e of religion, now brought out a missile
which it hurled against scientific investigators with deadly effect. The
mediaeval battlefields of thought were strewn with various forms of it.
This missile was the charge of unlawful compact with Satan, and it was
most effective. We find it used against every great investigator of
nature in those times and for ages after. The list of great men in
those centuries charged with magic, as given by Naude, is astounding; it
includes every man of real mark, and in the midst of them stands one of
the most thoughtful popes, Sylvester II (Gerbert), and the foremost of
mediaeval thinkers on natural science, Albert the Great. It came to be
the accepted idea that, as soon as a man conceived a wish to study the
works of God, his first step must be a league with the devil.

It was entirely natural, then, that in 1163 Pope Alexander III, in
connection with the Council of Tours, forbade the study of physics to
all ecclesiastics, which, of course, in that age meant prohibition of
all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to make them.
What the Pope then expressly forbade was, in the words of the papal
bull, "the study of physics or the laws of the world," and it was
added that any person violating this rule "shall be avoided by all and
excommunicated."(274)

(274) For the charge of magic against scholars and others, see Naude,
Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupconnes de Magie, passim; also Maury,
Hist. de la Magie, troisieme edition, pp. 214, 215; also Cuvier, Hist.
des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 396. For the prohibition by the
Council of Tours and Alexander III, see the Acta Conciliorum (ed.
Harduin), tom. vi, pars ii, p. 1598, Canon viii.

The first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into theologic
pitfalls, persevered in a truly scientific path, was Roger Bacon. His
life and works seem until recently to have been generally misunderstood:
he was formerly ranked as a superstitious alchemist who happened upon
some inventions, but more recent investigation has shown him to be one
of the great masters in the evolution of human thought. The advance of
sound historical judgment seems likely to bring the fame of the two who
bear the name of Bacon nearly to equality. Bacon of the chancellorship
and of the Novum Organum may not wane, but Bacon of the prison cell and
the Opus Majus steadily approaches him in brightness.

More than three centuries before Francis