s entirely contrary to the
ordinary impression in the matter; but this is the plain truth, while
the contrary opinions are founded on the false assumption of Church
opposition to science.

{340}

THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY MAN AND SCIENCE.

Even after the series of demonstrations which we have given that the
great thinkers and teachers at the medieval universities were deeply
interested in the problems of what we now call natural or physical
science, most people will still not be open to conviction that
interest in nature was quite as lively in the Middle Ages as at any
subsequent period, even our own. In spite of the fact that the
scholastics faced scientific questions in nearly the same mood as we
do ourselves, and, curiously enough, anticipated very closely many of
the doctrines now current in science, not a few of those who are most
interested in the history of education will continue to think that
science occupied the minds of the students at the medieval
universities very little, and that while the great thinkers may have
known something about it, the rank and file of the university men of
the time gave scarcely any thought to it. Besides, they will be almost
sure to conclude that, whatever they did think was likely to be inept,
and in most cases quite ridiculous. Such thoughts are a part of that
unfortunate educational tradition which stamps the Middle Ages as
neglectful of nature study, as we would call it now, and as lacking in
interest in natural phenomena. Nothing could well be less true, and it
will require, I think, but the simple tracing of the life and
erudition of a single well-known student of these medieval
universities, to show how utterly absurd and unfounded is the popular
belief.

{341}

I have chosen Dante for this purpose, mainly because so much more is
known about the personal details of his life than of anyone else, and
we are able to glean from his writings and the contemporary comments
on them, a good idea of what the general information on scientific
subjects of the educated man of his period was. The fact that Dante
was a member of the Guild of the Apothecaries in Florence, an
association that included also the physicians of the city, has added
an adventitious interest to his attractions as one of the few greatest
of poets of all time, and has made details of his career and evidence
of the breadth of his education and culture of special import, so that
I have frequently taken occas