is proved a serious
drawback to ecclesiastical efficiency. In Pope John's time the
necessity for providing revenues became acute. Besides, he wished to
make the new Papal City as worthy of the Holy See as the old one had
been. To him is largely due the development of Avignon, which {140}
occurred during the fourteenth century. The abuses which his
regulations in this matter led to did not culminate in his time, but
came later. The revenues obtained by him were, as we shall see, used
to excellent purpose, and were applied to such educational and
missionary uses as would eminently meet the approval of the most
demanding of critics in modern times.

John was a liberal and discriminating patron of learning and of
education in his time. He helped colleges in various parts of the
world, established a college in the East, and sent out many
missionaries at his own expense. These missionaries proved as
efficient as modern travelers in adding to the knowledge of the East
at that time, and practically laid the foundations of the science of
geography. [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: Those who are interested in the wonderful things
accomplished for geography by these missionary travelers of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, will find a brief account of them
in the chapter on Geography and Exploration in my book on The
Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries.]

What is of special interest to us here, however, in this volume, is
the fact that Pope John gave all the weight of the Papal authority,
the most important influence of the time in Europe, to the
encouragement of medical schools, the maintenance of a high standard
in them, and the development of scientific medicine. At this time
medicine included many of the physical sciences as we know them at the
present time. Botany, mineralogy, climatology, even astrology, as
astronomy was then called, were the subjects of study by physicians,
the last named because of the supposed influence of the stars on the
human constitution. Because of his encouragement of medical schools
and his emphatic insistence on their maintaining high standards, Pope
John must be commended as a patron of science and as {141} probably
having exerted the most beneficial influence in his time on education.

This is of course very different from what is usually said of this
Pope, Prof. White can scarcely find words harsh enough to apply to
him, because of his supposed superstition and the influence which he
had