Medieval Technology

A number of years ago, Stanley Jaki, a Roman Catholic historian of science, published an article in Modern Age defending the technological acumen of medievals. He cited three medieval inventions that provide evidence “of the striking modernity ofthe Middle Ages.” So many innovations came from the Middle Ages that “as late as the eighteenth century [medieval technology]formed the basis of all industrial skill.” Jaki describes what he calls “the medieval birth of modern science.”

The first notable medieval invention was the mechanical clock, which appeared around 1250. As Jaki says, we take exact timepieces for granted and “hardly ever think that clocks were first made in the Middle Ages.” To be sure, there were devices to keep time before the Middle Ages, but they were so imprecise that ancient wedding invitations asked the guests to arrive “from the ninth hour on.”

Soon after the perfection of the clock, belfries all over Europe were striking the hour and “life began to be regulated more and more in anticipation of the pace set bymodern factories, offices, shops, and transportation.”

The second invention Jaki describes was the cam, which “madepossible the transformation of the linear motion of the piston .. . into rotational motion.” Today, cams are essential to car engines, but in the Middle Ages they were used in watermills and windmills.

Third, cams and mills were used to operate hammers and saws. This permitted the production of large quantities of paper, and printing companies were soon flourishing. Even before Gutenberg, there had been experiments with movable type. As Jaki comments with some irony, anyone who publishes books that denounce the Middle Ages is making use of a medieval invention.

Finally, Jaki notes that medieval thinkers made in scientific theory. The basic principles of mechanics and some of Newton’s laws of motion were already intimated in the work of two professors at the Sorbonne in Paris in the early 13th century. These professors, moreover, came upon their breakthroughs byfollowing out the implications of Christian theology.

In sum, as Jaki says, medieval man was “driven by a biblical sense of mission. He felt that God’s words addressed to the first man and woman to ‘multiply and subdue the earth’ were also addressed to him.”