Volume I Part 33 (1/2)
[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.