Their citation in support of the thesis
of Church opposition to science, theoretic or applied, is entirely
without justification.

Exactly this same thing is true with regard to the other documents
that are referred to as having a parallel and confirmatory
significance of Church opposition to medical science, or medical or
surgical practice, or medical teaching. It requires no lengthy
explanation to see that the decrees referred to are simply
ecclesiastical disciplinary regulations, aimed at putting an end to
certain abuses that had arisen in religious matters, and well
calculated to prevent their further occurrence. The Church authorities
recognized as will anyone who understands the circumstances that men
who had devoted their lives in religious orders exclusively to the
work of religion, should not be permitted to neglect their religious
vocations because of devotion to some secular profession. They were
forbidden to practice and to study medicine, but the practice of law
was forbidden to them quite as well and for the same reason. There was
no question of limiting the number of persons who might take up
medical study, but all those who had bound themselves for life to
religious duties must not withdraw from these to take up secular
occupations. The case against the Church as opposed to science, and
above all medicine and surgery, must indeed be weak {425} when it has
to be bolstered up by recondite references to documents such as these,
the purport of which is so clear and the good sense of which is as
evident now as it was when they were issued.

Everyone recognizes that absorbing professional occupations such as
the practice of medicine or of law keeps men from devoting themselves
to the intellectual or the spiritual life. The opposite is also felt
to be the case and there is still a profound distrust of the lawyer or
the physician who devotes himself to literature or to any intellectual
avocation, for the feeling is that he cannot be practically successful
at his profession. This feeling is often a mere prejudice and great
lawyers and great physicians have often been litterateurs of
distinction, but as a rule there is incompatibility between the two
modes of occupation. In the medieval period it was felt that there was
the same incompatibility between proper devotion to the spiritual life
and the professions, and as members of religious orders had given up
worldly affairs and interests in order to devote themse