Antipope Innocent II

De genesi ad litteram, (II, xvii, 37), apparently. Though the correct translation using "astrologer" rather than "mathematician" is rather more honest and accurate for the modern reader than the incorrect and dishonest mistranslation that is often found online and which was used above.

The earlier poster who was questioning if this idea of the Middle Ages being a "dark age" of oppressed scientists and wicked clerics was a "conspiracy" should note how many of the counter-arguments presented in this thread are based on deliberate distortions and outright lies. Not by the posters who present them, of course, (though they should begin to see it would be wise to be more sceptical of the material they post), but by several centuries of prejudiced zealots of various stripes.

To pretend that Boniface XIII's De Sepultris was interpreted at a ban on human dissection is a blatant lie - one popularised by Andrew Dickson White in 1898 and still, 109 years of proper scholarship on Medieval anatomical studies later, current as though it were true. Someone decided to deliberately mistranslate Augustine in the quote above and present it as though he was warning against mathematicians and not astrologers. And in a quick Google search I found it repeated on over two dozen websites, only one of which gave the correct translation.

Over and over again on this thread and on the "Medieval Flat Earth" thread we've found those trying to bolster this idea of the Middle Ages as an age when the Church oppressed science resorting to these kinds of "Institute for Creation Research"-style lies and distortion. It's pretty clear there are some who have some blunt and heavy axes to grind when it comes to this subject and they aren't going to let little things like facts, accuracy or honesty get in their way.

As ever, we should beware of such fundamentalists. They are always enemies of reason.

Ray Moscow

I took that from another site (and have seen the same wording in various places), but Wikipedia has both renderings "mathematician" and "astrologer", with the latter said to be more accurate.

I was apparently wrong about Augustine.

Ray

Roger Pearse

Bede is correct about 'mathematicus' in patristric writings. Minucius Felix also wrote a work against these people.

Thanks for checking. We do need to be suspicious of any quote which isn't referenced, in my experience.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ray Moscow

As far as I can tell without jumping into Catholic apologist sites, it was interpreted as exactly that. For example, see the notes here and here or here.

Apparently the whole text itself can be interpreted differently, and perhaps was intended to be be interpreted differently. But its effect on scientific practice seems pretty clear, and was still in effect in the time of Vesalius.

You guys aren't of the "the RCC did little if any wrong" school, are you?

Ray

Lucretius

Regarding lefthandedness and mirror writing this is a recognized neurological phenomenom

And (My emphasis)

From Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 2007

http://jnnp.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/78/1/5

And

From Archives of Neurology 2004

http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/con...act/61/12/1849

From a personal and I admit non scientific, possibly non representative perspective I know of two other "lefties" who had the same experience as me of writing in "mirror writing" .

WishboneDawn

And it's just as simple as that? There was a delay and so it must have been fear of the church. I'd agree that that's one interpretation of the event but hardly the only or best supported one.

I can see what happens when issues are reduced to fit a frame. A publication delay must be because of a fear of the church. The condemnation of one man was purely a matter of contradicting church doctrine. Issues of politics and natural philosophy get swept aside so that a simplified view of a very complicated time and institution can be constructed.

Roger Pearse

Thank you. The only reference to 'mathematicus' in book 2 of this work in the Latin is here. I wish this work was online in English.

"Quid ergo vanius, quam ut illas constellationes intuens mathematicus, ad eumdem horoscopum, ad eamdem lunam, diceret unum eorum a matre dilectum, alterum non dilectum?...

which clarifies clearly that astrologers are in mind; and then the real source, I suspect, although the translation is clearly very, very misleading:

"Quapropter bono christiano, sive mathematici, sive quilibet impie divinantium, maxime dicentes vera, cavendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum animam deceptam, pacto quodam societatis irretiant."

"For which reason both astrologers and those impiously (of divinings?), saying mostly true things (?), must be avoided, lest after making a pact of agreement they entangle their soul in a hidden partnership with demons."

(I'm in a rush, someone else help)

All the best,

Roger Pearse

WishboneDawn

Antipope's an atheist so I hardly think that's his angle.

Lucretius

In just as much of a rush but

"For which reasons whether they be mathematicians ,whether they be those who make impious predictions,should be avoided by good Christians lest they....."
There does seem to be a quite deliberate act of equating mathematicians and astrologers here in my opinion the "sive ...sive..." can only really be read as that

Roger Pearse

Come, sir, Ad hominem!

I don't think any of us are RC's. What I think everyone who has been online awhile wearies of is the endless repetition of the same old slanders, clearly fabricated by people with little education, which serve to prevent anyone actually getting at the facts about the subject.

So I know some fairly racy anecdotes about Pope Alexander VI, but at least I know where they come from (John Burchard), and on what they are based (eyewitness testimony).

Whatever our religious views, don't we all want *facts*?

All the best,

Roger Pearse