--hence the curious picture of him in a Roman Catholic Bishop's
robes in the collection of pictures of professors of anatomy at the
University of Copenhagen. Not long after, at his own request, he was
sent up to the Northern part of Germany in order to try to bring back
to the Church as many of the Germans as might be won by his gentleness
of disposition, his saintly character, his wonderful scientific
knowledge, and his winning ways. He is the Father of Modern Geology as
well as a great anatomist, and his little book on geology was
published after he became a priest, yet did not hamper in any way his
ecclesiastical preferment nor alienate him from his friends in the
hierarchy. He was honored especially by the Popes. In a word, his
career is the best possible disproof of any Papal or ecclesiastical
opposition to science in his time.]

We have mentioned that it was while he was pursuing his special
investigations in various Italian universities that Stensen was
honored with the invitation to become professor of anatomy at the
University of Copenhagen. This was not a chance event, but a type of
the point of view in university education at the time. Just as at the
present time the prestige of research in a German university counts
for much as a recommendation for professorships in our American
universities, so in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was it
with regard to study in Italy. It was felt that men who had spent {98}
several years there could be reasonably expected to know all that
there was to be known in the rising sciences of anatomy and
physiology; at the same time there was a very general impression,
quite justified by the results observed, that those who did their
post-graduate work in Italy were nearly always sure to make
discoveries that would add to the prestige of their universities
later, and that would be a stimulus to students and to the other
teachers around them such as could be provided in no other way. If
read in the proper spirit, the history of the universities of those
times is quite like our own, only for influence, the name of Italy
must always be substituted for that of Germany. Yet Italy, if we were
to believe some of the writers on the history of education and
science, was at this time laboring under the incubus of ecclesiastical
intolerance with regard to anatomy and an almost complete suppression
of opportunities for dissection. Those who write thus know nothing at
all of the actual