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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 67, Telesio, Servetus, and Knox:
July 5, 2004:
I want to take a brief look at a person who had some influence of later scientists and philosophers. This is Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588). Telesio was an Italian philosopher and natural scientist who began the Renaissance empiricist reaction against the previous practice of what I call gossamer reasoning. This is the inward spiral of reasoning without reference to concrete data which began in ancient Greece. Telesio expressed his ideas in a set of nine books called On Nature According to Its Own Principles.
The main theme of this work was that the only way to understand the natural world was to study nature itself. According to Telesio this must be done with attention to the physical properties of matter and to the aspects of heat and cold. He disagreed with Aristotle who said matter is pure potency. He insisted that matter is a tangible datum. He further concluded from his studies of plants and animals that heat is the source of life. Cold he decided complements heat as the other active principle that explains all natural phenomena.
While Telesio was a bit astray in his conclusions he did manage to make a convincing case for shifting to the evidence of the senses rather than the conclusions of Aristotelian convoluted reasoning. This caused Bacon to call him the first of the moderns. Others who were influenced by his work were Tommaso Campanella and Thomas Hobbes. His books also made an impression of the church fathers. They consigned them to their infamous index.
I have already noticed Michael Servetus (1511-1553) in my discussion of Calvin in essay 66. Servetus was a Spanish-born theologian and physician. His contribution to medicine was a description of the circulation of blood. This description was revealed as an almost coincidental part of the manuscript that got him burned alive.
The manuscript in question Christianismi Restitutio was simply another one of those torturous nonsensical arguments over the minute unknowable theological concepts. This one had to do with the orthodox doctrines of the trinity. This is one area where the Roman Church and Calvin did agree. Both camps were eager to bring him to trial. Calvin made the claim that if he ever came to Geneva, he would not leave alive.
The Catholic inquisitor general at Lyon had the first shot at him. Servetus and his printers were arrested in lyon. Somehow, Servetus managed to escape during his trial. No one knows how. That ended with the Catholics burning him in effigy. After that he did something incredibly stupid. He showed up in Geneva where he was immediately recognized and arrested. In that one, he did not fair so well. He was burned alive on October 27 at Champel.
Another notable Presbyterian was John Knox (1514-1572). Knox was a Scottish religious reformer and the founder of Scottish Presbyterianism. He began as a Catholic priest, but under the influence of George Wishart he became a Protestant. Wishart was an early reform preacher who got in trouble with the church wherever he went. He was accused of heresy three times. The third time, through the treachery of the Earl of Bothwell, got him burned at the stake at St. Andrews. The deed was ordered by Cardinal David Beaton who was the real ruler of Scotland. He was the Earl's puppeteer, so to speak. The only good that came out of this is it caused some presbyterian conspirators to kill the good Cardinal a few weeks later when they took over the castle at St. Andrew.
Knox fared somewhat better than Wishart. After the murder of Wishart, he became the spokesman for the Scottish Reformation. To be sure, he had to keep moving. The Church heavies were ever on his trail. During this time he was tutor to the sons of a couple of Protestant conspirators. They were involved in political intrigues and did not afford him much protection. In fact they sent him with his pupils to St. Andrew a few months after the murder of Beaton.
In that environment, in a few months Knox was transformed. He became the accepted spokesman for and leader of the reformation in Scotland. The Protestants in the castle of St. Andrew pressed him into service. He gave one sermon in the town and thereinafter became the spokesman the movement needed. He had, as they say, receive the call to service in the lord's legions. He was convinced that the call came directly from God.
In the summer of 1547, things took a bad turn for Knox. The French pitched in to help the governor of Scotland. St. Andrews castle, bombarded and assailed by plague, capitulated. The terms of surrender forbid it, but treachery prevailed and Knox was hauled off to slavery in the French galleys. With English intervention he was finally released many months later, but his health was ruined.
He was still a sought after speaker and Edward VI of England put him to work pushing the protestant reform. Since Scotland was firmly under Catholic dominance, Knox had little choice. He was sent to a rowdy garrison town, Berwick-upon-Tweed. He established a congregation there and brought some order to the town. Then he was off to Newcastle and other towns and posts in England.
Bad news came again in 1553 when Mary Tudor took the English throne. She was a confirmed Roman Catholic. This time Knox had the foresight to escape before he was tracked down, but he was greatly disturbed that a single person could decide the religion of and entire people. This lead him to the conclusion that resistance by force was justified in some cases. It was not just the right, but the duty of magistrates and nobility to resist such a ruler.
This idea of Knox that the people have a right to religious
freedom turns up again and agin in the ensuing history of the
West. Of course, it was finally embodied in the American Constitution
as a guaranteed right under the first amendment. Even so, we still
have many small minded religious fanatics among us who want to
ignore history and impose their version of religious superstition
on our school children. The naive people who support that Falwellian
behavior should be required to read religious history beginning
with the primitive minded Semite tribes where all of this superstitious
nonsense began.
Back to Knox. He wanted religious freedom, but the time was not
right for him. He continued to hang out in Germany for a while
and became minister of a congregation of English refugees in Frankfurt.
From there he went to Geneva and took charge of some refuges.
He spent most of his time there until 1559.
He did make a short visit to Edinburgh in 1556 where he was well received. While there he urged the nobility of Scotland to rise up against catholic rule and defend the protestant faith. Before he departed again for Geneva he wrote a letter in support of private family religious practice and weekly meetings. These things did take place and produced the leaders of the Reformed Church.
In 1559, Knox returned to Scotland by invitation of the Protestant
nobles. He was to lead the fight against the regent, Mary of Guise.
That produced a civil war wherein the reformers won after the
French support for Mary was withdrawn. Knox then came to power.
Typically, the man who had advocated religious freedom imposed
his own brand of Presbyterian religious freedom on the entire
Scottish people. So it goes. A different name, the same game,
and the wheel of madness, pain, and sorrow continues to turn.
It continues to this day.
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