so became part of Protestant propaganda after the condemnation of Galileo
in 1632. But Servetus had been burned at Geneva in 1553; Grotius was
condemned to life imprisonment by the orthodox Calvinists in Holland in
1618, and escaped to Catholic France; Bayle was dismissed from his chair at
the Protestant academy in Rotterdam in 1693 under theological attack. Because
intellectual history written in English or German has been under the sway of
the Protestant viewpoint, we are not prepared for the idea that Spain at the
end of the 1500s was more of a creative center in philosophy than England or
Germany (see Figure 9.7). We miss the blunt fact that Galileo and his scientific
faction in Italy were based in Jesuit and papal networks, and that Catholic
France was the center of gravity of the leading philosophical networks from
the generation of Montaigne to that of Malebranche. It was by contact with
this network that most outsiders, from Hobbes to Leibniz, had their creativity
sparked. Catholic monks and priests ranged from Bruno and Campanella to
Arnauld (a Sorbonne theologian), Malebranche, and Bossuet.
In science the picture is more mixed across Catholic-Protestant lines. Cop-
ernicus was a Catholic church official, Gassendi and Mersenne were priests,
Clavius and Cavalieri Jesuits, Torricelli and Viviani Jesuit pupils, Pascal a
Jansenist convert. The men who made the mathematical revolution—Cardan,
Tartaglia, Viète, Descartes, Fermat—were all Catholics. On the Protestant side
we can muster Brahe, Kepler, Napier, Gilbert, Stevin, and Snel; Harvey was a
Protestant who studied at the Catholic university of Padua. When we come to
the generation of the Invisible College, there is a more consciously Protestant
identity, not surprising during the English Commonwealth; but this group
generally consists of moderates and opponents of the Puritan extreme, who
structurally were closely linked to their Catholic counterparts on the Continent.
Our long-term comparisons ought to have prepared us for the idea that science
is theologically neutral. Among the Muslims it had practitioners in virtually
all theological factions. In medieval Christendom we find science incorporated
in the worldviews of Victorines and Albertists, Thomists, Scotists, and nomi-
nalists, among both Averroists and their persecutor Peckham; indeed it is hard
to find a significant university philosopher who did not make room for science.
Among the Greeks, science was compatible with Sophists, Platonists, and
Neoplatonists, Aristoteleans, Epicureans, Stoics, and even some branches of
medical Skeptics. Science is not necessarily theologically controversial, and
many different philosophical camps can incorporate it.
Of course the Catholic Church was capable of being authoritarian; we see
this in the torture of Jews by the Inquisition in Spain, the prohibition of della
Porta’s writings by the Inquisition in 1592, the burning of Bruno in 1600 and
of the Averroist Vanini in 1619, the restrictions on Galileo in 1613–1616 and
his condemnation in 1632. There are episodes throughout the century: Jesuits
Secularization and Philosophical Meta-territoriality • 571