As if all this were not enough, in 1893 Leo issued Providentissimus Deus, which aimed to contain the new scholarship regarding the Bible. This edict argued, more than thirty years after Darwin, and nearly sixty years after Strauss and Lyell, that ‘a profitable understanding of sacred writings’ could not be achieved by way of the ‘earthly sciences’. Wisdom comes from above, reiterated the edict, and of course on these matters the pope was infallible. The papal document dismissed the charge that the Bible contained forgeries and falsehoods and pointed out that science was ‘so far from the final
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