Madam, - Your correspondent Leo Clear has written two important letters (September 22nd and 26th) demonstrating the fallacious assumption of an antagonism between the medieval church and science. Indeed, we need to revise some basic assumptions about the learning of the periods we are still apt to call the "Middle Ages" and the "Renaissance". There is indeed a continuity between the two.
C.S. Lewis went to Cambridge in 1937 to tell his English contemporaries there that the Renaissance "did not occur". If there is a true renaissance of learning in Europe it is in the 12th century (when the works of Aristotle were recovered), not the 16th. Anyone who tries to understand the poetry of Dante and Chaucer must wrestle with the mathematical learning that underlies their poetic allusions to astronomy and astrology. The mathematics that went into the building of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral (so I am led to believe) is still imperfectly understood.
As in the world of banking, so in that of scholarship: a little learning is a dangerous thing. - Yours, etc,
GERALD MORGAN,
School of English,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.
Madam, - I would like to clarify for Leo Clear (September 26th) that the point I was trying to make (September 23rd) was that the trial and punishment of Galileo, for heresy, was neither "imaginary", nor was it "about the only example of Church antagonism to science".
I do not disagree with many of Mr Clear's points relating to the "Christian" contribution to science, nor do I deny the Church's patronage of Galileo at points in his career.
I do agree too that professional ostracism and life-time house arrest was probably "mercifully mild" compared with the rack or being burned at the stake, but it was still an unjustified punishment for legitimately held beliefs. - Yours, etc,
MARTIN J. KINSELLA,
Luxembourg.