The legend of Faust from the Renaissance times. The end of civilization.
“While thus the Protestant churches have insisted on the acknowledgment of the Scriptures as the criterion of truth, the Catholic has, in our own times, declared the infallibility of the pope.”
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By John William Draper. Published 1875 by D. Appleton and company, New York.. Ch. VIII.
“During the year 1608 one Lippershey, a Hollander, discovered that, by looking through two glass lenses, combined in a certain manner together, distant objects were magnified and rendered very plain. He had invented the telescope.
In the following year Galileo, a Florentine, greatly distinguished by his mathematical and scientific writings, hearing of the circumstance, but without knowing the particulars of the construction, invented a form of the instrument for himself. Improving it gradually, he succeeded in making one that could magnify thirty times.
Examining the moon, he found that she had valleys like those of the earth, and mountains casting shadows. It had been said in the old times that in the Pleiades there were formerly seven stars, but a legend related that one of them had mysteriously disappeared. On turning his telescope toward them, Galileo found that he could easily count not fewer than forty.
In whatever direction he looked, he discovered stars that were totally invisible to the naked eye.
On the night of January 7, 1610, he perceived three small stars in a straight line, adjacent to the planet Jupiter, and, a few evenings later, a fourth. He found that these were revolving in orbits round the body of the planet, and, with transport, recognized that they presented a miniature representation of the Copernican system.
The announcement of these wonders at once attracted universal attention. The spiritual authorities were not slow to detect their tendency, as endangering the doctrine that the universe was made for man. In the creation of myriads of stars, hitherto invisible, there must surely have been some other motive than that of illuminating the nights for him.”
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By John William Draper. Published 1875 by D. Appleton and company, New York.. Ch. VI.
‘Full of misgivings as to what might be the result, he refrained from publishing his book for thirty-six years, thinking that “perhaps it might be better to follow the examples of the Pythagoreans and others, who delivered their doctrine only by tradition and to friends.” At the entreaty of Cardinal Schomberg he at length published it in 1543. A copy of it was brought to him on his death-bed. Its fate was such as he had anticipated. The Inquisition condemned it as heretical. In their decree, prohibiting it, the Congregation of the Index denounced his system as “that false Pythagorean doctrine utterly contrary to the Holy Scriptures.”
Astronomers justly affirm that the book of Copernicus, “De Revolutionibus,” changed the face of their science. It incontestably established the heliocentric theory. It showed that the distance of the fixed stars is infinitely great, and that the earth is a mere point in the heavens. Anticipating Newton, Copernicus imputed gravity to the sun, the moon, and heavenly bodies, but he was led astray by assuming that the celestial motions must be circular. Observations on the orbit of Mars, and his different diameters at different times, had led Copernicus to his theory.’
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By John William Draper. Published 1875 by D. Appleton and company, New York.. Ch. VI.
Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.
Although written well over a hundred years ago, John Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science took a clear-eyed and caustic view of traditional Catholicism.
“The Ptolemaic system is, therefore, essentially a geocentric system. It left the earth in her position of superiority, and hence gave no cause of umbrage to religious opinions, Christian or Mohammedan. The immense reputation of its author, the signal ability of his great work on the mechanism of the heavens, sustained it for almost fourteen hundred years—that is, from the second to the sixteenth century.
In Christendom, the greater part of this long period was consumed in disputes respecting the nature of God, and in struggles for ecclesiastical power. The authority of the Fathers, and the prevailing belief that the Scriptures contain the sum, of all knowledge, discouraged any investigation of Nature. If by chance a passing interest was taken in some astronomical question, it was at once settled by a reference to such authorities as the writings of Augustine or Lactantius, not by an appeal to the phenomena of the heavens. So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.”
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By John William Draper. Published 1875 by D. Appleton and company, New York.. Ch. VI.
Geocenticity – Primitive Concept of Nature
“An uncritical observation of the aspect of Nature persuades us that the earth is an extended level surface which sustains the dome of the sky, a firmament dividing the waters above from the waters beneath; that the heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon, the stars—pursue their way, moving from east to west, their insignificant size and motion round the motionless earth proclaiming their inferiority.
Of the various organic forms surrounding man none rival him in dignity, and hence he seems justified in concluding that every thing has been created for his use—the sun for the purpose of giving him light by day, the moon and stars by night.
Comparative theology shows us that this is the conception of Nature universally adopted in the early phase of intellectual life. It is the belief of all nations in all parts of the world in the beginning of their civilization: geocentric, for it makes the earth the centre of the universe; anthropocentric, for it makes man the central object of the earth. And not only is this the conclusion spontaneously come to from inconsiderate glimpses of the world, it is also the philosophical basis of various religious revelations, vouchsafed to man from time to time.
These revelations, moreover, declare to him that above the crystalline dome of the sky is a region of eternal light and happiness—heaven—the abode of God and the angelic hosts, perhaps also his own abode after death; and beneath the earth a region of eternal darkness and misery, the habitation of those that are evil. In the visible world is thus seen a picture of the invisible.
On the basis of this view of the structure of the world great religious systems have been founded, and hence powerful material interests have been engaged in its support. These have resisted, sometimes by resorting to bloodshed, attempts that have been made to correct its incontestable errors—a resistance grounded on the suspicion that the localization of heaven and hell and the supreme value of man in the universe might be affected.”
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By John William Draper. Published 1875 by D. Appleton and company, New York.. Ch. VI.
“Although astrology was never taught formally in English universities either, and was also regarded with suspicion by the majority of the clergy, it nevertheless began to enjoy a popular reception there during the later half of the sixteenth century. This sixteenth century renewal in England of interest in astrology, indeed to a level of interest that surpassed that of the middle ages, is attributed mainly to the mathematical revival brought about by the most famous Elizabethan astrologer John Dee (1527-1608), along with the help of Leonard Digges and his son Thomas, both astrologers and mathematicians as well.
Dee and the Digges’s practiced and advocated rigorous mathematical calculations in the study of astronomy as it applied to astrology, and in doing so raised the standard for the English astrological community from that time on.
John Dee was a long-time consultant of Queen Elizabeth I, and was commissioned for everything from the proper time for her coronation in 1559 to drawing an accurate map of the world in I580.” ….“The revival of astrology in England then, began during the reign of Elizabeth I with Dee and the Digges’s, but was practiced at first mainly among the upper classes, only slowly trickling down to the rest of society. Such was the state of astrology in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century.”
From: Kemp, David (2003) The scientific revolution’s axiomatic rejection of magical thinking : the case of astrology in England (1600-1700). Masters thesis, Concordia University. Pasted from <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/2327/>
In the Middle Ages, scientific inventions and instruments were regarded as magical. Following is an excerpt from the 1887 introduction to Marlowe, Tragical history of Doctor Faustus. Greene, Honourable history of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay:
“In the Middle Ages, two branches of study, the votaries of which were necessarily to a large extent groping in the dark or unsteadily moving in the twilight, were specially adapted to attract enquiring minds, and to excite the suspicions of the ignorant. These were astrology, which in the terminology of the Middle Ages included what we call astronomy, but which also occupied itself with speculations on the supposed influences of the heavenly bodies upon the inhabitants of the earth and their destinies, as well as with their actual or supposed influences upon the earth itself; and alchemy or chemistry, the speculative part of which treated of the production of all things out of the elements, while the practical part sought to rival or outdo nature in the production of colours and of many other things, but more especially of precious metals.
The connexion which both these sciences thus assumed with common life, with its chief events and most cherished objects, could not fail to impress and excite the wild imagination of common men; and the isolation in which these studies have to be carried on, the loneliness of the observatory and the laboratory, added a peculiar element of mystery. In these and in other sciences the instruments used or invented by their professors seemed a machinery of a more than human character and origin.
All these studies and their appliances were regarded as magic and as appliances of magic by the vulgar, who could not, like philosophic minds, distinguish the mighty powers of nature and the still mightier powers of art which uses nature as its instrument, from that which passes beyond the powers of nature and art, and is therefore either superhuman, or fiction and imposture.
‘For there are persons,’ writes the thinker and student already quoted, ‘who by a swift movement of their limbs or by changing their voice or by fine instruments or darkness or the cooperation of others produce apparitions, and thus place before mortals marvels which have not the truth of actual existence. Of these the world is full …. but in all these things neither is philosophic study concerned, nor does the power of nature consist’.’ Thus true though imperfect science and honest though often misdirected research, were rudely elbowed and discredited by the competition of imposture, and in the mind of the people confounded with their counterfeits.
Wherever, then, in the Middle Ages, scientific pursuits, especially of the kinds referred to, sought to assert themselves by the side of the scholastic philosophy and theology which were the ordinary mental pabulum of students, there the popular suspicion of magic found an opportunity for introducing itself. One out of many instances of this familiar phenomenon is that of the group or school of enquirers to which belonged Roger Bacon, the hero of the legend on which one of our plays is founded. In the pages of a narrative of English history unsurpassed as a vivid picture of such episodes in the progress of our national civilization, may be read a summary of Bacon’s attempt to give a freer and wider range of culture to the University of Oxford where he resided, and of its failure. The suspicion of magical practices was not indeed the main cause of his persecution, but appears to have contributed to it; and we have his own complaint that to speak to the people of astronomy, was to cause oneself to be immediately clamoured against as a magician, and that not only laymen, but most clerks regarded as wonderful things for which philosophy had a simple explanation. With Roger Bacon the studies he had pursued passed away from his University, and his own name, as will be seen, was long enveloped in the haze of a popular myth.”
Marlowe, Tragical history of Doctor Faustus. Greene, Honourable history of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Edited by Adolphus William Ward. Clarendon Press series. Edition 2. Clarendon Press, 1887.
Download the PDF at http://ia700402.us.archive.org/18/items/oldenglishdramas00warduoft/oldenglishdramas00warduoft.pdf
…Or see it at Google Books:
Why religions with an astrological element were intrinsically doomed – relentless mechanism:
“We have here an indication why religions, into which the astral element entered largely, were intrinsically doomed. The divine stars that ruled life were themselves subject to absolute law. Hence relentless Fatalism or final Scepticism for those sufficiently educated to see the logical results of their mechanical interpretation of the universe; hence the discrediting of myth, the abandonment of cult, as mendacious and useless; hence the silencing of oracle, ecstasy, and prayer; but, for the vulgar, a riot of superstition, the door new opened to magic which should coerce the stars, the cult of hell, and honour for its ministers — things all descending into the Satanism and witchcraft of not un-recent days. Even the supreme and solar cult reached not Monotheism, but a splendid Pantheism. A sublime philosophy, a gorgeous ritual, the support of the earthly Monocracy which mirrored that of heaven, a liturgy of incomparable solemnity and passionate mysticism, a symbolism so pure and high as to cause endless confusion in the troubled mind of the dying Roman Empire between Sun-worship and the adorers of the Sun of Righteousness — all this failed to counteract the aboriginal lie which left God still linked essentially to creation…. We do not hint that these elements which have been assigned as the origin of an upward revolution have always, or only, been a cause of degeneration: it is important to note, however, that they have been at times a germ of death as truly as of life.”
Pasted from <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11388a.htm> From The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, also known as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913.See the Wikipedia entry for <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia>
“Apathetic Fatalism.” Determinism is socially destructive. Selections from The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia on Astrology:
“From the start the Christian Church strongly opposed the false teachings of astrology. The Fathers energetically demanded the expulsion of the Chaldeans who did so much harm to the State and the citizens by employing a fantastic mysticism to play upon the ineradicable impulses of the common people, keeping their heathen conceptions alive and fostering a soul-perplexing cult which, with its fatalistic tendencies created difficulties in the discernment of right and wrong and weakened the moral foundations of all human conduct. There was no room in the early Christian Church for followers of this pseudo-science. The noted mathematician Aguila Ponticus was expelled from the Christian communion about the year 120, on account of his astrological heresies. The early Christians of Rome, therefore, regarded the astrological as their bitterest and, unfortunately, their too powerful enemies; and the astrologers probably did their part in stirring up the cruel persecutions of the Christians. As Christianity spread, the astrologers lost their influence and reputation, and gradually sank to the position of mere quacks. The conversion of Constantine the Great put an end to the importance of this so-called science, which for five hundred years had ruled the public life of Rome. In 321 Constantine issued an edict threatening all Chaldeans, Magi, and their followers with death. Astrology now disappeared for centuries from the Christian parts of Western Europe.”…“This deterioration of astrology is not surprising if we bear in mind the strong tendency of all Semitic races to fatalism and their blind belief in an inevitable destiny, a belief which entails spiritual demoralization.”…“The influence of the Copernican theory, the war of enlightened minds against pseudo-prophetic wisdom and the increasing perception of the moral and psychical damage wrought by astrological humbug at last brought about a decline in the fortunes of astrology”…“The rapid growth of experimental investigation in the natural sciences in those countries which had been almost ruined, socially and politically; by the Thirty Years War completely banished the astrological parasites from society. Once more astrology fell to the level of a vulgar superstition, cutting a sorry figure among the classes that still had faith in the occult arts. The peasant held fast to his belief in natural astrologist and to this belief the progress of the art of printing and the spread of popular education contributed largely. For not only were there disseminated among the rural poor “farmer’s almanacs”, which contained information substantiated by the peasant’s own experience, but the printing-presses also supplied the peasant with a great mass of cheap and easily understood books containing much fantastic astrological nonsense.”…“The remarkable physical discoveries of recent decades, in combination with the growing desire for an elevated philosophico-religious conception of the world and the intensified sensitiveness of the modern cultured man — all these together have caused astrology to emerge from its hiding place among paltry superstitions. The growth of occultistic ideas, which should, perhaps, not be entirely rejected, is reintroducing astrology into society. This is especially true of judicial astrology, which, however, by its constant encouragement of fatalistic views unsettles the belief in a Divine Providence.“…“Co-incident with the spread of old astrology in old Israel and the decline of the nation was the diffusion of demonology. The Jewish prayers to the planets, in the form in which they are preserved with others in Codex Paris, 2419 (folio 277r), came into existence at the time when Hellenism first flourished in the East, namely, the third and second centuries B.C. In these prayers special angels and demons are assigned to the different planets; the greatest and most powerful planet Saturn having only one angel, Ktetoel, and one demon, Beelzebub. These planetary demons regulated the destiny of men.”…“The lower the Jewish nation sank in the scale of religion and civilization the greater was the power gained by the erratic doctrines of astrology and the accompanying belief in demonology. The earthly labours of the Saviour purified this noxious atmosphere. The New Testament is the opponent of astrology, which, by encouraging an apathetic fatalism, prevents the development of and elevating and strengthening trust in a Divine Providence. “
Pasted from <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02018e.htm> From The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913.Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia>
The day the sun stood still. From the Bible. Joshua 10:
Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel:
“Sun, stand still over Gibeon;
And Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
So the sun stood still,
And the moon stopped,
Till the people had revenge
Upon their enemies.Is this not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.
Pasted from <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua+10&version=NKJV>
(Until about Faust’s time, the Church had held Europe in intellectual thrall for a thousand years. Inquiry was hobbled by the position of the Church that everything in the Bible was God-inspired and accurate; by a deep respect for ancient knowledge; and by a disregard for nature. While in some minds the literary Faust was a sinful man, in others he represents an individual – even a civilization – breaking free. That the sun doesn’t go around the Earth, suggests that suspiciously God knew no more than the people of the time – He added nothing to knowledge despite his perspective – but to argue that the Bible was wrong, or simply written by men was to imply that religion was nonsense and priests were superfluous.
Some people, while remaining Christian in their orientation, determined to ignore anything any human said about God and to concentrate on their own personal relationship and understanding of Him. While deism was scandalous to good Christians, many of the founding fathers of the USA were deists. Consequently, many think of the USA as a Christian society without noticing the explicit signs of Christianity are missing.)