ABSTRACT
In the early Christian era any aim of achieving a rational compatibil i ty between the revealed t ru th of the Bible and the principles of Greek science was held by some to be unthinkable. 'What', asked Tertullian (150/160c.222), 'can there be in common between Athens and Jerusalem, between the Academy and the Church, between heretics and Christians?'1 Yet throughout the whole long period of the Middle Ages, theologians and scholars were to apply intense effort to working out a plausible and coherent synthesis of the historical account of the Creation in the Book of Genesis and the structure of ancient Greek astronomy and physics. Within it lay the interface between the visible motions of the stars and planets and the invisible reality of the origins of the Creation according to Christian belief together with the place of man in the latter, both in life and after death. This construction proved to be the greatest t r iumph of medieval culture. By the end of the Renaissance, Tertullian's exclusionary conviction had come to be proved largely prophetic. I t a l i an philosophers, Protestants, astronomers, and Cartesians had, in different directions but always in a claimed pursuit of truth, already gone far in unravell ing the whole elaborately woven synthesis.
