The Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library in Oxford is actually not from the Middle Ages. It was founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley (1545 - 1613), an English diplomat and scholar. What he accomplished, however, was the salvation of what had existed in the Middle Ages.

The first library at Oxford was a collection of books left by Bishop Thomas Cobham of Worcester (died 1327). Those books were chained to tables for research, not for lending.

Between 1435 and 1437, the brother of King Henry V, Humphrey, 1st Duke of Gloucester, donated 281 manuscripts. The space where Cobham's books were stored was too small to accommodate the influx of material. A room above the Divinity School was built (finished in 1488) to store them all. That space is still known as Duke Humfrey's [sic] Library.

The Reformation (1550) saw the ruin of the library (not the building) in order to destroy any vestige of Roman Catholicism. Some books were removed by sympathetic people and hidden to keep them safe. The furniture was removed in 1556. Only three books from the original collection are there now. One was re-acquired only in the last few years.

Thomas Bodley began the restoring of Duke Humfrey's in 1598. Over the next decades, two wings were added, the east wing (Arts End) and west wing (Selden End), creating an "H" shape. It contains collections of art, maps, music, theology, and Western manuscripts.

Now there are five buildings that comprise the Bodleian, with off-site storage near Swindon. Its catalog includes over 13,000,000 items, the second largest collection in England after the British Library. It is one of a handful of "legal deposit" libraries (the British Library is another) to which a copy of all published works must be given.

Although he had access to wealth through his wife and father, Bodley recognized that donations would be needed to maintain the library, and he created the idea of a Benefactors' Book that would record every donation and be kept on display. In it we can see that Sir Walter Raleigh donated £50 in 1603, and Francis Bacon donated a copy of his book  The Advancement of Learning in 1605.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of the medieval works that exist inside the Bodleian.

The Flat Earth

In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon published Novum Organum ("The New Organon," by which he meant a new interpretation of nature). In it, he claimed that the ancient fathers of the Christian church did not tolerate a belief in a round Earth. It is probably this work that influenced the popular belief ever since that the Middle Ages, or religion, were steadfast in their belief in a flat Earth.

There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, however. True, there was "evidence" in the Middle Ages of a flat Earth. The Mappa Mundi (Map of the World), meant to portray the part of the world believed to be habitable, does make the world look flat and finite. Way back in he 3rd century BCE, however, Eratosthenes had coined the term "geography" and measured the circumference of the clearly round Earth by noting the difference in shadows of a stick at noon on two points many miles apart; the angles and length of the shadows told him that the sun was shining down on the surface at different angles, and the surface was therefore curved.

As revered an early christian as Boethius (480-524, mentioned here) in De consolatione philosophiæ (The Consolation of Philosophy) reminds us of how small we are in the grand scheme of things with this:

It is well known and you have seen it demonstrated by astronomers, that beside the extent of the heavens, the circumference of the earth has the size of a point; that is to say, compared to the magnitude of the celestial sphere, it may be thought of as having no extent at all.

Medieval sources even quote Pliny the Elder's figure of 29,000 miles for the circumference, a remarkably accurate figure.*

So was there a conflict between science and Christianity? Depends who you talk to, I suppose. William of Conches (1085-1154), who may have been a tutor to the young man who became King Henry II of England, wrote extensively on reconciling the origin of the cosmos in Plato's Timaeus with Genesis. The Bible may have described the earth as flat, but William knew this should not be taken literally, explaining:

The authors of Truth are silent on matters of natural philosophy, not because these matters are against the faith, but because they have little to do with the upholding of such faith, which is what those authors were concerned with.

As learning spread—specially with the advent of mass printing—perceptions of the Earth's shape would have spread thanks to re-printed classical works. Columbus' idea to go west to arrive at an eastward point was not a risky gamble or a brilliant insight. Other "facts" in the Bible were also understood to be not literal: Pope Innocent III, for instance, knew that the Moon shone with reflected light, even though the Bible refers to the Sun and Moon as "two lights."

So what account for the learned Bacon's statement? It may have something to do with the conflict between Galileo and the Church. Although the famous trial would not take place until 1633, Galileo had received a formal Admonition in 1616, warning him:

to relinquish altogether the said opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves; nor further to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing; otherwise proceedings would be taken against him by the Holy Office; which injunction the said Galileo acquiesced in and promised to obey.  [link]

It is very likely that Bacon and the rest of Europe's scientific community was aware of this growing conflict. In this historical context, Bacon's statement can be seen as a condemnation of the Church because of a recent action—even though for centuries the knowledge of a round Earth was common.

*In fact, the original figure might have been more accurate than we suspect: it was given in Greek stadia, a measurement which meant different things to different users. Our best interpretation is 29,000 miles, but if Pliny were using stadia of a slightly shorter length... .