Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

punished by God for their sins, but they were being purified by

their sufferings; and no deviltry of man could cheat them of their

divine destiny to happiness and glory.

-

Jewish contributions to science inevitably slackened in this

prolonged vivisection of a people. Not only did insecurity, poverty,

and instability impede scientific pursuits, but one of the most

respected and influential of the rabbis, Solomon ben Abraham ben Adret

of Barcelona, at the very beginning of this period (1305), had

forbidden, under penalty of excommunication, the teaching of science

or philosophy to any Jew under the age of twenty-five, on the ground

that such instruction might damage religious faith. Nevertheless Isaac

Israeli the Younger, of Toledo, summarized the astronomy of his time

(1320), and clarified the Jewish calendar and chronology; Immanuel

Bonfils of Tarascon drew up valuable astronomical tables, and

anticipated exponential and decimal calculus; Abraham Crescas of

Majorca, "Master of Maps and Compasses to the Government of Aragon,"

made a mapamundi (1377) which was so widely recognized as the best

world map yet made that Aragon sent it as a distinguished gift to

Charles VI of France, where it is now a prized possession of the

Bibliotheque Nationale. Abraham's son Jehuda Crescas was the first

director of Henry the Navigator's nautical observatory at Sagres,

and helped to chart his explorations. Pedro Nunes's Treatise on the

Sphere (1537) opened the way for Mercator and all modern cartography;

and Garcia d'Orta's Colloquios dos simples e drogas medicinaes

(1563) marked an epoch in botany and founded tropical medicine.

Abraham Zacuto was the one major figure in the Jewish science of the

fifteenth century. While teaching at Salamanca (1473-78) he compiled

his Almanach perpetuum, whose astronomical tables were used as

navigational guides on the voyages of Vasco da Gama, Cabral,

Albuquerque, and (after 1496) Columbus. Zacuto was among the

refugees from Spain (1492). He found temporary asylum in Portugal;

he was consulted by the court in preparing Da Gama's expedition to

India, and the ships were equipped with his improved astrolabe. But in

1497 persecution drove him from Portugal too. For years he wandered in

poverty until he settled in Tunis; and there, in his old age, he

comforted himself by writing a history of his people. His pupil Joseph

Vecinho, physician to John II of Portugal, was sent to chart latitudes

and solar declinations along the Guinea coast, and the charts so

prepared proved invaluable to Da Gama. Vecinho was one of the

commission to which John II referred Columbus's proposals for

seeking a western route to the Indies (1484), and shared in the

negative decision. `063281

Jewish physicians were still the most sought for in Europe. Harassed

with religious condemnations and official restrictions, and risking

their lives in treating prominent Christians, they were nevertheless

the favorites of popes and kings. Their contributions to medical

science were not now brilliant, except for d'Orta's to tropical

medicine; but Amatus Lusitanus exemplified the finest traditions of

his profession and his people. Driven by the Inquisition from the

Portugal whose Latin name he had taken, he lived passingly in Antwerp,

Ferrara, and Rome, and settled in Ancona (c. 1549), whence he was

often called to treat that same Pope Julius III who labored to destroy

the Talmud. To the end of his life he was able to take oath that he

had never concerned himself with compensation, had never accepted

valuable presents, had served the poor without fee, had made no

distinction in his practice among Christian, Jew, and Turk, and had

allowed no difficulties of time or distance to interfere with devotion

to his calling. His Curiationum medicinalium centuriae septem (1563)

gave clinical records of 700 cases that he had treated; these

Centuries were studied and treasured by physicians throughout

Europe. The king of Poland invited Amatus to be his personal

physician; Lusitanus preferred to remain in Ancona; but in 1556 he was

compelled to resume his wandering when Paul IV demanded the conversion

or imprisonment of all Marranos in Italy.

-

Ben Adret's moratorium on science and philosophy had less effect

on philosophy than on science, and less in France than in Spain. The

influence of Maimonides was still strong among the Jews who managed to

survive in southern France. Joseph Kaspi dared to write treatises on

logic and ethics for the guidance of his son, and defended the liberal

philosophical tradition that had received its classical exposition

in Maimonides's Moreh Nebuchim. This approach produced a major

Jewish thinker in Levi ben Gerson, known to the Christian world as

Gersonides. Like most Jewish philosophers, he earned his bread by

practicing medicine, and realized Hippocrates's ideal of the

physician-philosopher. Born at Bagnols (1288) in a family of scholars,

he lived nearly all his life in Orange, Perpignan, and Avignon,

where he worked in peace under the protection of the popes. There

was hardly a science that he did not deal with, hardly a problem in

philosophy that he left untouched. He was a learned Talmudist, he

contributed to the mathematics of music, he wrote poetry.

In mathematics and astronomy he was among the lights of the age.

He anticipated (1321) the method later formulated by Maurolico

(1575) and Pascal (1654), of finding the number of simple permutations

of n objects by mathematical induction. His treatise on trigonometry

paved the way for Regiomontanus, and was so widely esteemed that

Pope Clement VI commissioned its translation into Latin as De

sinibus, chordis, et arcubus (1342). He invented, or materially

improved, the cross-staff for measuring the altitude of stars; this

remained for two centuries a precious boon to navigation. He made

his own astronomic observations, and ably critized the Ptolemaic

system. He discussed but rejected the heliocentric hypothesis, in a

manner suggesting that there were quite a few adherents of it in his

time. He perfected the camera obscura, and used it, with the

cross-staff, to determine more accurately the variations in the

apparent diameter of the sun and moon.

As ben Gerson's science stemmed from the Arabic mathematicians and

astronomers, so his philosophy was based on a critical study of the

commentaries in which Averroes had expounded Aristotle. During the

years 1319-21 Levi composed commentaries on these commentaries,

covering Aristotle's treatises on logic, physics, astronomy,

meteorology, botany, zoology, psychology, and metaphysics; and to

these studies he added, of course, repeated readings of Maimonides.

His own philosophy, and most of his science, were embodied in a Hebrew

work entitled, in the fashion of the age, Milchamoth Adonai

( Battles of the Lord, 1317-29). It ranks second only to the Moreh

Nebuchim in Jewish medieval philosophy, and continues Maimonides's

attempt to reconcile Greek thought with Jewish faith, much to the

detriment of the faith. When we consider the similar efforts of

Averroes and Thomas Aquinas to harmonize Mohammedanism and

Christianity with Aristotle, we might almost say that the impact of

Aristotle on medieval theologies inaugurated their disintegration

and the transition from the Age of Faith to the Age of Reason.

Gersonides sought to soften orthodox resentment by professing his

readiness to abandon his views if these should be proved contrary to

Scripture- an old Scholastic dodge. Nevertheless he went on to

reason at great length about God, creation, the eternity of the world,

the immortality of the soul; and when his conclusions contradicted

Scripture he interpreted it with such violence to the text that his

critics renamed his book Battles against the Lord. `063282 We must

not take literally, said Levi, such stories as that of Joshua stopping

the sun; these and similar "miracles" were probably natural events

whose causes were forgotten or unknown. `063283 Finally he

proclaimed his rationalism without disguise: "The Torah cannot prevent

us from considering to be true that which our reason urges us to

believe." `063284

Gersonides derived the existence of God from what the atheist

Holbach would call "the system of nature": the law and order of the

universe reveal a cosmic Mind. To this he adds the teleological

argument: most things in living nature seem designed as means to

end, and Providence gives every organism the means of self-protection,

development, and reproduction. The world as cosmos or order was

created in time, but not out of nothing; an inert, formless mass

pre-existed from eternity; creation gave it life and form. Between God

and the created forms is an intermediary power which Gerson, following

Aristotle and Averroes, calls nous poietikos, the Active or Creative

Intellect; this emanation of divine intelligence guides all things,

and becomes the soul in man. So far as the soul depends upon the

individual's sensations, it is mortal; so far as it conceives

universals, and perceives the order and unity of the world, it becomes

consciously part of the Active Intellect, which is immortal.

Ben Gerson's philosophy was rejected by the Jews as essentially a

form of Averroism, a rationalism that would ultimately dissolve

religious belief. Christian thinkers studied him, Spinoza was

influenced by him; but the heart and mind of thoughtful Jews were more

faithfully expressed by Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas, who had imbibed

the conservatism of Solomon ben Adret. Born in Barcelona in 1340,

Crescas lived through a period of rabid anti-semitism. He was arrested

on a charge of having desecrated a Host; he was soon released, but his

son, on the very eve of marriage, was killed in the massacres of 1391.

Persecution strengthened Hasdai's faith, for only by belief in a

just God and a compensatory heaven could he bear a life so evil in

injustice and suffering. Seven years after the martyrdom of his son he

published in Spanish a Tratado which sought to explain to Christians

why a Jew should not be asked to accept Christianity. Courteously

and moderately he argued that the Christian dogmas of the Fall,

Trinity, Immaculate Conception, Incarnation, Atonement, and

Transubstantiation involved insuperable contradictions and absurd

impossibilities. Yet when he composed his major work, Or Adonai

( Light of the Lord, 1410), he took a stand from which the Christians

might have defended these theories: he renounced reason and bade it

surrender to faith. Though he was not officially a rabbi, he shared

the rabbinical view that the renewed persecutions were a divine

punishment for subjecting the revealed religion to rationalistic

dilution. If he wrote philosophy it was through no admiration for

it, but to prove the weakness of philosophy and reason, and to

affirm the necessity of belief. He repudiated the attempts of

Maimonides and Gerson to reconcile Judaism with Aristotle; who was

this Greek that God had to agree with him? He protested the

Aristotelian notion that God's supreme quality is knowledge; rather it

is love; God is the Absolutely Good. Crescas admitted that reason

cannot harmonize God's foreknowledge with man's freedom; we must

therefore reject not freedom but reason. We must believe in God,

free will, and immortality for our peace of mind and our moral health,

and we need make no pretense to prove these beliefs by reason. We must

choose between our proud, weak reason, which dissolves belief and

begets despair, and our humble faith in God's Word, through which

alone we can bear the indignities and inequities of life.

Crescas was the last of a brilliant line of medieval Jewish

philosophers. He was not at once appreciated by his people, for his

pupil Joseph Albo caught the philosophical audience with his more

readable Ikkarim ( Fundamental Principles ); this combined

Maimonides and Crescas in an eclectic system more consonant than

either with orthodox Judaism, which was not prepared to admit the

irrationality of faith. After Albo's death (1444) the Jews retired

from philosophy, almost from history, till Spinoza. Massacres,

dislocations, destitution, and restrictions of residence and

occupation had broken their spirit, and had diminished their number to

the lowest level since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. `063285 The

despised and rejected of men found refuge in the sorrowing chants

and comforting fellowship of the synagogue, in hopes of divine

forgiveness, earthly justification, and celestial bliss. Scholars

buried themselves in the Talmud, confining their reasoning to the

elucidation of the saving Law, while some followed the Cabala into a

mysticism that sublimated misery into heaven-scaling delusions. Jewish

poetry ceased to sing. Only a remnant lifted its head now and then

defiantly against the storm, or softened the ironies of life with

wistful humor and wry wit. Not till the humble Jew of Amsterdam

would dare to unite Judaism, Scholasticism, and Cartesianism into a

sublime merger of religion and science would the Jews wake from

their long and healing sleep to take their place again in the raceless

and timeless international of the mind.

BOOK IV: BEHIND THE SCENES

CHAPTER XXXIII: The Life of the People: 1517-64

I. THE ECONOMY

-

IN one sense the drama of religious, political, and martial conflict

that filled the front of the sixteenth century was superficial, for it

proceeded only by permission of a deeper drama played behind the

historic scenes or beneath the pompous stage- man's daily and

perpetual battle with the soil, the elements, poverty, and death.

What, after all, were the bulls and blasts of popes and Protestants,

the rival absurdities of murderous mythologies, the strut and

succession, gout and syphilis, of emperors and kings, compared with

the inexorable struggle for food, shelter, clothing, health, mates,

children, life?

Throughout this period the villages of Europe had to keep watch

night and day against wolves, wild boars, and other threats to their

flocks and homes. The hunting stage survived within the agricultural

age: man had to kill or be killed, and the weapons of defense made

possible the routine of toil. A thousand insects, the beasts of the

forests, and the birds of the air competed with the peasant for the

fruit of his seeds and drudgery; and mysterious diseases decimated his

herds. At any time the rains might become erosive torrents or

engulfing floods, or they might hold back till all life withered;

hunger was always around the corner, and fear of fire was never far

from mind. Sickness made frequent calls; doctors were distant; and

in almost every decade plague might carry off some member of the

household precious in the affections of the family or in the siege

of the earth. Of every five children born, two died in infancy,

another before maturity. `06331 At least once in each generation the

recruiting officer took a son for the army, and armies burned villages

and ravaged fields. From the crop at last grown and harvested, a tenth

or more went to the landlord, a tenth to the Church. Life on the

land would have been too hard for body or soul had not happiness

intervened in the gaiety of children, the games of the evening home,

the release of song, the amnesia of the tavern, and the half-believed,

half-doubted hopes of another and more merciful world. So the food was

produced that fed the barons in the castle, the kings in their courts,

the priests in their pulpits, the merchant and craftsmen in the towns,

the physicians, teachers, artists, poets, scientists, philosophers,

and, last and least, the slaves of the soil themselves. Civilization

is a parasite on the man with the hoe.

Agricultural science marked time; progress in productivity came

chiefly through the replacement of small holdings by large tracts. The

new landowning merchants and capitalists brought into stagnant rural

areas a lust for profits that increased both production and misery.

Enterprising importers introduced into Europe a new fertilizer rich in

phosphates and nitrogen- the guano or dung deposited by birds off

the coast of Peru. Plants and shrubs from Asia or America were

naturalized on the soil of Europe; the potato, the magnolia tree,

the century plant, the pepper plant, the dahlia, the nasturtium....

The tobacco plant was brought from Mexico to Spain in 1558; a year

later Jean Nicot, French ambassador in Lisbon, sent some seeds of it

to Catherine de Medicis; history rewarded him by giving his name to

a poison.

The fishing industry industry grew as population increased, but

the Reformation dealt a passing blow to the herring trade by

allowing meat on Fridays. Mining progressed rapidly under capitalistic

organization. Newcastle was exporting coal in 1549. The Fuggers

multiplied the output of their mines by prodding labor to greater

and more orderly effort, and by improving the methods of refining ore.

Georg Agricola takes us into a sixteenth-century mine:

-

The chief kinds of workmen are miners, shovelers, windlass men,

carriers, sorters, washers, and smelters.... The twenty-four hours

of a day and night are divided into three shifts, and each shift

consists of seven hours. The three remaining hours are intermediate

between the shifts, and form an interval during which the workmen

enter and leave the mines. The first shift begins at the fourth hour

in the morning and lasts till the eleventh hour; the second begins

at the twelfth and is finished at the seventh; these two are day

shifts in the morning and afternoon. The third is the night shift, and

commences at the eighth hour in the evening and finishes at the

third in the morning. The Bergmeister does not allow this third

shift to be imposed upon the workmen unless necessity demands it. In

that case... they keep their vigil by the night lamps; and to

prevent themselves falling asleep from the late hours or from fatigue,

they lighten their long and arduous labors by singing, which is

neither wholly untrained nor unpleasing. In some places one miner is

not allowed to undertake two shifts in succession, because it often

happens that he falls asleep in the mine, overcome by exhaustion

from too much labor.... Elsewhere he is allowed to do so, because he

cannot subsist on the pay of one shift, especially if provisions

grow dearer....

The laborers do not work on Saturdays, but buy those things which

are necessary to life, nor do they usually work on Sundays or annual

festivals, but on these occasions devote the shift to holy things.

However, the workmen do not rest... if necessity demands their

labor; for sometimes a rush of water compels them to work, sometimes

an impending fall... and at such times it is not considered

irreligious to work on holidays. Moreover, all workmen of this class

are strong and used to toil from birth. `06332

-

In 1527 Georg Agricola was made city physician of Joachimsthal. In

that mining town he became between times a mineralogist; there and

elsewhere he studied with zeal and fascination the history and

operations of mining and metallurgy; and after twenty years of

research he completed (1550) his De re metallica, which is as

epochal a classic in its field as the masterpieces of Copernicus and

Vesalius appearing in the same decade. He described in accurate

detail, and engaged artists to illustrate, the tools, mechanisms,

and processes of mining and smelting. He was the first to assert

that bismuth and antimony are true primary metals; he distinguished

some twenty mineral species not previously recognized; and he was

the first to explain the formation of veins ( canales, channels) of

ore in beds of rock by metallic deposits left by streams of water

flowing into and under the earth. *06062 `06333

Mining, metallurgy, and textiles received most of the mechanical

improvements credited to this age. The earliest railways were those on

which miners pulled or pushed ore-carrying carts. In 1533 Johann

Jurgen added to the spinning wheel, hitherto spun by hand, a treadle

that spun it by foot, leaving the hands of the weaver free; production

soon doubled. Watches were improved in reliability while diminishing

in size; they were engraved, chased, enameled, bejeweled; Henry VIII

wore a tiny one that had to be wound only every week. However, the

best watches of this period erred by some fifteen minutes per

day. `06334

Communication and transport limped behind commerce and industry.

Postal service was gradually extended to private correspondence during

the sixteenth century. The commercial revolution stimulated

improvements in shipbuilding: deeper and thinner keels helped

stability and speed; masts increased from one to three, sails to

five or six. `06335 Francis I and Henry VIII ran a race not only in

war and love and dress but in shipping; each had a grandiose vessel

built to order and whim, crowded with superstructure, and flaunting

the pennants of their pride. In the Mediterranean a ship of the

early sixteenth century could make ten miles an hour in fair

weather, but the heavier vessels designed for the Atlantic were

lucky to make 125 miles a day. On land the fastest travel was by the

postal courier, who rode some eighty-five miles a day; yet important

news usually took ten or eleven days to get from Venice to Paris or

Madrid. Probably no one then appreciated the comfort of having news

arrive too late for action. Land travel was mostly on horseback; hence

the heavy iron tethering ring fastened to the entrance door of a

house. Coaches were multiplying, but the roads were too soft for

wheeled traffic; coaches had to be equipped with six or more horses to

drag them through the inevitable mud, and they could not expect to

cover more than twenty miles a day. Litters carried by servants were

still used by ladies of means, but simple people traveled on foot

across the continent.

Traveling was popular despite roads and inns. Erasmus thought the

inns of France were tolerable, chiefly because the young waitresses

"giggle and play wanton tricks," and, "when you go away, embrace you,"

and "all for so small a price"; but he denounced German innkeepers

as ill-mannered, ill-tempered, dilatory, and dirty.

-

When you have taken care of your horse you come into the Stove Room,

boots, baggage, mud, and all, for that is a common room for all

comers.... In the Stove Room you pull off your boots, put on your

shoes, and, if you will, change your shirt.... There one combs his

head, another... belches garlic, and... there is as great a

confusion of tongues as at the building of the Tower of Babel. In my

opinion nothing is more dangerous than for so many to draw in the same

vapor, especially when their bodies are opened with the heat... not to

mention... the farting, the stinking breaths... and without doubt many

have the Spanish, or, as it is called, the French, pox, though it is

common to all nations. `06336

-

If matters were really so in some inns, we can forgive a sin or

two to the traveling merchants who put up at and with them in the

process of binding village with village, nation with nation, in an

ever spreading economic web. In each decade some new trade route was

opened- overland as by Chancellor in Russia, overseas by a thousand

adventurous voyages. Shakespeare's Shylock trafficked with England,

Lisbon, Tripoli, Egypt, India, and Mexico. `06337 Genoa had trading

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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