless the fact that Maurice
was suspected of Magrian tendencies, into which he had been lured
by the Persians. The mob of Constantinople had hooted after him
in the streets, branding him as a Marcionite, a sect which
believed in the Magian doctrine of two conflicting principles.

With very different sentiments Chosroes heard of the murder of
his friend. Phocas had sent him the heads of Maurice and his
sons. The Persian king turned from the ghastly spectacle with
horror, and at once made ready to avenge the wrongs of his
benefactor by war.

THE EXPEDITION OF HERACLIUS. The Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, one
of the chief officers of the state, also received the shocking
tidings with indignation. He was determined that the imperial
purple should not be usurped by an obscure centurion of
disgusting aspect. "The person of this Phocas was diminutive and
deformed; the closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his
beardless chin, were in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and
discolored by a formidable scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws,
and even of arms, he indulged in an ample privilege of lust and
drunkenness." At first Heraclius refused tribute and obedience to
him; then, admonished by age and infirmities, he committed the
dangerous enterprise of resistance to his son of the same name. A
prosperous voyage from Carthage soon brought the younger
Heraclius in front of Constantinople. The inconstant clergy,
senate, and people of the city joined him, the usurper was seized
in his palace and beheaded.

INVASION OF CHOSROES. But the revolution that had taken place in
Constantinople did not arrest the movements of the Persian king.
His Magian priests had warned him to act independently of the
Greeks, whose superstition, they declared, was devoid of all
truth and justice. Chosroes, therefore, crossed the Euphrates;
his army was received with transport by the Syrian sectaries,
insurrections in his favor everywhere breaking out. In
succession, Antioch, Caesarea, Damascus fell; Jerusalem itself
was taken by storm; the sepulchre of Christ, the churches of
Constantine and of Helena were given to the flames; the Savior's
cross was sent as a trophy to Persia; the churches were rifled of
their riches; the sacred relics, collected by superstition, were
dispersed. Egypt was invaded, conquered, and annexed to the
Persian Empire; the Patriarch of Alexandria escaped by flight to
Cyprus; the African coast to Tripoli was seized. On the north,
Asia Minor was subdued, and for ten years the Persian forces
encamped on the shores of the Bosporus, in front of
Constantinople.

In his extremity Heraclius begged for peace. "I will never give
peace to the Emperor of Rome," replied the proud Persian, "till
he has abjured his crucified God, and embraced the worship of the
sun." After a long delay terms were, however, secured, and the
Roman Empire was ransomed at the price of "a thousand talents of
gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a
thousand horses, and a thousand virgins."

But Heraclius submitted only for a moment. He found means not
only to restore his affairs but to retaliate on the Persian
Empire. The operations by which he achieved this result were
worthy of the most brilliant days of Rome.

INVASION OF CHOSROES Though her military renown was thus
recovered, though her territory was regained, there was something
that the Roman Empire had irrecoverably lost. Religious faith
could never be restored. In face of the world Magianism had
insulted Christianity, by profaning her most sacred
places--Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary--by burning the sepulchre
of Christ, by rifling and destroying the churches, by scattering
to the winds priceless relics, by carrying off, with shouts of
laughter, the cross.

Miracles had once abounded in Syria, in Egypt, in Asia Minor;
there was not a church which had not its long catalogue of them.
Very often they were displayed on unimportant occasions and in
insignificant cases. In this supreme moment, when such aid was
most urgently demanded, not a miracle was worked.

Amazement filled the Christian populations of the East when they
witnessed these Persian sacrileges perpetrated with impunity. The
heavens should have rolled asunder, the earth should have opened
her abysses, the sword of the Almighty should have flashed in the
sky, the fate of Sennacherib should have been repeated. But it
was not so. In the land of miracles, amazement was followed by
consternation--consternation died out in disbelief.

2. But, dreadful as it was, the Persian conquest was but a
prelude to the great event, the story of which we have now to
relate--the Southern revolt against Christianity. Its issue was
the loss of nine-tenths of her geographical possessions--Asia,
Africa, and part of Europe.

MOHAMMED. In the summer of 581 of the Christian era, there came
to Bozrah, a town on the confines of Syria, south of Damascus, a
caravan of camels. It was from Mecca, and was laden with the
costly products of South Arabia--Arabia the Happy. The conductor
of the caravan, one Abou Taleb, and his nephew, a lad of twelve
years, were hospitably received and entertained at the Nestorian
convent of the town.