ALENTEJO (PORTUGAL) AND THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE IN FORTIFICATION IN THE MODERN PERIOD: THE CIRCULATION OF MASTERS AND IDEAS

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alayo

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The Circulation of

Science and Technology

Proceedings of the

4th International Conference of the European Society for

the History of Science

BARCELONA, 18-20 November 2010

Hosted by

Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica

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Cover Image: View of Barcelona by 1535. By courtesy, Museu d‘Història de Barcelona (MUHBA)

Edited by Antoni Roca-Rosell

Published by Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) Layout by Miquel Terreu i Gascon

ISBN: 978-84-9965-108-8 DL: B-16442-2012

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FOREWORD BY A. ROCA-ROSELL

It gives me great pleasure to present the proceedings of the 4^th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), which was held in Barcelona between 18 and 20 November 2010. The ESHS, founded in 2003 in Paris, has become one of the most important reference points for our subject not only in Europe but also in the world¹. The large number of papers presented for the Barcelona Conference, and the wide range of subjects bear witness to this fact.

The Barcelona Conference was organized jointly with the Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology (Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, SCHCT), a society affiliated to the Institute for Catalan Studies (Institut d‘Estudis Catalans, IEC). More than a century after its creation, the IEC has become the main academic institution for higher culture and research in the Catalan speaking regions. The SCHCT was founded in 1991 and its function is to promote history of science and technology through publications, regular sessions and general meetings. The 4^th Conference coincided with the XI Trobada of the SCHCT. On the 21^st November, additional sessions took place, including a plenary lecture and the annual general assembly.

The aim of the Barcelona Conference was to facilitate the presentation of a variety of research topics and perspectives. Our logo represents: a) the medieval shipyards of the city (Drassanes), b) the Industrial School of Barcelona, c) the Hospital of la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, d) the Fabra Observatory, and e) the chimneys of the industrialized city. All this sums up the history of Barcelona, with its roots in medieval times, and its strong tradition of scientific, technical and medical activities.

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all the persons and institutions for making this meeting possible. We obtained support from several universities (UPC, UAB), but very special thanks are due to the University of Barcelona (UB) for allowing us to use many of its facilities. The Institut d‘Estudis Catalans (Secciñ de Ciències i Tecnologia, Secciñ de Ciències Biològiques) provided us with funds and many services. The following institutions made their lecture halls available to us: the Biblioteca de Catalunya, the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona, the Reial Acadèmia de Farmàcia de Catalunya, the Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de Catalunya, and the Residència d‘Investigadors-Consell Superior d‘Investigacions Cientìfiques. We obtained funds from the Generalitat de Catalunya and from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. We should also like to acknowledge Gas Natural Fenosa for its generous help. Some editorial companies sent their publications for exhibition during the Conference: Taylor & Francis, the Royal Society Publishing, and Birkhaüser-Springer Basel. A stand of the official journal of the ESHS, Centaurus, was also present.

However, we owe a special debt of gratitude to all the delegates without whose participation the Conference could not have taken place. There was an excellent response through papers and we are indebted to the many researchers and research groups that had chosen this conference to develop their activities. This justifies the existence of our societies, whose objective is to promote history of science, technology, and medicine.

The 4th Conference was devoted to the circulation of science and technology. Circulation is one of the most distinctive features of human activity, and continues to be a challenge for humanity. The study and analysis of the circulation of science and technology would result in a better understanding of the role of science and technology in our society. I should like to mention especially the papers presented as plenary lectures by Julio Samsó (Universitat de Barcelona),

1 The previous conferences of the ESHS, which took place in Maastricht (2004), Krakow (2006), and Vienna (2008), offered excellent opportunities for the development of our discipline.

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Efthymios Nicolaidis (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece), and Sona Strbanova (Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic). The excellent quality of their papers contributed to the success of the Conference.

As general coordinator of the Barcelona Conference, I should like to thank the programme committee for evaluating the proposals of sessions and of papers, and the local committee for taking care of the preparation and the development of the Conference. The present volume of Proceedings does not record exhaustively the development of the Barcelona Conference. Some participants informed us that their papers had already been selected for books or special issues of international journals. This may be verified by comparing the list of papers that appear in the general programme with recent publications in our field. In conclusion, it is a source of great satisfaction to have contributed in some way to the dynamic life of history of science, technology, and medicine.

Antoni Roca-Rosell Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

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COMMITTEES

International Programme Committee

Helge KRAGH (University of Aarhus, Denmark)

Jon ARRIZABALAGA (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Barcelona, Spain) Josep L. BARONA (Universitat de València, Spain)

Josep BERNABEU (Universitat d‘Alacant, Spain)

José Ramon BERTOMEU (Universitat de València, Spain) Olivier BRUNEAU (Université de Nantes, France) Àngel CALVO (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Josep M. CAMARASA (Institut d‘Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Spain) Horacio CAPEL (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Jesús CATALÁ GORGUES (CArdenal Herrera CEU, València, Spain) Suzanne DÉBARBAT (Observatoire de Paris, France)

Robert FOX (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the United Kingdom) Leonardo GARIBOLDI (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy)

Miguel Ángel GRANADA (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) Pere GRAPÍ VILUMARA (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) Hermann HUNGER (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wien)

Danielle JACQUART (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France) Eberhard KNOBLOCH (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany) Michal KOKOWSKI (Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraców) Ladislav KVASZ (Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia) Néstor HERRAN (Université de Strasbourg, France)

Henrique LEITÃO (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Guillermo LUSA (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) Àlvar MARTÍNEZ-VIDAL (Universitat de València, Spain)

M. Rosa MASSA-ESTEVE (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) Jorge MOLERO (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

Annette MÜLBERGER (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

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Víctor NAVARRO BROTONS (Universitat de València, Spain) Luís NAVARRO VEGUILLAS (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) Erwin NEUENSCHWANDER (Universität Zürich, Switzerland) Agustí NIETO-GALAN (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

José PARDO TOMÁS (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Barcelona, Spain) Enric PERDIGUERO (Universidad Miguel Hernández, Elx, Spain)

Mercè PIQUERAS (Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, Barcelona, Spain) Raffaela PISANO (Université de Nantes, France)

Albert PRESAS-PUIG (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain / Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, Germany) Roser PUIG (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Carles PUIG-PLA (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) Mònica RIUS (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Antoni ROCA-ROSELL (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) Xavier ROQUÉ (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

Vicenç ROSSELLÓ (Universitat de València, Spain) Pedro RUIZ CASTELL (Universitat de València, Spain)

Emma SALLENT DEL COLOMBO (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) Jesús SÁNCHEZ MIÑANA (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain) Sona STRBANOVA (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Praha)

Eva VAMOS (Hungarian Museum for Science, Technology and Transport, Budapest) Simon WERRETT (University of Washington, United States)

Alfons ZARZOSO (Museu d‘Història de la Medicina, Terrassa, Spain)

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Local Organizing Committee

Antoni ROCA-ROSELL (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) Pere GRAPÍ VILUMARA (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

M. Rosa MASSA-ESTEVE (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) José PARDO TOMÁS (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Barcelona, Spain) Mercè PIQUERAS (Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, Barcelona, Spain) Roser PUIG (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Carles PUIG-PLA (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) Mònica RIUS (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Emma SALLENT DEL COLOMBO (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

Conference Secretariat

Miquel TERREU (Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, Barcelona, Spain) Eva GIL (Societat Catalana d‘Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, Barcelona, Spain)

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ROCA-ROSELL, A. (ed.).(2012) The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the

4th International Conference of the ESHS, Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010. Barcelona: SCHCT-IEC, p. 17.

E. NICOLAIDIS:

SCIENCE AND THE

EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH

DURING THE 17 ^TH -19 ^TH CENTURIES

Efthymios NICOLAIDIS

National Hellenic Research Foundation, GREECE efnicol@eie.gr;www.hpdst.gr

Preface

The following paper aims to give an overview of a ―marginal‖ subject in the historiography of science: the relations science-Orthodox church during the period when new scientific ideas developed in Europe.¹ Indeed, the great majority of works on the history of the relations between science and religion follow the history of Western Christianity. This just follows the prevailing historiography about the Christian world. In his preface at The Cambridge History of Christianity, the Archbishop of Canterbury describes this prevailing historiography as follows: ―the Church gradually builds up a centralized system of authority, filling the vacuum left by the fall of the Roman Empire; its ideological monopoly is challenged at the Reformation, and the map of the Christian world is reconfigured… Even in some good and sophisticated surveys of the world Christianity published in recent years, this remains the dominant picture. But Christianity is more various than this begins to suggest.‖²

The existing literature on science and religion contains virtually nothing that pertains to the vast part of Eastern Europe and Western Asia that constituted the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. Contrary to Western Europe, here there was no political and institutional void; on the contrary, we observe an astonishing continuity, damaged but not abolished in 1204, date of the conquest of Constantinople during the Crusades. This continuity also involved the perpetuation of an educational system put in place at the end of Antiquity that was associated with both secular and ecclesiastical power, the latter placed under the authority of the former. In the sciences, this translated into the perpetuation of a tradition of teaching ancient Greek science in the Greek language, sometimes as reviewed and modified by the Greek Fathers of the School of Alexandria, such as Saint Basil. Hence conflicts –when they existed− were not ―science versus Christianity‖, but rather ecclesiastical conflicts that traversed the whole society and consequently also concerned the sciences by always coming back to the question of the importance of secular knowledge and the possibility (or not) for humankind to conceive of Creation through science. For the medieval Oriental Empire, it was not a matter, as in the West, of rediscovering the Ancients, because they simply were always taught. During all this period, the Orthodox Church searched equilibrium between secular knowledge and revelation, hence between science and Christianity. The Hesychastic debate

1 This overview is based on the book: E. Nicolaidis (transl. by S. Emanuel) Science and Eastern Orthodoxy. From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 2011.

2 Williams, Roman, Archbishop of Canterbury, ―Foreword‖, Anglod, Michael, ed., The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 5, Eastern Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 p. XVI.

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(14^th c.) that initially expressed the hostility of monks and lower clergy toward the secularization of the high clergy and especially its distance from the ascetic tradition, is an example. Hesychasts believed than man, through prayer and ascetics could have a vision of God and thus true knowledge comes from this effort and not from secular knowledge. But this belief did not mean that they totally rejected science. The ideological father of this movement, Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), in one of his religious texts posed the problem of the location of the centers of the spheres of the two elements, earth and water, and based himself on the science of Aristotle and the geometry of Euclid to answer the problem. In effect, the Hesychastic leader did not deny the utility of the sciences; he was more distrustful of the place granted to them by Byzantine power, seeing it as one of the causes of the secularization of high clergy.

After the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed II the Conqueror who established the town as the capital of his vast Empire, the Byzantine tradition was kept by the Greek Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria and Jerusalem. The Patriarch of Constantinople became the leader of the Orthodox communities of the Ottoman Empire, assuming the role of the control of education, hence of the relations between science and the Church. Indeed, after its definite victory on the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire based its domination on the organization of millets, that is to say, a system for controlling non-Muslim populations that was in large part delegated to their religious leaders as appointed by the sultan. The first millet to be created was that of the Orthodox Christian Church, followed by the Armenian millet and the Jewish millet.

The millets had their own laws (for example, when a member of a millet committed a crime, the law applicable was that of the millet of the person harmed, but when a Muslim was involved, sharia trumped everything). They collected their own taxes in compensation for their loyalty to the empire, and they managed their own educational system, which largely freed Orthodox communities from Islamic influences.

Mehmed II, subtle politician that he was, sought to alienate the Greeks from the Westerners, in order to reduce the chance of a crusade by Christian countries against the Turks. For this purpose he supported the enemies of the union of Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Mehmed, learning that the anti-unionist leader Scholarios had been made prisoner during the sack of Constantinople, liberated him and placed him at the head of the prime millet of the Ottoman empire and after raising him rapidly through all the ecclesiastical grades (he was not in a monastic order), he appointed him Patriarch on 6 January 1454.

Scholarios, in the spirit of ―the Turks are better than the Latins‖, maintained good relations with the Sultan and inaugurated the Ottoman period of the Orthodox Church. Having control over the Orthodox Christian millet, he tried to purge it of nefarious influences, whether Latin or Ancient Greek. Thus the first Patriarch of the Ottoman period took a rather uncommon decision for the Eastern Church: to burn publicly a book as Hellenizing, idolatrous and satanic. This was the Book of Laws of a late Byzantine scholar and astronomer, Pletho, who made an attempt to return to a pre-Christian religion.

This aversion towards the Catholic West in a period of a vivid revival of sciences in this part of the world, and towards the Ancient Greek tradition which was synonymous to secular knowledge and science, lead to the fact that the sciences did not figure among the preoccupations of the Orthodox Church of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, for a century and a half after the Ottoman conquest, the patriarchate of Constantinople did not have a policy of teaching anything except what was useful for the renewal of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The only organized Orthodox school in the Ottoman Empire was the patriarchal school of Constantinople, refounded in 1454. With regard to curriculum, it had nothing in common with its predecessor in the days of Byzantium, when mathematics and astronomy were taught at the highest level. And until the start of the 17^th century, this was the sole organized school for the Orthodox population in the Ottoman Empire. The other schools for Orthodox pupils were to be found in Italy or in the Venetian possessions such as Crete.

The ―Orthodox humanism‖ and science

Thus, after the Ottoman conquest, the Orthodox Church followed a reactionary policy towards secular knowledge and in particular science. The Byzantine renaissance of the 15^th century which brought up the development of science ended abruptly. East Orthodox did not participate to the birth of the new European science of the 16^th and early 17^th centuries.

Nevertheless due to the flourishing Greek Orthodox communities of Italy, the Orthodox world came quickly into contact with new European scientific ideas. The problem of the spread of new science to the East Orthodox world has thus been set.

This problem did not oppose clergy to secular scholars but the debates traversed the whole body of the Orthodox Church. In fact, the scholars of the orthodox world who propagated this new science were in large part ecclesiastics, sometimes occupying high positions in the Church hierarchy. It will be the rise of nationalities at the end of the eighteenth century and the effort of modernization of the nineteenth that will first forge in the Orthodox world the image of a man of science who is not linked to the Church.

As mentioned above, the leader of the Christian Orthodox millet was the patriarch of Constantinople. Thus the power of the Church with respect to education and science increased, compared to what it had had in the Byzantine era, when it shared this domain with the Byzantine emperor. As was the case since antiquity, the scholarly language of Orthodoxy was Greek, and so education was dispensed in Orthodox schools in Greek. Thus concerning science specifically, the policy

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adopted by the Church involved all orthodox peoples (whether or not they were native Greek speakers) of the vast Ottoman Empire, which at its apogee extended over three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa.

A discussion on the validity of secular learning that expressed Italian humanist views had already taken place in the 16^th century, among Greeks who were in contact with Italian culture.³ But, as until the start of the 17^th century, only a tiny number of Christian Orthodox thinkers –not more than fifty during the 16^th century– were involved with the sciences this discussion remained marginal. The creation of a scientific community worthy of the name among Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire would be a long and slow process; it would not be fully achieved until the century of the Enlightenment. Yet such a community began to make its presence felt in the17^th century, with a movement that modern historians call ―religious (orthodox) humanism.‖

Cyril Lucaris, the leading humanist in the Orthodox world, was born in 1572 in Crete, then under Venetian domination. He had been educated by a tutor in Heraklion and continued his studies in Venice and then at the University of Padua. In 1593, he found himself in Alexandria where his uncle, Meletios Pegas, was patriarch. He went into religious orders and was sent to Poland in 1594-1596, and then again in 1601-1602 to fight against the influence of the Catholic Church, which was converting Orthodox believers to Catholicism. During his stay in Poland, Lucaris realized the importance of Jesuit colleges, and analogously he organized the Orthodox Academy of Vilnius. At the death of his uncle in 1601, he became patriarch of Alexandria. In 1612, Lucaris was named throne steward of the patriarchate of Constantinople, and in 1620 he was appointed by the sultan patriarch of Constantinople. In a rare display of cooperation, Catholics and conservative Orthodox believers united to convince Sultan Murat IV to remove him in 1623. Restored and removed by the sultan no less than four times, Lucaris was finally strangled, on the orders of the Grand Vizier in 1638.⁴

Lucaris brought a small revolution to Orthodoxy, supporting the Protestant spirit in the midst of the Thirty Year‘s War.

Lucaris was the prime source of Orthodox religious humanism, aiming to re-establish the teaching of letters and sciences, especially ancient Greek learning, among the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire. This was one of the reasons why his enemies accused him of preparing an insurrection of Greeks in the empire. With Lucaris‘s encouragement, his friend Theophilus Korydaleus (c. 1570-1646) applied the ideas of religious humanism to scientific teaching. Born in Athens, this scholar had followed the characteristic educational path of wealthy families of that era: primary education in his native town, then at the Greek College of Rome, and finally theology, philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua. There his professor of natural philosophy was Cesare Cremonini, the well-known Aristotelian adversary of Galileo.⁵

In 1622, in the reforming spirit in education (which in this context consisted of introducing into the curriculum something other than grammar and theology), Cyril Lucaris called upon Korydaleus to teach at the Patriarchal School of Constantinople, and a year later he became its director. Korydaleus introduced instruction in natural philosophy, geography, and astronomy. It was the first time since Byzantium that such education was dispensed at the very heart of the patriarchate of Constantinople. Obviously this innovation would not leave conservative circles of the Orthodox Church indifferent. The adversaries of his friend Lucaris accused Korydaleus of Calvinism, and his career experienced highs and lows, more or less following those of Lucaris‘s influence. In 1640, two years after Lucaris was assassinated, Korydaleus retired definitively to his native city Athens, to teach philosophy. His teaching of Aristotelian natural philosophy and logics would mark the whole Balkan Peninsula until the end of the 18^th century.

The most novel features of Korydaleus‘s thought, were that, contrary to Orthodox scholars of the 16^th century, philosophy served knowledge of both divine and profane things and that the happiness of man in his bodily consisted of studying. Not only did philosophy not depend on theology, but its methodology was valid for theological matters. This position inaugurated a new debate in the Orthodox world, which in certain circumstances would last until our own day.

This new ideology advocated by Korydaleus coincided with the birth of a scientific community in the Greek Orthodox world that might be called neo-Aristotelian. This nascent community was closely linked to the University of Padua, that favorite site of Greek university study. Some Greeks even made careers in Italy, as George Koressios ―Lettore della Lingua Greca nello studio di Pisa‖, who wrote a dissertation in Italian against Galileo‘s mechanics of liquids or Ioannis Kotounios, who studied at the Greek College of Rome and at the university of Padua, and succeeded Cremonini in 1632 in the chair of Aristotle. But the great majority of them would teach Orthodox Greeks and write their books in Greek in order to spread scientific ideas in the Orthodox world.

It is very important to note that Korydaleus revival of the sciences, although influenced by Western Europe, had nothing to do with the ―scientific revolution‖ that was simultaneously unfolding in Europe. Korydaleus, like all the Greek scholars influenced by religious humanism, sought ancient Greek science. He wanted to return to sources unrelated to the

3 Petsios, Kostas, Η πεξί θύζεσο ζπδήηεζε ζηε λενειιεληθή ζθέςε [The discussion on nature in Modern Greek thought], Jannina, 2003., p. 65.

4 On Cyril Lucaris, see Hering, Gunnar, Das ökumenische Patriarchat und europäische Politik 1620-1638, Wiesbaden:Franz Steiner 1968.

5 On Korydaleus see Tsourkas, Cléobule, Les débuts de l'enseignement philosophique et de la libre pensée dans les Balkans. La vie et l'œuvre de Théophile Corydalée (1570-1646), Bucarest, 1948; 2nd ed., Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1967.

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Christian belief in the ancestral wisdom offered to humans by God. Like the scholars of late Byzantium, religious humanists argued that Orthodox believers were the natural heirs of Ancient Greek learning. Korydaleus studied Aristotelianism in Padua with Cesare Cremonini. Nevertheless, given the sentiment that Greeks were the legitimate heirs of Aristotle, the neo- Aristotelianism propagated by Korydaleus in the orthodox world was not that of his Italian professor, but a ―direct line‖

Aristotelianism that drew on the tradition in the Greek language, starting with Alexander Aphrodisieus. In fact, Korydaleus was opposed to the theological interpretation of scholastic Aristotelians, insisting on the autonomy of philosophy from theology.

However, Korydaleus did have to respond to the questions that Christianity posed to Aristotelianism, essentially about the genesis of the world. For him the scholar‘s primary duty is to make a distinction between theology and philosophy, keeping the two intact and separate. This position is illustrated by the following short anonymous passage, written in 1669 at the latest: ―What is true for theology is also true for philosophy, and what is false for philosophy is also so for theology. For theology is based on the light of faith, and philosophy on the light of nature.‖⁶

Thus natural philosophy is independent of theology, and so Korydaleus can allow himself to teach the former without any reference to the latter. He presents reasons for the utility of this physical science, which are both practical (for example, applications to agriculture), and theoretical, when it comes to the nature of the universe or of light. In the latter case, utility consists of the acquisition of wisdom, which is pleasing to God.

Speaking of the world, of matter, of genesis and decay, without presenting the Christian theory of nature as it had been formulated by the hexaemerons of the Church Fathers, was something new in the Orthodox world of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, Korydaleus‘ written works were designed for education in the very orthodox Greek colleges. Korydaleus was not just anybody, he was close to the highest spheres of the Church during the reforming patriarchate of Lucaris, he had taught at the very heart of Orthodoxy, at the Patriarchal School. Given the stakes, the reaction in orthodox circles to Korydaleus‘ kind of teaching was rather moderate. And starting at the end of the 17^th century, Korydaleus would be accepted as a great scholar by the orthodox world; his name became a reference in the domain of the sciences.

This rapprochement was facilitated by the thesis of the ―double truth‖ (philosophical learning is independent of theology) he had advocated, even if his theologian contemporaries thought he expressed it in an extreme manner. Little by little, the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church came around to the idea of teaching ancient natural philosophy independently of the teaching of creation. This acceptance was prepared by the idea –increasingly widespread in the 17^th century– that the Orthodox were the heirs of Greek splendor and learning. This idea was a comfort to the Orthodox of the Ottoman Empire, who felt subjugated to the Muslim state and at the same time threatened by the specter of Uniates, Orthodox believers who had converted to Catholicism. Without political power, wedged between Islam and Catholicism, the Orthodox Church sought support. And the Greek heritage was such a support, and Greek philosophy could therefore gradually assume its place in the education controlled by the Orthodox Church.

The first references to the new European scientific ideas

The introduction of a scientific curriculum in the Orthodox colleges did not bring any revolutionary scientific learning.

But it did increase the interest in the education and it increased contacts with Italian scholarship. Between about 1630 and the end of the century, at least a dozen Greek colleges were founded or fundamentally renovated in the lands controlled by the Ottoman Empire. This education network would constitute the means by which the new science would later spread to Southeast Europe but this new science would not become central to the preoccupations of Greek scholars before the middle of the 18^th century. Nevertheless, bits of this science were introduced at the second half of the 17^th c. thanks to the circle of Greek Aristotelians. Alexander Mavrocordatos (1641-1709), a student at Padua who wrote his dissertation on the circulation of the blood, taught the new ideas of Harvey at the Patriarchal School between 1665 and 1672.⁷ Nikolaos Koursoulas (1602- 1652), in his commentary on Aristotle‘s De coelo, briefly presents the systems of Copernicus and Tycho accompanied by drawings. Ioannis Skylitzes (born in 1630) in his Introduction to Cosmographical Sciences and Arts,written before 1680, also presents the Copernican system but condemns it because it does not offer a greater simplicity in the explanation of phenomena.⁸

These few timid references to the ideas of the scientific revolution of the 17^th century presented no danger whatever to the Orthodox Church. There was almost no reaction and certainly not a debate worthy of the name. The big majority of the clergy ignored all about the new system. The few scattered reactions such as this of Nektarios, Patriarch of Jerusalem

6 Petsios, op. cit., p. 178.

7 Alexandro Mavrocordato, Pneumaticum instrumentum circulandi sanguinis sive de motum et usu pulmonum, Bononiae, 1664, reedited 1665, 1682 and 1870.

8 Karas, Yannis, Οη επηζηήκεο ζηελ Τνπξθνθξαηία. Χεηξόγξαθα θαη έληππα [Sciences under Ottoman domination: Printed books and manuscripts]. vol. 2, Natural Sciences; Athens: Estia, 1992, p. 211-215 and 282-286.

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(1602-1676), were the exception. Responding to the accusations of the French Protestant Jean Claude (1619-1687) that the Greeks were illiterate and superstitious, Nektarios wrote that they did not need professors like Copernicus or Galileo since it was their fashion to overthrow sacred texts by sophistry.⁹ But the debate did not go farther.

As already mentioned, until the 19^th century there was little to distinguish between the positions of church and secular scholars. Debates and discussions traversed Orthodoxy itself: every tendency was present among the clergy. The first book to present the heliocentric system in detail was written by Michael Mitros, called ―the geographer‖ (1661-1714), future metropolitan of Athens under the name Meletios. About 1690 Mitros wrote a huge manuscript in which he describes the Copernican system and presents all the new discoveries of Galileo which came in favor of it –sunspots, the moons of Jupiter, comets– and discusses the existence of heavenly spheres.¹⁰ As a man of the Church, Mitros could not be a partisan of the Copernican system, but as a cultivated man, he realized that the new phenomena observed by Galileo could not be explained by the geocentric system. Therefore he followed the position adopted by the Jesuit astronomers and supported the geo-heliocentric system of Tycho Brahe which was in accordance with the new observations and with the Bible.

The main characteristic of the reforming orthodox current of 17^th century is a ―return to sources,‖ but these sources are not the Church Fathers and ecclesiastical Byzantines, but the ancient sources of secular knowledge. After two centuries of uncontested Ottoman domination, the orthodox communities of the empire were becoming more powerful by controlling essential economic activities. This would give them the desire for an independence that would only become concrete after the middle of the 18^th century, with the advent of new national ideas. These impulses toward independence assumed ideological expression, such as the affiliation of Orthodoxy with Greek culture in the form of religious humanism. Orthodox believers would thus feel strengthened in the face of both the Ottomans, who had the political power but whose science left much to be desired, having neglected their Arab scientific heritage, and the West, who were developing a new science that would put them at the forefront of world scientific and technological achievement.

This return to Hellenic sources, which in science was translated into the introduction of natural philosophy and mathematics into orthodox schools, had a major theological impact: relaunching discussion of the validity of science in relation to theology. But this renewed discussion took place in a new context. Now it was a matter of affirming the glorious past of a people who felt themselves ―in decadence,‖ subjugated by a non-Christian state. Until then the only reference of the Orthodox had been Byzantium. But now European humanism revalorized ancient Greece and offered a frame of reference that had been neglected after the victory of the anti-unionists.

A scientific Patriarch: Chrysanthos Notaras

In 1697, the Orthodox monk Chrysanthos Notaras was sent by his uncle Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Padua in order to complete his education. The curriculum of the University of Padua included theology courses that were also followed by Orthodox students. This might appear to contradict the hatred of Catholics felt by a majority of the Orthodox clergy, but the clerical aristocracy needed men who understood well the dogma of the ―Latins‖ and a certain portion of the clerical aristocracy maintained good relations with the Catholic Church. Chrysanthos‘s professor at Padua was the Greek Catholic Nicolas Komninos. His attachment to Catholicism did not prevent him from considering Italy as a sinful land, and he maintained friendly relations with Dositheos, to whom he wrote that his nephew was leaving Padua more knowledgeable but without having been perverted by Italian morals. In this period the teaching at the faculty of arts was Aristotelian. A curious mind that knew that a new science had existed for a long time, Chrysanthos was not going to be content with Aristotelian study. In 1700, at the end of his study in Padua, he went to France, another sinful land according to the Komninos.¹¹

In Paris, Chrysanthos made the acquaintance of liberal theologians such as Louis Ellies Du Pin, Alexandre Noël, and Michel Le Quien. Still more important for him was his contact with men of science He asked to visit the Paris Observatory, and he was welcomed and lodged there for a week by John Dominique Cassini, first director of this modern establishment.

As he himself wrote, ―there we observed with him [Cassini] with the aid of the largest telescopes the Moon, Jupiter and its so- called satellite-stars, the galaxy and other things. He then told us that by using several methods and observations, he discovered that one minute of the earth‘s circumference –that is to say, an Italian Mile– is five thousand, seven hundred and six feet of Paris, or five thousand eight hundred and eighteen geometric feet.‖¹² Apart from astronomy, Chrysanthos expressed interest in methods of measuring the earth, that is, in surveying and the determination of coordinates and had the

9 Petsios, op. cit., p. 203.

10 Karas, op. cit., p. 243-251. The title of the manuscript is: Astronomical book presenting and explaining the discoveries of Ancients and Moderns, from Adam to Ptolemy and Copernicus…

11 On Chrysanthos see Stathi, Pinelopi, Χξύζαλζνο Ννηαξάο, Παηξηάξρεο Ιεξνζνιύκσλ, πξόδξνκνο ηνπ Νενειιεληθνύ Γηαθσηηζκνύ [Chrysanthos Notaras, Patriarch of Jerusalem, precursor of the Greek Enlightenment], Athens: Syndesmos ton en Athinais Megaloscholiton, 1999.

12 Chrysanthos Notaras, Δηζαγσγή εηο ηα γεσγξαθηθά θαη ζθαηξηθά [Introduction to geography and the sphere], Paris, 1716, p. 92.