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The same level of technological achievement could have been 22 observed in practically all of them. Although the world of classical antiquity had not adopted mechanization for industrial use on any considerable scale, the medieval world did so on an enormous scale, a fact symbolized and reflected in the Cistercians use of waterpower: Entering the Abbey under the boundary wall [writes a twelfth- century source], which like a janitor allows it to pass, the stream first hurls itself impetuously at the mill where in a welter of move- ment it strains itself, first to crush the wheat beneath the weight Church1-final:working template.qxd 12/19/08 9:30 AM Page 34 34 How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization of the millstones, then to shake the fine sieve which separates flour from bran. Already it has reached the next building; it replenishes the vats and surrenders itself to the flames which heat it up to prepare beer for the monks, their liquor when the vines reward the wine-growers toil with a barren crop. The stream does not yet consider itself discharged. The fullers established near the mill beckon to it. In the mill it had been occupied in preparing food for the brethren; it is therefore only right that it should now look to their clothing. It never shrinks back or refuses to do anything that is asked for. One by one it lifts and drops the heavy pestles, the fullers great wooden hammers . . . and spares, thus, the monks great fatigues. . . . How many horses would be worn out, how many men would have weary arms if this graceful river, to whom we owe our clothes and food, did not labor for us. When it has spun the shaft as fast as any wheel can move, it dis- appears in a foaming frenzy; one might say it had itself been ground in the mill. Leaving it here it enters the tannery, where in preparing the leather for the shoes of the monks it exercises as much exertion as diligence; then it dissolves in a host of streamlets and proceeds along its appointed course to the duties laid down for it, looking out all the time for affairs requiring its attention whatever they might be, such as cooking, sieving, turning, grind- ing, watering, or washing, never refusing its assistance in any task. At last, in case it receives any reward for work which it has not done, it carries away the waste and leaves everywhere spotless.23 THE MONKS AS TECHNICAL ADVISERS The Cistercians were also known for their skill in metallurgy. In their rapid expansion throughout Europe, writes Jean Gimpel, Church1-final:working template.qxd 12/19/08 9:30 AM Page 35 HOW THE MONKS SAVED CIVILIZATION 35 the Cistercians must have played a role in the diffusion of new techniques, for the high level of their agricultural technology was matched by their industrial technology. Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various indus- 24 tries located on its floor. At times iron ore deposits were donated to the monks, nearly always along with the forges used to extract the iron, and at other times they purchased the deposits and forges. Although they needed iron for their own use, Cistercian monasteries would come in time to offer their surplus for sale; in fact, from the mid-thirteenth through the seventeenth century, the Cistercians were the leading iron producers in the Champagne region of France. Ever eager to increase the effi- ciency of their monasteries, the Cistercians used the slag from their furnaces as fertilizer, as its concentration of phosphates 25 made it particularly useful for this purpose. Such achievements were part of a broader phenomenon of technological achievement on the part of the monks. As Gimpel observes, The Middle Ages introduced machinery into Europe 26 on a scale no civilization had previously known. And the monks, according to another study, were the skillful and unpaid technical advisers of the third world of their times that is to say, 27 Europe after the invasion of the barbarians. It goes on: In effect, whether it be the mining of salt, lead, iron, alum, or gypsum, or metallurgy, quarrying marble, running cutler s shops and glassworks, or forging metal plates, also known as firebacks, there was no activity at all in which the monks did not display creativity and a fertile spirit of research. Utilizing their labor force, they instructed and trained it to perfection. Monastic know-how [would] spread throughout Europe.28 Church1-final:working template.qxd 12/19/08 9:30 AM Page 36 36 How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization Monastic accomplishments ranged from interesting curiosities to the intensely practical. In the early eleventh century, for instance, a monk named Eilmer flew more than 600 feet with a 29 glider; people remembered this feat for the next three centuries. Centuries later, Father Francesco Lana-Terzi, not a monk but a Jesuit priest, pursued the subject of flight more systematically, earning the honor of being called the father of aviation. His 1670 book Prodromo alla Arte Maestra was the first to describe the 30 geometry and physics of a flying vessel. The monks also counted skillful clock-makers among them. The first clock of which we have any record was built by the future Pope Sylvester II for the German town of Magdeburg, around the year 996. Much more sophisticated clocks were built by later monks. Peter Lightfoot, a fourteenth-century monk of Glastonbury, built one of the oldest clocks still in existence, which now sits, in excellent condition, in London s Science Museum. Richard of Wallingford, a fourteenth-century abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Saint Albans (and one of the initiators of Western trigonometry), is well known for the large astronomical clock he designed for that monastery. It has been said that a clock that equaled it in technological sophistication did not appear for at least two centuries. The magnificent clock, a mar- vel for its time, no longer survives, perhaps having perished amid Henry VIII s sixteenth-century monastic confiscations. How- ever, Richard s notes on the clock s design have permitted schol-
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