Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/599

Rh which was once Lot's wife. He not only indicates places on land, but places in the sea; thus he shows where Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes."

As to the Dead Sea miracles generally, he does not dwell on them at great length; he evidently felt that Quaresmio had exhausted the subject, but he shows largely the fruits of Quaresmio's teaching in other matters. He sees, describes, and reasons with great theological acuteness upon the basilisk. The animal is about a foot and a half long, shaped like a crocodile, and kills people with its glance. The one which he saw was dead, fortunately for him, for in the time of Pope Leo IV, as he tells us, one appeared at Rome and killed many people by merely looking at them, but the Pope destroyed it with his prayers and the sign of the cross. He says that Providence has wisely and mercifully protected man by requiring the monster to cry aloud two or three times whenever he leaves his cavern, and the divine wisdom has also made it necessary that the monster should look his victim in the eye, and at a certain distance, in order that his glance may penetrate the victim's eye, and so pass at once to his heart. He also gives reason for supposing that the same divine mercy has provided that the crowing of a cock will kill a basilisk.

But even in this good and credulous missionary we see the influence of Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for, having been told many stories regarding the salamander, he secured one, placed it alive upon the coals, and reports to us that the legends regarding its power to live in the fire are untrue. He also tried experiments with the chameleon, and found that the stories told regarding it were to be received with much allowance; but, while he uses his mind in these things after the modern method, he locks up his judgment when he discusses the letter of Scripture. A curious example of this we find in his reference to the famous text, in the thirty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, which led the mediæval map-makers to place Jerusalem at the center of the earth. Coupling with this a text from Isaiah, he, by a theological argument, satisfies himself that the exact center of the earth is a certain spot marked on the pavement of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: by a similar process of theological reasoning he also proves that the place where the Holy Cross stood was the identical spot first occupied by the tree which bore the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio echoing afar through the German universities, in public disquisitions, dissertations, and sermons. The great Bible commentators, both Catholic and Protestant, generally agreed in accepting them.

But, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as