578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



view from Scripture to account for the planetary movements, and 

 develops at length the theory that the sun and planets are moved 

 and the " windows of heaven " opened and shut by angels ap- 

 pointed for that purpose. 



How intensely real this way of looking at the universe was, 

 we find in the writings of St. Isidore, the greatest leader of ortho- 

 dox thought in the seventh century. He affirms that since the 

 fall of man, and on account of it, the sun and moon shine with a 

 feebler light ; but he proves from a text in Isaiah that when the 

 world shall be fully redeemed these " great lights " will shine 

 again in all their early splendor.* But despite these authorities 

 and their theological finalities, the evolution of scientific thought 

 continued, its main germ being the geocentric doctrine — the doc- 

 trine that the earth is the center, and that the sun and planets 

 revolve about it. 



This doctrine was of the highest respectability : it had been 

 developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until 

 it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly 

 bodies; its final name— " Ptolemaic theory "—carried weight; 

 and, having thus come from antiquity into the Christian world, 

 it was finally acquiesced in and universally held to agree with the 

 letter and spirit of Scripture, f 



Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was 

 developed in the middle ages, by means of Scriptural texts and 

 theological reasonings, a new sacred system of astronomy, which 

 became one of the great treasures of the universal Church— the 

 last word of revelation. 



Three great men mainly reared this structure. First was the 

 unknown who gave to the world the treatises ascribed to Dio- 

 nysius the Areopagite. It was unhesitatingly believed that these 

 were the work of St. Paul's Athenian convert, and therefore vir- 

 tually by St. Paul himself. Though now known to be spurious, 

 they were then considered a treasure of inspiration, and an Em- 



* For Tevtullian's view of an eclipse of the sun, see the Ad Scapulam, cap. iu, m Migne. 

 Patr. Lat, i, p. 701. For passage cited from Clement of Alexandria, see edition of T. 

 Clark, Edinburgh, 1869, vol. ii, p. 868. For typical statements by St. Augustine, see De 

 Genesi, ii, cap. ix, in Migne, Patr Lat., tome xxxiv, pp. 2Y0, 271. For St. Isidore, see the De 

 Ordine Creaturarum, cap. v, in Migno, Patr. Lat., Ixxxiii, pp. 923-925 ; also, 1000, 1001. For 

 Cosmas's view, see his Topographia Christiana in Montfau9on, Col. Nov. Patrum, ii, p. 150, 

 and elsewhere as cited in my chapter on " Geography." 



f As to the respectability of the geocentric theory, etc., see Crete's Plato, vol. m, p. 

 257; also Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, chap, iii, sec. 1, for a very thought- 

 ful statement of Plato's view, and differing from ancient statements. For plausible elabo- 

 ration of it, and for supposed agreement of Scripture with it, see Fromundus, Anti-Aris- 

 tarchus, Antwerp, 1631 ; also Melanchthon's Initia Doctrinae Physics. For an admirable 

 statement of the theological view of the geocentric theory, antipodes, etc., see Eicl^en, 

 GescUclite der St/stem der Miitelalterlichen Wcltanscliauung, pp. 618 et scq. 



