NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 157 



ditionalism ; and yet we find the great Florentine apostle and 

 martyr absolutely tied fast to the old system of allegorical inter- 

 pretation. The autograph notes of his sermons, still preserved in 

 his cell at San Marco, show this abundantly. Thus we find him 

 attaching to the creation of grasses and plants on the third day 

 an allegorical connection with the " multitude of the elect " and 

 with the " sound doctrines of the Church " ; and to the creation 

 of land animals on the sixth day a similar relation to " the Jewish 

 people " and to " Christians given up to things earthly." * 



The revival of learning in the fifteenth century seemed likely 

 to undermine the older structure. 



Then it was that Lorenzo Valla brought to bear on biblical 

 research, for the first time, the spirit of modern criticism. By 

 truly scientific methods he proved the famous Letter of Christ 

 to Abgarus a forgery ; the Donation of Constantine, one of the 

 great foundations of the ecclesiastical power in temporal things, 

 a fraud ; and the creed attributed to the apostles a creation 

 which post-dated them by several centuries. Of even more per- 

 manent influence was his work upon the New Testament, in 

 which he initiated the modern method of comparing manuscripts 

 to find what the sacred text really is. At an earlier or later 

 period he would doubtless have paid for his temerity with his 

 life ; fortunately, just at that time, the ruling pontiff and his con- 

 temporaries cared much for literature and little for orthodoxy, 

 and from their palaces he could bid defiance to the Inquisition. 



While Valla thus initiated biblical criticism south of the Alps, 

 a much greater man began a more fruitful work in northern 

 Europe. Erasmus, with his edition of the New Testament, 

 stands at the source of that great stream of modern research and 

 thought which is doing so much to undermine and dissolve away 

 the vast fabric of patristic and scholastic interpretation. 



Yet his efforts to purify the scriptural text seemed at first to 

 encounter insurmountable difficulties, and one of these may 

 stimulate reflection. He had found, what some others had found 

 before him, that the famous verse in the first chapter of the First 



* For Agobard, see the Liber auversus Fredigisuna, cap. xii ; also Reuter's Relig. Auf- 

 klarung iin Mittelalter, i, 24 ; also Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought, 

 London, 1884, pp. 38 et seq. For Erigena, see his De Divisione Naturae, lib. iv, cap. v, also 

 i, cap. lxvi-lxxi, and for general account see Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, New York, 

 1871, vol. i, pp. 358 et seq., and for the treatment of his work by the Church, see the edition 

 of the Index under Leo XIII, 1881. For Abelard, see the Sic et Non, Prologue, Migne, 

 torn, clxxviii, and, on the general subject, Milman, Latin Christianity, vol. iii, pp. Z1 1-311. 

 For Hugo of St. Victor, see Erudit. Didask., lib. vii, vi, 4, in Migne, clxxvi. For Savonarola's 

 interpretations, see various references to his preaching in Villari's Life of Savonarola, Eng- 

 lish translation, London, 1890, and especially the exceedingly interesting table in the ap- 

 pendix to vol. i, chap. vii. 



