700 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



He who would assign, then, the sources of the modern scientific 

 spirit cannot, without injustice, fail to assign a large measure of in- 

 fluence to Christianity. 



Besides this general assistance to science from the religious spirit, 

 the Christian Church, as an organization, although guilty of much 

 hinderance, nevertheless has given much help. I believe, indeed, that 

 in an impartial comparison the assistance which it has supplied would 

 outweigh the injury which it has done. There was a time in the his- 

 tory of Europe we should not forget when the fruit of all past 

 knowledge and the seeds of future culture and enlightenment lay in 

 the hands of the Christian clergy. For six centuries during the 

 deluge of barbarism and ignorance which had submerged the ancient 

 world, the Christian Church was the ark which rode upon the flood, 

 bearing in its bosom whatever was most precious of the old-time 

 learning and knowledge. Amid the devastations which attended the 

 repeated waves of barbarian invasion, the greater part of Italy and 

 France had become desolate and waste, dense with tangled forests, 

 and haunted by wild beasts ; and the arts of agriculture were not 

 merely disused, but almost forgotten. By whom were these tracts 

 and arts in Western Europe recovered for civilization ? Mainly by 

 the monks and priests. It is calculated that three-eighths of the 

 cities and towns of France were born under the pioneership and pro- 

 tection of the monastic orders. The Benedictines, Mrs. Jameson 

 says, were the first agriculturists who brought intellectual resources 

 to bear on the cultivation of the soil, to whom we owe experimental 

 farming and gardening, and the introduction of a variety of new 

 plants. 



Again, in the disorders occasioned by the fall of the Roman Em- 

 pire, the imperial schools formerly scattered over Western Europe 

 were extinguished, for an almost universal loss or destruction of 

 books had occurred. It was only in the cloister and in the schools 

 attached to the monasteries, established primarily for the study of 

 the Scriptures, and conducted by the monks, that the light of knowl- 

 edge was kept alive in Western Europe. The great universities of 

 Europe, such as those of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge, are 

 generally admitted to have had their origin in the schools attached to 

 cathedrals and monasteries. Almost every one of the ancient and 

 eminent seats of learning was either founded by the clergy or 

 originally instituted for the purpose of fostering the study of the 

 Scriptures. 



Of course, the studies which occupied the first place were the 

 Bible, the works of the Fathers, and theology in its various branches. 

 But they were not limited to these. Science and art received atten- 

 tion, as well as sacred literature. Physics, chemistry, botany, medi- 

 cine, law, painting, and the art of illumination, were all pursued with- 

 in the walls of the cloister. A Benedictine monk, Guido d'Arezzo, 



