[36]
Here and there among men who were free from church control we have
work of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd
Allatif made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which
showed a truly scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II
attempted to promote a more fruitful study of Nature; but one of
these men was abhorred as a Mussulman and the other as an infidel.
Far more in accordance with the spirit of the time was the
ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book on the topography of
Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals of the island, and
rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate moral. For
example, he says that in Ireland "eagles live for so many ages that
they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints,
having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed
fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly
so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in
the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets
of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as
if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which they are
borne were scorched.
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