NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 155 



Another weapon was also used upon the battle-fields of science 

 in that time with much effect. The Arabs had made many noble 

 discoveries in science, and Averroes had, in the opinion of many, 

 divided the honors with St. Thomas Aquinas; these facts gave 

 the new missile— it was the epithet " Mohammedan " — this too was 

 flung with effect at Bacon. 



The attack now began to take its final shape. The two great 

 religious orders, Franciscan and Dominican, then in all the vigor 

 of their youth, vied with each other in fighting the new thought 

 in chemistry and physics. St. Dominic solemnly condemned re- 

 search by experiment and observation ; the general of the Fran- 

 ciscan order took similar ground. In 1243 the Dominicans inter- 

 dicted every member of their order from the study of medicine 

 and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this interdiction was extended 

 to the study of chemistry. 



In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order, assembled at 

 Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teaching, and the general of 

 the Franciscans, Jerome d'Ascoli, afterward Pope, threw him into 

 prison, where he remained for fourteen years. Though Pope 

 Clement VI had protected him, Popes Nicholas III and IV, by 

 virtue of their infallibility, decided that he was too dangerous to 

 be at large, and he was only released at the age of eighty, but a 

 year or two before death placed him beyond the reach of his ene- 

 mies. How deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be 

 gathered from that last affecting declaration of his, "Would 

 that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of 

 science ! " 



The attempt has been made by sundry champions of the 

 Church to show that some of Bacons utterances against eccle- 

 siastical and other corruptions in his time were the main cause 

 of the severity which the Church authorities exercised against 

 him. This helps the Church but little, even if it be well based, 

 but it is not well based. That some of his utterances of this sort 

 made him enemies is doubtless true, but the charges on which St. 

 Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him, 

 and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were 

 " dangerous novelties " and suspected sorcery. 



Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to 

 the world had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. He held the key 

 of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error 

 and misery. With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as 

 a guide, what might not the world have gained ! Nor was the 

 wrong done to that age alone ; it was done to this age also. The 

 nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thir- 

 teenth. But for that interference with science the nineteenth 

 century would be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached 



