At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father
Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome,
published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon
meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at
so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had
been developed under the influence of theology during nearly
seventeen hundred years. This learned head of a great college at
the heart of Christendom taught that "the surest remedy against
thunder is that which our Holy Mother the Church practises,
namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends: thence
follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a physical,
because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and
by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the
thunder; but the moral effect is the more certain, because by
the sound the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers,
by which they win from God the turning away of the thunderbolt."
Here we see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at
the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism.
Pages:
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636