Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/28

18 those herbs were especially cultivated which were supposed to have healing virtues. So, too, in the thirteenth century, the Emperor Frederick II, though under the ban of the pope, brought together in his various journeys, and especially in his crusading expeditions, many Greek and Arabic manuscripts, and took special pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and studied; he also promoted better ideas of medicine, and embodied them in law.

Men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word, even in the centuries under the most complete sway of theological thought and ecclesiastical power; a science, indeed, alloyed with theology, but still infolding precious germs. Of these were men like Arnold of Villanova, Bertrand de Gordon, Albert of Bollstadt, Basil Valentine, Raymond Lull, and, above all, Roger Bacon, all of whom cultivated sciences subsidiary to medicine, and in spite of charges of sorcery, and consequent imprisonment and danger of death, kept the torch of knowledge burning, and passed it on to future generations.

From the Church itself, also, even when the theological atmosphere was most dense, rose here and there men who persisted in something like scientific effort. As early as the ninth century, Bertrarius, a monk of Monte Casino, prepared two manuscript volumes of prescriptions selected from ancient writers; other monks studied them somewhat, and during succeeding ages, scholars like Hugo, Abbot of St. Denis; Sigoal, Abbot of Epinay; Hildegarde, Abbess of Rupertsberg; Milon, Archbishop of Beneventum; John of St. Amand, Canon of Tournay, did something for medicine as they understood it. Unfortunately, they generally understood its theory as a mixture of deductions from Scripture with dogmas from Galen, and its practice as a mixture of incantations with fetiches. Even Pope Honorius III did something for the establishment of medical schools; but he did so much more to place ecclesiastical and theological fetters upon teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts may well be doubted. All germs of a higher evolution of medicine were for ages well kept under by the theological spirit. As far back as the sixth century so great a man as Pope Gregory I showed himself hostile to every development of science. In the beginning of the twelfth century the Council of Rheims interdicted the study of law and physic to monks, and a multitude of other councils enforced this decree. About the middle of the same century