Critics of the Catholic Church, especially atheists, have charged that numerous scientists in history were executed by the Catholic Church for promoting the results of their scientific inquiries. As is the case with all attacks on the Catholic Church, apologists attempt to "set the record straight." Below are examples from one Catholic apologetic website and my responses to such:
1. Hypatia
Hypatia's death was political; Hypatia was not an enemy of Christianity; on the contrary, she was respected by the Christian intellectual circles of the day; she was a victim to the political jealousy which at the time prevailed; she was not killed for being a scientist.
2. Roger Bacon
Details on Bacon's life are thin, but he was certainly not persecuted for his scientific ideas; He also had a reputation as loose cannon theologically because of his promotion of certain wild prophecies then floating around in relation to the Spiritual-Conventual debate, as well as his preference for deterministic astrology.
3. Pietro d' Abano
Medieval science was often bound up with occultic practices and magic; Though Abano was a distinguished physician and scholar, he was also deeply involved in the occult; His arrest by the Inquisition seems to be on the grounds of magic and his astrological theories.
4. Cecco d' Ascoli
Ascoli was a renowned scholar and astronomer who was of favorable enough reputation to work in the service of Pope John XXIII; He first fell afoul of the Inquisition in 1324, not for any scientific theory, but for some statements he made in a commentary on John de Sacrobosco's book Sphere that concerned wild theories about demonology; He fled the papal court to Florence where he subsequently got in trouble for trying to read Christ's horoscope; Cecco was subsequently condemned and burned. Again, it was not for his scientific theory that Cecci d'Ascoli was put to death, but for his occultic impiety.
5. Michael Servetus
Servetus was not a religious skeptic. Servetus rejected the tenets of both the Catholic and Protestant creeds, but not because he was a religious skeptic per se, but because he was a Unitarian - he rejected the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; It was for his heterodoxy regarding the Trinity that he was condemned by the Inquisition and later burned at the stake by John Calvin. He was certainly not killed for any of his scientific ideas.
6. Girolamo Cardano
Cardano possessed an extremely abrasive personality that brought him into conflict with his professional peers; The Inquisition arrested him in 1570; It seems clear that Cardano's arrest by the Inquisition was a strong-arm tactic employed by his professional rivals; He never seems to have been in danger of his life and there is no indication his scientific theories were ever the reason for his persecution.
7. Giordano Bruno
Bruno's case is difficult because it is unknown to what degree his cosmological theories were behind his condemnation; It is true that he was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600, but the church authorities guilty of this action were almost certainly more distressed at his denial of Christ's divinity and his other heresies than at his cosmological doctrines.
8. Lucilio Vanini
He also wrote several works in which he denied the immortality of the soul He was commanded by his superiors to report to Naples for discipline, but instead he fled to England; The Parlement of Toulouse found Vanini guilty of blasphemy and atheism and put him to death; His death had nothing to do with the Church. It was not the Church, but the secular authorities who apprehended him and the Parlement of Toulouse that condemned him to death. The Catholic Church literally had no part in his death.
9. Tommaso Campanella
Campanella's questioning of Aristotle did get him in trouble with the Inquisition, but he was released after only a brief confinement. What got Campanella in trouble was not his science, but his politics
10. Kazimierz Lyszczynsk
Like other philosophers of the age, Lyszczynsk found traditional arguments for the existence of God to be unconvincing; King Jan Sobieksi attempted to rescue Lyszczynsk by having the case transferred to Vilna, but the clergy, led by Brzoska, insisted on his condemnation. Brzoska succeeded in getting Lyszczynsk condemned to death by the royal diet of 1689; Lyszczynsk had his tongue tore out, hands burned, and suffered beheading before having his body and his manuscript committed to the flames.
Conclusion
In none of these cases was a man put to death or imprisoned merely on account of his scientific ideas; in most cases, these people were punished for theological heresies, or for political actions or financial reasons; Speaking of the Church punishing people, it also must be pointed out that in none of these cases did the Church actually kill anybody. It must be remembered that heresy was a civil crime in the secular law books.
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My comments:
- During the period of time that these events occurred, there was functionally no divide between the Catholic Church and secular law.
- Virtually all scientists during this time were under the thumb of the Catholic Church.
- The "crimes" were essentially blasphemy/heresy against the Dogma of the Catholic Church punishable by torturous death. Science during this time was essentially any claim approved by the Catholic Church, and any opinion, scientific or otherwise, not in keeping with the Dogma was blasphemy/heresy.
- In other words: not all who were executed for heresy were scientists; not all scientists were executed for scientific heresy; all who defied the dogma of the Catholic Church were punished if not executed.
- Note that this apologetic didn't address the "Biggie": Galileo. Here is what happened to him and why.
