IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a great English and American heart -- Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Caper -- "Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded, -- "Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of Mankind!" In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year 1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28. But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted -- "in the state it has since appea...

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." [Saint Augustine] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." [St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim" (The Literal Me...

Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, (Philadelphia: Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1894) vol. 1, no. 4, 2-5 Hanover Historical Texts Project Scanned by Linda Xue, May 1998. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Munroe's introduction: These are the most valuable sources for the crusade Of Frederic II. Each of the contestants tells the story from his own standpoint. We have comparatively little data for controlling their statements and determining their motives. See Rohricht: Reitrage zur Geschichte der Kreuzzuge, Vol. I. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gerold, patriarch of Jerusalem, to all the faithful--greeting. If it should be fully known how astonishing, nay, rather deplorable, the conduct of the emperor has been in the eastern la...

Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History , (Philadelphia: Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1894) vol. 1, no. 4, 17-19 Hanover Historical Texts Project Scanned by Linda Xue, December 1997. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Munro's introduction: After the second crusade it was difficult to arouse enthusiasm in Many letters were written begging piteously for aid. In the meantime a Holy Land went from had to worse. Owing to the mistaken policy of Christians, Noureddin had been allowed to get a strong foothold in Egypt. But dissensions arose between his general and the vizier of Egypt, and the latter the king of Jerusalem for aid. While Amalric, profiting by this carrying on a successful campaign in Egypt, the events recorded in the took place. See Kugler: Geschichte der Kruzzuge pp. 167-169. The second lett...

J.H. Robinson, ed., Readings in European History 2 vols. (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 2:179-183. Hanover Historical Texts Project Scanned by Brian Cheek, Hanover College. November 12, 1995. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robinson's note: The statesman and fair-minded historian De Thou (1553-1617), who as a young man witnessed the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, thus describes that terrible event. [Page 180] So it was determined to exterminate all the Protestants, and the plan was approved by the queen. They discussed for some time whether they should make an exception of the king of Navarre and the prince of Conde. All agreed that the king of Navarre should be spared by reason of the royal dignity and the new alliance. The duke of Guise, who was put in full command of the enterprise, summoned by night several captains of the Catholic Swiss mercenaries from the five ...

J.H. Robinson, ed., Readings in European History 2 vols. (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 2:211-212 Hanover Historical Texts Project Scanned by Brian Cheek, Hanover College. November 12, 1995. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Otto von Guericke, Burgomeister of Magdeburg, recorded the destruction of the city by imperial troops in May of 1631. [Page 211] So then General Pappenheim collected a number of his people on the ramparts by the New Town, and brought them from there into the streets of the city. Von Falckenberg was shot, and fires were kindled in different quarters; then indeed it was all over with the city, and further resistance was useless. Nevertheless some of the soldiers and citizens did try to make a stand here and there, but the imperial troops kept bringing on more and more forces - cavalry, too - to help them, and finally they got the Krockenthor open and l...

"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use." [Galileo] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." [Galileo Galilei] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit..." [Galileo Galilei, 1615] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and the...

"The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot err, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes an erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun in inherently motionless and the earth movable. With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the Holy Bible can never speak untruth—whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe that nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies...

We by the grace of God, cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Inquisitors General, by the Holy Apostolic see specially deputed, against heretical depravity throughout the whole Christian Republic. Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine taught by many, that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable, and that the earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine; for holding correspondence with certain mathematicians of Germany concerning the same; for having printed certain letters, entitled “On the Solar Spots,” wherein you developed the same doctrine as true; and for replying to the objections from the Holy Scriptures, which from time to time were urged against it, by glossing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning: and whereas there was thereupon produced the copy of a docum...

"All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself." [Martin Luther (1483-1546), German Protestant leader] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon....This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13]that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." [Martin Luther in one of his "Table Talks" in 1539] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People give ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus]who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course th...