History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in ChristendomWhite, Andrew Dickson
Religion
History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
White, Andrew Dickson
Religion and science -- History
Nor did medieval thinkers rest with this conception. In accordance with
the dominant view that physical truth must be sought by theological
reasoning, the doctrine was evolved that not only the site of the cross
on Calvary marked the geographical centre of the world, but that on this
very spot had stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit in Eden.
Thus was geography made to reconcile all parts of the great theologic
plan. This doctrine was hailed with joy by multitudes; and we find in
the works of medieval pilgrims to Palestine, again and again, evidence
that this had become precious truth to them, both in theology and
geography. Even as late as 1664 the eminent French priest Eugene Roger,
in his published travels in Palestine, dwelt upon the thirty-eighth
chapter of Ezekiel, coupled with a text from Isaiah, to prove that the
exact centre of the earth is a spot marked on the pavement of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, and that on this spot once stood the tree which
bore the forbidden fruit and the cross of Christ.(31)
(31) For the site of the cross on Calvary, as the point where stood "the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in Eden, at the centre of the
earth, see various Eastern travellers cited in Tobler; but especially
the travels of Bishop Arculf in the Holy Land, in Wright's Early Travels
in Palestine, p. 8; also Travels of Saewulf, ibid, p. 38; also Sir John
Mandeville, ibid., pp. 166, 167. For Roger, see his La Terre Saincte,
Paris, 1664, pp. 89-217, etc.; see also Quaresmio, Terrae Sanctae
Elucidatio, 1639, for similar view; and, for one narrative in which the
idea was developed into an amazing mass of pious myths, see Pilgrimage
of the Russian Abbot Daniel, edited by Sir C. W. Wilson, London, 1885,
p. 14. (The passage deserves to be quoted as an example of myth-making;
it is as follows: "At the time of our Lord's crucifixion, when he gave
up the ghost on the cross, the veil of the temple was rent, and the rock
above Adam's skull opened, and the blood and water which flowed from
Christ's side ran down through the fissure upon the skull, thus washing
away the sins of men.")
Nor was this the only misconception which forced its way from our sacred
writings into medieval map-making: two others were almost as marked.
First of these was the vague terror inspired by Gog and Magog. Few
passages in the Old Testament are more sublime than the denunciation
of these great enemies by Ezekiel; and the well-known statement in the
Apocalypse fastened the Hebrew feeling regarding them with a new meaning
into the mind of the early Church: hence it was that the medieval
map-makers took great pains to delineate these monsters and their
habitations on the maps. For centuries no map was considered orthodox
which did not show them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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