Clerical Inventions

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 35, 1 September 1904, Page 15

Clerical Inventions

Reileralted attacks of the Protestant press (says the ' Catholic Columbian ') upon the ' ignorance oi the clergy,' the ' stupidity of tlhe monks,' the ' intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages,' and other stock phrases, whidh used to be current pnes in /this country also, give occasion to the ' Linzer QtoartaJschrift ' to gather tiogetiher an interesting list of some of /tlhe discoveries and inventions due to the Catholic clergy.

Guido, a monk of Arezzo, discovered the musical scale, the fundamental rules of music, and the principles of harmony.

The deacon, Flavio Gioja, of Amalfi, perfected the magnet and the mariners' compass, and so rendered possible the great ocean navigations which revolutionised history. A Dominican, Spitaa, invented spectacles. The first astronomical clock was built in 1326 by Richard Wallingford, Abbot of St. Allan's.

The Jesuit Cavalieri discovered the scale of colors in sunlight in 1747. Another Cavalieri, a Jeromite monk, who died in 1647, invented the method of the ' invisible' for measuring surfaces and solids, now supplanted by the differential calculus.

Regiomontanus, whose real name was Johann Muller, Bishop of Regensburg, who died in 1476, was the Tirsi inventor of the metric system, erected a pres,s in Nuremburg for the publication of rare mathematical works, was a great astronomer, and long before Galileo (died 1642) taught that the sun was stationary and that the earth revolved, greatly advanced the sciences of algebra and trigonometry, and improved several mechanical instruments.

The Jesuit, Kircher (died 1680), was the inventor of a lensi, and Hober of the pantometer aft-d the magic lantern. Another Jesuit, Schemer, in 1650, invented the pantograph. The immortal Copernicus, the father of modem astronomy, whom Luther called ' a fool, who wanted to upset the whole art of astronomy,' was a Caflicn of FrJaurti'burg. A Spia<nish monk, Pedro de Police, devised the first method of instructing deaf mutes, whilst tihe French Abbe de TEpee was the inventor of the deaf and dumb alphabet.

LJong before Monfcgolfier, a Jesuit, Francesco Lana (1670), published an accurate deseriptioh and drawing of an aerial s-hip supported by four balloons. Tihe list is interesting, but certainly infconvplete. We misls from it, for instance, all reference to the illustrious Francisfca"n of Oxford, Friar Roger Bacon (12141294), the mast famous cultivator of mathematical and natural sciences in the Middle Ages, the inventor probably of the telescope, whilst his claim to iihe invention of gunpowder is shared with another friar, Berthold Schwarz. Long before either, in the tenth century, Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester 11., was equally celebrated as a mathematician and physicist. Again we nrisis) the ' father 'of geology,'*, the Catholic Bishpp Stenfon, or Stenius.