Ch. 2 (Brenna: “Clergymen in the Field”)

ClergymenAbiding in the Field:

The making of the observer in eighteenth-century Norwegian natural history

Brita Brenna

By the mid-eighteenth century, governors of major European states promoted the study of nature as part of natural-resources based schemes for improvement and economic self-sufficiency.Procuring good knowledge about nature, however, required observers, collectors, and compilers who were able to produce useable and useful descriptions of nature. The way governments promoted scientific explorations varied according to the form of government, the makeup of the civil society, economic ideologies and practices, and geographical situations. This article will show that the roots of one of the major natural historical initiatives in Denmark-Norway are firmly planted in the state-church organization. Through the clergymen and their activities, a bishop, supported by the government in Copenhagen, could gather a huge collection of natural objects, receive observations and description of natural phenomena, and produce scientific publications where many of the species of the north were described for the first time. Devout naturalists were a common species in the eighteenth century, when clergymen involved themselves in the investigation of nature on a grand scale all over Europe. The specific interest here is in how natural knowledge was supported and enforced as part of church practice, and the degree to which this influenced the character of the science produced and the evaluation and identity of the observers.

Botanizing in the parishes

In the spring of 1770, Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus of Trondhjem diocese in the state of Denmark-Norwaywas planning his forthcoming visitation journey to the northern-most parts of Norway. A visitation journey was a highly ritualized church administrative tour, regulated by law and the chief means of governing and controlling the religious state of affairs in the kingdom. Moving from parish to parish, the bishop would interrogate, supervise, and admonish deans, clergymen, schoolteachers, and parishclerks, representing the highest authority of state and church in this absolutist Protestant monarchy. As one of only four bishops in Norway, Gunnerus supervised an enormous diocese, stretching up to the Russian border, and it would take the bishop four to six months to travel back and forth to the most distant parishes in need of guidance and supervision(see Dahl, Hagland 2002, Ramberghaug 2006).

Planning for the visitation journey this summer, the bishop invited two newly appointed professors of natural history in Copenhagen to accompany him. In his letter to the professor of economy and natural history at the University of Copenhagen, Johan Christian Fabricius, Gunnerus described how most of the trip would be conducted by sea, where the bishop’s boat would offer comfortable boarding, and “under these conditions the journey would surely prove agreeable, and the expenses would not be considerable, as in my company you will have free food and drink in the vicarages”(Gunnerus to Fabricius, 6 March 1770, in Dahl).The professorship in natural history was a poorly paid post, hence Gunnerus emphasized that the expedition would cost Fabricius nothing.

The letter described in detail the route they were to follow. When the party went ashore, they would be offered “handsome situations” and “attractive fields,” Gunnerus assured, and “by all such occasions Your Honourable will have time to observe and collect a large amount of natural objects and to make important discoveries in natural history and other things, which could deserve Your attention” (Gunnerus to Fabricius, 6 March 1770, in Dahl). Along the route natural objects of all kinds abounded, and this was the bait Gunnerus could lay out for the young and poor professor of natural history in Copenhagen. But he would have an additional piece of bait. He was at this time one of the most renowned scholars of natural history in the kingdom, and his visitation journeys to the north were reputed as expeditions of discovery. His correspondents would enquire and congratulate him on the “treasures from his northbound journey,” (Klevenfeldt to Gunnerus, 15October 1762, in Dahl) or recount how they had heard rumors in Copenhagenabout “beautiful collections of rarities from the northern countries” (Müller to Gunnerus, 20 October 1762, in Dahl). Gunnerus also mustered his own assistants. As he particularly urged professor Fabricius to bring his own draughtsman, he made it clear that he was himself traveling as a naturalist, emphasizing that the draughtsman he brought along “will overcome to draw only half of what is collected for me on a voyage like this, and which need immediate drawing” (Gunnerus to Fabricius, 6 March 1770, in Dahl).

When receiving his calling as a bishop in Trondheim in 1758, Johan Ernst Gunnerushad very limited knowledge of natural history. Now, 12 years later, he could invite able professors to take part in journeys which were esteemed as important contributions to the field of knowledge. He had written the first Norwegian Flora and close to thirty papers on natural historical topics, he had set up a scientific society, and corresponded with learned men and reputed naturalists in northern Europe(for the history of the Society and Gunnerus’ role within it see Andersen et.al. 2009). Since his arrival in Norway, the bishop had been transformed from a learned metaphysical university lecturer into a renowned naturalist. But the letters quoted above also show how Gunnerus’ raise to fame as a naturalistdepended on the church organization he controlled. He used the free board and travel which were his due as a bishop to undertake scientific work. Moreover, as I will show, his naturalist practice was the result of work performed by clergymen, commoners, and state officials. The organization, or network, which he built has been accurately labeled as a church-scientific organization (Hagland 2002), an organized scientific endeavor which took place through and by way of the church.

The importance of trade and trading companies, colonial administrativebodies,and mission organizations has been shown to have enabled and been decisive for natural historical projects in early modern Europe. In the case of Northern European Protestant States, and perhaps particularly in the case of Norway, the state-church seems to have played a far greater role than any other single institution. What I will try to reveal in this article is how the church came to play such an important role, and what the implications of this were for the participation of lay persons in producing knowledge about nature.

A modern divide between expert and lay knowledge was nowhere to be found at this time. The naturalists, “the experts,” were more often than not themselves uneducated in the subject they excelled in, they mostly earned their money from other sources or occupations, and they would rarely define themselves socially in relation to the science they followed (Clarke, Shapin). Hence the demarcation line in relation to the non-expert, “the lay person,” was blurry, without in any way implying that there were particularly unclear criteria for evaluating knowledge. What I want to emphasize is that the lay-expert divide was articulated differently. In this case we will deal with many persons who had no or little knowledge of natural history, and where some became highly esteemed practitioners, others remained unknown and their knowledge was not attributed to them. Precisely this question is of importance when studying this process: who werecounted, and whose knowledge was accounted for. To complicate the issue, the clergymen whom I deal with here were all considered as learned as opposed to the laity, the lay persons. Their standing as learned personswas, however, important in their local community, but not necessarily in relation to the centers of natural historical inquiry.

Earlier treatments of Gunnerus’ scientific activities have tended either to look at the “pure” scientific content of his work, portraying him as the first Norwegian scientist and hailing his Linnaean connection, or to approach his activities as part of a strictly national culture. If we use an approach inspired by recent colonial history of science and works focusing on the specificities of German and Scandinavian early modern natural history, Norwegian natural history in the second half of the eighteenth century can both be understood as less peripheral and more specific than earlier approaches have allowed.[1]On the one hand, the approaches to natural history which were developed around the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in Trondheim (established 1760) were internationally oriented and part of broader international currents of scientific practice. On the other hand, the specific social system with clergymen as the largest group of learned people, the predominance of free peasants, the special situation as a semi-colony of the Danish crown, and the topographical traits of the country which made travel and correspondence slow and difficult, are only four of the factors which make Norwegian eighteenth-century natural history a local and unique phenomena.

First I want to establish the state and contemporary state practices as central conditions for Gunnerus’use of his subject clergymen and other parishioners as scientific observers. I will proceed by focusing on the ways of making the subjects interested: How did he make the subjects work for him? How did he approach them, and what were their reactions? Next, I examine what sort of knowledge was provided by the lay observers, before I turn to the question of how nature was transformed into a specific kind of object through this network.

The Sciences in Absolutist Denmark-Norway

“Our fatherland was enveloped by darkness, its sight obliterated by haze,” the historian Gerhard Schøning wrote in his obituary for Bishop Gunnerus, who had died on a visitationjourney in 1773. Gunnerus, Schøning stated, was the man who finally succeeded in bringing Norway the light of science which had been ignited in most other European countries. This country with no university, no academy, no scientific society, no public library, no cabinets of natural objects, medals, arts, or antiquities, should look upon herself in shame because she was surrounded by sister countries, which, though poor, had suchinstitutions (Schøning 1805).Clerics working as naturalists, collecting and recording local floras, mineralogies, and natural histories, were far from uncommon in early modern Europe (see for example Bravo and Sörlin, 2002; Cooper 2007; Outram 1995, Shapin 2003). The special aspect of the Norwegian case was that the clerics were almost alone in pursuing natural knowledge. There was, as Schøning so eloquently pointed out, no university, and preciously few other learned institutions. Small academies for mining engineers, military officers,teachers, and Sami missionaries had been set up during the 1750s, but they were small and scattered around in a number of cities. There were, moreover, four Cathedral schools in Norway which prepared Norwegian students for university training in Copenhagen.Albeit important, these institutions had too few teachers to make an impact. Neither were there physicians who could act as a collective in the pursuit of natural history. Norway had approximately seven hundred thousand inhabitants, four hundred and eighty clergymen, and about ten physicians (for clergymen: Mansåker 1954, 21; for physicians: Utheim 1901, 4).

In the first part of the eighteenth century, natural knowledge was at a low tide in Denmark-Norway, according to both contemporaries and later historians. The turning point is said to have occurred around the middle of the century (Kragh 2005; Dahl 1888-90, 136). The king’s interest in promoting natural philosophy, mathematics, natural history, and economic sciences grew as he and his ministers came to see them increasingly as useful sciences. The king’s support for the sciences (in the sense of the Danish videnskaber, which equals the German Wissenschaften) was not new, but the extent and consequence of King Fredrik V’s interest were unprecedented (Feldbæk 1994, 3).While “the politics of science and culture” under his father’s, Christian VI’sreign, was aimed at an audience within the borders of the kingdom, this changed with Frederik V, who reigned from 1746-1766. His policy was directed at Europe. Within the fine arts, literature, and history, measures were taken to promote excellence and Europeanize the Copenhagen scene. He aimed not only to lift Danish science and culture to a high European level: his ambition was to give specific Danish contributions to the enlightened cultures of Europe.As kings and ministers in other European kingdoms collected and experimented, and promoted science within their countries, the Danish king and his ministry also wanted to improve the scientific reputation of the country (Feldbæk 1994).

There were various new measures taken on to achieve these goals. The most important were calling in new professors from the continent, establishing a botanical garden and a natural cabinet with professorships, installing a pro-chancellor at the university in an attempt to reform it, initiating work on a Danish flora, organizing and financing a large scale international scientific expedition to Arabia felix (Yemen), and supporting publications oneconomy and natural history (see Kragh 2005; Sörlin 2001; Wagner 1992).

The Making of the Naturalist-Clergyman

But how could these initiatives aimed at improving science and making it useful for the welfare of the nation be transported out of the capital? How could enlightenment and science spread throughout the vast Danish-Norwegian kingdom, reaching from North Cape, by way of Greenland and Iceland, to the Elbe? One attempt was to make the clergymen the spearheads of science. The University of Copenhagen was basically a clergyman’sinstitution: about 67 percent of the students left university with a degree in theology, and about 30 percent were educated in law. Even though the university was economically self-sustaining, the king exerted political influence on certain aspects of university life through the patron who was also one of his ministers. But within a limit: when one of the king’s ministers wanted to install the German Georg Christian Oeder as a professor in economy (natural history), he was rejected by the university on the official grounds of lack of knowledge in Latin. He was instead offered a professorship at the king’s new Botanical Garden and paid directly by the king (Wagner 1992).

With a keen eye on developments in Sweden, and especially informed by the rhetoric of Linnaeus, numerous voices expressed the advantage that could be gained from giving the theological students a broader scientific education. The man who was offered the position as pro-chancellor at the university was the bishop of Bergen, Erich Pontoppidan, in the years 1748 to 1754. He was a learned man of considerable power, as the chief ideologue of the particular kind of state-pietism in the kingdom, but also as a historian, antiquarian, and church historian. In Norway he had devoted himself to natural history and in 1752 he wrote the first natural history of the kingdom, Natural History of Norway, which soon appeared in German and English translations, and here he mentioned the usefulness of natural knowledge ( in the following quotes I use the English 1755 translation): “If physical knowledge be not, like godliness, profitable to all things, yet it is so to many, and in a certain degree to most things” (Pontoppidan 1755, v). Natural knowledge was useful for the practice of law. It was obviously useful for medicine, according to Pontoppidan. But first and foremost it was a science that was useful for those who were going to educate others on the road to salvation. A theological candidate ought to study physics as well as metaphysics and logic, but “these last not being so indispensably necessary and useful as the former,” argued Pontoppidan (ibid). For clergymen who were called to attend a country parish, natural knowledge will “not only furnish them with many clear arguments, and edifying reflexions to themselves and their hearers,” Pontoppidan contended, “but it will besides prove a liberal amusement in their solitude; it will enable them, by much greater opportunities than the learned enjoy in towns, to make useful discoveries or improvements, from the products of nature, to the lasting benefit of their country, which it is their duty to promote (ibid).” In Norway, skills in metallurgy would be of the greatest importance, that is knowing “the species of ores and minerals, to make little experiments by fusion, and thus to form a judgment of the intrinsic value of a mine, and how far it will answer the expence of opening (Pontoppidan 1755, vii-viii).”

This tripartite motivation for studying nature embraced science as a pleasurable pastime which kept the clergymen away from idleness and furnished them with work to perform as good Protestants. It would also furnish them with intellectual stimulation as they moved to the barren peripheries. But not least, it would make them useful servants of the state, helping to harness the treasures of the countryside. The bottom line was that science was useful, and even more useful in the provinces than in the capital; therefore the clergymen were the prime targets of reform. There were ambitions to get more theological students to study physics and mathematics (Kragh 2005, 47), andthere were also suggestions that clergymen who could document natural knowledge should be preferred for new positions. Even if these initiatives did not have immediate effects, they were well-known and would provide strong motivation for clergymen with an interest in the study of nature. They were official ambitions to hook on to.