Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/383

Rh , a rancorous religious quarrel aroused, expensive legal proceedings entailed, and battalions of soldiers with muskets and cannon, have at last to be invoked to carry out the mandate of a judicial tribunal. All this has resulted from the action of an ecclesiastical body which for centuries has pursued this policy of using the graveyard and its associated superstitions as a means of spiritual domination and temporal profit. Guibord was in favor of having certain books in a library to read. His Church declared that he should not have them there. He adhered to his opinion, and the Church then declared that he should not have Christian burial. The appeal to his superstitions was not strong enough to move him, but it thrilled the community with a painful agitation, and for many centuries such appeals and threats have been powerful enough to intimidate and keep in subjection countless millions of people. For more than a thousand years the Catholic Church has maintained its claim, against the civil authority, to the ownership and custody of the dead, and by attaching the place of interment to the church, by prohibiting heretics from Christian burial and making it ignominious to repose in any but consecrated earth, and by digging up the bones of those who are alleged to have entertained false opinions, burning them and scattering the ashes to the winds or casting them into the floods, the Romish ecclesiastics have not only made the church-yard a copious source of pecuniary emolument, but "a vital portion of the material machinery for enforcing spiritual obedience and theological conformity."

The history of the antagonism between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, regarding the ownership and control of the dead, is of great interest; and a very able sketch of this subject by an eminent legal writer will be found in the present number of It is part of a report on the "Law of Burial" made to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, by Hon. Samuel B. Ruggles. When Beekman Street was widened several years ago, a slice of land was taken from the "Brick Church" property to be converted to public use, and the ground thus appropriated embraced certain vaults long ago constructed for the reception of the dead. The question arose in regard to the legal control and redisposition of the bodies contained in these vaults, and Mr. Ruggles was appointed as a referee to take evidence and make a report upon the subject. In this masterly document, he touched upon the historical aspects of the legal question, showing that the old view, held by the Roman and Saxon law, was that the civil authority had jurisdiction in the case, and that under the common law the bodies of deceased persons are subject to the control of those next of kin. The Church, early in the days of its power, subverted this principle, and under the title of "ecclesiastical cognizance" established its exclusive authority over the burial of the dead, and even carried its assumptions so far as to decree, not only who should be allowed to lie in consecrated earth, but who should be allowed to be interred at all! The part of Mr. Ruggles's report which we reprint will be found of general interest to readers, and in a high degree instructive in connection with the Guibord case.



}}

influence of national characteristics upon the pursuit of science is an interesting subject of observation and reflection. For while there is a broad general agreement among scientific students of all nationalities as to what science is, and the mental methods or processes involved in its extension, there is a marked diversity among the people of different countries in the organized arrangements for its promotion, the feelings that impel its pursuit, and