Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/26

22 of Guido d'Arezzo; counterpoint was developed into a doctrine; optics and acoustics were greatly improved and the foundations of mechanics were laid; manufactures of all kinds made great progress, notably those of glass and steel; the art of printing opened literature to all the world—the poor and the rich alike.

If we pass to the field of art there are notable matters to be chronicled. All the basilicas of Italy, all the mosques of the Arabs, all the Byzantine churches, all the Gothic cathedrals are of this period. Santa Sophia dates from A. D. 532, St. Mark's from 1052, Notre Dame from 1163, the Cathedral of York from 1171, St. Peter's from 1450. Of the great painters, Cimabue was born in 1240, Giotto in 1276, Van Byck in 1366, Botticelli in 1447, Leonardo in 1452, Dürer in 1470, Michel Angelo in 1474, Titian in 1477, Raphael in 1483, Correggio in 1494, Holbein in 1495, Tintoretto in 1512, Veronese in 1532. The dates, set down almost at random, cover a thousand years, but the epoch of great progress was from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. When we thus sum up what was accomplished in five hundred years, the period is seen to be full to overflowing. Its interests did not lie in the direction of science—its ideal was not comfort. At the beginning of the dark ages the problem of Europe was to tame the hordes of barbarians who had possessed themselves of the lands—to contrive workable compromises between the customs, laws, ideals, institutions of northern and southern races. Given the point of starting the progress is not slow. The advancement of Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century is an amazing phenomenon and no one can study it closely without a sense of wonder that so much was achieved.

We who breathe a different air must never forget that the doctors of the church cared little for science, as such, and everything for religion. In the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas there is but one chapter that deals with scientific matters. Moreover, we must always carefully distinguish between the opinion of the philosophers and that of the multitude. The mass of men then, as now, thought little of philosophical matters and took their opinions ready-made. Real tolerance in philosophy is a product of real experience. Princes like Al Mamun and Alfonso X. patronized learning in a large and liberal way. The crowd of doctors, poets, artists, physicians, astronomers, at such courts lived in a harmony which was enforced upon them by their very situation. Outside the courts there was envy and malice among the excluded theologians, a sullen opposition among the people. What men do not understand they suspect as heretical. There is scarcely a moslem or a christian doctor of the middle ages who did not bear the reputation of magician among the common people. Medicine, astrology, alchemy were, almost necessarily, regarded as magical arts. To a populace that sincerely believed in ubiquitous devils all science was suspect.