He who would assign, then, the sources of the modern scientific spirit cannot, without injustice, fail to assign a large measure of influence to Christianity.
Besides this general assistance to science from the religious spirit, the Christian Church, as an organization, although guilty of much hinderance, nevertheless has given much help. I believe, indeed, that in an impartial comparison the assistance which it has supplied would outweigh the injury which it has done. There was a time in the history of Europe we should not forget—when the fruit of all past knowledge and the seeds of future culture and enlightenment lay in the hands of the Christian clergy. For six centuries during the deluge of barbarism and ignorance which had submerged the ancient world, the Christian Church was the ark which rode upon the flood, bearing in its bosom whatever was most precious of the old-time learning and knowledge. Amid the devastations which attended the repeated waves of barbarian invasion, the greater part of Italy and France had become desolate and waste, dense with tangled forests, and haunted by wild beasts; and the arts of agriculture were not merely disused, but almost forgotten. By whom were these tracts and arts in Western Europe recovered for civilization? Mainly by the monks and priests. It is calculated that three-eighths of the cities and towns of France were born under the pioneership and protection of the monastic orders. The Benedictines, Mrs. Jameson says, were the first agriculturists who brought intellectual resources to bear on the cultivation of the soil, to whom we owe experimental farming and gardening, and the introduction of a variety of new plants.
Again, in the disorders occasioned by the fall of the Roman Empire, the imperial schools formerly scattered over Western Europe were extinguished, for an almost universal loss or destruction of books had occurred. It was only in the cloister and in the schools attached to the monasteries, established primarily for the study of the Scriptures, and conducted by the monks, that the light of knowledge was kept alive in Western Europe. The great universities of Europe, such as those of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge, are generally admitted to have had their origin in the schools attached to cathedrals and monasteries. Almost every one of the ancient and eminent seats of learning was either founded by the clergy or originally instituted for the purpose of fostering the study of the Scriptures.
Of course, the studies which occupied the first place were the Bible, the works of the Fathers, and theology in its various branches. But they were not limited to these. Science and art received attention, as well as sacred literature. Physics, chemistry, botany, medicine, law, painting, and the art of illumination, were all pursued within the walls of the cloister. A Benedictine monk, Guido d'Arezzo,
