The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in this field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made of ice; and he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth chapter of Job, "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them."
About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in that triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred science throughout the early middle ages—Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence. Starting, like all his predecessors, from the first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here and there from the ancient philosophers, and excluding everything that could conflict with the letter of Scripture, he follows, in his work upon the universe, his two predecessors, Isidore and Bede, developing especially Bede's theory that the firmament is strong enough to hold up the "waters above the heavens," because it was made of ice.[1]
For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their doctrine was translated and diluted for the common mind,[2] But, about the second quarter of the twelfth century, a priest, Honorius of Autun, produced several treatises which show that thought on this subject had made some little progress. He explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern manner; with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert." His thinking is vigorous and independent.[3] Had theorists such as he been many, a new science could have been rapidly evolved, but the theological current was too strong.
The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of Honorius is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John of San Geminiano, who in the thirteenth century gave forth his "Summa de Exemplis "for the use of preachers in his order. Of its thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations drawn from the heavens and the elements. A characteristic specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase,"The arrows of the thunder." These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry vapor rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be extinguished, its particles become
- ↑ See Rabanus Maurus, "Comment, in Genesim" and "De Universo" (Migne, "Patr. Lat.," cvii, cxi).
- ↑ For a charmingly naïve example of these primers, see the little Anglo-Saxon manual of astronomy, sometimes attributed to Ælfric. It is in the vernacular, but is translated in Wright's "Popular Treatises on Science during the Middle Ages." Bede is, of course, its chief source.
- ↑ See Honorius Augustodunensis, "De imagine mundi," and "Hexæmeron" (Migne, "Patr. Lat.," clxxii). The "De philosophia mundi," the most rational of all, is, however, believed by modern scholars to be unjustly ascribed to him. See note above.
