The Renaissance and Enlightenment

Scientific discovery is often depicted as having occurred in opposition to the dominant force of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. While this is sometimes true, the Church also sponsored and encouraged scholarship through the initial foundation of the Monastic Schools, which by 1100 had evolved in the founding of universities across Europe where scholars and students were encouraged to explore and develop new ideas.

However, as time went by, those who challenged what was thought of as "established" knowledge - whether spiritual or scientific - could find themselves facing enormous consequences:

Galileo

William Tyndale

William Tyndale was a scholar, born 1494, who worked in at Oxford University in England where he was fluent in Greek, Latin, French, English, Hebrew, Italian, German and Spanish. He travelled Europe after falling into controversy by opposing the king's annulment of his marriage. He worked to translate the Bible from original Greek into English.

On one hand this became a class issue, where ordinary citizens were now capable of reading the Bible on their own and checking the theological or spiritual declarations made by the Church. On the other, it became a means of checking the translation of the Latin Vulgate - the dominant and exclusive text for the Bible used by the Catholic Church.

While Tyndale started as a reformer, his efforts ended in his being arrested, charged with heresy, strangled to death and publicly burned at the stake.

Gutenberg eventually published his work, which helped to foment the Protestant Reformation.

The History of Enlightenment Science:

The Enlightenment

The enlightenment was a broad period of scientific discovery and achievement which often reacted against the religious and traditional systems that had come previously. Some of these reactions are now seem as gross over-reactions; (for example the wholesale murder of religious intellectuals and the "scientific" reconstruction of the calendar to eliminate Christian references during the French Revolution in order to effect social change. Nonetheless, the ideological conflict between faith and reason is seen as having been ossified during this period