"Because the authority of my superiors commands": Censorship, physics and the German Jesuits

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 1, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 319-354

  Hellyer, Marcus ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34548617878     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157338296X00060     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible (Notre Dame, 1991), 150. This is an excellent book, but this particular claim seems over-stated.
2. For most of the period under discussion here the Society of Jesus was divided into five assistancies which were in turn divided into provinces. My research focuses on the German assistancy, in particular on the provinces of the Upper Rhine (Rheni Superioris) and Upper Germany (Germaniae Superioris), which combined covered the southern half of modern day Germany and Switzerland, but also draws on material from the provinces of the Lower Rhine (Rheni Inferioris), Austria (Austriae) and Bohemia (Bohemiae). This paper uses the following abbreviations: Const. (Constitutiones Societatis Iesu), MPSI (Monumenta Pedagogica Societatis Iesu, Rome, 1965-1992), ARSI (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu), APUG (Archives of the Pontifical University Gregoriana, Rome), BHSA (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich), BSB (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich), StAMz (Stadtarchiv Mainz), StBMz (Stadtbibliothek Mainz), and BSAWü (Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Würzburg). Biographical information is taken primarily from Augustin De Backer SJ and Carlos Sommervogel SJ, Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus (Paris: 1890), hereafter "Sommervogel".
3. The point was made quite clearly by the Order's third Congregation General in 1573: "47. R.P.N. Praepositus Generalis commendatum magnopere habeat, ut Praeceptores nostri qui interpretantur Aristotelem, non nisi cum magno delectu interpretes eos legant, qui contra Christiana dogmata impiè scripserunt, & maximè ad ea impugnanda quae Christiana veritati adversentur: & ità Philosophiam inter-pretentur, ut verae Theologiae Scholasticae, quam nobis commendant Constitutiones, ancillari & subservire faciant." Institutum Societatis Iesu, 3 vols. (Florence, 1893). For the 1599 Ratio Studiorum on this issue see MPSI, V: 397.
4. The injunctions are in Const. IV, c. 14. §. 2 & 3. On the development of the concept of uniformity in Ignatian and early Jesuit thought see Ugo Baldini, "Una fonte poco utilizzata per la storia intellettuale: le 'censurae librorum' et 'opinionum' nell'antica Compagnia di Gesù," Annali dell'hlituto storico Italo-germanico in Trento 9 (1985), 16-67, in particular 21-29.
5. The development of the Jesuit teaching enterprise and the rules that governed it has generated a vast and still-expanding literature which cannot be mentioned here in any comprehensive way. The best work on the roots of Jesuit pedagogy is Gabriel Codina Mir, SJ, Aux Source de la Pèdagogie des Jèsuites: Le "Modus Parisiensis" (Rome, 1968).
6. On the Ratio Studiorum see Allan P. Farrell, SJ, The Jesuit Code of Liberal Education. Development and Scope of the Ratio Studiorum (Milwaukee, 1938). The documents including the three versions of the Ratio Studiorum collected in the seven volumes of the Monummta Pedagogica Societatis Iesu are indispensible for any work on the first sixty years of Jesuit education.
7. The pioneer in the field of Renaissance Aristotetianism was Charles B. Schmitt whose work has inspired renewed interest on the topic. See, for example, his "Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism," History of Science 11 (1973), 159-93
8. Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.,1983).
9. "Decretum R.P.N. Generalis Praepositi Francisci Borgiae in mense Novembri 1565," MPSI III: 382-385.
10. "Quae doctores collegii Romani responderunt circa rationem docendi theologiam ad vitandas novas opiniones et quaestiones," MPSI VI: 1-6.
11. The specific opinions on Borgia's list were officially abandoned by General Acquaviva. Borgia's 1565 list was drafted at a time when the relatively young Order was attempting to establish its own philosophy in opposition to the strongly Averroistic Aristotelianism of Italian universities and of Padua in particular. By 1582, however, a Jesuit philosophy based on a "purer" Aristotle was both intellectually and institutionally more secure and therefore less threatened by Averroism. On this subject see Charles Lohr, SJ, "Jesuit Aristotelianism and Sixteenth-Century Metaphysics," in Paradosis: Studies in Memory of Edwin A. Quain. eds. H.G. Fletcher III and MB. Scholtel (New York, 1976).
12. MPSI VI: 44.
13. A report on the use of textbooks in the Austrian province reveals particularly clearly the aversion professors had to following a single textbook, "Deliberatio de certo auctore philosophis explicando [1603]," MPSI VII: 518-520.
14. Caspar Knittel, professor of philosophy at the Jesuit college in Prague published a work which listed the differing views among the Jesuits on a wide range of philosophical issues, Aristoteles Curiosus et Utilis in quo centum praecipuae quaestiones peripateticae problematicè disputantur, ac utriusque Partis argumenta dissolvuntur... (Prague, 1682). In mathematics the matter appears somewhat different; Clavius' textbooks standardized mathematical instruction throughout the Order to a very high degree well into the seventeenth century.
15. This coverage of the rules governing censorship has been necessarily brief. For more detail see Baldini, "Una fonte" and on provincial censorship Theodor Heigel, "Zur Geschichte des Censurwesens in der Gesellschaft Jesu," Archiv fiter Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels 6 (1891), 162-167.
16. "Maxima una cura censores et superiores advigilent, ne quid sit, quo videri possint vel levissime Regum aut Principum consilia, factave reprehendi, aut aliquo modo notari, quae presentem Reipub. statum attingunt." BHSA Jesuitica 38: 8v. This volume is a manuscipt collection of various rulings on matters dealing with censorship.
17. "... moreover the provincial should watch diligently and ensure that opinions which are taught in philosophy are subordinate to theology, and our philosophers follow one Aristotle, wherever his doctrine does not dissent from the Catholic truth," from "Ordinatio R.P. Gen. Claudii Aquavivae de soliditate atqne uniformitate doctrinae a nostris servandae (1611)," in G.M. Pachtler, Ratio Studiorum et Institutiones Scholasticae Societatis Jesu per Germaniam olim vigentes collectae concinnatae dilucidatae. 3 vols. (Berlin, 1887-1894), III: 15-20.
18. The 1613 decree is "Claudius Aquaviva Generalis de opinionum delectu (1613)," in Pachtler, Ratio, III: 21-40.
19. The provincial of the Upper Rhenish province took the 1611 decree to mean that Aristotle had to be followed in all philosophical matters where his view was not contrary to the faith, Pachtler, Ratio, III: 20-21.
20. The burgeoning literature on the Jesuit role in the Galileo affair cannot be covered here; see Rivka Feldhay, Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (Cambridge, 1995) for the most recent treatment.
21. Pietro Redondi, Galileo: Heretic (Princeton: 1987) is particularly important for exploring Jesuit motivation in the whole affair.
22. The massive literature on this particularly fertile period of Jesuit science appears to be growing daily. The works of William Wallace and Ugo Baldini are particularly important. For a collection of very recent contributions see Luce Giard ed., Les Jèsuites a la Renaissance. Système èducatif et production du savoir (Paris, 1995).
23. Of significance for the German assistancy is Albert Krayer, Mathematik im Studienplan der Jesuiten: Die Vorlesungen von Otto Cattenius an der Universität Mainz (1610/11) (Stuttgart, 1991).
24. Claudio Costantini expresses this middle way nicely: "Con il Baliani [Orazio Grassi] volle farsi portavoce di gruppi di recercatori - quello romano dell [Niccolò] Zucchi e quello lionese del [Honorè] Fabri - che, continuando, in una situazione per molti aspetti diversa, una linea di cui il Grassi era stato un esponente, operavano contemporaneamente per una prudente apertura ai moderni indirizzi scientifici all'interno della Compagnia e per un'elastica difesa della tradizione all'esterno di essa." Baliani e i Gesuiti (Florence, 1969), 75.
25. A similar point is made by Edward Grant, "In Defense of the Earth's Centrality and Immobility: Scholastic Reaction to Copernicanism in the Seventeenth Century," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 74/4 (1984).
26. This open Aristotelianism also existed outside the Order; Charles Schmitt has written of, "serious attempts... made to retain a basically Aristotelian system into which new scientific discoveries could be fitted." A Critical Survey and Bibliography of Studies on Renaissance Aristotelianism (Padua, 1971), 132.
27. Consider for example the appeal of the mathematician Christoph Grienberger on the question of the constitution of the heavens: "... it seems to me that the time has now come for a greater degree of freedom of thought to be given to both mathematicians and philosophers on this matter, for the liquidity and corruptibility of the heavens are not absolutely contrary to theology or philosophy and even much less to mathematics..." Reprinted in Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible, 152.
28. The Revisors deal with these questions numerous times in ARSI FG 656 AI, 656 AII, 657, 659, 671. Attacks on nominalist views of body were made not only by the Revisors, but also in the classroom, for example the dissertation by Jakob Scholl et al., Physica disputatio de quantitale, loco, et tempore... (Würzburg, 1594).
29. An early and influential treatment of the implications of Cartesian body for absolute accidents and in turn for the physics of the Eucharist was made by the English Jesuit Thomas Compton Carleton in his philosophy textbook Philosophia Universa (Antwerp, 1649). Redondi's work in drawing attention to the significance of atomism and the physics of the Eucharist in Jesuit natural philosophy in his Galileo: Heretic is particularly important. It is now necessary, however, to examine how the issue continued to play out after the Galileo affair.
30. ARSI Congr 20e: 49.
31. For example ARSI Cong 20e: 98 & 99. To some degree the Revisors' generated an air of crisis at the Congregation, claiming Aristotle and Thomas had been laughed out of the Order (ARSI Congr. 20e: 49r-50r). The climate was not helped by Sforza Pallavicino who responded from the other end of the spectrum by refusing to follow the Revisors' recommendations on one of his manuscripts and counter-attacked with his
32. Vindicationes Societatis Jesu (Rome, 1649), calling for greater intellectual freedom in the Order. See Costantini. Baliani, 95-109.
33. The text of the Ordination is in Pachtler, Ratio, III: 77-97.
34. The final draft manuscript of the Ordination is in ARSI FG 657: 641-667. The Ordination was also printed in 1655.
35. Admittedly the situation was considerably different for mathematicians who could in a sense be considered professionals, spending several years or even their whole careers teaching and publishing on mathematics. On Jesuit mathematicians see Steven J. Harris, "Jesuit Ideology and Jesuit Science: Scientific Activity in the Society of Jesus, 1540-1773," (Ph. D. diss., University of Madison-Wisconsin, 1988)
36. "Les Chaires de Mathematique" in Giard, Les Jesuites. 239-261.
37. Sommervogel gives the tide as Demonstratio qua ratio, mensura, modus ac potentia accelerationis motus in naturali decensu gravium determinatur, advenus nuper excogitatam a Galilæo Galli æi Florentino Philosopha ac mathematico de eodem motu Pseudoscientiam. Ad Clarissimum virum Petrum Gassendum... (Paris, 1645).
38. The letters to Gassendi are in Gassendi's Opera Omnia, VI: 448-452 & III, 589.
39. Casrè also was involved in the late 1640s in a dispute over the proper definition of uniformly and continuously accelerated motion with Le Tenneur who defended Gassendi against Casrè. Like Fabri and other Jesuits, Casrè sought a middle path, using much of Galileo's mathematical account of motion whilst trying to provide an a physical causal explanation. See David Clough Lukens, "An Aristotelian Response to Galileo: Honorè Fabri, S.J. (1608-1688) on the Causal Analysis of Motion" (Ph.D. Diss, Toronto, 1979), 257-258.
40. Here Casrè was clearly using the term "experientia" in a sense more akin to that of modern meaning of "experiment," rather than in the peripatetic sense of repeated, every-day experience of natural phenomena (in fact, as was typical of the time, he used the terms "experimenta" and "experientia" interchangeably). This usage became increasingly common throughout the seventeenth-century in Jesuit mathematics and natural philosophy. Peter Dear's Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1995) is particularly important on this issue.
41. The first two propositions dealt with the ability of God to make as many worlds as he wanted and in any way he wanted. The critic claimed that Kircher asserted that the world could not be more perfect, which would limit God's omnipotent capability to make a better one. The third concerned the number and distinctness of primary qualities. According to the critic, Kircher claimed that light, brightness and heat were not only indistinct from each other, but were not even accidents but substances and body, namely fire (Kircher, Iter exstaticum, 488-489). Although the denial of accidents could be seen as leading to atomism and thus possibly as a danger to the orthodox view of transubstantiation, the critic does not make either of these connections. The author of the attack may well have been a Jesuit; several of the censors of Kircher's original manuscript had been very hostile towards it (Materials concerning the censorship of Kircher's Iter Exstaticum are preserved in ARSI FG 661: 29ff and FG 663: 134). The incident is dealt with by Carlos Ziller Camenietzki, "L'Harmonie du Monde au XVIIe Siècle. Essai sur la Pensèe Scientifique d'Athanasius Kircher," (Ph.D. Diss, Universitè de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1995), 173ff.
42. "... quis Scriptorum aut Doctorum nostrorum censeatur peccasse in dictas Ordinationes, non sufficere, quòd ex ejus dictis aliqua Propositio prohibita deduci videatur, etiam per consequentiam probabilem; sed vel debet illam docuisse in ipsis terminis, vel certè aliquid ita cum illa connexum, ut nulla ratione probabili declinari possit consequentia." Caspar Schott in Kircher, Iter exstaticum, 509.
43. "Ego arbitror, verba Auctoris Exstatici benignè interpretanda, & non ita rigidè censenda esse," and "Locutio Auctoris Exstatici est palàm tropica & translatitia, ex qua nihil rectè inferas. Cúm de ejus recta mente constet, quid refert verba in invidiam vocare?" "Apologeticon R.P. Melchior Cornaeus" in Kircher, Iter exstaticum, 509-512. Cornaeus concluded frankly that "this critique is too harsh and is advanced without sufficient basis. I fear that something other than a natural love of the truth impelled the mind of this severe censor into such a sinister judgement."
44. "Porro superdictas propositiones omnes, prout saepe declaravimus, nulla nos afficimus censura, sed solum prohibemus doceri in nostris Gymnasiis, ad majorem uniformitatem et soliditatem doctrinae inter nos et copiosiorem fructum in auditonbus faciendum;" and "[Superiors should take care] ne hujusmodi sententiae vel proponantur in thesibus, vel in disputationibus propugnentur, vel in scholis nostris doceantur." Pachtler, Ratio, 97.
45. As soon as Schott died the work was published again as Joco-Seriorum Naturae et Artis, sive Magiae Naturalis Cenluriae tres (Würzburg, 1666) and was followed by several further editions, indicating that the reading public did not share Oliva's view of the book. The letters from Oliva are in the ARSI, Rhen. Sup. 2: 540, 556, 563, 565. The incident is also treated by Bernhard Duhr, SJ, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge. Vol III (Munich, 1921), 591.
46. Peter Udri, SJ treated the issue as early as 1635 in Stellae vigiliis astronomicis elucubratae (Friburg, 1635).
47. "Nicolaus Copernicus Prutenus, incomparibili ingenio," Cornaeus, Curriculum Philosophiae Peripateticae, ut hoc tempore in scholis decurri solet... (Würzburg, 1657), II: 530ff.
48. On the use of the term "hypothesis" in Catholic astronomy in this period see John L. Russell, SJ, "Catholic Astronomers and the Copernican System after the Condemnation of Galileo," Annals of Science 46 (1989), 365-386, in particular 369-370.
49. Caspar Knittel, SJ, Theses curiosioresex universa Arislotelis Philosophia... (Prague 1682), Thesis 27.
50. "In revereritiam S. Congregationis Cardinalium, quae S. Scripturam de solis motu accipi in sensu literati debere edixit, nefas sit, Copernicanum Systema à Viro Catholico ùt Thesin defendi." Philipp Cordier, SJ, Theses ex universa physica... (Cologne, 1752), 80.
51. de Olivera Dinas, "Cosmology," 235-237, concludes that the Jesuit astonomer Riccioli was sincere in his adherence to an essentially Tychonic view and his rejection of heliocentrism. Eusebius Amort's obituary for the Ingolstatdt astronomer Nicasius Grammatici stated that the lack of stellar parallax was the decisive reason why Grammatici supported the Copernican system as only a hypothesis: "jedoch ware P. Nicasius hierdurch nit gesinnet, gedachte Hypothesim zu realisiren; indeme noch keine unwidertreibliche demonstration vorhanden / welche uns nöthigte / von dem sensu obvio Scripturae abzuweichen. Dann er bestättigte vilmehr selbest die Unbeweglichkeit der Erden mit seinen etlich Jahr auf mein Zureden gemachten Observationibus circa Nebulosam in Ursa majori, in Orione, und in Collo Cygni, allwo die nahe aneinander stossende Sternlein 3. 4. und 6. magnitud. das Jahr hindurch ihr Distanz nit verändern, folglich keinen Parallaxin auswerffen." "Von dem Leben und gelehrten Schrifften P. Nicasii Grammatici S.J." Parnassus Boicus 1 (1737), 46-53.
52. On Arriaga's career see Karl Eschweiler, "Roderigo de Arriaga S.J. - Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Barockscholastik," Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, 1/3 (1931), 253-285.
53. "Litterae Adm. R.P.N. Vincentii (Caraffae) ad R.P. Prov. (Rh. Sup.) Nithard Biberum. 3. Mart. 1649. Prohibetur sententia Zenonis de quantitate: Constare ex meris punctis." Pachtler, Ratio, III: 75.
54. "... nihilominus tarnen eas ego in hoc Auctario tradere non praesumpsissem, nisi Admodum R.P. Paulus Oliva Societatis nostrae dignissimus Vicarius Generalis, tum ob antiquam, quam dixi, in eis edendis meam bonam fidem, turn quia paucae illae & in hac Pragensi Universitate valde receptae, turn quia in materia pure Philosophica ad mysteria Fidei & morum nullatenus pertinentia, turn denique, quod mihi gloriosum est, ob singularem benevolentiam, qua me licet omnino indignum a multis iam annis prosequitur, eas recudendi faculatatem, humiliter a me rogatus, concessisset gratiosissme. Nolens tarnen per hunc favorem ulli alteri eas in scholis tradendi multo autem minus typis divulgandi, licentiam concedere." Rodrigo de Arriaga, Cursus Philosophicus (Leiden, 1669), "Prologus."
55. Joseph Pfriemb, SJ, Apologia qua mores RP. Andræ Gordon, O.S.F. contra philosophiam scholasticam... (Mainz, 1748).
56. "... qui tutâ conscientiâ â primariis principiis Scholasticorum, utpote ad cognoscenda fidei Catholicae mysteria aptissimis discedere minimè possunt." Pfriemb, Apologia, 12.
57. "... quas omnes sibi Scholastici ut suas aut vendicant, aut minime contemnandas putant." Pfriemb, Apologia, 13.
58. Melchior Cornaeus, SJ, Curriculum, II: 100-101.
59. For more on this text see Paul Richard Blum, "Sentiendum cum paucis, loquendum cum multis: Die aristotelische Schulphilosophie und die Versuchungen der Naturwissenschaften bei Melchior Cornaeus SJ," in Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Bd. II. Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben, ed. Jürgen Wiesner (Berlin, 1987).
60. "Ergo datur in ligno levitas positiva, quae est principium motus sursum." Cornaeus, Curriculum, II: 110.
61. "... video equidem quid ab adversa parte ad haec argumenta responden posset, sed pluris mihi sit obedientia quam ingenii curiosi victima." Cornaeus, Curriculum, II: 110.
62. Melchior Cornaeus, Ens rationis Luthero-Calvinicum ab Aristotele redivivo explicatum (Würzburg, 1659).
63. General Tamburini's list appeared on 15June 1706, General Retz's on 8 November 1732. They both specifically dealt with Cartesian and Leibnizian propositions. Pachtler, Ratio, III: 122ff & 125ff.
64. StBMz HS II 387:13. The text of the proposition is "19. Mixta etiam corpora, excepto homine, non habent propriam formam substantialem, sed pro varia atomorum mixtura et dispositione exhibent illas species, quas videmus, auri, marmoris, etc." Pachder, Ratio, III: 91.
65. Joseph Falck, Mundus aspectabilis philosophice consideratus (Augsburg, 1737)
66. This was claimed in Falck's necrology in the Bavarian learned journal, Parnassus Boicus 1 (1737), 74-75.
67. On this tension at the Collegio Romano in the sixteenth century see A.C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," in PRISMATA - Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien. Festschrift für Willy Hartner. eds. Y. Maeyama and W.G. Saltzer (Wiesbaden, 1977); on the early seventeenth century in Germany see Albert Krayer, Mathematik. My forthcoming dissertation, "The Last of the Aristotelians: The Transformation of Jesuit Physics in Germany, 1630-1773," discusses the integration of mathematics and physics in the Jesuit curriculum over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
68. "Notis autem PP. Revisorum Romanorum in hunc librum integrè mihi videtur satisfactum correctis, mutatis, et omissis, quae ipsi et qua ratione emendanda censuerant. Sententias itidem substantiales Aristotelici systematis in hac nostra Provincia tradi solitas bene propugnat Author, oppositisque Atomistarum opinionibus dicit et facit probabiliores. Ita censeo." BHSA Jesuitica 785: 24-25. Note the appeal to the local, always an element in Jesuit practice, but one that grew stronger throughout the eighteenth century. Falck had written a very positive report on one of Grammatici's works in 1720 (BHSA Jesuilica 784: folios unnumbered) and the two carried out a long-standing correspondence (BSB Gm 1609).
69. One of them, Ludwig Simonstin, felt that because of this the work should not be published at all. BHSA Jesuitica 785: 3ff. & 9.
70. "Omnis ambiguitas erit sublata, et magís recedetur à prohibitione prohibita: Gravitas et levitas non differunt specie, sed tantùm secundum maps et minus, si addatur saltern possibilem esse levitatem absolutam, vel etsi in sublunaribus non detur, tarnen alibi forsan dari. Caeterum fateor, neque mihi circa propositiones in scholis nostris prohibitas ubique occurrere rationem intrinsecam prohibitionis, atque etiam sensum in pluribus esse ambiguam, in quo illae sint prohibitae: interim tarnen tutius est, ab ijs etiam quoad modum loquendi recedere." BHSA Jesuitica 785: 15v-16r.
71. Joseph Falck, Liquidorum Gravitas el Æquilibrium (Freiburg i. Br., 1713).
72. Falck, Mundus, 19.
73. Falck, Mundus, 182 & 213.
74. Georg Vaeth, SJ, Concordia veritatis ontobgicae de accidentibus cum veritate theo-logica de speckbus Eucharistitis brevi dissertation; stabilita (Würzburg: 1772).