The relationship between science and the Catholic Church has included both extensive institutional patronage and support as well as periods of censorship and sharp conflict. The influential Latin Church theologian, philosopher and bishop St. Augustine (354-430) taught that God revealed Himself through the created world, which is like a "book" that is accessible to every human being regardless of literacy. In the Early Middle Ages, Catholic clergy had a near monopoly on literacy in Western Europe and were the leading scholars of natural philosophy in the Latin West. During the High Middle Ages, the Church founded Europe's first universities. During the Renaissance, a high-ranking Church official - Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) - proposed that the earth circled the sun. Historians of science have documented important continuities between pre-modern Christian ideas and the birth of modern science.
During the Scientific Revolution, the Papacy and the Jesuits initially promoted the observations and studies of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) but the Roman Inquisition later forced him to recant his views and then sentenced him to house arrest. Critics point to episodes like this, where the Church has opposed scientific findings that challenged its teachings, as evidence for a conflict thesis — the idea that there is an intrinsic and inevitable intellectual conflict between religion and science. The Catholic Church has adopted the distinction between science and salvation that Galileo himself insisted on, maintaining that there can never be real disagreement between science and theology because the "things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God" while Pope John Paul II (r. 1978-2005) wrote that Galileo was "more perceptive" about interpreting Scripture "than the theologians who opposed him."
Catholic clergy have been credited as fathers of a diverse range of scientific fields: Bl. Nicolas Steno (1638-1686) was a founder of geology, Fr. Angelo Secchi (1818-1878) helped launch astrophysics, Fr. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) pioneered genetics, and Msgr. Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) proposed the Big Bang cosmological model. Church patronage of the sciences continues through institutions like the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Vatican Observatory.
Faith and reason
Belief seeking understanding
The early Church's interest in astronomy stemmed from issues surrounding the determination of the date for Easter, which was originally tied to the Hebrew lunisolar calendar. In the 4th century, due to perceived problems with the Hebrew calendar's leap month system, the Council of Nicaea prescribed that Easter would fall on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
To a significant extent, the Church's approach to the study of the natural world was part of the intellectual legacy of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430). In his "Two Books" doctrine, Augustine maintained that God revealed truth through both the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature:
In De Genesi ad litteram Augustine identified a space for the study of nature by Christians:
By acknowledging that there is "obscure" knowledge to be discovered about the world "even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture" and also framing the study of astronomy, specifically, as a way to prevent infidels from scorning Christians in a way that could interfere with their salvation, Augustine helped to keep the study of the heavens a religiously-respectable activity during the Middle Ages when the cultural influence of the Church was at its zenith.
Sanctuary of letters
Because papyrus perishes easily and does not last well in the wetter European climate, any existing papyrus books that people wanted to preserve were eventually moved from papyrus to parchment. After the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, the import of papyrus to Europe appears to have ceased altogether. Since parchment was far more expensive than papyrus, books became accessible only to the Church and the very wealthy. The leading scholars of the Early Middle Ages were all clergymen, for whom the study of nature was but a small part of their scholarly interest but who had both opportunity and motive for the study of aspects of nature. Modern readers may find it disconcerting that sometimes the same works discuss both the technical details of natural phenomena and their symbolic significance but this mixing reflects the core conviction of the era's clergy scholars that reason should serve religious belief,Faith Wallis, "'Number Mystique' in Early Medieval Computus Texts", pp. 179–99 in T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds. Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005) sometimes also referred to as the idea that natural philosophy should be the "handmaiden" to theology.
On the fringes of western Europe, where the Roman tradition had not made a strong imprint, monks engaged in the study of Latin as a foreign language, and actively investigated the traditions of Roman learning. Ireland's most learned monks even retained knowledge of Greek. Irish missionaries like Colombanus (543-615) later founded monasteries in continental Europe, which went on to create libraries and become centers of scholarship. The need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars;Stephen C. McCluskey, "Gregory of Tours, Monastic Timekeeping, and Early Christian Attitudes to Astronomy", Isis, 81(1990):9–22; reprinted in M. H. Shank, ed., The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000). the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon.Stephen C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1998), pp. 149–57.Faith Wallis, "'Number Mystique' in Early Medieval Computus Texts", pp. 179-99 in T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans, eds. Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study, (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005).
The period between the 4th and the 8th centuries was the era of the "Latin Encyclopedists". The most popular and notable of their works was Etymologiae, a vast compendium of human knowledge at the time, including mathematics, geometry, astronomy, medicine, animals, the physical world, geography, metals and rocks compiled by Bishop Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636). In On the Reckoning of Time, the monk Bede of Jarrow (c. 673-735) provided churchmen with the practical astronomical knowledge needed to compute the proper date of Easter using a procedure called the computus. (This text remained an important element of the education of clergy from the 8th century until well after the rise of the universities in the 12th century.Faith Wallis, ed. and trans, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), pp. xviii–xxxiv ) Bede described two comets over England in AD 729 as "fiery torches" that struck terror in all who saw them – for comets were heralds of bad news. Rabanus Maurus (c. 780-856), Archbishop of Mainz was one of the most prominent teachers of the Carolingian Age who, like Bede, wrote treatises on computus and On the Nature of Things. Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955–c. 1010), who is known mostly for his Old English homilies, wrote a book on astronomical time reckoning in Old English based on the writings of Bede. Abbo of Fleury (c. 945-1004), the abbot of Fleury Abbey, wrote astronomical discussions of timekeeping and of the celestial spheres for his students, teaching for a while in England where he influenced the work of Byrhtferth of Ramsey (c. 970-c. 1020), who wrote a Manual in Old English to discuss timekeeping and the natural and mystical significance of numbers.
Foundation of universities
In the High Middle Ages, Cathedral schools developed as centers of education. The School of Chartres, established by the Chartres Cathedral, became an important center of French scholarship. One of the most prominent members of the School, William of Conches (c. 1090-c. 1154), wrote that "in those matters that pertain to the Catholic faith or moral instruction, it is not allowed to contradict Bede or any other holy fathers. If, however, they err in those matters that pertain to physics, it is permitted to state an opposite view."
Cathedral schools evolved into, or were superseded by, medieval universities which were the springboard of many of Western Europe's later scientific achievements."The key event that made the new intellectual life of Western Europe different than anything that had gone before is the emergence of the university as a unique and vital institution. Not only was it unique in the history of Western Europe, but it also was unique in the history of the world." The oldest university currently in continuous operation in the world appeared in the 11th century in Italy (the University of Bologna). Paris University (), Oxford University (1167), Salerno University (1173), the University of Vicenza (1204), Cambridge University (1209), Salamanca University (1218–1219), Padua University (1222), Naples University (1224), and Vercelli University (1228) followed over the next century and a half. Closely associated with the Church, these medieval universities used church Latin as a lingua franca.
In the 12th century, the Church helped re-popularize and disseminate ancient Greek ideas and mathematical techniques across Europe by sponsoring the translation of newly available Arabic-language versions of Greek texts into Latin. This was done in large part to aid in astronomical study. J.L. Heilbron in his book The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories writes that "the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions."
Scholasticism
Theology was regarded as the first among the faculties and the "queen of the sciences""The new universities were associated with the Roman church and with its cultural agenda. As a result, at universities such as Paris or Oxford, theology was the first among their higher faculties (those granting the doctorate); theology was routinely known as 'queen of the sciences.' Scholarly prestige tended as a result to accrue to abstract philosophizing intended to serve the establishment of truth; this was the rational counterpart of religious belief, and it sought intellectual conviction rather than practical know-how." Dear, Peter (2019) Revolutionizing the Sciences. Princeton University Press. . pp. viii-ix. but within this religious framework medieval universities produced a great variety of scholars and natural philosophers - later known collectively as the "scholastics" - including Robert Grosseteste (1170-1253), who taught at the University of Oxford, was the founder of the Oxford Franciscan school, became the Bishop of Lincoln, and was an early expositor of a systematic method of scientific experimentation; Saint Albert the Great (1200-1280), who wrote in De Mineralibus (Book II, Tractate ii, Ch. 1) that "it is [the task] of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of natural things"; and Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1292), who wrote in Opus Majus that "there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and by experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest in the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience."