(Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought - Fourth Series) Amanda Power - Roger Bacon and The Defence of Christendom-Cambridge University Press (2012)

ROGER BACON AND THE DEFENCE
OF CHRISTENDOM
The English Franciscan Roger Bacon (c. 1214–92) holds a controversial but
important position in the development of modern science. He has been
portrayed as an isolated figure, at odds with his influential order and
ultimately condemned by it. This major study, the first in English for
nearly sixty years, offers a provocative new interpretation of both Bacon
and his environment. Amanda Power argues that his famous writings for
the papal curia were the product of his critical engagement with the
objectives of the Franciscan order and the reform agenda of the thirteenth-
century Church. Fearing that the apocalypse was at hand and Christians
unprepared, Bacon explored radical methods for defending, renewing and
promulgating the faith within Christendom and beyond. Read in this light,
his work indicates the breadth of imagination possible in a time of expand-
ing geographical and intellectual horizons.
amanda power is a lecturer in medieval history at the University of

Sheffield.
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought
Fourth Series
General Editor
rosamond mckitterick
Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College
Advisory Editors
christine carpenter
Professor of Medieval English History, University of Cambridge
jonathan shepard
The series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought was inaugurated by G. G.
Coulton in 1921; Professor Rosamond McKitterick now acts as General Editor of
the Fourth Series, with Professor Christine Carpenter and Dr Jonathan Shepard as
Advisory Editors. The series brings together outstanding work by medieval
scholars over a wide range of human endeavour extending from political econ-
omy to the history of ideas.
A list of titles in the series can be found at:

www.cambridge.org/medievallifeandthought
ROGER BACON AND THE
DEFENCE OF CHRISTENDOM
AMANDA POWER
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© Amanda Power 2013
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Power, Amanda, 1975–
Roger Bacon and the defence of christendom / Amanda Power.
p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought ; 4th ser.)
Includes bibliographical references (p. and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-88522-5
1. Bacon, Roger, 1214?–1294. I. Title.
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For my mother and in memory of my father
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements page viii

Abbreviations ix
introduction 1
1 a life in context 29
2 traces on parchment 84
3 from the world to god 126
4 the crisis of christendom 164
5 beyond christendom 209
in memoriam 265
Select bibliography 268

Index 300
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the years that have passed since I became acquainted with Roger
Bacon I have acquired many intellectual and personal debts. The pre-
liminary work would not have been possible without the funding of my
doctoral studies by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and a research
fellowship attached to the research project Kultur, Mobilität, Migration
und Siedlung von Juden im mittelalterlichen Europa, funded by the
European Commission Directorate-General of Education and Culture.
The book began to take shape during a research fellowship at Magdalene
College, Cambridge. I would like to thank the Master and Fellows of the
College for allowing me to return as a visiting scholar in order to complete
the work, and the University of Sheffield for granting the corresponding
research leave.
I have profited enormously from the insights of those who have read
chapters at various stages of the book’s emergence: Anna Sapir Abulafia,
James Alexander, Hugo Azérad, Andrew Burns, David D’Avray, Miriam
Dobson, Valerie Flint, Rosamond McKitterick, Mark Gregory Pegg,
Jonathan Riley-Smith and Ineke van’t Spijker. Tim Harper commented
on successive drafts and provided crucial support throughout. David
Luscombe has laboured through various versions with great patience
and acumen since he first encountered the ideas in doctoral form. I have
greatly appreciated the generous encouragement of Jeremiah Hackett. I
should also thank my colleagues and students in Sheffield for their tireless
insistence that I finish the book. To David Abulafia, my doctoral super-
visor, I owe much, not least his shrewd suggestion that Bacon might be a
fruitful topic of research. John Pryor and John O. Ward first showed me
the fascination of studying the medieval period. Andrew Burns, Stephen
Kirkaldy and Lucy O’Connell helped me through the worst times. Tim
Horton came late to Bacon, but made all the difference in the final stages.
The greatest debt, however, is to my parents. This book is for my mother,
and in memory of my father.
viii
ABBREVIATIONS
Adm Francis of Assisi, ‘Admonitiones’ in Opuscula, 57–82

AF Analecta Franciscana
AFH Archivum Franciscanum Historicum
AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge
AHR American Historical Review
BF Bullarium franciscanum romanorum pontificum
CA ‘Compilatio Assisiensis’
1Cel Thomas of Celano, Vita prima
2Cel Thomas of Celano, Vita secunda
CF Collectanea Franciscana
ChrXXIVGen Chronica XXIV generalium
CM Matthew Paris, Chronica majora
Coll.hex. Bonaventure, Collationes in hexämeron in Opera omnia,
vol. v, 329–449
CSP Roger Bacon, Compendium studii philosophiae
CST Roger Bacon, Compendium of the Study of Theology
CUP Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis
DAFM Thomas of Eccleston, Tractatus Fr. Thomae vulgo dicti de
Eccleston: De adventu fratrum minorum
DCD Augustine, Sancti Aurelii Augustini episcopi De civitate
Dei
DDC Augustine, De doctrina christiana
DMS Roger Bacon, De multiplicatione specierum in Roger
Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature
DNB Dictionary of National Biography
EFRB Roger Bacon, Epistola Fratris Rogerii Baconi
EHR English Historical Review
EpFid2 Francis of Assisi, ‘Epistola ad fideles (recensio
posterior)’ in Opuscula, 113–28
EOS Catto (ed.), The Early Oxford Schools
ix
List of abbreviations
FF Fontes Franciscani
FoAED Francis of Assisi, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents
FS Franciscan Studies
Gasq Roger Bacon, ‘An Unpublished Fragment of a Work
by Roger Bacon’, ed. F. A. Gasquet
Itinerarium William of Rubruck, Itinerarium; translation in
Jackson, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck
Itinerarium Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in deum in Opera omnia,
mentis vol. v, 295–316
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JMH Journal of Medieval History
LM Bonaventure, Legenda maior in AF, x.1–3 (1926–28),
555–652; FF, pp. 777–961
MP Roger Bacon, Moralis Philosophia
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
OHIRB Roger Bacon, Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi
OM Roger Bacon, Opus maius
OMin Roger Bacon, Opus minus
OT Roger Bacon, Opus tertium
OT(Duhem) Roger Bacon, Un fragment inédit de l’Opus tertium,
ed. P. Duhem
OT(Little) Roger Bacon, Part of the Opus Tertium, ed. A. G. Little
Perspectiva Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva
PL Patrologia Latina
RBS Hackett (ed.), Roger Bacon and the Sciences
RegB Francis of Assisi, ‘Regula bullata’ in Opuscula, 225–38
RegNB Francis of Assisi, ‘Regula non bullata’ in Opuscula,
239–94
SD Roger Bacon, ‘Les Summulae dialectices de Roger
Bacon’; translation in Roger Bacon, The Art and Science
of Logic, trans. T. S. Maloney
3Soc ‘Legenda trium sociorum’
SS Roger Bacon, Secretum secretorum
Test Francis of Assisi, ‘Testamentum’ in Opuscula, 305–17
x
INTRODUCTION
During the thirteenth century the ambitions and fears of the inhabitants of
Latin Christendom took on new forms as their horizons expanded. The
Mongol conquests in Asia at once menaced Europeans and opened up the
unknown lands of Central Asia and the Far East to diplomacy, trade and
evangelism. The conquest of Constantinople and the struggle to regain
Jerusalem involved them more than ever in the societies of the eastern
Mediterranean. Victories over their Muslim and pagan neighbours
swelled their lands on all sides, but gave them uncomfortable responsi-
bilities. There was a growing awareness of the sheer size of the world in
relation to the small corner occupied by Latin Christians. In the same
period many lost texts of ancient Greece, together with commentaries and
treatises from the Muslim world, were obtained and translated. This
diverse body of material included works on philosophy, medicine, natural
sciences, astronomy, astrology, alchemy and magic. Its introduction into
the courts and universities of Europe radically affected Latin thought, at
once suggesting new possibilities and posing an uneasy challenge to
existing orthodoxies.
For many observers these developments had an uncertain historical
resonance. The community of the faithful seemed fragile in the face of
so many challenges. The spread of heresies and the endless wars and
tensions within Europe suggested that darker forces were at work. The
appearance of Antichrist was widely anticipated. Yet theirs was also a
society of increasing prosperity and sophistication. A powerful, reforming
papacy and new religious orders worked to renew the faith and to convert
unbelievers. Successive popes and councils called for responses to this array
of threats, problems and opportunities. Many people sought to address the
troubles of Christendom, but few were able to propose overarching or
enduring solutions. One exception was an English Franciscan, Roger
Bacon. In the late 1260s he wrote a series of treatises at the request of
Pope Clement IV, analysing the perilous situation of Christendom and
1
Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom
outlining a programme of reform that would turn Latin weakness into
strength. His work has rarely been read in this context, but it was one of
the most dynamic attempts of its time to empower the Latin West in the
face of internal divisions and external threats.
Roger Bacon occupies a prominent, if ambiguous, position in the
history of the medieval period. He is widely regarded as a significant
figure in the development of modern scientific thought, playing an
important role in the assimilation of Graeco-Arabic learning into the
Latin world. He was one of the first to teach Aristotle’s natural philosophy
in Paris, and his later investigations were imaginative and diverse. In
particular, he explored controversial fields such as astrology, alchemy
and magic, which sought to harness the power of nature at the very
boundaries of the licit. Although he was one of a number of scholars
who were involved in the process of adapting this material for Christian
use, he was unique in producing a series of treatises for the papal curia in
which he offered pungent analyses of his society and its intellectual life.
These, together with his programme for its reform, have brought him
lasting attention and repute. Displaced from their original setting, his ideas
have been valued as a remarkable early statement of a set of aspirations
central to Western secular identity: the rejection of prejudice and super-
stition and the continuing advance of science. As a result, his work seemed
to belong to one of the great narrative arcs of human progress, rather than
to a particular place and time. This impression was fostered by the view
that Bacon was isolated in his own society by the nature of his interests and
the originality of his mind – and the persecuting zeal these aroused in his
contemporaries. During the centuries after his death something of a ‘black
legend’ grew up around his memory, suggesting that he had been silenced
and imprisoned by his order and a complicit pope. His experience has
been represented as exceptional, difficult and obscure: historically signifi-
cant, but peripheral to the main currents of the day rather than indicative
of them.
Something of this perception of a disjunction between Bacon and his
environment has lingered on, permitted by the directions in which study
has proceeded. His social and intellectual criticisms and his reform pro-
gramme can still seem curiously adrift in modern discussion, cast loose by
the centuries from the vital currents of thought in which they had been
anchored. His work has not often been read as characteristic of the wider
discourses of its day, or as evidence of them. In particular, the seriousness
of his commitment to the Franciscan order has been largely overlooked.
The consequence of this is not only the perpetuation of some grave
misrepresentations of his life and thought, but also the persistent neglect
of a group of important and relatively accessible sources for the order’s
2
Introduction
history. The present study seeks to address both of these deficiencies in the
historiography. It offers a new reading of Bacon’s work, arguing that he
wrote out of a keen personal engagement with the objectives of his order
and the contemporary Church. In the process, it challenges the image of
Bacon as a marginalised and suspect figure, suggesting that his work rather
provides an indication of the breadth of imagination possible where
mendicant aspirations met the intellectual dynamism generated by the
early universities. Following from this, it shows how, as a neglected
witness to the thought of the friars, he offers us an unsettlingly new
perspective on terrain that has, perhaps, grown too familiar.
roger bacon in history

A new study cannot be undertaken without setting out plainly the nature
of our current understanding of Bacon and the reasons for it. Modern
views of him have surprisingly deep roots. Unlike many other medieval
intellectuals, he did not at his death pass soberly into sainthood or obscur-
ity, but continued to be read and discussed throughout the centuries. This
has generated a rich interpretative legacy that continues to affect repre-
sentations of him.1
During his life Bacon wrote on a wide range of topics. His treatises for
Pope Clement IV criticised the ignorance and prejudice that, in his view,
were endangering the Latin West. He set out a bold new programme of
studies that would remedy the situation. Embedded within these larger
texts were treatises on neglected subjects that Bacon thought necessary to
the Church. He was particularly interested in mathematics, optics and
scientia experimentalis, which encompassed, in addition to the more obvious
elements, branches of learning such as astrology, alchemy and magic. This
material was popular with contemporaries and continued to be copied,
disseminated and supplemented in the centuries after his death. He was
much admired, not least because he had addressed difficult questions
about the limits that should be imposed upon the study and use of
controversial arts and sciences. These were early contributions to a debate
that has persisted, in one form or another, to the present day. At some
point in the fourteenth century it began to be rumoured that he had been
condemned by members of his order for holding suspect views, and
sentenced to prison. As far as we can tell, the stories did him little harm:
official histories of his order continued to boast of his achievements while
tales of his magic exploits proliferated.
1
Some of the material presented here and in the following paragraphs is given in greater detail in
A. Power, ‘A Mirror for Every Age: The Reputation of Roger Bacon’, EHR, 121.492 (2006), 657–92.
3
In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries he became a
notable historical figure. On the Elizabethan stage he was a benign
counterpart to the darker figures of Prospero and Dr Faustus. In literature
he was associated with knowledge of occult arts: sometimes as a practi-
tioner with demons at his command; sometimes as a critic; occasionally as
a wily rescuer of souls ensnared by Satan.2 Scholars of the time, anxious to
defend the legitimacy of their own scientific endeavours, were irritated by
the popular stories of Friar Bacon achieving technological marvels with
the aid of demons or magical practices. They mounted a strident defence
of him, insisting that he achieved everything as a good Christian, through
the use of mathematics and natural philosophy, and that allegations to the
contrary were the slanders of his jealous and uncomprehending contem-
poraries.3 They were eager to insist that only the ignorant could suppose
Bacon – and, by extension, themselves – to be interested in magic or other
‘unscientific’ arts. This was something of a misrepresentation, but it has
taken a long time for the more esoteric aspects of Bacon’s thought to be
investigated on their own terms. Instead, there were recurring efforts to
insist, for example, that he was superior to ‘ordinary alchemists’ and
‘worthy of being placed among the chemists’.4 This hindered recognition
of his view of nature, its powers and the application of them to ecclesias-
tical affairs, although matters have greatly improved in recent decades.5
A second, more serious, consequence of this early enthusiasm for Bacon
has been the secularisation of his objectives. The prevailing view that he
was not particularly dedicated to his order and the Church almost certainly
had its roots in the hostility to the friars that developed in England during
his own lifetime and greatly intensified with the Reformation.6 The
2
The famous history of Fryer Bacon contayning the wonderfull things that he did in his life: also the manner of his
death, with the lives and deaths of the two conjurers, Bungey and Vandermast (London, 1640). The stories
vary across the different editions of this popular ‘history’. See A. Kavey, Books of Secrets: Natural
Philosophy in England, 1550–1600 (Chicago, 2007), esp. pp. 32–58.
3
E.g. J. Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam uocant (Basle, 1557),
p. 342; the prefaces to Frier Bacon his discovery of the miracles of art, nature, and magick. Faithfully translated
out of Dr Dees own copy, by T.M. and never before in English (London, 1659); Roger Bacon, Epistola
Fratris Rogerii Baconis, De secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae . . . opera Johannis Dee
(Hamburg, 1618), pp. 11–12; and the indignation of Anthony Wood: Survey of the Antiquities of the
City of Oxford, composed in 1661–6, by Anthony Wood, ed. A. Clark (3 vols. Oxford, 1889–99), vol. ii,
p. 385. For further references see Power, ‘Mirror’, pp. 664–8.
4
M. M. Pattison Muir, ‘Roger Bacon: His Relations to Alchemy and Chemistry’ in A. G. Little (ed.),
Roger Bacon Essays (Oxford, 1914), 285–320, p. 320.
5
Now regularly discussed in Micrologus, and notably by Chiara Crisciani and Agostino Paravicini
Bagliani. See also the essays by W. R. Newman, F. Getz, S. J. Williams, together with J. Hackett’s
essay ‘Roger Bacon on Astronomy-Astrology: The Sources of the Scientia Experimentalis’ in RBS,
175–98.
6
P. R. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton, 1986); C. Z. Wiener, ‘The
Beleaguered Isle: A Study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Anti-Catholicism’, Past and Present, 51
4
Introduction
Tudor ‘Friar Bacon’ was an English luminary, a patriot and a defender of
his country against its foreign foes. It was important to preserve him from
the stigma of loyalty to the Pope, the Roman Catholic Church and the
Franciscan order. The rumours of a condemnation came into their own
and took on a new significance in this climate. It was frequently claimed
that the papacy or the friars had actively objected to his work: ‘The silly
Fryers envying his too prying head, by their craft had almost got it off his
shoulders.’ Popes Clement IV and Nicholas IV were each said to have
imprisoned him.7 This did not merely establish Bacon’s nationalist cre-
dentials, it enhanced his scholarly prestige. For Protestant England,
Roman Catholicism was the embodiment of Dark Age superstitions and
intellectual backwardness. The rejection of Bacon’s ideas by Rome was to
his credit: it showed that he was modern and enlightened. His ill-attested
condemnation was thus made central to narratives of his life and came to
function rhetorically as the main indication of the reaction of his con-
temporaries to his work. This use of the condemnation story persists,
although with our very different understanding of the medieval Church it
now tends, if anything, to discredit Bacon among scholars, although it
remains the basis for popular lionisation.8 Beyond the condemnation, it is
noticeable that while Elizabethans did not present Bacon as a religious
sceptic, they did construct him as a man whose aims were antithetical to
those of the papacy and the friars. This, too, has its echoes in time – the
idea persists that Bacon sought, as Daniel put it, ‘to deflect the purpose and
approach given [to the Franciscans] by their founder’.9
From the end of the seventeenth century interest shifted towards
Bacon’s originality as a thinker. He was credited with having invented
certain useful technologies, such as telescopes and gunpowder. In the
nineteenth century he emerged as a visionary scientist, struggling against
the forces of ignorance and religious conservatism, prophesying a bright
future for humanity if it adopted his rational modus operandi – namely,
experimental method. His supposed persecution at the hands of the
medieval Church imbued him with a tragic heroism, and even an oblique
contemporary relevance. Everyone from Positivists to liberal Catholics
(1971), 27–62; D. Williams, ‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and the Rhetoric of Temporality’ in
G. McMullan and D. Matthews (eds.), Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge,
2007), 31–48.
7
Frier Bacon his discovery, quotation from Preface. See also G. Powell, Disputationum theologicarum &
scholasticarum de Antichristo & eius Ecclesia (London, 1605), p. 14.
8
P. Sidelko, ‘The Condemnation of Roger Bacon’, JMH, 22.1 (1996), 69–81. The condemnation is,
for example, made much of in a recent popular biography: B. Clegg, The First Scientist: A Life of
Roger Bacon (London, 2003) and a highly inaccurate sketch in D. Sharpes, Outcasts and Heretics:
Profiles in Independent Thought and Courage (Lanham, MD, 2007), pp. 187–90.
9
E. R. Daniel, The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (Lexington, KY, 1975), p. 66.
5
found this figure attractive. It was an acolyte of Auguste Comte who
produced what remains the standard edition of the Opus maius. The
seventh centenary of his birth was celebrated in Oxford in 1914 and
drew distinguished guests from across Europe. Inevitably, perhaps, the
backlash began in earnest the same year.
A far more critical approach to Bacon’s work had begun to appear from
the end of the nineteenth century, among scholars such as Pierre
Mandonnet, Emile Charles and Hastings Rashdall. Their concerns were
developed and brought to a wider audience by Lynn Thorndike in a series
of articles beginning in 1914 and later consolidated by a contextualised
portrait in the influential History of Magic and Experimental Science. He
asserted that there was no evidence that Bacon anticipated modern dis-
coveries in any practical sense or was persecuted by his contemporaries.
On the contrary, Bacon’s reputation was based largely on extrapolations
from his boastful account of his own merits and his criticisms of his
contemporaries. In fact, he was not particularly original in his interest in
natural science or even his advocacy of experimental method. The
importance of his writings, when read in their proper context, lay in the
fact that they gave ‘a most valuable picture of medieval thought’ at its
advanced stages.10
Thorndike’s arguments convinced most people, perhaps all the more
powerfully because they fitted into a general revulsion against Victorian
biography and intellectual hagiography. Yet the grounds on which he
attacked the nineteenth-century stereotype were not quite as encompass-
ing as they appeared. He was suspicious about the way the known
evidence was used and sceptical of fashionable theories of scientific pro-
gress, basing his analysis firmly in a more sophisticated sense of historical
context. He suggested that attention be paid to Bacon’s interest in
astrology and magic. He showed that the evidence for the dramatisation
of Bacon’s relationship with his order was extremely slender. Yet there
were misunderstandings about Bacon that Thorndike did not specifically
address, and indeed that he perpetuated in the very studies that purported
to signal a clean break with the past. In particular, he did very little to
address the secularisation of Bacon’s life and work, paying no serious
10
L. Thorndike, ‘Roger Bacon and Experimental Method in the Middle Ages’, Philosophical Review,
23 (1914), 271–92. He continued to develop his argument in ‘The True Roger Bacon, i’, AHR,
21.2 (1916), 237–57 (quotation from p. 238); ‘The True Roger Bacon, ii’, AHR, 21.3 (1916),
468–80; A History of Magic and Experimental Science During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era (8
vols. London, 1923–58), vol. ii, pp. 616–91. On Thorndike’s ‘deflationary’ approach to historical
study see D. B. Durand, ‘Magic and Experimental Science: The Achievement of Lynn Thorndike’,
Isis, 33.6 (1942), 691–712, esp. p. 702. On Mandonnet, Charles and Rashdall see Thorndike,
‘Roger Bacon and Experimental Method’, pp. 272–6; Thorndike, History, vol. ii, pp. 686–7.
6
Introduction
attention to the significance of Bacon’s Franciscan vocation.11 Thorndike
also largely accepted and reproduced the Victorian view that ‘before Jebb
had edited the Opus maius in 1733, Roger Bacon was unappreciated and
unknown’.12 This had the effect of obscuring the origins of many endur-
ing ideas about Bacon.
In the first half of the twentieth century most of Bacon’s lesser-known
extant writings were printed, filling out the picture of his life and thought.
Of particular importance was Robert Steele’s monumental Opera hactenus
inedita, which appeared between 1905 and 1941. While it revealed the
range of Bacon’s work, it tended to destroy the legend of singularity still
further, since much of it seemed hardly outstanding in a thirteenth-
century context that was now far better known. However, in the 1930s
there was a renewed hunger for improving biographies of great men,
which was reflected in the rising once more of Bacon’s star, especially in
Britain where he was lauded in Whiggish and nationalistic histories.13 It is
likely that this jingoistic popular enthusiasm provoked the growing scho-
larly hostility to him. A negative view of his ‘character’ emerged amid a
fashion for magisterial vignettes. These, as David Knowles put it, depicted
historical figures ‘as in truth they were’ and sought to assess their ‘moral
worth’.14 Unfortunately, judgements about Bacon’s moral worth were
not pronounced on the basis of a fresh reading of his writings, but made in
reaction to the existing representations of him. Among twentieth-century
scholars, who were predisposed by long tradition to assume that his
contemporaries resented him, and who prized modesty and academic
courtesies, Bacon’s self-promotion and attacks on his colleagues earned
him the reputation of an outsider; a vain and unreliable witness with a
bitter tongue.15 The tendency to castigate rather than examine the emo-
tions and language of medieval writers was perhaps also the corollary of
the then conventional view that medieval passions had been inherently
11
His sole comment was that he was not surprised that Bacon had joined the order, ‘for both Orders
were rich in learned men, including students of natural science’: ‘True Roger Bacon, i’, p. 237.
12
Thorndike, ‘Roger Bacon and Experimental Method’, p. 271.
13
R. Partin, ‘Biography as an Instrument of Moral Instruction’, American Quarterly, 8.4 (1956), 303–
15. See, for example, G. M. Trevelyan, Illustrated History of England (3rd edn. London, 1956), p. 183.
Curiously, in Soviet popular scholarship he was glorified as an atheist, a scientist and an ‘ideologist
of the urban working classes’: A. Klemeshov, ‘Roger Bacon’s Life and Ideas in Russian
Historiography’ in J. Carvalho (ed.), Religion, Ritual and Mythology: Aspects of Identity Formation in
Europe (Pisa, 2006), 253–63, p. 257.
14
D. Knowles, ‘The Historian and Character’ (1954), reprinted in The Historian and Character and
Other Essays (Cambridge, 1963), 1–15, quotations at p. 14.
15
The point is illustrated by a reproof given to the notoriously combative historian George Coulton,
at the end of a lecture to the British Academy in 1932, when the chairman told him firmly: ‘I cannot
feel that controversy can ever be respectable’: G. G. Coulton, Fourscore Years: An Autobiography
(Cambridge, 1945), p. 326.
7
uncontrolled and childish.16 Bacon’s enthusiasm, which had moved the
nineteenth century to sympathy and respect, was often seen by subsequent
authors as overwrought and eccentric. The cliché of the ‘flawed genius’
was routinely deployed to describe him.17 These basic ideas about his
personality have, on the whole, persisted up to the present day in the face
of considerable evidence that could modify them.
It was in this climate that two monographs on Bacon appeared almost
simultaneously: those of Theodore Crowley and Stewart Easton, in 1950
and 1952 respectively. They remain, in the absence of anything more
recent, the standard Anglophone biographies.18 They both provide
detailed evaluations of the often patchy and ambiguous evidence for
Bacon’s life. Many of their conclusions are persuasive, or at least thought-
provoking. However, Easton, in particular, constructed a deliberately
unsympathetic portrait of Bacon, partly on the basis of hypotheses about
his psychology that cannot be substantiated and now seem dated. In his
view, Bacon was a ‘crank’ who had neglected to study theology as a young
man, and as a consequence spent his life watching resentfully as fame and
status was achieved by those who had. ‘It seems to me’, wrote Easton, ‘that
the subconscious realisation that he had made a wrong decision accounts
for the whole of Bacon’s later career and his peculiar psychological
disposition.’ He believed – again, without any real evidence – that
Bacon was closely supervised by his superiors and his work censored,
and that this was because he was a Joachite with leanings towards the ‘left-
wing’ of the order: the proto-Spirituals. He attributed Bacon’s criticisms
of the state of study to jealousy and ‘hatred’ of men more successful than
himself, and saw him as a genius, but one flawed by credulity, malice,
arrogance, a lack of generosity and other failings.19 Easton, it should be
noted, was not a medievalist. Crowley, a theologian, also felt that Bacon
was an ‘erratic genius’, and his depiction of Bacon’s psychology, while less
overtly speculative and rather less aggressive in tone, was in essential
agreement with that of Easton.20 It is hard to escape the impression that
16
Represented in Johan Huizinga’s Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919) and Norbert Elias’ Über den
Prozess der Zivilisation (1937).
17
For example: D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England (3 vols. Cambridge, 1948–59), vol. i,
pp. 214–16.
18
A number of shorter biographical essays, particularly by Jeremiah Hackett, David Lindberg and
A. G. Molland, critique and update Crowley and Easton, but cite them in support of many
fundamental points. For the current state of Bacon biography see below, pp. 10–11.
19
S. C. Easton, Roger Bacon and his Search for a Universal Science (New York, 1952), esp. pp. 19–34, 144–
5; quotations at pp. 144, 30–1.
20
T. Crowley, Roger Bacon: The Problem of the Soul in his Philosophical Commentaries (Louvain, 1950),
esp. pp. 27, 70–1, 196–8.
8
Introduction
both authors read Bacon through the lens of prevailing moralised assess-
ments. They have, however, been highly influential.
These biographies were followed by several studies from Italian histor-
ians, who had their own perspectives on Bacon. In 1953 Eugenio Massa
published a critical edition of the seventh part of the Opus maius, the
section on moral philosophy. This was the basis for his 1955 monograph,
which was partly devoted to an investigation into Bacon’s use of classical
philosophy.21 In 1957 Franco Alessio published a biographical study that
contextualised Bacon more sensitively than had his predecessors. He
characterised Bacon as a reformer who drew deeply on the ideas of
those around him, including the poor; a man whose work came out of
the very intensity of his experiences and the events of his life.22 He saw the
development of the Franciscan order in terms that made Bacon’s place
among the friars seem more natural, but only by emphasising that he was
acting within an intellectualised order greatly changed from the days of
Francis of Assisi. He investigated Bacon’s relationships with his contem-
poraries, particularly Grosseteste and Bonaventure. He argued that Bacon
had sought to reform the order along distinctive lines suggested by the
study of science and philosophy, and that this had been opposed by
Bonaventure.23 The view that Bonaventure and Bacon were in antago-
nistic dialogue, and that this was a major cause of Bacon’s problems, was
further developed by Camille Bérubé in several studies of the two men,
and is still the subject of debate.24 Finally, additional contextualisation of
Bacon among the Oxford friars was offered in 1971 by Davide Bigalli, in a
close analysis of the relationship between the eschatological thought of
Bacon and Adam Marsh and the wider affairs of the Church in the shadow
of the Mongol threat.25
Despite the general disenchantment with Bacon as a personality, the
later decades of the twentieth century saw a sustained effort to clarify the
nature and importance of his thought by scholars working within the
history of ideas. There have been few academic monographs in any
language, although there have been several biographies aimed at a more
21
MP; E. Massa, Ruggero Bacone: etica e poetica nella storia dell’‘Opus maius’ (Rome, 1955).
22
F. Alessio, Mito e scienza in Ruggero Bacone (Milan, 1957), pp. 10–11.
23
Alessio, Mito, pp. 79–105. See also Crowley, Roger Bacon, pp. 55–76.
24
C. Bérubé, ‘Le dialogue de S. Bonaventure et de Roger Bacon’, CF, 39 (1969), 59–103; C. Bérubé,
De la philosophie à la sagesse chez St Bonaventure et Roger Bacon (Rome, 1976); D. Hattrup, Ekstatik der
Geschichte: Die Entwicklung der christologischen Erkenntnistheorie Bonaventuras (Paderborn, 1993), esp.
pp. 126–71.
25
D. Bigalli, I Tartari e l’Apocalisse: Ricerche sull’escatologia in Adamo Marsh e Ruggero Bacone (Florence,
1971).
9
popular audience.26 Instead, literally hundreds of articles have been writ-
ten to examine Bacon’s work across a range of highly specialised disci-
plines.27 The main research questions have concerned Bacon’s sources,
the development of his ideas and their influence on later thinkers.
Although the notion of ‘genius’ has gone out of fashion, a chorus of
scholars confirm that he was indeed exceptional in many areas: ‘It might
be correct to describe Roger Bacon as the Middle Ages’ greatest apostle of
natural science.’28 ‘Bacon not only deserves an important place in the
history of language studies as a philologist, but as a student of semantics as
well.’29 ‘Taylor’s epithet describing [Bacon] as “Father of Modern
Geography” still holds a grain of truth.’30 ‘Light was one of the most
important entities in the medieval cosmos, and Roger Bacon was its most
accomplished medieval student.’31 ‘Roger Bacon’s bold synthesis of
alchemy and medicine, in which both are subordinate to scientia experi-
mentalis, was a significant novelty for its time.’32 ‘It was Bacon who
showed western scholars how to do optics the mathematical way.’33
‘No medieval thinker had ever argued the case of utility so forcefully or
hammered it home so often. In his repeated insistence on the practical
application of scientific knowledge, on its beneficiality for the individual
and the state, Bacon is the advocate for a program that has become our
own.’34
Away from the specialist studies of Bacon’s thought, many medievalists
touch on him in passing. In the last few decades his views on other
26
The best introduction to the modern study of Bacon is the collection of essays edited by Jeremiah
Hackett: Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays (Leiden, 1997) and the German
translation of some of these and other essays in F. Uhl (ed.), Roger Bacon in der Diskussion (2 vols.
Frankfurt, 2001–2). See also the biographical introduction in A. Boadas i Llavat, Roger Bacon:
subjectivitat i ètica (Barcelona, 1996), pp. 7–69. The bibliographies of two recent publications
confirm this picture: F. Finkenberg, Ancilla theologiae? Theologie und Wissenschaften bei Roger Bacon
(Mönchengladbach, 2007), pp. 107–13; G. Mensching, Roger Bacon (Münster, 2009), pp. 131–2.
27
Some indication of the extent of publishing on Bacon may be gained from the International
Medieval Bibliography, which, although far from comprehensive, lists 206 articles on Bacon for the
period from 1976 to the beginning of 2011.
28
S. J. Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and his Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum’,
Speculum, 69 (1994), 57–73, p. 70.
29
J. Pinborg, ‘Roger Bacon on Signs: A Newly Recovered Part of the Opus Maius’ in J. P.
Beckmann et al. (eds.), Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1981), 403–12, p. 412.
30
D. Woodward and H. M. Howe, ‘Roger Bacon on Geography and Cartography’ in RBS, 199–
222, p. 221.
31
D. C. Lindberg, ‘Roger Bacon on Light, Vision and the Universal Emanation of Force’ in RBS,
243–75, p. 243.
32
W. R. Newman, ‘An Overview of Roger Bacon’s Alchemy’ in RBS, 317–36, p. 335.
33
D. C. Lindberg, ‘Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva’ in E. Grant and J. E. Murdoch (eds.),
Mathematics and its Application to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1987),
249–69, p. 264.
34
S. J. Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and the Secret of Secrets’ in RBS, 365–93, p. 391.
10
Introduction
religions, methods of evangelism, eschatology, astrology, alchemy and
magic, in particular, have been the subject of close readings and are
regularly outlined within broader surveys.35 These supply him with a
different kind of context and open up new avenues for exploration of
his thought. In general, the research of the last decades has been extremely
important, clarifying many issues and laying essential foundations for
further study. It must, however, be observed that the unintended con-
sequence of the way that it has proceeded is that Bacon’s great unity of
vision, which had so impressed the Positivists and other admirers of
systems, seems to have splintered into a multitude of fragments that no
one has yet put together. Indeed, there is now almost too large, diverse
and specialised a body of scholarship, in too many different languages, to
be readily absorbed, much less synthesised into a coherent picture, by a
single scholar.36
Fragmentation is even more palpable in the current state of the editions
of Bacon’s writing. It reflects the chaotic state of the manuscripts, which
was greatly compounded by his habit of writing as many as five drafts and
re-using the same material under different titles and in different con-
texts.37 We lack complete modern critical editions of any of his works,
save for the Compendium studii theologiae, De multiplicatione specierum and
some of his early treatises such as the Summulae dialectices. In order to read
the whole text of the Opus maius itself, as far as it has been established and
edited, together with its putative preface, one must consult six separate
volumes and two articles, not to mention incorporating a plethora of
35
To give a few examples from among dozens: P. Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410
(Harlow, 2005), passim; B. Grévin, ‘Entre Magie et Sémiotique: Roger Bacon et les caractères
chinois’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 70.1 (2003), 118–38; J. D. North, ‘Roger
Bacon and the Saracens’ in G. F. Vescovini (ed.), Filosofia e scienza classica, arabo-latina medievale e l’età
moderna (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1999), 129–60; B. Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches
towards the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), esp. pp. 177–83; S. C. Akbari, Idols in the East: European
Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, 2009), pp. 269–79; H. M. Carey, ‘Astrology
and Antichrist in the Later Middle Ages’ in G. Jaritz and G. Moreno-Riaño (eds.), Time and
Eternity: The Medieval Discourse (Turnhout, 2003), 515–35; K. H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the
Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundation of Semantics, 1250–1345 (Leiden, 1988), esp.
pp. 3–26; K. H. Tachau, ‘Seeing as Action and Passion in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’
in J. F. Hamburger and A.-M. Bouché (eds.), The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the
Middle Ages (Princeton, 2006), 336–59; D. G. Denery II, Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval
World: Optics, Theology and Religious Life (Cambridge, 2005), esp. pp. 75–116.
36
Hackett noted the difficulty in the introduction to his edited collection: ‘it will be obvious from the
present volume why such an introduction [to the Opus maius] had to be a cooperative venture’
(RBS, p. 4).
37
See A. G. Little, ‘Roger Bacon’s Works with References to the MSS. and Printed Editions’ in A. G.
Little (ed.), Roger Bacon: Essays Contributed by Various Writers on the Occasion of the Commemoration of
the Seventh Centenary of his Birth (Oxford, 1914), 375–425.
11
minor corrections to any reading of the first two volumes.38 In this
context, it is worth pointing out that the only relatively complete
translation, that of Robert Belle Burke, published in 1928, is not reliable.
It has various shortcomings, one of which is its secular terminology.
Sapientia is routinely translated as ‘knowledge’ and scientia as ‘science’,
which cumulatively present a misleading picture.39 The sheer challenge
posed by the materials – manuscripts, editions and secondary literature –
may be one reason why Bacon, unlike many of his contemporaries, has
not been the subject of a major scholarly biography in any language for
over fifty years.
The most significant consequence of this fragmentation is that Bacon’s
ideas on particular topics are often discussed in isolation from the sur-
rounding text. This has facilitated the continuing disregard of his religious
commitment, and, indeed, of the stated purposes of his reform pro-
gramme, with disastrous results for the understanding of his thought.
This may be symptomatic of a wider problem within the discipline of
intellectual history: a selective approach to context – a kind of tone
deafness – that minimises or ignores the importance of religious belief.
As recently as 1995, Lindberg was drawing attention to the problem of
indifference to religious history among those working on medieval
science, while French has suggested that much work in the field is posited
on a highly secular concept of ‘science’ that did not in fact exist in earlier
times.40 The idea that science is inherently in opposition to religion, so
ubiquitous in modern Western culture, has obscured the fact that Bacon
38
These are the two original volumes of OM, supplemented by a third which gives an improved
version of books 1–3 together with a list of corrections for books 4–7; K. M. Fredborg et al., ‘An
Unedited Part of Roger Bacon’s Opus maius: De signis’, Traditio, 34 (1978), 76–136; Perspectiva and
MP, which update books 5 and 7 respectively. For the preface, there is Gasq, re-edited in EFRB. As
the latter is very rare, I have also supplied the Gasquet page numbers when citing it. On these
hindrances to the study of Bacon, see the observations of Jeremiah Hackett in ‘Roger Bacon and
the Sciences: Introduction’ and ‘Roger Bacon: His Life, Career and Works’, both in RBS, pp. 1–
23. The situation that he describes has not changed significantly during the intervening years. The
Opus tertium is in a similar state: Brewer’s 1859 edition is supplemented with fragments published by
Duhem (1909) and Little (1912). Little used a different base manuscript for his edition (Winchester
College MS 39), but compared it with that published by Duhem (Paris MS Bibl. Nat. lat. 10264)
and noted variants, also omitting sections that he did not consider to be part of the work.
39
Recent translations offer only sections of the text: Ruggero Bacone, Filosofia, scienza, teologia
dall’Opus maius, trans. V. Sorge and F. Seller (Rome, 2010); Ruggero Bacone, La scienza
sperimentale: Lettera a Clemente IV – La scienza sperimentale – I segreti dell’arte e della natura, trans.
F. Bottin (Milan, 1990). The latter should be read alongside Bridges’ edition of Opus maius vi as its
notes are much fuller and it contains helpful textual corrections.
40
D. C. Lindberg, ‘Medieval Science and its Religious Context’, Osiris, 2nd ser., 10 (1995), 60–79;
R. French, Ancient Natural History: Histories of Nature (London, 1994), pp. ix–xxii. Lindberg argued
this point more specifically with regard to Bacon in ‘Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the
Patristic Tradition’, Isis, 78 (1987), 518–36 and the introduction to Perspectiva, esp. pp. xxii–xiii.
12
Introduction
and many of his contemporaries did not think that investigation into the
workings of nature was distinct from the wider remit of the Christian
scholar.41 It has taken a long time for historians to appreciate that there are
different kinds of ‘rationality’, and that the medieval world-view was as
rational and coherent on its own terms as our own.42
Historians of religion may be equally guilty of a lack of sympathy
towards the concerns of intellectual history, as recently argued in a
collection of essays attempting to bridge the gap between the two dis-
ciplines.43 Undoubtedly, those working on the medieval Franciscan order
have not, by and large, shown much interest in Bacon, tending to present
him as an instinctive opponent of the order’s proper aims. As one scholar
has observed: ‘He is something of an uncomfortable – when remem-
bered – memory in the Franciscan tradition, and one wonders at times
what to do with him.’44 The main exception has been the British Society
of Franciscan Studies, the most important sponsors of work on Bacon in
the first decades of the twentieth century. These scholars – who, perhaps
significantly, were not themselves Catholics – published editions of his
writing and treated him as a central figure in their studies of the early years
of the order in Britain.45 When this era came to an end, Bacon virtually
disappeared from the order’s histories, except where they touched on
education.46 Even here, Moorman described him as ‘the type of scholar of
which [St Francis] was naturally suspicious’.47 This is doubtless due to the
negative characterisations of his relationship with the order by biographers
such as Easton, but is also symptomatic of the troubled state of Franciscan
historiography itself.
Historians of the Franciscans have, over the last century, been preoc-
cupied by questions of authenticity. The central concern since the late
nineteenth century, the so-called ‘Franciscan question’, is to discover,
41
See D. C. Lindberg, ‘Science and the Early Christian Church’, Isis, 74.4 (1983), 509–30; H.-G.
Gadamer, ‘Reflections on the Relation of Religion and Science’ in J. Weinsheimer (ed. and trans.),
Hermeneutics, Religion and Ethics (New Haven, 1999), 119–27.
42
D. L. D’Avray, Medieval Religious Rationalities: A Weberian Analysis (Cambridge, 2010).
43
A. Chapman et al. (eds.), Seeing Things their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre
Dame, 2009).
44
T. J. Johnson, ‘Preaching Precedes Theology: Roger Bacon on the Failure of Mendicant
Education’, FS, 68 (2010), 83–95, p. 90.
45
For the wave of non-Catholic enthusiasm for St Francis behind these developments see Knowles,
Religious Orders, vol. i, pp. 114–16. See W. H. V. R[eade], Review of Sabatier et al. (eds.), Franciscan
Essays, EHR, 27 (1912), 810 for the view that the Society depended too much on unquestioning
acceptance of Bacon’s statements.
46
For example: B. Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden, 2000).
47
J. H. R. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968),
p. 252.
13
through the layers of hagiography, the ‘historical’ St Francis.48 The same
doubtful premise – that sources can be used to access a long-lost reality –
underpins much of the study of the subsequent history of the order. There
is a great emphasis on trying to discover what Francis intended for his
brothers, and then measuring the order’s development against these
hypothesised standards. Appreciation of the extraordinary success of the
order in most areas of medieval life has been tempered by a keen sense that
the price was betrayal of the original ideals. Scholarly attention has focused
around issues of poverty and education, as the abandonment of one and
the embrace of the other are seen as fundamental to the divergence of the
order away from its founder’s vision. The institutionalisation and clerica-
lisation of the order are presented as symptomatic of its decline.49 The
early disputes within the order are often read through the lens of the later
Spiritual–Conventual schism, reducing a complex process to a simple
opposition between incompatible positions that are assumed to have
existed almost from the beginning.50 In all this, the image of Francis
looms large. Although many people canonised by the Roman Catholic
Church have been subjected to critical scrutiny by practitioners of a
secular academic discipline, Francis of Assisi has rarely been one of them.51
It may not be apparent to historians working outside the order that a
major reason for the character of much Franciscan historiography over the
last decades, aside from the emotional connection that many feel with the
saint, is the commitment of modern Franciscans to discovering and
remaining true to the original conception of their way of life. In the
1960s the Second Vatican Council directed all religious orders to under-
take the ‘sensitive renewal of [their] life and rule’. This involved, among
other things, the directive to each order ‘to reverence and embrace the
genius and directives of its founder, its authentic traditions, the whole
48
On the enterprise so far see J. Dalarun, The Misadventure of Francis of Assisi: Towards a Historical Use of
the Franciscan Legends, trans. E. Hagman (New York, 2001), pp. 21–57; J. Dalarun, Vers une resolution
de la question franciscaine: La ‘Legende ombrienne’ de Thomas de Celano (Paris, 2007); A. Vauchez,
François d’Assise: Entre histoire et mémoire (Paris, 2009). See also R. B. Brooke, The Image of St Francis:
Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006).
49
The language employed to describe the masters involved in bringing about this shift continues to
be harsh. See for example D. Flood, ‘Three Commentaries on the Rule’ in La regola dei frati minori
(Spoleto, 2010), 153–85. The classic study is L. C. Landini, The Causes of the Clericalization of the
Order of Friars Minor 1209–1260 in the Light of Early Franciscan Sources (Chicago, 1968). Landini claims
to investigate ‘without any personal prejudice’ (p. v), but his language is not neutral. His clerical
friars ‘would not scruple’ to depart from strict observance or ‘to impose on the whole Order their
mentality’ even if they did so for ‘the greater spiritual good’ (p. 126).
50
This problem was addressed in D. Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the
Century after Saint Francis (University Park, PA, 2001).
51
On the consequences see J. Dalarun, Francis of Assisi and Power, trans. A. Bartol (New York, 2007),
esp. pp. 186–93.
14
Introduction
heritage, indeed, of the religious body’. The accumulated material of each
order, including constitutions and rules, was to be ‘carefully scrutinised
and obsolete injunctions deleted’. The effect of this, upon the Franciscans
at least, was to stimulate a scholarly endeavour unprecedented in scale and
devoted to uncovering the order’s ‘authentic traditions’.52 The methods
of modern secular scholarship have been employed in pursuit of this aim,
but the central presuppositions about what can be discovered have often
been those of the Roman Catholic Church.53
All this constitutes a hostile landscape into which to put Bacon. To
anyone in search of the authentic intentions of Francis, Bacon must seem
at best an irrelevance, and very likely an irritant. Molland was echoing
these ideas of the authentic and inauthentic Franciscan when he wondered
why Bacon became a friar: ‘for his likeness to St Francis was minimal’.54
While few of the friars resembled Francis closely, it must be acknowledged
that the process of secularising Bacon’s thought – to suit each generation’s
ideas of what constitutes ‘genius’, or at least, the scientific mind – has taken
him far from his order and its concerns. I hope in this broad sketch – itself
subject to many exceptions – to have indicated that the reasons for
questioning Bacon’s commitment to his order seem to have been driven
very largely by concerns external to his actual writings. His alienation from
his order seems, in short, to be posthumous. The early evidence must be
revisited.
the condemnation of roger bacon: a ‘black legend’?

In the first place, it must be acknowledged that evidence exists to support
the view that Bacon was ill suited to the Franciscan order and unhappy and
unpopular within it. In his writings of the late 1260s, as we will see, he
expressed discontent with the state of his order and complained of diffi-
culties with his superiors. He was severely critical of some of the scholars
among the brethren. There appears to be little explicit praise of the order
to set against the negativity. The impression given by these passages seems
52
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. N. P. Tanner (2 vols. London, 1990), vol. ii, pp. 939–40.
Catejan Esser explained that the research for his highly regarded Origins of the Franciscan Order was
undertaken partly to provide a ‘sure basis’ for the instruction of novices, and partly because in the
era of Vatican II the order was ‘pondering its origins, to discover, thereby, a path through the
present into the future’: C. Esser, Origins of the Franciscan Order, trans. A. Daly and I. Lynch
(Chicago, 1970), pp. v–vi. His study was declared by Roman Catholic authorities to be ‘free of
doctrinal or moral error’.
53
See the observations in G. Miccoli’s preface and the introduction to G. G. Merlo, Nel nome di san
Francesco: Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanismo sine agli inizi del XVI secolo (Padua, 2003), pp. xiii–5.
54
‘Roger Bacon’, ODNB.
15
to be confirmed by a report in a Franciscan chronicle of the later four-
teenth century, the Chronica XXIV generalium ordinis minorum.55 It states
that in the late 1270s some of his ideas were condemned by the minister
general of his order, with the support of many friars, and that he was
sentenced to imprisonment. When read in combination, this material
suggests that he made enemies by criticising his brethren too freely and
that his superiors regarded him with suspicion, with the result that his
work was censured and he was placed under some kind of restraint. The
two periods of apparent conflict with his order seem each to strengthen
the case for the other, and, like running ink, spread a dark and troubled
hue across the whole fabric of his life. Historians have varied considerably
in their readings of the material, but have not on the whole strayed far
from this essential construction of Bacon’s life in the order.
This is perhaps not surprising given the way in which Bacon’s biogra-
phy has been constructed. His autobiographical remarks are disconnected,
scattered thinly through the thousands of extant pages of his writing, with
a few areas of concentration. They have all been very well known for a
long time – many of them had been identified by 1747 – and their
problematic points debated ever since.56 Biographical studies proceed by
arranging the extracted fragments chronologically and reading them in
isolation from the text as if they provide a narrative, which to some extent
they can be made to do. There are, however, a number of problems with
this approach. Virtually all of the statements that appear to describe
Bacon’s experiences, particularly in the Franciscan order, were not written
to do that at all. Some of them were written in a flurry of embarrassment
and self-justification, during which Bacon blamed everyone, including his
superiors, for his lack of progress. Others were written in anguish of spirit
in order to reproach the Pope for putting him into an impossible position
and then doing nothing to help him. At most, these remarks describe a
particular, painful situation that was, as we will see, evidently rectified
later. I do not think they can be trusted to yield much more than that. We
would do better to look at what Bacon cared about, what he believed in,
what he wrote to achieve. The evidence to answer these questions is much
stronger, since most of his major works were written precisely in order to
inform the Pope of his hopes and ambitions.
The report of the condemnation in the Chronica presents a different
kind of problem. While some historians have used the source with cau-
tion, many others have both accepted it virtually at face value and given
55
ChrXXIVGen, p. 360.
56
Biographia Britannica or the Lives of the Most eminent Persons who have flourished in Great Britain and
Ireland, from the earliest Ages down to the present Times (6 vols. London, 1747–66), vol. i, pp. 341–64.
16
Introduction
weight to it in formulating their views on Bacon’s place in his society. It
has come to be used very widely and virtually without caveats as an
argument that Bacon’s work as a whole cannot have been acceptable to
his contemporaries and that it made him enemies.57 The evidence for this
assumption is both slender and controversial, yet it is allowed to affect
perspectives on Bacon to a surprising extent. One of the main contentions
of the present monograph is that Bacon was working from a position of
essential conformity with his time and its ideals. In order to avoid a
constant dialogue with the issue of the condemnation, it seems best to
address it at the outset.58
Modern discussions of the question of Bacon’s condemnation have
usually proceeded by asking which elements in Bacon’s work could
have caused him to be condemned.59 This has, not surprisingly, resulted
in a variety of competing hypotheses, but little firm agreement. With each
new hypothesis yet another strand of Bacon’s thought is made to seem
unacceptable to his contemporaries. Given that the source itself only
claimed that one of Bacon’s teachings was condemned, there is something
absurd in our accumulation of a whole list of potentially suspect teachings.
Rather oddly, the debate has at no point been informed by critical study of
the Franciscan chronicle in which the account was recorded. Judgements
on its reliability have been based entirely on whether Bacon’s writings
seem to provide grounds for a condemnation: in fact an entirely separate
question. If we are to have any sense of whether the Chronica can be relied
upon, we must rather ask about its intellectual, ideological and social
contexts. It should be compared with other sources of the later fourteenth
century that also mention Bacon. Above all, there must be a greater
awareness of the extremely complex nature of Franciscan historiography.
While this cannot clarify matters beyond doubt, it should certainly
encourage caution.
57
For example: J. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York, 2002), p. 225;
L. DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy and the End of Time: John of Rupecissa in the Late Middle Ages (New
York, 2009), p. 81.
58
For a preliminary exploration of this material see A. Power, ‘The Remedies for Great Danger:
Contemporary Appraisals of Roger Bacon’s Expertise’ in J. Canning, E. King and M. Staub (eds.),
Knowledge, Discipline and Power: Essays in Honour of David Luscombe (Leiden, 2011), 63–78.
59
Thorndike did not think Bacon was condemned for magic or astrology (History, vol. ii, pp. 628–9),
but the view that it was for astrology, alchemy and attacks on contemporaries has been maintained
by Crowley (Roger Bacon, pp. 67–72), Sidelko (‘Condemnation’) and, rather more warily, by
Hackett (‘Roger Bacon: His Life’, p. 19) and Lindberg (Perspectiva, p. xix). Easton (Roger Bacon,
pp. 192–202) thinks it was not for errors of doctrine, but for his attitude and putative Spiritual/
Joachite leanings. North thinks it ‘very unlikely’ that it was astronomy or even astrology related,
but was due to his delight in ‘Aristotelian and Saracenic writings’ (‘Roger Bacon’, pp. 141–2).
R. James Long noted some problems in Bacon’s angelology (‘Roger Bacon on the Nature and
Place of Angels’, Vivarium, 35.2 (1997), 266–82, pp. 280–2).
17
In the first place, it is worth stating that there are no known thirteenth-
century references to a condemnation of Bacon. The only reference to
him that can be dated to the second half of the 1270s comes from a book of
preaching exempla and implies, if anything, that he was an acquaintance of
whom it was worth boasting.60 The only autobiographical remarks that
can be dated securely to the period after the alleged condemnation occur
in his 1292 Compendium studii theologiae. Here he explained the delay in
producing the work by saying that although ‘often and much requested,
and long expected’ to write ‘some things useful for theology’, he had been
‘hindered [impeditus] in many ways, as is known to many’.61 This could,
with a stretch of the imagination, be interpreted as a delicate allusion to a
condemnation and confinement, years earlier, but it could also mean any
number of other things. He had used the same explanation – ‘impedi-
menta’ – when excusing his delay to Pope Clement IV around 1268. They
had been, he said, so numerous that it was impossible to list them all.62
One further element in this work seems to militate against the likelihood
of a condemnation: his criticism of Richard Rufus of Cornwall. He
asserted that, although Richard was admired by many, ‘among the wise
it was known that he was insane, and had been reproved in Paris due to the
errors which he had invented and promulgated when he was teaching
solemnly on the Sentences there’.63 The allegation that Richard was
‘reproved’ is not accepted by Richard’s recent biographer, who all but
accuses Bacon of fabricating it.64 Whether or not this is so, one might
think that if Bacon had himself been reproved and, more seriously,
condemned and imprisoned, the statement that Richard had (merely)
been reproved would hardly carry the force that it was clearly intended
to carry.
60
A. G. Little (ed.), Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium: saeculo xiii compositus a quodam fratre minore
anglio de provincia hiberniae (Aberdeen, 1908), p. 22. On this text see N. Louis, ‘Entre vérité et
efficacité: les stratégies de rédaction dans le Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium (ca. 1275–1279)’,
Revue Mabillon, new ser., 19 (tome 80) (2008), 123–53.
61
CST, p. 34/35. 62 OT, p. 15; OM, iv.iv.16, 1:403.
63
‘Sed apud sapientes fuit insanus et reprobatus Parisius propter errores quos invenerat [et] promul-
gaveret quando solemniter legebat Sententias ibidem’: CST, p. 86 (my translation).
64
P. Raedts, Richard Rufus of Cornwall and the Tradition of Oxford Theology (Oxford, 1987), p. 34.
However, a letter by Adam Marsh, then Richard’s superior in Oxford (Letter 203 in Adam Marsh,
The Letters of Adam Marsh, ed. and trans. C. H. Lawrence (2 vols. Oxford, 2006–10), vol. ii, pp. 494/
5–496/7), indicates that Richard was overwrought. It is possible that Adam – whom Bacon
certainly counted among ‘the wise’ – was the source of Bacon’s remark about Richard’s sanity.
See also ‘Introduction’, SD, trans. Maloney, pp. xix–xxii. It is indicative of the general estimate of
Bacon that his condemnation is accepted on the basis of a chronicle written ninety years after the
fact, whereas his report of the public ‘reproof’ of someone he knew is readily dismissed as
fabrication.
18
Introduction
No more is heard from Bacon himself; and when his name was men-
tioned in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it was gen-
erally as an authority in good standing. Intellectuals, both within and
outside the order, were drawing on his writings in a range of fields.65
This in itself strongly suggests that if he had been censured at all, it was not
a serious or lasting problem for those who wished to use his ideas. There
are no extant reports that state, or even imply, that his work had been
condemned. A number of Franciscan documents were, of course, pro-
duced in this period and did not survive: now they are known only by
their titles, if at all.66 Yet if they mentioned a condemnation they did not
do so with any consistency or uniformity, for the two earliest extant
references to such an event are muddled and tell strikingly different stories.
The lesser known, and possibly the earlier of the two, is the concluding
note to a summary of an alchemical treatise, De leone viridi. The summary
was preserved in a collection of works on the natural sciences, astronomy,
astrology and alchemy. The compilation was made between 1361 and
about 1400.67 The note reported that the original treatise had been written
by ‘Brother Roger Bacon of England’ and summarised by Raymond
Gaufredi, minister general of the Franciscan order. Raymond, it said,
had initially given orders to have Bacon seized by the friars and imprisoned
for his authorship of the treatise. However, when Bacon subsequently
taught Raymond about the work, Raymond released him from prison.68
Raymond, on this evidence, was ultimately not merely convinced that
Bacon’s pursuits were perfectly acceptable for a friar, but was so impressed
by the treatise that he wished to preserve and propagate it. The summary
certainly proved popular and survives in a number of manuscripts and
printed editions. It may in fact have been the better-known version of the
condemnation in the early modern period.69
Bacon is not now thought to have been the author of the treatise,
which was one of the many in circulation under his name by this time.
65
For details see below, pp. 266–7.
66
See A. Kehnel, ‘The Narrative Tradition of the Medieval Franciscan Friars on the British Isles:
Introduction to the Sources’, FS, 63 (2005), 461–530; B. Roest, Reading the Book of History:
Intellectual Contexts and Educational Functions of Franciscan Historiography 1226–ca. 1350 (Groningen,
1996), esp. pp. 33–68.
67
Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS. 2872, on which see J. Monfrin, ‘La place du Secret des secrets
dans la littérature française mediévale’ in W. F. Ryan and C. B. Schmitt (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle, The
Secret of Secrets: Sources and Influences (London, 1982), 73–113, pp. 83–4.
68
‘Verbum abbreviatum de Leone Viridi’, printed in Sanioris medicinae magistri D. Rogeri Baconis Angli
(Frankfurt, 1603), p. 285. The same note is attached to most of the MSS, including the earliest
extant. See A. G. Little, ‘Roger Bacon’s Works with References to the MSS. and Printed Editions’
in Little (ed.), Roger Bacon, 375–425, pp. 397–98.
69
ChrXXIVGen was not in print until 1897, whereas the Sanioris was printed in 1603 and again in
1620.
19
The question of whether Raymond did make the summary of the treatise
has been briefly considered and the attribution dismissed as improbable.70
Raymond was minister general from 1289 to 1295 and was, it seems,
effectively deposed by Pope Boniface VIII, who may have disliked his
support of the more rigorist friars. One of his most notorious acts as
minister general was to free one such group of friars from prison in
1289. This seems to have encouraged some historians to feel that he
might also have freed Bacon, as the note claims. The note has occasionally
been used to provide a terminus ad quem for Bacon’s imprisonment
although, rather inconsistently, no one has been similarly eager to use
the starting date that it supplies or indeed any other information from it.71
On the whole, this piece of evidence is treated briskly if at all. Its chief
function in the historiography has been to lend support to the general idea
of a condemnation.
The second piece of evidence, on the other hand, is well known and is
widely accepted as a broadly factual statement. It is the brief paragraph in
the Chronica XXIV generalium, which was completed between 1369 and
1374. The authorship is uncertain, although the Chronica is sometimes
attributed to Arnaud of Sarrant, at the time provincial minister of
Aquitaine.72 It was based on earlier sources, but, as in the case of all
Franciscan histories, its author selected and rewrote his sources in support
of a distinct agenda.73 The process, begun by Francis, Gregory IX and
Thomas of Celano, of defining what the order should be through inter-
pretations of its past had by this time generated a century and a half of
texts. The Chronica was written in a world utterly changed by the Black
Death and as the bitter divisions in the order were escalating into the final,
70
P. K. Balthasar, Geschichte des Armutsstreites im Franziskanerorden bis zum Konzil von Vienne (Münster,
1911), p. 210; Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris, 1733–), vol. xxvii, pp. 119–22; M. Pereira, ‘I
francescani e l’alchimia’ in P. Capitanucci (ed.), I francescani e la scienza (Assisi, 2008), 117–57,
pp. 147–8. Elias, the order’s most controversial minister general, was also said to be an alchemist,
although whether this originated as slander or mere report is unclear. See Pereira, ‘I francescani’,
pp. 122–5; A. Vinciguerra, ‘The Ars alchemie: The First Latin Text on Practical Alchemy’, Ambix,
56.1 (2009), 57–67.
71
A. G. Little, ‘Introduction on Roger Bacon’s Life and Works’ in Little (ed.), Roger Bacon, 1–31,
p. 27; Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 201–2; CST, p. 8; Bérubé, De la philosophie, p. 58.
72
M. T. Dolso, La Chronica XXIV generalium: il difficile percorso dell’unità nella storia francescana
(Padua, 2003), pp. 40–4.
73
On the manuscripts see M. T. Dolso, ‘I manoscritti della Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis
Minorum’, Franciscana, 6 (2004), 185–261; and on sources Dolso, La Chronica, pp. 257–382. She
thinks that the author manipulated but probably did not invent episodes outright (p. 382). Sabatier
was of the opinion that the part of the Chronica dealing with Bacon can be dated to the first half of
the fourteenth century, and was therefore one of the more authentic sections (OM, 3:158). See also
M. Zips, ‘Franziskanische Didaxe und Geschichtsschreibung im späteren Mittelalter: Einige
Überlegungen zum Geschichtsdenken der Minoriten im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert’ in C. Tuczay
et al. (eds.), Ir sult sprechen willekomen: Grenzenlose Mediävistik (Berne, 1998), 839–57.
20
Introduction
formal split into conventual and observant branches.74 These were grim
days, and Dolso argues that its theme in this difficult time was the need for
unity; it was palpably negative in its presentation of friars whom it saw as
fomenting division. It was not an empirical record of the order’s history
and neither were its sources.75 The vagaries of manuscript tradition,
exploration of which has only just begun, add yet another layer of
uncertainty to the interpretation of the printed text.76
The Chronica stated that the Franciscan minister general, then Jerome of
Ascoli, ‘after consultation with many brothers, condemned and reproved
the doctrine of Brother Roger Bacon of England, a master of sacred
theology, because it contained some suspected novelties. On account of
these novelties the same Roger was condemned to prison.’ It went on to
report: ‘There were also admonitions to all brothers that none should hold
that doctrine, but avoid it because of the Order’s condemnation of it.
Beyond this, [Jerome] even wrote to the Lord Pope Nicholas, so that the
aforesaid dangerous doctrine would be entirely laid to rest by his author-
ity.’77 No date was given, but within the Chronica’s narrative the event
seems to occur during the first year of Nicholas III’s pontificate, which
commenced at the end of 1277. Given the chaotic succession of topics in
the chronicle, this cannot, however, be entirely relied upon. It should be
noted that the Chronica described the censure without saying whether
Nicholas did endorse the condemnation of the doctrine. Most of the
manuscripts do not specify whether the sentence of imprisonment was
actually carried out, and if so, for how long. A few state that Bacon was
imprisoned for twenty years – a round, but quite implausible, number.78
On the details given, there is no reason to assume that Bacon did not
74
Roest, Reading, p. 28; D. Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval Franciscan Order (Rome,
1987). According to the Chronica, two-thirds of the friars had succumbed to the plague (pp. 544,
558). On the situation see E. Casteen, ‘John of Rupescissa’s Letter Reverendissime pater (1350) in the
Aftermath of the Black Death’, Franciscana, 6 (2004), 139–84; A. Müller, ‘Managing Crises:
Institutional Re-stabilisation of the Religious Orders in England after the Black Death (1347–
1350)’, Revue Mabillon, 16 (2005), 205–19.
75
See Roest (Reading, pp. 13–68) on the functions of Franciscan history writing and his pertinent
criticisms of the ‘historicist legacy’ in modern interpretations of the texts.
76
Dolso (‘I manoscritti’) notes the need to consider the editorial choices behind the 1897 text of the
Chronica.
77
‘Hic Generalis frater Hieronymus de multorum fratrum consilio condemnavit et reprobavit
doctrinam fratris Rogerii Bachonis Anglici, sacrae theologiae magistri, continentem aliquas novi-
tates suspectas, propter quas fuit idem Rogerius carceri condemnatus, praecipiendo omnibus
fratribus, ut nullus illam teneret, sed ipsam vitaret ut per Ordinem reprobatam. Super hoc etiam
scripsit domino Papae Nicolao praefato, ut per eius auctoritatem doctrina illa periculosa totaliter
sopiretur’: ChrXXIVGen, p. 360. The editors noted that ‘mancipatus’ and ‘damnatus’ appeared in
place of ‘condemnatus’ in some manuscripts.
78
The editors note the variants but do not specify which manuscripts add this detail.
21
recant, as did virtually all of those whose ideas were condemned, and thus
avoid further punishment.
This passage has proved very attractive. It is simple and straightforward,
free of all suspect moralising, and sits well among the known events of
those years. Its only demonstrable error was in calling Bacon a master of
theology. Many historians have interpreted it as describing a situation
directly connected with the Parisian condemnations of March 1277,
although, as already noted, there has been no agreement on which parts
of Bacon’s work might have upset the authorities.79 The condemnations
have been the subject of intense scrutiny, but many questions remain
unanswered.80 Much is still unclear about the personalities, motivations
and relationships between the individuals and institutions involved in
bringing about the condemnations. There is further uncertainty about
the identities of some of those apparently targeted. The place of Bacon in
the sequence of events continues to receive detailed attention. Regardless
of the Chronica account, there are good reasons for investigating his
involvement. Only a few years before the condemnations were promul-
gated he had expressed grave concerns to the ecclesiastical authorities
about the intellectual methods of many scholars. His interests involved
him in the fields of study that were being scrutinised. The research being
done on these issues, particularly by Jeremiah Hackett, is very illuminating
on Bacon’s thought, its connections to that of his colleagues, his sources
and his influence.81 Trying to link the investigation to the Chronica,
however, serves no useful purpose and may in fact interfere with the
independent scrutiny that these questions deserve.
The Chronica itself made no reference to the university condemnations.
It stated clearly that Bacon’s condemnation was an internal affair, pro-
nounced and executed within the Franciscan order, and followed by a
request for confirmation from the Pope. Tempier’s condemnations led, in
the first instance, only to action against masters of arts within the uni-
versity.82 It was not until the general chapter of 1279, at which Jerome was
replaced as minister general, that the order officially ruled that friars were
79
R. Hissette (Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 Mars 1277 (Louvain, 1977), esp. p. 316)
does not think that Bacon was a target.
80
L. Bianchi, ‘New Perspectives on the Condemnation of 1277 and its Aftermath’, Recherches de
Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 70.1 (2003), 206–29; J. A. Aertsen et al. (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung
von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts.
Studien und Texte (Berlin, 2001).
81
Hackett suggests he might have served as a ‘whistleblower’: J. Hackett, ‘Aristotle, Astrologia, and
Controversy at the University of Paris (1266–1274)’ in J. Van Engen (ed.), Learning Institutionalised:
Teaching in the Medieval University (Notre Dame, 2000), 69–110, p. 76. See also J. Hackett, ‘Roger
Bacon, Aristotle, and the Parisian Condemnations of 1270, 1277’, Vivarium, 35.2 (1997), 283–314.
82
CUP, vol. i, no. 473, pp. 543–58; CUP, vol. i, no. 474, pp. 558–61.
22
Introduction
not to hold opinions condemned by Tempier.83 This means that if Jerome
presided over a condemnation of Bacon’s ‘doctrine’, he had to have done
so before these decisions were taken formally. This may weaken the link
between Tempier’s condemnations and Bacon’s ‘suspected novelties’.
The dependence of the Chronica upon earlier sources is one of the main
reasons for the willingness of historians to take it seriously. Nevertheless, it is
worth asking why Bacon was singled out, when better attested condemna-
tions and related upheavals of the period went unmentioned. In particular,
the great scandal provoked by Gerard of Borgo San Donnino’s 1254 pub-
lication of heretical eschatological writings was omitted and its various
ramifications glossed over.84 All this must, surely, represent editorial choices.
Had the author a wider agenda that was served by the inclusion of Bacon’s
condemnation and the omission of Gerard’s? Was he responding specifically
to the sort of reputation attained by Bacon by the late fourteenth century?
The nature of some of the pseudo-Baconian texts in circulation was not
always helpful for Bacon’s reputation: after reading among these spurious
works, the sixteenth-century antiquarian John Bale considered Bacon a
necromancer aided by demons.85 These are important questions, particularly
in view of the fact that several contemporary Franciscan historians either did
not know the story of Bacon’s condemnation or chose not to use it.
Bartholomew of Pisa wrote his vast De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad
vitam domini Jesu between about 1385 and 1390. It was officially approved
by the order in 1390.86 The organising theme was the conformity of
Francis’ life with that of Christ. Within this structure were extensive, often
repetitive, lists of different kinds of friars and summaries of their achieve-
ments. Unlike the Chronica author, Bartholomew knew that Bacon was
not a master of theology. He repeatedly praised Bacon for the range of his
83
‘Constitutiones generales assisienses (1279)’ in Constitutiones generales ordinis fratrum minorum I
(Saeculum XIII), ed. C. Cenci and R. G. Mailleux (Grottaferrata, 2007), vi.22, p. 126. Burr sees
this development as the context for Bacon’s condemnation and the precursor to that of Olivi in
1283: D. Burr, ‘The Persecution of Peter Olivi’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new
ser., 66.5 (1976), 1–98, p. 9.
84
William of Saint-Amour was treated as an unprovoked aggressor, and much made of his subsequent
punishment (ChrXXIVGen, pp. 272–3, 277, 280). On these events see below, pp. 57–9.
85
J. Bale, Illvstrivm Maioris Britanniae Scriptorvm, hoc est Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae Summarium
(Gippeswici, 1548), fos. 114v–115. He later revised both his judgement and his list of Bacon’s
works, omitting some of the more scandalous titles. See Index Britanniae Scriptorum: Quos ex variis
bibliothecis non parvo labore collegit Joannes Baleus, cum aliis: John Bale’s Index of British and other writers,
ed. R. L. Poole and M. Bateson (Oxford, 1902), pp. 392–8.
86
Bartholomew of Pisa, De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu in AF, vols. iv–v (1906–
12). See R. Manselli, ‘Bartholomeo da Pisa’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (online edn);
C. Erickson, ‘Bartholomew of Pisa, Francis Exalted: De conformitate’, Mediaeval Studies, 34 (1972),
253–74; M. D’Alatri, ‘L’immagine di san Francesco nel “De conformitate” di Bartolomeo da Pisa’ in
S. Gieben (ed.), Francesco d’Assisi nella storia: secoli XIII–XV (Rome, 1983), 227–37.
23
learning, calling him ‘the greatest scholar in every field’.87 Bartholomew
knew the Chronica and used many of the same sources. Relatively little
work has been done on the late chronicles, but De conformitate has been
praised for its ‘serene and balanced vision’ and its thoroughness and
accuracy in preserving earlier sources which other authors preferred to
abbreviate. Its omissions are also seen as important indicators of the
reliability of older material.88 One cannot make too much of this assess-
ment in particular cases, but if Bartholomew had access to the brief
account of the condemnation offered in the Chronica, and did not use it,
he must either have doubted its veracity or, of course, have been promot-
ing a view of the order’s achievements that was better without it. His
silence on the subject suggests that such rumours as there may have been
on the subject of a condemnation were not enough to detract from the
pride the order felt in Bacon’s achievements.
This point is reinforced by another source produced at much the same
time. It was probably in 1385 that a friar called, perhaps, Donnio di Pietro
da Traù wrote about Bacon in the convent of Durazzo in Dalmatia. His
Liber notabilium gestorum beati Francisci et sociorum sive discipulorum in ipsius
legenda omissorum was very similar to that of Bartholomew in structure, but
survives in a single manuscript.89 It includes a series of catalogues of friars
organised on much the same lines: ministers general, those notable for
their learning, and those outstanding in their various provinces.90 Bacon
was, once again, singled out for extensive praise and no mention was made
of the alleged condemnation. This text has been used chiefly as evidence
of the emergence of the ‘legendary’ Bacon, but a closer reading of it
suggests that its author was more familiar with Bacon’s work than were the
others of this cluster of fourteenth-century sources.91
87
‘in omni facultate doctissimus’: Bartholomew of Pisa, De conformitate, i, 338. When noting
particularly distinguished friars in different areas of scholarship, Bartholomew selected Bacon as
the one who had excelled in ‘all branches’ (pp. 341, 547). On his attitude to learned friars and its
immediate context see P. Maranesi, Nescientes litteras: L’ammonizione della regola francescana e la
questione degli studi nell’ordine (sec. XIII–XVI) (Rome, 2000), pp. 251–6.
88
D’Alatri, ‘L’immagine’, p. 236; Erickson, ‘Bartholomew’, p. 253. Sabatier, although weary after
reading the whole text, considered it ‘the most important work which has been made on the life of
St Francis . . . we can boldly place him in the front rank of compilers’: P. Sabatier, Life of St Francis of
Assisi, trans. L. S. Houghton (London, 1899), pp. 421–5.
89
Bodleian MS Canonici Miscell. 525, fos. 49–266. It was preceded by the Speculum perfectionis and
followed by a miscellany of documents concerning the order. See R. Paciocco, Da Francesco
ai‘Catalogi sanctorum’: Livelli istituzionali e immagini agiografiche nell’ordine francescano (secoli XIII–
XIV) (Assisi, 1990), pp. 127–32; A. G. Little, ‘Description du manuscript Canonic. Miscell. 525
de la Bibliothèque Bodléienne à Oxford’, Opuscules de critique historique 1 (1903), 251–97.
90
The section on Bacon is at fos. 202v–203v.
91
See Power, ‘Mirror’, p. 660 for the first interpretation and Power ‘Remedies’, pp. 69–70 for the
second.
24
Introduction
He described Bacon as ‘a man of such great subtlety in natural philo-
sophy that he was more interested in pursuing his wonderful experiments
(which provide the truest form of knowledge) than in writing with a pen
or teaching with words’. It was not unknown, he reported, for Bacon to
make a bridge of condensed air that spanned the thirty miles across the sea
to England. After he had walked across it, he would dissolve it ‘naturally’
behind him. He had made two mirrors in Oxford: one that could light
candles ‘at any hour of day or night’ and one that could show ‘what people
were doing in the most remote parts of the world’. Peter went on to report
that Bacon had described these, and even greater things: ‘for the glory of
God, in his letter to Pope Clement IV’.92 He was quite right. Bacon had
sent Clement a treatise on burning mirrors and had also told the Pope
about mirrors used by armies to spy out distant lands. Furthermore, Bacon
had speculated about what could be done if ‘anyone should know how to
make the air dense’.93 Peter also insisted that Bacon had done all these
things through natural philosophy, experimentation and the science of
perspectiva. In doing so, he showed understanding of one of the main
themes of Bacon’s writings for Clement: that, with the proper learning
and skills, wonders could be performed without recourse to magic or the
aid of demons. There are elements of fantasy in Peter’s account, but these,
it should be noted, are the consequence of crediting Bacon with concrete
achievements where Bacon himself only suggested possibilities.
This brief survey of some fourteenth-century sources indicates that the
story of Bacon’s condemnation was anything but a secure feature in the
order’s traditions. This does not necessarily mean that there was no truth
in it, but it certainly suggests the need for far more caution in our
acceptance and use of it. We simply do not know enough about the
sources, transmission, editorial motivations and manuscript variants
behind even the Chronica account, much less that of the note appended
to the De leone. We are similarly ignorant about Bacon’s standing at the
time, which obviously provoked very different reactions in different
authors. It is known that colourful and inaccurate stories about various
thirteenth-century scholars such as Bacon, Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus
92
‘frater Rogerius dictus Bachon Anglicus . . . tante subtilitatis in naturali phylosophia extitit ut magis
eius mirabilibus experimentis (quibus nulla verior scientia) quam scripture stilo aut doctrine verbo
insistens’; ‘quilibet omni hora diei et noctis’; ‘quid agebant homines in quantumcumque remotis
constituti partibus’; ‘in sua Epistola ad papam Clementem quartam ad laudem Dei’: Oxford,
Bodleian Library, MS Canon. Misc. 525, fos. 202v–203v, transcribed in A. G. Molland, ‘Roger
Bacon as Magician’, Traditio, 30 (1974), 445–60, pp. 446–7.
93
Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Edition, with English Translation,
Introduction, and Notes, of De multiplicatione specierum and De speculis comburentibus, ed.
David C. Lindberg (Oxford, 1983), pp. 152/3–56/7 (burning mirrors); Perspectiva, pp. 330/1–
332/3 (spying mirrors and condensed air).
25
and Michael Scot became a popular theme in literature from the middle of
the fourteenth century.94 The story currently has a considerable impact on
interpretations of the reception of Bacon’s work by his contemporaries,
his relationship with his superiors and fellow friars and his attitudes
towards his order. Although one is forced into agnosticism, able to reject
it with no more certainty than one can accept it, its creeping dominance of
our sense of Bacon must be reversed. For these reasons, the testimony of
the Chronica is largely set aside in what follows. We know how Bacon’s life
appears when viewed through its gloomy lens: it is high time that we
found out how it might appear without.
new directions
Two fundamental and entwined contentions of the present study are that
we will not understand Bacon’s thought until we read his writings as
products of a committed member of the Franciscan order; and that we will
understand the thirteenth-century order better if we can develop a view of
it that encompasses Bacon. While there is no doubt that historians of the
intellectual history of the order have, at least to some extent, achieved
both aims, it is also undeniable that Bacon’s main role in the historiogra-
phy has been as a barometer of change.95 Allowing Bacon a more natural
presence in the order requires adjustments to a number of established
narratives and approaches. These are indicated in the first chapter, which
offers a fresh reconstruction of his life. While the reconstruction inevitably
follows existing contours, depending as it must on Bacon’s sparse remarks
about his own life, I have tried to offer alternative interpretations of many
of the major debates. In doing so I have been assisted by the work of
historians such as Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Steven J. Williams,
who have shown that there was great interest at the papal curia in ‘secret’
material of the kind that fascinated Bacon. The many recent studies of
Bacon’s influence on other thinkers have helped to create a sense that
Bacon was being read and appreciated by those around him. I have
indicated the ways in which successive popes and other prominent
94
See W. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
(Princeton, 1994), esp. p. 62; and more generally E. M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge,
1948). Similarly, it was only from around 1346 that the anonymous Speculum astronomiae was
attributed to Albertus Magnus: previously, no author had been given. See A. Paravicini Bagliani, Le
Speculum Astronomiae, une énigme? Enquête sur les manuscrits (Turnhout, 2001), esp. pp. 151–62.
95
For example, Capitanucci argues that ‘the Franciscan message of total openness to the natural
world’ was fundamental to both Bacon’s thought and the development of modern experimental
science (‘Introduzione’ in P. Capitanucci (ed.), I francescani e la scienza (Assisi, 2008), 9–25, esp.
pp. 20–2). Merlo, on the other hand, contrasts statements from Francis and Bacon to illustrate the
changes in the order (Nel nome, p. 216).
26
Introduction
individuals characterised the problems and aspirations of the Latin West,
and shown how closely Bacon – like other members of the Franciscan
order – addressed these public concerns. I have tried to evoke something
of the moral, emotional and rhetorical climate within which his thought
developed, suggesting that the language in which he wrote was unexcep-
tional and characteristic of his day.
As a complement to this, the second chapter examines in detail Bacon’s
best-known and most coherent work, the Opus maius. It looks first at the
sort of man Bacon was, as far as he can be seen through the texts; and then
at the contents of the treatise itself, focusing on the ways in which Bacon
constructed and justified his programme for reform. The remaining chap-
ters develop an argument about Bacon’s commitment to and programme
for the Franciscan order. Chapter 3 looks at the most inward aspect of
being a friar: the lifelong struggle to move from the secular state through
to the final immersion of the soul in God. It is structured around an
example of Bacon’s, in which he used the geography of the Holy Land as
allegory for this spiritual journey. It considers both his use of conventional
models and his occasional attempts at originality in an attempt to discover
what was unique about his own vocation.
Chapter 4 examines Bacon’s perceptions of the Franciscan order as an
institution involved in the affairs of his own day. It looks at his under-
standing of history, and in particular his horrified sense that the Church,
the religious orders and society as a whole were at the very extreme of
sinfulness, indicating that the appearance of Antichrist was imminent. His
well-known criticisms of his order and his contemporaries must be read in
this context, and his writings understood as belonging, at least in part, to
the genre of apocalyptic reform texts. He believed that the nature of the
times required the Church to mount an effective defence of Christendom
against its various enemies. The only way to do this, in his view, was
through the increase of knowledge and sapientia, and particularly through
the application of scientia experimentalis. He recommended, in effect, that
Christians master the techniques that Antichrist himself was prophesied to
command, including magic.
The final chapter considers Bacon’s views of the world beyond
Christendom. He included substantial summaries of contemporary
knowledge of geography and astronomy in his works for Clement.
These are outlined in order to indicate the nature of his cosmographical
imagination. A fundamental principle in his thought was that higher
things influenced lower things; heavens affected the earth; planets and
stars shaped the nature of the populations below them. He considered that
the major religions of the world existed as a consequence of these influ-
ences. It was the role of Christian missionaries to help unbelievers exercise
27
their free will in order to choose the true faith and thus find salvation. The
rest of the chapter looks at the various methods that Bacon proposed for
use by missionaries in the field. These included mysterious potions,
rational arguments, ancient rhetorical skills, conventional preaching and
the Eucharist – in essence, the combined riches of Graeco-Arabic learning
and more familiar Latin traditions. Most of his ideas about what was
necessary were stimulated by the report of William of Rubruck, a
Franciscan recently returned from the court of the Mongol qaghan in
Central Asia. This suggests that, unlike many other Franciscan texts deal-
ing with mission in an idealised fashion, Bacon was at the forefront of
serious consideration of how the friars should operate among unbelievers.
It was during Bacon’s lifetime that Franciscans had become prominent
both within the Church and lay society, and in the conduct of wider
European affairs. The focus of the historiography upon official documents
dealing directly with St Francis and other normative sources has meant
that the other, often more personal, writings of friars during this period
have received less attention than they deserve. In every friar there was a
unique chemistry between individual experience and disposition, and the
spiritual ideals within which all sought to live. Rather than comparing
Bacon negatively with the models offered by Francis and his early com-
panions, or indeed with contemporaries such as Bonaventure, I hope to
present a new and independent interpretation of what it could mean to be
a Franciscan at this time.
28
Chapter 1
A LIFE IN CONTEXT
Roger Bacon was born in England during the second decade of the
thirteenth century.1 This England was separated from the rest of
Christendom by the surrounding sweep of sea, often perilous to navigate.
In the learned imagination of the time it marked the furthest north-
western edge of the known and habitable world, part of an archipelago
lying in the outer ocean that encircled the linked continents of Europe,
Asia and Africa. To mapmakers, carefully symmetrical in their representa-
tions, England was as far from the centre of the world as the furthermost
parts of Asia.Yet in every other respect it was fully integrated into Latin
Christendom. The dominion of its kings and nobles still extended beyond
the dividing waters along the coasts of France, even if the vast holdings of
Henry II were vanishing under the mismanagement of his sons and the
determined onslaughts of Philip Augustus. In the overmastering desire for
distinction and possessions its rulers would look confidently, if unsuccess-
fully, to realms as distant as Germany and Sicily; to Jerusalem itself, lying at
the very heart of things. A multitude of ties – familial, spiritual, educa-
tional, linguistic, diplomatic, military and commercial – bound the people
of England to the rest of Christian Europe. Meanwhile, the hierarchy of
the English Church reached – however resentfully – up to God through
Rome.
1
The exact year of his birth cannot be established beyond doubt. Historians have based their estimates
(c. 1210–20, favouring 1214) on Bacon’s 1268 remark: ‘Multum laboravi in scientiis et linguis, et
posui jam quadraginta annos postquam didici primo alphabetum’ (OT, p. 65). For a discussion of
the various positions and their implications see J. Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon (circa 1214/1220–1292)’,
in J. Hackett (ed.), Medieval Philosophers (London, 1992), 90–102; Lindberg in Roger Bacon, Roger
Bacon’s Philosophy, pp. xv–xvi. Elsewhere, Bacon noted that the letters of the alphabet were
‘prima puerorum rudimenta’ (OM, iii.11, 3:119), suggesting that ‘didici primo alphabetum’
meant the beginning of education, implying a birth date of around 1220. Bacon, however, often
used the scripturally significant period of ‘forty years’ to indicate simply a substantial period of time.
The commonly accepted date of 1214 will be used here for the sake of convenience.
29
In the last years of Innocent III’s pontificate the ideology of a universal
Church led by the successors of St Peter seemed close to realisation in the
Latin West. The young heir to the imperial throne, Frederick of
Hohenstaufen, was a papal protégé who self-consciously evoked the
image of Charlemagne: defender of the papacy; defender of
Christianity.2 Most kings acknowledged at least some pontifical right of
interference in their affairs; more than a few were papal vassals. All around
the Mediterranean, the lands that had been lost with the division and
crumbling of the ancient empire seemed once more within the grasp of
Rome. The Greek Church was humbled; the power of Islam was newly
broken in Iberia; the insidious flame of heresy seemed guttering or
quenched throughout the Languedoc. In the meantime the peoples of
north and east, from the Baltic to the Balkans, were being won for the
Latin Church. The papacy stood at the heart of spiritual and temporal
affairs, articulating in its actions across a vastly expanded Christendom the
immense claim to possess plenitudo potestatis, the authority to bind and to
loose all things on earth and in heaven.3 From the beginning of his
pontificate Innocent had promoted the evolving vision of a Christian
world united under papal guidance, where general obedience and indi-
vidual striving for moral perfection would please God and bring military
victories and peace. Fundamental to achieving this was the task of improv-
ing the quality of priestly conduct and pastoral care. It was with the
intention of drawing together an ambitious programme of reform and
renewal that Innocent called the first great council since late antiquity at
which the whole body of the faithful – lay as well as clerical – was
represented. He announced its purposes as ‘rooting up vices and planting
virtues, correcting excesses and reforming morals, eliminating heresies and
strengthening faith, calming discord and establishing peace, restraining
oppression and promoting liberty, and inducing the Christian princes and
people, both clerical and lay, to offer aid and support to the Holy Land’.
These aspirations ran unevenly and unpredictably, yet unmistakably,
through the thirteenth century, imparting a distinctive quality to the
enterprises of Bacon and his contemporaries.4
The many triumphs of the years immediately before Lateran iv were
evidence of what might be done, yet the Pope and his flock were painfully
aware that much of what had been accomplished was coloured with moral
2
D. Abulafia, Frederick II (London, 1992), pp. 120–21.
3
J.C. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root Up and to Plant (Leiden, 2003), pp. 203–30.
4
Innocent III, Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III Concerning England (1198–1216), ed. C.R. Cheney and
W.H. Semple (London, 1953), no. 51, p. 145; A. Melloni, ‘Vineam Domini – 10 April 1213: New
Efforts and Traditional Topoi – Summoning Lateran iv’ in J.C. Moore (ed.), Pope Innocent III and his
World (Ashgate, 1999), 63–71; Moore, Pope Innocent III.
30
A life in context
ambiguity: achieved with too much violence; too much dissension;
always too fragile an alliance between conflicting objectives and between
the worldly and spiritual ambitions that jostled together in human hearts.
To the anxious observers of the day the righteous seemed to sleep and the
corrupt to prosper, while the enemies of God roamed freely and souls
sickened in the fetid atmosphere of the end-times.5 In his letters and
proclamations Innocent repeatedly and sorrowfully contrasted his hopes
with the reality of threat and conflict on every border and throughout all
the warring lands and kingdoms, which brooded in moral laxity beneath
the shadow of God’s displeasure.
It was with bitter immediacy that the disputes of princes and the
tensions between spiritual and temporal imperatives were felt in
England around the time of Bacon’s birth. King John, at odds with his
barons and at war with France, had been excommunicated and the whole
land had lain under interdict since 1208.6 Bacon may have been born in
the last months of negotiations before the realm was admitted back into
communion with the Church, in the year after John had surrendered the
kingdoms of England and Ireland to Innocent III; the year of Philip
Augustus’ devastating triumph at Bouvines. Henceforth the kings of the
reduced territories of England were to be papal vassals, owing homage,
allegiance and annual tribute, and enjoying the advantages these brought.7
When John died in 1216, his nine-year old son, Henry III, became a papal
ward. Throughout his reign Henry remained closely bound to the papacy
and its interests. Like so many other rulers of his day, he found himself
pressed between the demands of the papacy and those of his barons. Many
of his subjects were hostile to him because he seemed to be in confederacy
with popes and other foreigners against his own people, but among those
who remained faithful to their king in the face of great personal hardship
was the family of Bacon. They were the loyal servants of this king
5
E.g. Jacques de Vitry, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition, ed. J.F.
Hinnesbusch (Fribourg, 1972), chaps. 1–5, pp. 73–88; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry
1160/70–1240, évêque de Saint-Jean d’Acre, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), letter 1; J. Bird, ‘The
Religious’s Role in a Post-Fourth-Lateran World: Jacques de Vitry’s Sermones ad status and Historia
occidentalis’ in C. Muessig (ed.), Medieval Monastic Preaching (Leiden, 1998), 209–29. Innocent
preached on the ‘sleep’ of priests (‘Sermo VII. In concilio generali lateranensi habitus’, Sermones
de diversis, PL, 217, col. 0679–0688A) and was influenced by the thought of Joachim of Fiore (F.
Robb, ‘Joachimist Exegesis in the Theology of Innocent III and Rainer of Ponza’, Florensia, 11
(1997), 137–52; C. Egger, ‘Joachim von Fiore, Rainer von Ponza und die römische Kurie’ in R.
Rusconi (ed.), Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III (Rome, 2001), 129–62, esp.
pp. 140–50). See also J.C. Moore, ‘Innocent III’s De Miseria Humanae Conditionis: A Speculum
Curiae?’, Catholic Historical Review, 67.4 (1981), 553–64.
6
CM, vol. ii, pp. 521–3.
7
CM, vol. ii, pp. 540–7; Innocent III, Selected Letters, no. 55; Letter 117 in Robert Grosseteste,
Epistolae, ed. H.R. Luard (London, 1861), pp. 338–43.
31
whose own feudal overlord was the Pope. Such was the background
claimed by Roger, who would, half a century later, offer his services to
the papal legate sent to assert the beleaguered authority of Henry: the
future Pope Clement IV. The result would be his Opus maius, Opus minus
and Opus tertium.
beginnings
At the time of Bacon’s birth there were families called Bacon in England
and Normandy, and the name Roger was a common one among them.
There is nothing to identify the branch from which he came and no extant
evidence to support the traditional association with the Somerset town of
Ilchester.8 From his few personal remarks, it can be inferred that his
immediate family possessed considerable wealth. Roger was one of several
sons. The eldest would fight at the side of Henry III in the 1260s. The
phrasing of this piece of information – ‘taking his stand with the king,
together with my mother, and brothers’ – conveys the impression that his
mother was an active force in the family even in the later years of her life.9
He did not allude to his father directly. In old age, in a discussion of
signification, he wrote: ‘if one of [two] relatives is destroyed, [the other]
relative is also destroyed, for if there is not a father there is not a son’, but it
may merely have been an impersonal example.10 Another of the brothers
seems to have shared his intellectual interests. In middle age Roger wrote
warmly of composing things ‘for my scholar brother and other dear friends
of mine’.11 Attempts have been made to identify this brother from among
the several contemporary learned Bacons known to posterity. One was
Nicholas Bacon who owned copies of treatises on Avicenna (Ibn Sıˉnaˉ ) and
other Muslim philosophers, and may have been connected with Robert
Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln.12 Another was the Brother Thomas Bacon
mentioned as potential secretary for Richard Rufus of Cornwall by
8
For a thorough, but inconclusive, early twentieth-century attempt to trace Bacon’s family see the
unpublished notes in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS.Eng.hist.c.969/230–46. See also C. Jourdain,
‘Discussions de quelques points de la biographie de Roger Bacon’, Excursions historiques et philoso-
phiques à travers le moyen âge (Paris, 1888), 129–42, pp. 132–37; L.C. Lloyd, The Origins of Some
Anglo-Norman Families, ed. C.T. Clay and D.C. Douglas (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 10–11. I am
grateful to Tony Moore for his efforts to locate the family using modern technology, although it
remains unidentifiable.
9
‘qui ex parte regis consistens, cum matre mea, et fratribus’: OT, p. 16. Repeating the point
elsewhere, he wrote of ‘parentes’ (EFRB, p. 94; Gasq, p. 502). Crowley, Roger Bacon, p. 19.
10
CST, ii.v.113, p. 100/101.
11
‘pro fratre meo scholari, et aliis amicis meis carissimis’: OT, p. 13.
12
A. B. Emden, ‘Accounts Relating to an Early Oxford House of Scholars’, Oxoniensia, 31 (1966),
77–81, pp. 79–80.
32
A life in context
Adam Marsh in 1253.13 However, this is pure speculation, given the
number of Bacons associated with Grosseteste’s circle in Oxford at the
time, much less in England as a whole.14 Working on the same uncertain
principle of a common surname, older biographical works suggest that
Roger Bacon may have been a relative of the Dominican Robert Bacon
(d. 1248), regent master in theology at Oxford, and a close associate of
leading English churchmen such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund
of Abingdon, and Grosseteste, two men whom Roger much admired.15
By his own account, Roger Bacon began studying the various branches
of knowledge (scientiae) and languages as soon as he had mastered
the alphabet, and continued to do so during all but two of the next
forty years. It is probable that he was educated privately, at home with
his brothers, by a secular master, as were many children born into wealthy
families. It is possible, but perhaps less likely, that he might have been sent
to a school.16 The only other piece of information on his early education is
his claim that he had wished to read Seneca’s moral philosophy ‘ab
infancia’ – before he was eight years old – but that he had not been able
to obtain the manuscripts for many years.17 This precocious desire may
have been provoked by reading newly available works of Seneca such as
the Letters, for in those days long-dormant manuscripts of Seneca were
emerging to wide popularity. It was still common in the thirteenth
century for children to learn their Latin grammar from classical texts of a
pagan character.18 As an adult Bacon would argue in favour of the
inclusion of Seneca among didactic texts for children, although like
many before him he objected to the use of Ovid and other pagan
poets.19 He would also urge the civic morality and the ‘exalted sense of
13
Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. ii, p.470/471; A.G. Little, ‘The Franciscan School at Oxford in the
Thirteenth Century’, AFH, 19 (1926), 803–74, p. 842, but see Raedts, Richard Rufus, pp. 6–7.
14
Emden also identified a Peter Bacon in the same household in Oxford: ‘Accounts’, p. 80.
15
A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD 1500 (3 vols. Oxford, 1957–9; repr.
1989), vol. i, p. 87. The putative connection is not mentioned in J. Dunbabin, ‘Robert Bacon’, ODNB.
16
N. Orme, Education in the West of England 1066–1548: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire,
Somerset, Wiltshire (Exeter, 1976), p. 1. On the likely curriculum see N. Orme, English Schools in
the Middle Ages (London, 1973), pp. 30, 61–104.
17
‘licet huiusmodi prosecutus sum ab infancia . . . non potui unquam videre nisi modo’: MP, iii.v
(proemium), p. 133. Isidore of Seville defined infantia as the first seven years: Etymologiarum siue
Originum libri XX , ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), xi.ii.2. See C.M. Zottl, ‘“Quae voces audio?”
Some Questions Regarding the Exploration of Medieval English Childhoods’, Concilium medii aevi,
9 (2006), 1–21, p. 8.
18
L.D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), pp. 356–60;
J. A. Franquiz, ‘The Place of Seneca in the Curriculum of the Middle Ages’, Arts libéraux
et philosophie au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1969), 1065–72; Orme, English Schools, p. 103.
19
OT, pp. 54–5; S. Reynolds, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text
(Cambridge, 1996), esp. pp. 7–16; R.N. Swanson, The Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Manchester,
1999), pp. 46–50.
33
the virtues’ of the Romans upon the Christians of his own age, who
seemed to him to fall far short of the moral standards of their
pre-Christian exemplars.20 That Bacon’s mind was partly formed on
the literature and philosophy of classical Rome is evident from his
writing, his ethics, and the authors he cited. Only the most tenuous
connection can be made between the abstractions of his moral philoso-
phy and the possible world-view and preoccupations of an affluent
Anglo-Norman family, but there are indications of a social conscience
that may, perhaps, have its origins in the way his family thought of its
duties during his childhood.
For all this, the dominant influence on the formation of his mind came
from the Church. The words of scripture supplied a vocabulary of meta-
phors, characterisations and reactions that would become instinctive; the
liturgical cycle must have given his world its early shape, just as ecclesias-
tical art and architecture supplied visual imagery. His developing con-
sciousness of himself as an individual was interwoven with the grand
narrative of Christianity as it unfolded in the temporal sphere from
creation to apocalypse. His deeds and gestures were given meaning by
the hope of heaven and the dread of hell; while his sense of reality
included an awareness of the ways in which supernatural beings and
superlunary forces penetrated earthly existence. As a child of his time he
must also have been exposed to the rich oral culture of folklore, chansons de
geste, romances, wonders and other tales; his imagination coloured by a
wealth of luminous, disquieting, fantastical stories. Above all, his fascina-
tion with the workings of nature and his capacity for close observation
must have emerged within the physical landscapes of his early years, the
changing seasons, the northern skies.
When he was old enough, Bacon left home to pursue his studies. Based
chiefly on his references to particular individuals, it is generally accepted
that he completed his formal education in the schools at Oxford.21 The
earliest date suggested for Bacon’s arrival is 1227, but it may have been at
least as late as 1234.22 Oxford in the early thirteenth century was a
flourishing city, situated at a strategic point at the heart of southern
England, on the great artery of the Thames. It lay in water-meadows,
encircled by streams, fish-ponds and water-filled ditches, and distantly
20
‘sublimia virtutum’: MP, iii (proemium), pp. 46–47, i (premium), pp. 3–7; Massa, Ruggero
Bacone.
21
Crowley, Roger Bacon, pp. 20–2; Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 11–18. However, A.C. Crombie and
J. North (‘Roger Bacon’, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, 1970), 377–85, p. 377) argue
that there is no firm evidence for his presence in Oxford.
22
The first supposes a birth date of 1214; the second 1220. See Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon (circa 1214/
1220–1292)’, p. 92, n. 1.
34
A life in context
surrounded by gently rolling hills. The old Anglo-Saxon town had out-
grown its ramparts and the city was spreading beyond the later Norman
walls during Bacon’s lifetime. The western end of the town was domi-
nated by the moated castle with its high mound. It was just below the
castle, in the parish of St Ebbe’s, hard against the city walls, that the first
Franciscans had their house. Like the Dominicans, who lived a few
minutes’ walk away in St Aldate’s parish, the Franciscans had arrived
only a few years before Bacon, but were already attracting masters of
high calibre and, in some cases, existing fame: notably, Adam Marsh and
Robert Grosseteste.23 It was in the same part of Oxford that the Jewish
community was concentrated. Even if Bacon did not have contact with its
members in his youth, he would later both learn and teach Hebrew, and
worked with Jews to that end.24
Although Oxford was growing in size and reputation, it had only
recently become a plausible destination for a student such as Bacon.
Until the 1190s it had been more usual for a member of a wealthy
Anglo-Norman family such as his to go to Paris to study.25 Growing
tensions and the outbreak of war between the kings of England and
France made English students less likely to travel to Paris, and contributed
to the slow emergence of Oxford as a centre for education in the liberal
arts, law, theology and possibly medicine. It is often claimed that post-
conquest England inherited the leanings of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals
towards mathematically based disciplines, in contrast to the increasingly
scholastic methodologies of ‘Continental’ scholars.26 Whether this is so,
by the time that Bacon embarked on his studies, Oxford could provide an
education in many respects equivalent to Paris, but distinctive in its
emphases and less stifled by institutional and ecclesiastical regulation. In
particular, the attempts by the theology faculty in Paris to control the
23
H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. F. M. Powicke and A.B. Emden
(rev. edn. 3 vols. Oxford, 1987), vol. iii, p. 8; A.G. Little, ‘Franciscans at Oxford’ in P. Sabatier
(ed.), Franciscan Essays (Aberdeen, 1912), 71–87, esp. pp. 72–4; Little, ‘Franciscan School’; W.J.
Courtenay, ‘Franciscan Learning: University Education and Biblical Exegesis’ in M.F. Cusato
and G. Geltner (eds.), Defenders and Critics of Franciscan Life (Leiden, 2009), 55–64; J. McEvoy,
Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 2000), pp. 19–30; J.R. Ginther, Master of the Sacred Page: A Study of the
Theology of Robert Grosseteste, ca. 1229/30–1235 (London, 2004); C.H. Lawrence, ‘Adam Marsh’,
ODNB.
24
P. Manix, ‘Oxford: Mapping the Medieval Jewry’ in C. Cluse (ed.), The Jews of Europe in the Middle
Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries) (Turnhout, 2004), 405–20; CSP, p. 434.
25
R.W. Southern, ‘From Schools to University’ in EOS, 1–36.
26
R.W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (2nd edn.
Oxford, 1992), pp. xxxv–xxxvii, 49–62. See the detailed comparison in G. Leff, Paris and Oxford
Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: An Institutional and Intellectual History (New
York, 1968); C. Burnett, Adelard of Bath: An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century
(London, 1987); J.A. Weisheipl, ‘Science in the Thirteenth Century’ in EOS, 435–69, pp. 438–40.
35
study of Aristotle and the libri naturales had no discernible parallel in
England.27 It is unclear how widespread study of Aristotle was, even in
Oxford, but Bacon’s enthusiasm for it laid the shape of his future career. ‘I
heard [the works of Aristotle] more assiduously, and read them more than
the others,’ he later asserted.28 He also had access to an impressive collec-
tion of Arabic and Greek texts that had been brought to Oxford in the
preceding decades.29 It is not known who taught him, but it is usually
assumed that he heard the prominent masters at Oxford, as consonant
with becoming a Master of Arts around the age of twenty-one, some-
where between 1235 and 1241.30 From the vantage point of middle age
among the friars he observed: ‘I have learned more useful and excellent
things without comparison from very plain people unknown to fame in
letters, than from all my famous teachers’.31 At the time, however, this
education evidently positioned him well to begin a career as a secular master.
Throughout his life he believed in the central importance to society of
good teaching, but it is difficult to determine the temper of his mind as a
young man.32 His early work gives a few glimpses. It seems that he already
had an exalted sense of the purpose of learning – objecting, for example,
to the mechanical arts because they inclined the mind ‘totally to temporal
and inferior things when it ought to inquire after things perpetual and
superior and thus finally arrive at a knowledge of the Creator’.33 His sense
of humour is visible, together with a mild irreverence that was, not
surprisingly, less apparent in his writings for the Pope: ‘Are you crazy;
do you want to be a bishop?’ was an example of a defective syllogism
clearly intended to amuse.34 His interests were already wide, reflected in
the breadth of his reading and the innovative directions in which it took
his teaching. Notes have been preserved from two lectures he gave in Paris
concerning mathematics, geometry and music.35 He was also interested in
language and grammar, straddling the somewhat separate logical traditions
27
C.H. Lawrence, ‘The University in State and Church’ in EOS, 97–150; CUP, vol. i, no. 87,
pp. 143–4; Leff, Paris, pp. 75–6.
28
‘audivi diligenter plures, et legi plus quam alius’: CSP, p. 468; D.A. Callus, ‘Introduction of
Aristotelian Learning to Oxford’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 29 (1943), 229–81.
29
C. Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (London, 1997), esp. pp. 61–77.
30
Easton, Roger Bacon, p. 18; Crowley, Roger Bacon, p. 195.
31
‘plura enim utilia et digna sine comparatione didici ab hominibus detentis magna simplicitate, nec
nominatis in studio, quam ab omnibus doctoribus meis famosis’: OM, i.x, 1:23.
32
E.g. MP, ii.i, p. 39.
33
SD, proemium, p. 171; trans. Maloney, p. 3. He would later revise this opinion.
34
SD, 3.3.2.2 (704), p. 268; trans. Maloney, p. 223.
35
R. Steele, ‘Roger Bacon as Professor: A Student’s Notes’, Isis, 20.1 (1933), 53–71. See P. Duhamel,
‘L’enseignement de la musique à l’Université de Paris d’après le manuscrit BnF lat.7378A’, Acta
Musicologica, 79.2 (2007), 263–89.
36
A life in context
of Oxford and Paris.36 However, it is thought that during his career as a
master he lectured principally on Aristotle, giving at least twelve series of
lectures on the Metaphysics and the various libri naturales.37
One incident sheds light on Bacon the magister in the classroom. It
occurred during his course of lectures on the pseudo-Aristotelian De
plantis, given in Paris. He was using a translation that had been made in
Spain and telling his students that, according to Aristotle, the deadly herb
henbane was highly dangerous in Persia, but edible if transplanted to
Jerusalem. His translation supplied the word belenum for henbane, and
Bacon had assumed that this was the Arabic term for the herb, explaining
as much to his class. Unfortunately for his auctoritas, there were a number
of students in the room who had come from Spain, and they began to
laugh at him, telling him that belenum was not Arabic, but the Spanish
vernacular term. From these students Bacon subsequently learned other
Spanish words that had been used in translations from the Arabic, and had
previously been thought by Latin scholars in the north of Europe to be
Arabic – and therefore scholarly, scientiale – terminology.38 Bacon’s aware-
ness that translators, in ignorance, might impose on Latin scholars in such a
fashion was one of the reasons for his suspicion of translations.39
Such evidence as there is for the chronology of his movements at this
time rests again on his references to other people. He said he had seen
William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris (d. 1248/9) with his own eyes, and
perhaps also the prominent Franciscan master Alexander of Hales (d. Paris
1245).40 He heard John of Garland’s criticisms of the errors of commen-
tators on Latin texts ranging from the Bible to Pliny ‘from his own
36
His three works Summa grammatica, Summa dialectices and Summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus
probably date from this period. I. Rosier-Catach, ‘Roger Bacon and Grammar’ in RBS, 67–102,
p. 68; A. De Libera, ‘Roger Bacon et la logique’ in RBS, 103–32, pp. 103–17; J.A. Sheppard,
‘Revisiting Roger Bacon’s De Signis’, CF, 73 (2003), 563–88; M.M. Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow is
Bent in Study . . .’ Dominican Education Before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), pp. 240–1.
37
Hackett places the series of Questiones on the philosophy, physics, metaphysics of Aristotle, on De
plantis and De causis, and on grammar and dialectics in the period 1237–50. They are printed in
OHIRB, fascs. 7, 8, 10–15. See R. Wood, ‘Roger Bacon: Richard Rufus’ Successor as a Parisian
Physics Professor’, Vivarium, 35.2 (1997), 222–50.
38
CSP, pp. 467–8; OM, iii.i, 1:82.
39
‘Introduction’, Questiones supra De Plantis, in OHIRB, fasc. 11, pp. xviii, xxv–xxix. See also
R. Lemay, ‘Roger Bacon’s Attitude Toward the Latin Translations and Translators of the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’ in RBS, 25–48, esp. pp. 37–9; Burnett, Introduction, pp. 77–9;
L.G. Kelly, ‘Medieval Philosophers and Translation’ in H.-J. Niederehe and K. Koerner (eds.),
History and Historiography of Linguistics (2 vols. Amsterdam, 1990), vol. i, 205–18, esp. pp. 209–16.
40
OT, pp. 74–5 (William); OMin, p. 325, which is accepted as referring to Alexander by Denifle
(CUP, vol. i, no. 76, pp. 134–5), Crowley (Roger Bacon, p. 25) and Lindberg (in Roger Bacon, Roger
Bacon’s Philosophy, p. xvii), but not Hackett (‘The Attitude of Roger Bacon to the Scientia of
Albertus Magnus’ in J.A. Weisheipl (ed.), Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays
(Toronto, 1980), 53–72, esp. p. 72).
37
mouth’.41 All these masters were living and working in Paris, and it is
considered that he must therefore have been to that city by 1245 at
the latest. That he taught there for some time, as well as visited, is
apparent from the internal evidence of his lectures, which were littered
with casual references to the local environment: the Seine, Montmartre
and nearby towns.42 Bacon’s years in Paris as a master have been
studied largely from the perspective of his academic interests. In particular,
he is thought to have been one of the first to teach the libri naturales
of Aristotle publicly in that city.43 If this is the case, his was an activity of
great significance for the future directions of Latin thought, and probably
also for his sense of his own role in temporal affairs; his capacity to take study
in new, necessary, directions. However, while the question of his influence
on Paris is important, so too is that of the effect of the city upon him: the
broadening of his horizons; the new ideas and impulses to which he would
have been exposed; the quickening in him of a more global imagination.
life in paris
When Bacon left Oxford to travel across the Channel and southwards
to Paris, he found himself in the largest and most important city in the
north of Christendom: Louis IX’s capital, and the heart of his rapidly
expanding kingdom.44 Louis’ grandfather had paved the city, greatly
extended the compass of the city walls, and built the towering fortress of
the Louvre. Louis continued the work. Around 1245 the towers of the
cathedral of Notre Dame were finished, although the chaos of building
continued throughout Bacon’s lifetime, and well beyond. He would have
had the opportunity to observe the methods of the builders, later writing
about the mechanical arts, the science of weights and, above all, the
applied mathematics that were providing an increasingly sophisticated
basis for thirteenth-century architecture.45 The cathedral was also famous
41
‘ego ab ejus ore audivi’: CSP, p. 453.
42
Questiones supra libros octo physicorum aristotelis, OHIRB, fasc. 13, p. 226; also SD, xx, 1.2 (243–5); 2.2
(462–5); 3.3.2.1 (441, 448); 3.3.2.2 (657).
43
See ‘Introduction’ to SD, trans. Maloney; CST, pp. 3–4; Leff, Paris, esp. pp. 274–94; J. Hackett,
‘Roger Bacon and the Reception of Aristotle in the Thirteenth Century: An Introduction to his
Criticism of Averroes’ in L. Honnefelder et al. (eds.), Albertus Magnus und die Anfänge der Aristotles-
Rezeption im lateinischen Mittelalter: von Richardus Rufus bis zu Franciscus de Magronis (Münster, 2005),
219–48.
44
S.C. Ferruolo, ‘Parisius-Paradisus: The City, its Schools, and the Origins of the University of Paris’
in T. Bender (ed.), The University and the City: from Medieval Origins to the Present (Oxford, 1988),
22–43, pp. 22, 29; S. Roux, Paris in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2009), pp. 9–13; A. Horne, Seven
Ages of Paris (London, 2002), pp. 32–7.
45
J. Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders, trans. J. Waugh (London, 1993), pp. 89–121, 133–47. On the
section on weights missing from the Opus maius see J. Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on the Classification
38
A life in context
for its innovative polyphonic liturgy, which Bacon undoubtedly heard.46
The student quarter, which in the early decades of the century had been
confined to the Île de la Cité near the royal palace and the cathedral,
spilled by this time across the river westwards as far as the new city wall.
Beyond the walls, in the open meadows, lay the famous abbeys of Saint-
Germain-des-Prés and Saint-Victor, the latter the home of some of the
greatest scholars of the previous century.47 For decades many of the best
minds from all over Christendom had come to Paris to learn and to teach.
The intellectual life of Paris was on a larger scale and broader historical
canvas than he had previously known.
The coalescence of relatively independent schools into a more centralised
institution supported by royal and papal privileges had a number of con-
sequences. One of the most important was that the scholars produced by the
new system were seen – and were eager to present themselves – as a crucial
resource for those engaged in the government of Christendom. The role of
Paris masters in shaping the agendas of the Church had been growing since
the middle of the previous century.48 By the early decades of the thirteenth
century Innocent III and then Honorius III were so confident in the
capacity of the city’s education system to produce skilled and reliable men
that they wished to transplant clerics trained in Paris to parts of the Christian
world where faltering orthodoxy needed support. Such men were to
engage in philosophical and theological disputes with Greeks and other
schismatics, heretics, Jews, and Muslims, as well as contributing to the
enhancement of pastoral care and undertaking more vigorous assaults on
dissent such as the process of inquisitio.49 The role of learning was extra-
vagantly imagined at the papal curia. Just as the world was inundated by the
great rivers flowing out of the earthly paradise, the learning of Paris was to
of the Sciences’ in RBS, 49–65, p. 60. On Bacon’s ideas about mechanical arts see E. Whitney, ‘The
Artes Mechanicae, craftsmanship and moral value of technology’ in N. Van Deusen (ed.), Design
and Production in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Ottawa, 1998), 75–87.
46
M.E. Fassler, ‘The Role of the Parisian Sequence in the Evolution of Notre-Dame Polyphony’,
Speculum, 62.2 (1987), 345–74. Bacon alluded to concerns shared by his contemporaries working
on the liturgy at Notre Dame (OM, iv.iv.16, 1:236–8) and complained that the Church was let
down by poor singing in ‘maximis ecclesiis cathedralibus, et aliis collegiis famosis’ (OT, p. 298).
47
Rashdall, Universities, vol. iii, pp. 427, 441, vol. i, pp. 276–7.
48
See J.W. Baldwin, ‘Paris et Rome en 1215: les réformes du IVe Concile de Latran’, Journal des
savants, 1 (1997), 99–124; J. Van Engen (ed.), Learning Institutionalised: Teaching in the Medieval
University (Notre Dame, 2000).
49
E.g. CUP, vol. i, no. 3, pp. 62–3, no. 25, pp. 83–4. R.W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the
Unification of Europe (2 vols. Oxford, 1995–2001), vol. i: Foundations, pp. 158–62, 198–233;
R. McKeon, ‘The Status of the University of Paris as Parens scientiarum: An Episode in the
Development of its Autonomy’, Speculum, 39.4 (1964), 651–75; P.O. Lewry, ‘Papal Ideals and the
University of Paris 1170–1303’ in C. Ryan (ed.), The Religious Roles of the Papacy: Ideals and Realities
1150–1300 (Toronto, 1989), 363–88, pp. 366–7. On the realities see A. Vauchez, The Laity in the
Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. D.E. Borstein and trans. M. J. Schneider
(Notre Dame, 1993), esp. pp. 95–106.
39
be a source of sweet water which would flow from the throne of God to
irrigate the spiritual wastelands of the world and refresh the whole
Church.50
Yet there was peril in such a system. If personal, institutional or
doctrinal purity failed, then the contamination could spread within, and
far beyond, the universities. It was vital to the Church that Parisian
scholarship was not infected by suspect doctrines, unqualified masters or
the dangerous new ways of thinking that were emanating from the
Muslim world. This was the reason for the vigilance of the masters, of
secular and ecclesiastical authorities; the intermittent exercise of a tight
control over ideas that can be traced through the history of investigations,
prohibitions and condemnations. At the same time, there were endless
disagreements and internal tensions when papal ideologies were imposed
at the expense of more local interests and institutional autonomy.
Although the Dominicans and Franciscans had been received with
relative complaisance, they made enemies when they put their own
interests before those of the corporation of masters. They did not
support the strikes of 1229 and 1253, and benefited from their disloyalty
by gaining a chair of theology during the masters’ absence. Attempts by
the seculars to force them to uphold the statutes of the university tended to
be thwarted by papal and even royal interventions.51 The mendicants
themselves were frequently engaged in rivalry and mutually hostile
polemic. Throughout Bacon’s lifetime the academic environment in
Paris was a place of bitter, sometimes violent, polarisation between various
groups.
The impact of this mingled ambition, apprehension and turmoil on
Bacon can hardly be overestimated. His later works were written because
he felt compelled to offer his own statement of the power, potential
and dangers of institutionalised learning. When he criticised the corrup-
tion of his age and showed how the fruits of scholarship could serve
the purposes of the faith, he was in accord with many around him. He
was in dialogue with ideas long circulating in Paris: hoping to link the
individual work of scholars to the agendas of the papal curia and
the religious orders; seeking – through the application of learning – the
renewal of Christian society and its defence against heretics, infideles and
Antichrist himself.52
50
CUP, vol. i, no. 425, pp. 479–81; Lewry, ‘Papal Ideals’.
51
D. Douie, The Conflict between the Seculars and the Mendicants at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth
Century (London, 1954); A.G. Traver, ‘Rewriting History? The Parisian Secular Masters’ Apologia
of 1254’, History of Universities, 15 (1997–9), 9–45.
52
EFRB, pp. 70–2 [Gasq, p. 499].
40
A life in context
The wider programme of the Church was restated in 1245, when Pope
Innocent IV called a general council, the first of Bacon’s adult life. It was a
time of peculiar crisis for the Latin West. The eastern kingdoms, particu-
larly Hungary and Poland, had been devastated by the Mongol invasions
of 1241–2. No one knew what to expect next; some, Bacon among them,
speculated that the Mongols were the forerunners of Antichrist.53
More shocking still, in the scheme of things, was the savage sack of
Jerusalem by the Khwarismian Turks in 1244, followed by the crushing
defeat of the Latins and their allies at La Forbie. Yet these events were in
practice overshadowed by the escalating feud between Innocent and
Frederick II, which had flared up once again, this time so seriously that
Innocent had fled to the safety of Lyons. He opened the council with a
sermon in which he described the ‘five sorrows of his heart’: the moral
corruption of clergy and laity; the threat to the Crusader states by Muslims;
the schism between the Greek and Latin Churches; the Mongol invasions;
and the dispute with the emperor.54 Although Innocent’s obsession with
Frederick dominated the proceedings, each of the ‘sorrows’ remained high
among papal concerns in the following decades. They would give a
distinct shape to Bacon’s interests, providing him with a clear statement
of the problems for which remedies were required.
Among those summoned to the council were prominent Franciscans
and Dominicans, together with others, such as Robert Grosseteste, who
shared their urgent sense that reform was needed. Although they had little
influence on the council itself – indeed, they felt threatened by the
hostility of some participants – their surviving letters, sermons and other
material give some indication of the energy that was being put, during
these years, into improving the quality of pastoral care offered by the
Church. They knew how politics worked – ‘the process of salvation is
unceasingly resisted by impious knavery, the subterfuge of changing
direction, cunning sophistry, and pleas for delay’, wrote Adam Marsh –
but they insisted tirelessly that anyone who failed in the cure of souls
would have to answer to God for it.55 They constantly urged their
contemporaries, including kings, popes and cardinals, to aspire to the
apostolic virtues: humility, poverty, obedience, love.56 They did not
always go unheard. One of those who came increasingly to support and
share their endeavour was Louis IX.
53
Jackson, Mongols, pp. 142–53.
54
H. Wolter and H. Holstein, Lyon I et Lyon II (Paris, 1966), p. 63.
55
Letter 211 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. ii, p. 514/515. Adam referred here to fears of ‘serious attacks’
by some prelates, and a general sense of the mendicants being out of favour at the curia.
56
A. Power, ‘Franciscan Advice to the Papacy in the Middle Ages’, History Compass, 5.5 (2007),
1550–75.
41
Bacon was in Paris during the most formative decade in the evolution
of Capetian spirituality, when the king and his sister Isabelle moved from
conventional expressions of royal dignity towards the adoption of severe
models of apostolic poverty and humility.57 Louis’ complex public iden-
tification of himself with both the suffering and the glory of Christ was
already visible. He obtained from the bankrupt barons of Constantinople
some of the most precious relics of the Passion, including the crown of
thorns – this, according to Pope Innocent IV, constituting a coronation by
Christ with his own crown – and built the Sainte-Chapelle to house
them.58 In 1244 he took the Cross, and devoted the next four years to
extensive preparations for an expedition to Damietta. His guiding princi-
ple was an ambitious application of the old notion that God would aid the
righteous in battle, so the preparation included a thorough investigation
into the administration of his kingdom. His intention was to put every-
thing to rights before setting sail.59 In this, he was echoing some of
Innocent III’s preparations for Lateran IV, which included commissioning
legates and bishops to uncover abuses across Christendom – a programme
carried out particularly effectively in France.60 Bacon only wrote of the
Crusade to regret its outcome, but it is probable that Louis’ activities
impressed him, given his later sense that the connection between personal
piety, communal virtue and practical achievements would strengthen
Christendom. Possibly he was still in the city when the altars of the
Sainte-Chapelle were consecrated in 1248, shortly before Louis’ departure
for the east, on foot and in penitential garb.61
In 1250 the news came back to France that the holy enterprise, so
propitiously begun, had ended with the bitter shame of defeat and
capture. The faithful were badly shaken – in some cases, according to
Matthew Paris, even fearing that God preferred Muslims to Christians.
57
S.L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre
Dame, 2006), pp. 18–59.
58
J. Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris, 1996), pp. 140–9, 185–6, 882–4; B. Brenk, ‘The Sainte-Chapelle as a
Capetian Political Program’ in V.C. Raguin et al. (eds.), Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings
(Toronto, 1995) 195–213; W.C. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in
Rulership (Princeton, 1979), pp. 182–213; M.C. Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship,
Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2008), esp. pp. 72–7, 217–18, 230–1.
59
Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. J. Monfrin (Paris, 1995), 106–7, p. 54. See Jordan, Louis
IX; J. Richard, Saint Louis: Crusader King of France, ed. S. Lloyd, trans. J. Birrell (Oxford, 1992),
pp. 85–112; W.C. Jordan, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Thirteenth-Century Europe’, JMH,
35.2 (2009), 204–19.
60
Innocent III, Selected Letters, no. 51, pp. 144–7; J.W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The
Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle (2 vols. Princeton, 1970), vol. i, pp. 316–18; Moore,
Pope Innocent III, pp. 206–12, 219–27.
61
On Louis’ journey as a penitent see Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. G. Scalia (2 vols. Turnhout,
1998–9), vol. i, pp. 334–40.
42
A life in context
Bacon – like Louis – regarded the disaster as a humiliation for the Church
about which the whole world knew.62 His distress and frustration may
have fuelled one of his driving preoccupations: to find a better way of
dealing with enemies ‘than by the shedding of Christian blood’.63 He was
also to witness the demoralising effects of the defeat on the general
population.
Preoccupied with the affairs of the empire in the immediate aftermath
of the death of Frederick II, Innocent IV had little attention to spare to
help the largely French army, and anger flared across Louis’ lands, resulting
in mass movements of rural workers who determined to go to the aid of
the Holy Land. These pastores were led by a visionary claiming to have
been commanded by the Virgin, whose mandate he carried everywhere in
his hand. Louis’ mother, Blanche of Castile, regent in his absence, was
ready in her wrath against the Pope to support them, and they entered
Paris in large numbers in 1251. At first she welcomed them, but the
movement, which had already turned to open violence against the clergy
in Rouen, was beyond her control. Bacon was in Paris and saw their leader
walking barefoot and surrounded by a ‘multitude of armed men’. He was
close enough to see that the man was holding ‘a certain thing openly in his
hand, as if it were a sacred thing’: presumably the mandate of the Virgin.64
The Pastoureaux preached wildly against the papal curia, bishops, clergy
and the friars, and were soon attacking the clergy in the city. The students
at the university narrowly escaped being massacred.65 It took some time
for calm to be restored. Nevertheless, Bacon admired Blanche, whom he
called ‘a most wise woman’, and felt that she had been imposed on by the
leader.66
The experience had a great effect on Bacon. In later years he would
condemn aspects of the papal preoccupation with the Hohenstaufen
family which distracted it from the proper business and protection of
Christendom.67 Like others, he suspected that the Pastoureaux had been
emissaries of the Mongols and Muslims, and that the leaders had used
magical arts in order to fascinate people in the same way as Antichrist
62
CM, vol. v, pp. 108–9; OM, iii.13, 3:121, iv.iv.16, 1:321.
63
‘quam per effusionem sanguinis Christiani’: OM, i.i, 3:1.
64
‘vidi eum oculis meis portare patenter in manu sua quiddam tanquam esset res sacra, ac si homo
deferret reliquias, et ivit nudis pedibus, et erat circa cum multitudine armatorum’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:401–2.
65
CM, vol. v, pp. 246–52; R.E. Lerner, ‘The Uses of Heterodoxy: The French Monarchy and
Unbelief in the Thirteenth Century’, French Historical Studies, 4.2 (1965), 189–202, esp.
pp. 197–202; C.T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth
Century (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 153–4; G. Dickson, ‘The Advent of the Pastores’, Revue Belge de
Philologie et d’Histoire, 66 (1988), 249–67.
66
‘sapientissimam mulierem’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:401. 67 CSP, p. 399; EFRB, p. 68 [Gasq, p. 498].
43
would in the future.68 The combination of all these menacing events
contributed to the growing awareness in the Latin West of the sheer size of
the globe and the immense numbers of unbelievers that filled it.69
Pessimism seized many observers. Grosseteste, in his memorandum
to the papal curia in 1250, had painted a grim picture of a world in
which ‘the greatest part has been occupied by infideles’ and the Christian
parts were divided by schism and infected by heresy and even the
nominally orthodox were ‘at one with the Devil’.70 Others cautioned
against the consequences of Christian disunity in the following years.
This had been the central message of John of Plano Carpini’s report on
the Mongols; one echoed by high-ranking churchmen such as Eudes
of Châteauroux and, of course, the popes themselves. In 1263 Urban IV
lamented ‘the pitiable condition’ of Christendom torn by internal
wars and afflicted by savage enemies from beyond its frontiers.71 Bacon
may have reacted similarly at that time: he certainly came to share
these convictions. He feared that Christendom was dangerously vulner-
able to the occult and demonic powers of its enemies and that Christians
needed to be better equipped to recognise and resist such deadly
persuasions.
the pursuit of wisdom

As far as we can tell, the shape, if not the content, of Bacon’s early career
was conventional enough. He had taken his degrees, become a master,
travelled to Paris to teach there, and written a number of treatises on the
subjects of his lectures. This public life was to come to an end. Somewhere
in the late 1240s he ceased teaching in the universities and concentrated on
private study. He would probably have been in his mid-thirties. Despite
much speculation, the catalyst – if there was one – for his departure is
unknown. Ill health may have played a role: he later alluded to the ‘many
weaknesses and infirmities’ that had prevented public engagement for a
68
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:401–2; CM, vol. v, pp. 246, 252; Bigalli, Tartari, pp. 94–100; G. Dickson,
‘Medieval Christian Crowds and the Origins of Crowd Psychology’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique,
95.1 (2000), 54–75, esp. pp. 65–73.
69
P. Biller, The Measure of the Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought (Oxford, 2000), esp. pp. 238–45;
J. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels (Liverpool, 1979), esp. pp. 34–6.
70
‘Plurimam namque partem occupavit infidelitas’; ‘concorporaverunt diabolo’: Robert Grosseteste,
‘Robert Grosseteste at the Papal Curia, Lyons 1250: Edition of the Documents’, ed. S. Gieben, CF,
41 (1971), 340–93, p. 353.
71
Eudes of Châteauroux, ‘Sermo in concilio pro negotio Tartarorum’ ed. in A. Ruotsala, Europeans
and Mongols in the Middle of the Thirteenth Century: Encountering the Other (Helsinki, 2001),
pp. 156–61; ‘miseranda conditio’ in letter 560 of Epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis pontificum romanorum,
ed. C. Rodenberg (3 vols. Berlin, 1883–94), vol. iii, 544–9, p. 548.
44
A life in context
decade.72 Twenty years afterwards he would lay a heavy emphasis on this
part of his life when claiming the authority to be heard by Clement. By
that stage he had placed his actions within some larger contexts and was
offering his decision and resultant experience as a model for the future of
Latin learning. He told Clement, quoting Aristotle, that it was only when
the mind had removed itself from the turbulence of the world that it could
obtain the stability and tranquillity to comprehend great and hidden
truths.73 It is hard to be sure how far a reliable picture of his earlier
motivations can be uncovered from this material, but one can be
suggested.
A constant theme in his writings was his distaste for the intellectual
methods of the ‘vulgus’: the mass of scholars and students – proud, greedy
for fame, narrow in their interests, following each other like sheep. He
believed that these methods had to be explicitly rejected by the individual
who sought the purer, higher ways of sapientia. Sapientia perfecta was
nothing less than the knowledge that God had bestowed on the first
humans as they walked sinless in the earthly Paradise, but which had
been lost with the Fall. As it was part of perfection, it was only accessible
to the perfected individual as she or he became one with God, either
through mystical union in life or in death. Since the Fall few people other
than the saints had even glimpsed it, but through the study of the works of
those few who had, such as Aristotle, together with the fresh labours of
later generations, it was being recovered.74 Yet the process of restoration
was gravely hindered, in Bacon’s opinion, by the moral and intellectual
failings of those involved. In offering this interpretation he was drawing
on the profound disquiet about the function and nature of learning that
had emerged with the drift of education from monasteries and cathedral
72
‘languores multos et infirmitates varias’: EFRB, p. 78 [Gasq, p. 500]; OT, p. 59. Crowley (Roger
Bacon, pp. 29–32) attributes it to the influence of Grosseteste, exercised during a hypothesised
return to Oxford around 1247. Crombie and North (‘Roger Bacon’, pp. 377–8) and Lindberg (in
Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy, pp. xviii–xix) broadly agree, but Hackett (‘Roger Bacon:
His Life’, pp. 14–16; ‘Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis’) and Bettoni (‘L’aristotelismo di
Ruggero Bacone’, Rivista di Filosofia neo-Scolastica, 58 (1966), 541–63, esp. p. 563) dispute this.
Easton (Roger Bacon, pp. 70–86) ascribes it largely to the impact of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum
secretorum, which he says engendered Bacon’s vision of a ‘universal science’. Maloney effectively
agrees (CST, pp. 4–5), but Williams does not, although he regards the Secretum secretorum as
important for Bacon’s later work (‘Roger Bacon and the Secret’, pp. 369–72).
73
EFRB, p. 68 [Gasq, p. 499].
74
See I. Tonna, ‘La concezione del sapere in Ruggero Bacone (1214–1292)’, Antonianum, 67.4
(1992), 461–7. Southern argued that ‘scholasticism’ itself was a concerted programme along these
lines (Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970); Scholastic Humanism), but see the more
fluid interpretations in P. Dronke (ed.), A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy
(Cambridge, 1992); B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of
Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983).
45
schools to more secular spheres.75 Echoing prominent voices of the
previous century, he asserted that his contemporaries were failing to
reach the heights of truth because they were too dependent on unworthy
authorities; unquestioning in their reliance on long-standing assumptions;
subservient to current intellectual and ideological conventions; and deter-
mined to conceal their ignorance with a show of knowledge.76 ‘Not
clerics, but shadows of clerics,’ William of Conches had complained.77
The reaction of some of these earlier scholars had been withdrawal –
either temporary or permanent – from the environment that seemed to
foster such unsound habits of thought. When Bacon enumerated the
errors of the vulgus he quoted from Adelard of Bath’s Questiones naturales,
a text which contained strongly worded denunciations of the same pro-
blems. ‘Those who profess the truth suffer at the hands of the vulgar
crowd,’ Adelard had cautioned, before going on to attack the general
abandonment of reason and critical thought in favour of the ‘halter’ of
authority. He attributed his own clarity of thought to his ‘Arab masters’,
and reported that he had left his students behind in order to spend some
years studying among the ‘Arabs’.78 Here, it would seem, is a direct model
for Bacon’s decision. Adelard conceived of a simple opposition between
what was on offer among the Latins, in the schools, and the genuine
pursuit of scholarship informed by the exercise of reason and shaped by
the methods of the Muslim world.
75
For background see D. Luscombe, ‘Philosophy and Philosophers in the Schools of the Twelfth
Century’ in O. Weijers (ed.), Vocabulaire des écoles et des méthodes d’enseignement au moyen
âge (Turnhout, 1992), 73–85; D. Luscombe, ‘Thought and Learning’ in D. Luscombe and
J. Riley-Smith (eds.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. iv: c. 1024–c. 1198, part 1
(Cambridge, 2004), 461–98; S. Jaeger, Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in
Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia, 1994); Swanson, Twelfth-Century Renaissance, esp.
pp. 12–39; H. Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars in the High Middle Ages, trans. D.A. Kaiser
(Philadelphia, 1998), esp. pp. 215–319. Jaeger suggests that twelfth-century masters felt ‘envy’ of
the morality and charisma of their imagined predecessors, uneasily aware of ‘the fading vitality of
the previous age’ (Envy of Angels, p. 329). See also Van Engen (ed.), Learning; Ferruolo, ‘Parisius-
Paradisus’, pp. 37–8.
76
OM, i, 3:1–35. See S. Ebbesen, ‘Roger Bacon and the Fools of his Times’ in S. Ebbesen and J.
Pinborg (eds.), Studies in the Logical Writings Attributed to Boethius de Dacia (Copenhagen, 1970), 40–
4. For previous criticisms, some quoted by Bacon, see M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the
Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, trans. J. Taylor and L. K.
Little (Chicago, 1997), esp. pp. 11–18, 310–30; S.C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The
Schools of Paris and their Critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford, 1985).
77
‘umbras clericorum non clericos’: Guillelmi de Conchis: Dragmaticon philosophiae, ed. I. Ronca
(Turnhout, 1997), i.i.4, p. 5. John of Salisbury’s tirades against the ‘Cornificians’ provide another
example.
78
Adelard of Bath, Conversations with his Nephew: On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural
Science, and On Birds, ed. and trans. C. Burnett (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 90/1–104/5. On the
importance of Adelard’s work for Bacon’s see J.M. Hackett, ‘Adelard of Bath and Roger Bacon:
Early English Natural Philosophers and Scientists’, Endeavour, 26.2 (2002), 70–4.
46
A life in context
By the 1240s the meanings of these earlier rejections had been overlaid
by the ideas of the mendicant orders. The Franciscans and Dominicans
recruited heavily in the schools, preaching the message that learning was
valuable in the service of God, and not otherwise. They forged a firm link
between the journey towards sapientia and the vita apostolica, increasingly
suggesting that the former could hardly be achieved without the latter.
While Bacon did not enter an order, he was certainly in an environment
in which well-publicised rejections of the methods, and milieux, of
secular scholarship were regular events. By the time that he told
Clement ‘I worked specifically on the pursuit of wisdom, setting aside
the methods of the common throng’, he had taken the habit and was
doubtless drawing on a mixture of precedents when he described his
earlier action.79 If Bacon differed from the others of his generation, it
was not in his decision to withdraw, but to some extent in the sorts of
studies he pursued when he did; and even more, perhaps, in the conclu-
sions that he eventually drew from them. Although we cannot know what
he had in mind when he began his new studies, his programme was clear
by the 1260s. ‘I have examined everything which is necessary for it and I
know how to proceed, what help I need, and what impediments there
are,’ he wrote trenchantly.80
In order to support his new enterprise, which would prove expensive,
Bacon must have received money from his family, or perhaps used his
own inheritance if he had one. There is no indication that he had a patron.
He later told the Pope that he had spent more than two thousand pounds
on ‘secret books, and diverse experiments, languages, instruments, tables,
and other things’, then on seeking the friendship of learned men, and
finally on assistants who had training in languages, figures, numerals,
tables, instruments, and much else.81 He learned Greek, some elements
of Hebrew and the smattering of Arabic terms that he was able to exhibit
in his later writings.82 He had also spent time teaching such skills to young
79
‘specialiter laboravi in studio sapientiae, neglecto sensu vulgi’: OT, p. 59.
80
‘Et examinavi omnia quae hic necessaria sunt, et scio qualiter procedendum est, et quibus auxiliis, et
quae sunt impedimenta’: OT, pp. 58–9.
81
‘propter libros secretos, et experientias varias, et linguas, et instrumenta, et tabulas, et alia’: OT,
p. 59; Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 87–8.
82
On Bacon’s Greek see E. Hovdhaugen, ‘“Una et Eadem”: Some Observations on Roger Bacon’s
Greek Grammar’ in G.L. Bursill-Hall et al. (eds.), De ortu grammaticae (Amsterdam, 1990), 117–31;
R. Weiss, ‘The Study of Greek in England During the Fourteenth Century’, Rinascimento, 2.3–4
(1951), 209–39, pp. 214–15; Roger Bacon, The Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon and a Fragment of his
Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Nolan and E. Hirsh (Cambridge, 1902). Scholars are more divided on
Bacon’s Hebrew knowledge. See S.A. Hirsch, ‘Early English Hebraists: Roger Bacon and his
Predecessors’, Jewish Quarterly Review, 12 (1899), 34–88, pp. 44–5; H. Weinstock, ‘Roger Bacon’s
Polyglot Alphabets’, Florilegium, 11 (1992), 160–78; J. Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘The Knowledge and
47
men himself, and seems to have encouraged others who then surpassed
him as linguists.83 He regarded the knowledge of languages and grammar
as being absolutely fundamental to scholarship, and included grammatical,
orthographical and phonetic information in his programme for the reform
of learning. He could not praise enough those whom he considered to
have taken the same approach successfully. He was also stringently critical
in this matter, horrified by the damage that errors in grammar or transla-
tion did to the reputation and functioning of the Church and to human
souls. He believed that linguistic accomplishments would open the way to
healing the schism with the Greeks and to drawing the Jews into the
Church. During this period of his life, as he later reported, he had worked
so hard that people wondered how he survived it.84 Perhaps stimulated by
Grosseteste, he made his own intensive study of ancient Greek texts,
together with commentaries and independent works produced by
Muslim scholars. He may have had access to Grosseteste’s library of
Greek material, which was kept after the bishop’s death in the
Franciscan studium in Oxford.85 His reading in this period also included
‘secret’ books. He became acquainted with the Secretum secretorum, a text
of predominantly Arabic provenance, which had been put together
between the eighth and tenth centuries but purported to be a letter of
advice from Aristotle to Alexander the Great. In addition to its relatively
conventional ‘mirror for princes’ material, it made high claims for the
value to rulers of astrology, medicine, physiognomy, talismans, alchemy,
mineralogy and other sources of occult power.86 This material fascinated
Practice of Hebrew Grammar among Christian Scholars in Pre-Expulsion England: The Evidence
of “Bilingual” Hebrew–Latin Manuscripts’ in N. de Lange (ed.), Hebrew Scholarship in the Medieval
World (Cambridge, 2001), 107–28, pp. 109–11, 116–17, 124; H. Weinstock, ‘Roger Bacon und das
“hebräische Alphabet”’, Aschkenas, 2 (1992), 15–48; P. Dozio, ‘Alcune note sulla lingua ebraica in
Ruggero Bacone’, Liber Annuus, 46 (1996), 223–44, esp. p. 244.
83
On his influence see B. Grévin, ‘L’hébreu des franciscains: Nouveaux éléments sur la connaissance
de l’hébreu en milieu Chrétien au XIIIe siècle’, Médiévales, 41 (2001), 65–82; D.C. Klepper,
‘Nicholas of Lyra and Franciscan interest in Hebrew scholarship’ in P.D.W. Krey and L. Smith
(eds.), Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture (Leiden, 2000), 289–311, pp. 295–9; P. Bourgain, ‘Le
sens de la langue et des langues chez Roger Bacon’ in G. Contamine (ed.), Traduction et traducteurs au
moyen âge (Paris, 1989), 317–29; E. Anheim et al., ‘Exégèse judéo-chrétienne, magie et linguistique:
un recueil de Notes inédites attribuées à Roger Bacon’, AHDLMA, 68 (2001), 95–154; G. Dahan,
‘La critique textuelle dans les correctoires de la Bible du XIIIe siècle’ in A. de Libera et al. (eds.),
Languages et philosophie: hommage à Jean Jolivet (Paris, 1997), 365–92.
84
OT, p. 65.
85
A.C. Dionisotti, ‘On the Greek Studies of Robert Grosseteste’ in A.C. Dionisotti et al. (eds.), The
Uses of Greek and Latin: Historical Essays (London, 1988), 19–39, pp. 31–2; A.C. Dionisotti, ‘Robert
Grosseteste and the Greek Encyclopaedia’ in J. Hamesse and M. Fattori (eds.), Rencontres de cultures
dans la philosophie médiévale: traductions et traducteurs de l’antiquité tardive au XIVe siècle (Louvain-la-
Neuve, 1990), 337–53, p. 348.
86
S.J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle
Ages (Ann Arbor, 2003), pp. 7–30.
48
A life in context
Bacon. He developed a strong faith in the power of disciplines such as
astrology, alchemy and magic. These interests, it should be stressed, were
not uncommon, and were certainly shared by those in European centres
of power. The Secretum itself was known at both papal and imperial courts
from at least 1230.87 However, they were also the subject of anxiety
among scholars and some of the possibilities that Bacon was prepared to
contemplate sat uncomfortably with certain kinds of orthodoxy.
Bacon’s movements in these years of his life are obscure. It is generally
assumed that, when he decided to undertake private study, he returned to
his native land, no longer having a professional reason to be in Paris and
being aware that it was Oxford where he had a greater chance of finding
teachers in his new interests. Even twenty years later he was noting that
perspectiva ‘is not yet taught at Paris, nor among the Latins except twice at
Oxford in England, and there are not three people who know the power
of this science’. Oxford was also well equipped with relevant books.
Nevertheless, he must have returned to Paris at least from time to time,
since he was there, as we have seen, in 1251.88 The existence in Paris of a
thriving culture of experimentores and, indeed, magicians of one kind and
another – a ‘clerical underworld’ – is well attested.89 Ideas central to
Bacon’s later works were an unmistakable product of this milieu, which
he regarded with mingled approbation and censure. However, all that
can really be surmised is that he went where books and scholars were to
be found: ‘I have sought the friendship of all the wise among the Latins,’
he wrote.90 It has been suggested that he may have gone to Lincoln to
visit Grosseteste, who was alive until 1253.91 He may have met
Campanus of Novara, whom he considered one of the two greatest
mathematicians of his day.92 He said that he had heard most of the new
masters. He went to Oxford at some point in the late 1240s, where he
87
Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and his Edition’, p. 69; S.J. Williams, ‘The Early Circulation of the
Pseudo-Aristotlian Secret of Secrets in the West: The Papal and Imperial Courts’, Micrologus, 2 (1994),
127–44.
88
‘Haec autem scientia non est adhuc lecta Parisius, nec apud Latinos, nisi bis Oxoniae in Anglia; et
non sunt tres qui sciant ejus potestatem’: OT, p. 37. On Oxford books see Burnett, Introduction; on
Bacon’s movements see Maloney, ‘Introduction’, CST, pp. 4–9.
89
S. Marrone, ‘Metaphysics and Science in the Thirteenth Century: William of Auvergne, Robert
Grosseteste and Roger Bacon’ in J. Marenbon (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. iii: Medieval
Philosophy (London, 1998), 204–24, pp. 213–15; R. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages
(Cambridge, 1989), quotation at p. 151.
90
‘quaesivi amicitiam omnium sapientum inter Latinos’: OT, p. 58.
91
Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon: His Life’, pp. 12, 15. Bacon’s remarks about ‘seeing’ Grosseteste are
ambiguous: OM, iii.iii, 3:88–9; OT, p. 88. For a table of some specific borrowings of Grosseteste’s
thought by Bacon see Alessio, Mito, pp. 319–20.
92
OT, p. 35; Campanus of Novara and Medieval Planetary Theory: Theorica planetarum, ed. and trans. F.S.
Benjamin, Jr. and G.J. Toomer (Madison, 1971), pp. 7–8.
49
encountered the two Franciscan scholars he later most admired: Thomas
the Welshman and Adam Marsh, and heard Adam teach.93 In Paris he
worked with Petrus Peregrinus of Maricourt, a private scholar, and talked
to the missionary and traveller William of Rubruck. The list could be
multiplied, and the study of Bacon’s intellectual connections is far from
exhausted. His description of the ideal conditions for scholarship empha-
sised the value of collaboration and the support of a skilled team of
assistants.94 It sounds very much as though this was how he worked
during the period. The popular notion of Bacon’s studies as a solitary
enterprise can probably be abandoned.
As well as the impressive scholarly achievements of this time, which
brought him ‘fame’, Bacon must have been developing a series of per-
spectives and priorities that would lead him to become a friar.95 Again, it is
only possible to offer interpretations based on material written years later,
but on this basis some tentative suggestions can be made. Bacon’s contact
with Adam seems to have been important. Adam was by this time a man of
authority within his order and beyond. He corresponded with kings,
queens, nobles, popes, cardinals, archbishops and many others, petitioning
them and dispensing uncompromising advice, all within an anguished
commentary on the state of the Church and the world. Bacon may well
have read the collection made of these letters after Adam’s death, and it
seems likely that he absorbed Adam’s influence through direct contact. He
was, for example, impressed by witnessing Adam’s refusal to answer
students who were asking questions frivolously and ‘not out of the desire
for wisdom’.96 Certainly, as we will see, aspects of Bacon’s work seem to
grow out of the moral and emotional atmosphere that Adam and his
intimates clearly sought to create across Christendom.97
Another source of inspiration was Petrus Peregrinus.98 Bacon wrote of
him in laudatory terms, saying that, among the Latins, Petrus was the only
person who really understood the natural sciences, and especially scientia
experimentalis. Petrus knew about nature through observation; about
healing and alchemy. He responded with humility if a member of the
93
OT, pp. 139, 75, 88, 186; OM, iii.iii, 3:88–9. Thomas left Oxford for the See of St David’s in 1247:
DAFM, p. 62; M. Bateson and M. Costambeys, ‘Thomas Wallensis’, ODNB; Adam ceased
lecturing in theology in 1250: Lawrence, ‘Adam Marsh’, ODNB.
94
He lamented the loss of these advantages due to his vow of poverty: EFRB, pp. 82–94 [Gasq,
pp. 500–2].
95
On his fame see OT, p. 7. 96 ‘non propter sapientiam’: OT, p. 75. 97 See Bigalli, Tartari.
98
See A.G. Molland, ‘Roger Bacon’s Knowledge of Mathematics’ in RBS, 151–74, pp. 152–3, 159;
OT, pp. 34–5; J. Luis Rivera, ‘Pierre de Maricourt’ in J.E. Gracia and T.B. Noone (eds.), A
Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003), 538–9; E. Schlund, ‘Petrus Peregrinus
von Maricourt: sein Leben und seine Schriften (ein Beitrag zur Roger Baco-forschung)’, AFH, 4
(1911), 436–55.
50
A life in context
laity, whether knight or peasant, knew something that he did not. When he
discovered an area of ignorance he would set himself to learn, and conse-
quently knew how to cast metal and to work gold and silver, and had learnt
everything there was to know about warfare, weaponry, hunting, agricul-
ture and the measurements of the earth. He had made experiments in the
course of investigation into the ageing process, as well as divination, charms
and in fact everything to do with magic and trickery, so that all the secrets of
these dubious arts were exposed and could no longer deceive the unwary.
Bacon wrote this praise of Petrus in the mid-1260s, without saying when he
first knew him, but Petrus was productive in that decade, writing treatises
on the astrolabe, mirrors and the magnet which bore the signs of
Grosseteste’s thought, perhaps communicated through Bacon.99
Bacon implied that the main reason that Petrus was so skilled was
because he was not interested in spending time on academic disputes,
but was simply content to pursue sapientia. Petrus was not looking for
rewards or honours, even though if he revealed his abilities, Bacon said,
kings and princes, all Paris and indeed the whole world would admire
him. Since he did not choose to work for acclaim, and was financially
independent and untroubled by worldly cares, he could approach his
studies in a spirit of intellectual purity which made them far more effec-
tive: ‘while the others blindly struggle to see, like bats in the sunlight at
dusk, he looks thoroughly at things in full brightness and so is the master of
experience’.100 Bacon admired but does not seem to have sought to
acquire Petrus’ particular skills: Petrus himself valued ‘manual ability’
very highly, and Bacon may perhaps have lacked the fine dexterity that
this implied, especially if he was no longer in good health.101 Instead, he
reflected on the possible applications of Petrus’ investigations, wanting to
employ them in the service of Christendom. He became convinced they
might be forged into weapons both spiritual and physical with which the
faith could be administered, bolstered and protected, even against
Antichrist himself. This could only be done if the necessary studies and
tasks were carried out by the pure in mind and soul: those who had
divorced themselves from the petty ambition and errors of the multitude.
99
A.C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100–1700 (Oxford, 1953),
pp. 204–10; J.A. Smith, ‘Precursors to Peregrinus: The Early History of Magnetism and the
Mariner’s Compass in Europe’, JMH, 18 (1992), 21–74.
100
‘Et ideo quod alii caecutientes nituntur videre, ut vespertilio lucem solis in crepusculo, ipse in
pleno fulgore contemplatur, propter hoc quod est dominus experimentorum’: OT, pp. 43, 46–7.
101
Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt, Opera: Epistula de magnete, Nova compositio astrolabii particularis, ed.
L. Sturlese and R.B. Thomson (Pisa, 1995), 1.1–2, pp. 64–7. On Bacon’s health see EFRB, pp. 78,
82 [Gasq, p. 500]. For the argument that he was a practitioner as well as a theorist of alchemy see
W.R. Newman, ‘The Philosopher’s Egg: Theory and Practice in the Alchemy of Roger Bacon’,
Micrologus, 3 (1995), 75–101.
51
Petrus was not the only example present in Bacon’s mind when he was
writing later on. He illustrated the powerful effects of the successful union
of scholarship and virtue with observations about his own students. He
described one young man, John, who was only about twenty years old,
poor and of only modest ability, who had achieved extraordinary things
already simply because of his unblemished innocence and ‘clear and bright
soul’. Bacon could see no other reason for his success: ‘except the grace of
God, which, due to the purity of his soul, has given him things which it
has denied to all the other students’. ‘Virtue clarifies the mind’, wrote
Bacon, ‘so that a man more easily comprehends not only matters of
morality, but even those of scientia’. A soul stained with sins was like a
rusty mirror, and the sins obscured all vision.102 It was essentially the same
metaphor as he had used about Petrus: moral weakness and worldliness
darkened the eyes and the soul so that the light of sapientia seemed too
blinding to be endured, or shone on too dull and corroded a surface to be
visible. It was not enough merely to leave the universities and work
independently of them as both Bacon and Petrus had done, but one had
to become entirely free of desire for anything that the world could offer to
anyone: riches, fame, pleasures or even the ordinary comforts of life.
Perhaps it was a natural conclusion for someone whose mind was
working along these lines: in order to achieve full detachment from
the snares of the world the scholar must, in fact, leave the world. This
Bacon did, some time in the 1250s, when he entered the Order of the
Friars Minor.103 He had been first a university master and then a private
scholar before taking what was in some senses the final step away from
secular concerns, and yet in other senses a step that involved him in the
struggles of humanity more than ever before. Nor was it merely a
renunciation in the cool spirit of one who knows what must be sacrificed
in order to accomplish greater things. Bacon wrote of the struggle to free
the soul from sin in warm, sensual prose, as a chivalric labour: ‘the beauty
of truth seen in its splendour lures men to the love of it, but “the proof of
love is the display of effort” ’.104 It was the hardest of tasks to seek and
deserve the illumination of divine wisdom, yet while its siren-song
102
‘animam ita claram et perspicuam’; ‘non potest esse alia causa nisi gratia Dei quae propter
munditiam animae suae dedit ei illa quae fere omnibus studentibus donare denegavit’; ‘Virtus
ergo clarificat mentem ut non solum moralia sed etiam scientialia homo facilius comprehendat’:
OM, vi.i, 2:170–1. See also MP, iii.iii, p. 55; OT, pp. 60–2.
103
We do not know the date, although Bacon implied that it was ten years prior to Clement’s 1266
letter (OT, p. 7), so c. 1256–7 has been used here.
104
‘pulchritudo veritatis cognitae in suo fulgore allicit homines ad ejus amorem, sed “probatio amoris
est exhibitio operis”’: OM, vi.i, 2:170; CSP, p. 402. The internal quotation is from the Homiliae in
Evangelia of Pope Gregory I.
52
A life in context
intoxicated the mind and soul, its very difficulty made it glorious and
demonstrated the depth of devotion that motivated the lover of sapientia;
the lover of God.
the franciscan order

When Bacon became a Franciscan he entered an order that was less than
fifty years old, but already influential throughout the Christian world
and occasionally beyond. A major reason for its success, especially north
of the Alps, was its capacity to attract masters and students; another was
the consistent support of the papacy, manifested through bulls, privileges
and other interventions. The friars were involved in the pastoral care
of the general population as preachers, confessors and inquisitors.
Some served secular and ecclesiastical leaders as negotiators, diplomats,
chaplains, theologians, councillors and much else. They had established
their own network of studia and were, with the Dominicans, coming to
dominate European intellectual life.105 They were often vocal critics
of the failings of the clergy and the curia: reformers with a strong tang
of apocalypticism in their zeal. They were, in short, instruments of the
kind of reform for which the Lateran Council had reiterated the call:
detailed, critical, wide-ranging and bold; sparing of no one. Inevitably,
this drew them into the conflicts and controversies of the day, requiring
them to adapt their tactics to shifting circumstances and to position
themselves effectively in response to criticism and approval alike.106
Friars, unlike monks, lived in the world and tended to possess an acute
awareness of its moral and political contours, even as they insisted on the
need for Christians to cease temporising and to live according to the
principles of their religion. Bacon’s later writings were very clearly pro-
ducts of this ambitious, adaptive and energetic approach to the renewal of
the faith.
The friars had arrived in England during Bacon’s childhood: a small
group of men who sought to create a social space where the benefits of
105
See Roest, Franciscan Education; B. Roest, ‘The Franciscan School System: Re-assessing the Early
Evidence (ca. 1220–1260)’ in M. Robson and J. Röhrkasten (eds.), Franciscan Organisation in the
Mendicant Context: Formal and Informal Structures of the Friar’s Lives and Ministry in the Middle Ages
(Berlin, 2010), 253–79; B. Roest, ‘The Role of Lectors in the Religious Formation of Franciscan
Friars, Nuns, and Tertiaries’ and W.J. Courtenay, ‘Academic Formation and Careers of
Mendicant Friars. A Regional Approach’, both in Studio e studia: le scuole degli ordini mendicanti
tra XIII e XIV secolo (Spoleto, 2002), 83–115 and 197–217 respectively; Landini, Causes;
Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow’.
106
The successful strategies of Franciscans and Dominicans can be measured against the failure of
some of the other mendicant orders to survive the 1274 cull. See F. Andrews, The Other Friars:
Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack and Pied Friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006).
53
patronage and education might be tempered by the habitation of decaying
buildings and the strange ecstasies of cold and hunger. It is not always
appreciated that at this time, in 1224, the history of their order had not yet
been written. Francis of Assisi was still alive: not yet canonised; the events
of his life not yet given their familiar form. All these things would occur
within a few years, gradually imposing specific meanings and coherence
on a mass of ideas, personalities and events. In the meantime, and doubt-
less afterwards, the friars were guided, as Thomas of Eccleston remem-
bered it, ‘not by human constitutions, but by the unfettered inclination of
their piety’, living according to the Rule, a few statutes, and the customs
that grew up in the various convents. They were full of simplicity and joy,
and they were quick to learn from their small spiritual failures or achieve-
ments, adapting their ideas in accordance with the messages contained in
their dreams, visions and the anecdotes they were told. All these stories
became part of a corpus of exempla to shape the conduct and identity of
future friars.107 Being a ‘lesser brother’ was far more multivalent than is
generally recognised.
When histories were written they told a story at once inspiring and
disheartening. It was as follows. In Umbria, a merchant’s son was suddenly
consumed by a burning love of God, rejected the bourgeois security of his
family by literally stripping himself of its trappings, and sought perfection
through fierce acts of physical and mental mortification. He claimed: ‘no
one showed me what I had to do’ but instead God told him to live
according to the teaching of the gospels.108 He attracted followers; he
secured the approval of Innocent III; he sent the brothers through the
world to exhort the faithful; his order spread to every corner of
Christendom; he preached; he performed miracles. He went to Egypt to
convert the sultan, and to the Holy Land, returning to find his order
betraying the standards he had given it, with its houses, papal privileges
and complacency. He lashed the friars with his anger – ‘I will show them
what my will is!’ – but to no effect.109 He withdrew, by stages, sorrowing
and ill; only to be given, before his death, the inestimable blessing of
carrying the imprints of Christ’s torment in his own flesh. The coda to
all this was the world closing back in: his speedy canonisation by a
pope who badly needed the favourable publicity; the building of a
107
‘non humanis constitutionibus, sed liberis suae devotionis affectionibus’: DAFM, p. 30; Roest,
Reading, pp. 197–201; J.H. Moorman, The Franciscans in England (London, 1974). On the situation
as a symptom of institutional weakness see Dalarun, Francis, esp. pp. 101–23.
108
‘Testament’, FoAED, vol. i, p. 125.
109
CA, 44; 2Cel, 188; FF, pp. 1517, 607; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, pp. 146, 367. Dalarun discusses the
problems created by Francis’ determination both to renounce and cling to power (Francis,
pp. 85ff.).
54
A life in context
glorious basilica to house his body; the disputes between the brothers over
its lavish display; the treachery of his chosen successor, Elias; the creeping
clericalisation of the order.110
The intention of the histories was to place Francis at the centre of the
order’s past, and also of its future. This was useful because the memory of
Francis could – at least notionally – be deployed to provide the normative
voice otherwise so lacking in a rapidly changing environment. It was
achieved in several ways. The emphasis on Francis’ sanctity was obviously
important: in itself; as an example to the friars; and for the standing of the
order. As time passed he was imagined as a figure of eschatological
significance whose followers carried the heavy responsibility of protecting
the faithful in the world’s last days. This image, based in the writings of
Joachim of Fiore, linked many aspects of the wide-ranging reform pro-
gramme of the friars.111 Equally significant, however, was Francis’ depic-
tion as an extreme and often bitter critic of his own followers.The early
accounts were dominated by the notion that the friars betrayed Francis
during his life and continued to do so as the order developed after his
death. This perspective endured and indeed intensified amid the contro-
versies of the fourteenth century, creating a poisonous legacy for the
brethren, and, indeed, for modern historians of the order. One should,
nonetheless, avoid projecting the resultant acrimony too far back in
time.112 It is a major contention of the present study that for much of
the thirteenth century Franciscan self-criticism, whether voiced directly
or put into the mouth of Francis, was a crucial mechanism for maintaining
high standards, especially over questions of poverty, humility, obedience
and – perhaps surprisingly – the pursuit of sapientia. William of
Nottingham reminded the brethren to consider the intentions of
110
See C. Frugoni, Francis of Assisi, trans. J. Bowden (London, 1998), pp. 154–60 on how Francis’
body ceased to be his own, becoming a valuable relic even before his death; and Merlo (Nel nome,
pp. 43–56) on how his death liberated the order and perhaps even the papacy from its difficult
engagement with the will of its founder.
111
On Franciscan Joachite thought see Roest, Reading, pp. 158–77; M.W. Bloomfield and M.E.
Reeves, ‘The Penetration of Joachism into Northern Europe’, Speculum, 29 (1954), 772–93; D.
Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom: A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 2–
45. For a critique of some of the orthodoxies of the field see B. Roest, ‘Franciscan Commentaries
on the Apocalypse’ in M. Wilks (ed.), Prophecy and Eschatology (Oxford, 1994), 29–37; E.R.
Daniel, ‘A Re-examination of the Origins of Franciscan Joachitism’ in D.C. West (ed.), Joachim of
Fiore in Christian Thought: Essays on the Influence of the Calabrian Prophet (2 vols. New York, 1975),
vol. i, pp. 143–8; B. McGinn, ‘Apocalyptic Traditions and Spiritual Identity in Thirteenth-
Century Religious Life’ in B. McGinn (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition (Aldershot,
1994), vii.
112
Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 11–41. On the distress of the hagiographers see Dalarun,
Misadventure.
55
St Francis: ‘otherwise, as insensibly as hairs growing into a beard, super-
fluities will appear and multiply in the Order’.113
In many different ways, then, the friars evoked the saint to express their
own ideas about their past, present and future. They maintained consider-
able uniformity of approach through regular readings of the Rule, con-
stitutions, vitae and legendae of the saint, and through the liturgy.114 Even
so, the growing corpus of material was not static, as the order was not. The
Rule acquired commentaries that altered its meaning and emphasis; the
evolving memories of Francis’ companions were periodically recorded
from the 1240s; Thomas of Celano’s two successive vitae were replaced by
Bonaventure’s legendae in the 1260s; the constitutions were elaborated
from council to council.115 Not surprisingly, the friars were more con-
cerned with the affairs, personalities and ideas of their own day than the
luminous, increasingly remote, image of the saint.116 None of this is to
suggest that worldliness had overtaken the friars minor, or that they lacked
love for the saint and respect for their own traditions; quite the contrary.
The early impulses of Francis had dispersed through the order and were
embodied in the daily efforts, rituals and routines of its members, in small,
quasi-miraculous happenings that provided localised inspiration, and in
the particular examples of friars notable for their devotion. The point of
the order was precisely diffusion: to show the face of apostolic devotion far
and wide in the world; through the cities, courts and battlefields, and to
the ends of the earth if possible.
The paradox of Bacon’s day was that this way of life had come to be so
closely associated with the pursuit and exercise of sapientia through aca-
demic study.117 In order to understand it, it is crucial to appreciate the
113
‘alioquin, sicut insensibiliter crescunt pili barbae, sic crescent superfluitates in ordine’: DAFM,
p. 125.
114
M. Robson, ‘An Early Manuscript of the Admonitions of St Francis of Assisi’, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 62.2 (2011), 217–54, pp. 220–2; B. Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before
the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004), pp. 120–44. When Bacon repeated constitution vi.21 to
Clement (OT, p. 13), he paraphrased, rather than quoted, and in the process exaggerated its
severity.
115
Flood, ‘Three Commentaries’; 3Soc, Epistola, FF, pp. 1373–4; Dalarun, Francis.
116
See M.W. Sheehan, ‘S. Francis in the Chronicle of Eccleston’ in S. Gieben (ed.), Francesco d’Assisi
nella storia (Rome, 1983), 201–18, who notes: ‘most of [the friars] joined not to follow Francis, but
to follow a way of life’ (p. 217). Similarly, Bonaventure went to La Verna – where Francis had
received the stigmata – to meditate on the saint’s life only after he had become the order’s minister
general. Before that, references to Francis were few in his writings. See J.G. Bougerol, Introduction
to the Works of Bonaventure, trans. J. de Vinck (Paterson, 1964), pp. 5–6, 19–20.
117
These trends were established by 1240, visible in the earliest constitutions and Rule commentaries.
See ‘Fragmenta Priscarum Constitutionum Praenarbonensium (1239)’ in Constitutiones generales,
e.g. 20, 41, pp. 7, 10; Expositio quatuor magistrorum super Regulam Fratrum Minorum (1241–1242), ed.
P.L. Oliger (Rome, 1950), pp. 152, 157–8; Hugh of Digne’s Rule Commentary, ed. D. Flood
(Grottaferrata, 1979), pp. 141, 186–8.
56
A life in context
term sapientia in its fullest sense. The exile from Paradise was an exile from
the pure, full communion with the mind of God that was the essence of
sapientia. The lost intimacy with God and his creation could be regained
through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, through mystical ecstasy and
also, crucially, through patient years of learning, perfecting oneself, strain-
ing for the wisdom that would reunite the soul with its maker. Full
consummation could only come with death, but the partial understanding
acquired in life was of the greatest importance. It was not merely a private
benefit.118 Whole communities could be touched by the potency of holy
women and men who were close to God. With the growth of the
mendicant orders and the universities, which were both meant to serve
the needs of the Church, links emerged between long-standing ideas of
the social power of personal sanctity and the sapientia uncovered by
scholars who were ‘perfect’ in life. Looked at from this perspective, it
seems that Francis and his followers – learned and unlearned alike – all
yearned for a knowledge of God and an authenticity of experience that
was usually just out of reach of fallen humanity. They wanted it as the
apostles wanted it: not simply for their own souls’ sake, but in order to
renew the world around them and bring it to salvation. In the many uses
of the term sapientia among the friars, there was a convergence of desire.
Bacon, as we have seen, was possessed by this desire. The order as a whole
accepted the notion that formal education was the way to achieve these
ends – as Bonaventure wrote: ‘to arrive at knowledge without human
teaching is not for everyone, but the privilege of a few’ – and showed
remarkable determination and tenacity in their efforts to obtain it.119
Given the importance of learning to the order, it is perhaps not
surprising that it was in Paris that the growing hostility between the friars
and the secular clergy exploded into open conflict. The trouble began
over questions of institutional solidarity and competition within the uni-
versity, but quickly absorbed many of the wider social tensions generated
by the success of the mendicant model of evangelical perfection and the
tendency of the popes to support the friars at the expense of other
interests.120 The 1250s were punctuated with crises, excacerbated by the
118
See Bacon’s remarks on this subject in EFRB, pp. 68–72 [Gasq, p. 499].
119
‘scire non per hominum non est omnium, sed privilegium paucorum’: ‘Sermo V’ in Bonaventure,
S. Bonaventurae: Opera omnia (11 vols. Quaracchi, 1882–1902), vol. ix, p. 592; Dalarun,
Misadventure, pp. 254–5; Maranesi, Nescientes litteras, pp. 95–117.
120
On these events see Douie, Conflict; McKeon, ‘Status’; Traver, ‘Rewriting History?’; Szittya,
Antifraternal Tradition, pp. 11–61; M.-M. Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la Polémique
Universitaire Parisienne 1250–1259 (Paris, 1972). About the physical dangers to the friars see
Humbert of Romans’ letter in CUP, vol. i, no. 273, pp. 309–13; for context see G. Geltner,
‘Mendicants as Victims: Scale, Scope and the Idiom of Violence’, JMH, 36 (2010), 126–41.
57
tendency of both sides to gather rival apocalyptic readings into their
analyses of the situation. Bacon later painted a vivid picture of a time
when passions ran so high that each side was calling the other ‘heretics
and disciples of Antichrist’.121 The Franciscan infatuation with Joachite
interpretations of their role in history was at its height, given public
expression by the minister general, John of Parma, in an encyclical jointly
issued with the Dominicans in 1255. They considered themselves to be
the witnesses mentioned in Revelation, clad in sackcloth and sent to
minister to the faithful amid the tribulations of Antichrist.122 Secular
masters, such as William of Saint-Amour, were more inclined to consider
them hypocrites and forerunners of Antichrist. Both sides were made
vulnerable by such tactics, but disaster struck the Franciscans first, when,
in 1254, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, a friar known for his strong
Joachite leanings, published his shocking, heretical Introductorius in evange-
lium aeternum. It was seized upon by the secular masters, who used it to
throw suspicion on the orthodoxy of both orders. On the defensive, John
of Parma put in place emergency measures to curtail any circulation of
Franciscan writings before they had been read and approved by a friar’s
superiors. Much early material about the order was rewritten or destroyed
during this precarious period, something that the Franciscans later
regretted.123
By this time Innocent IV had been drawn into the conflict, and had
supported the secular masters. As a consequence – said the friars – he lost
the power of speech, died shortly afterwards and found himself in purga-
tory.124 His successor, Alexander IV, revoked his decision in favour of the
mendicants. Meanwhile, an indiscreet war of polemical treatises and
sermons raged in Paris. In defence of their interpretation of voluntary
poverty, which was coming under heavy attack, Bonaventure and other
friars emphasised the papal right to approve of their way of life, reflecting
on the nature of papal plenitudo potestatis in the process.125 Louis himself
121
‘se mutuis assertionibus vocaverunt haereticos et discipulos Antichristi’: CSP, pp. 429–30. See
G. Geltner, ‘Introduction’ in William of Saint-Amour, De periculis novissimorum temporum, ed.
G. Geltner (Paris, 2008) pp. 1–22; R. Lambertini, ‘Ende oder Vollendung: Interpretazioni
escatologiche del conflitto tra Secolari e Mendicanti alla metà del XIII secolo’ in J.A. Aertsen
and M. Pickavé (eds.), Ende und Vollendung: Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter (Berlin, 2002),
250–61.
122
Rev. 11; Annales minorum, ed. L. Wadding (30 vols. Quaracchi, 1931–51), vol. iii, pp. 380–1.
123
Roest, Reading, pp. 78–9. 124 DAFM, pp. 118–19; Salimbene, Cronica, vol. ii, pp. 634–5.
125
B. Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty
and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1972), pp. 58–92; R. Lambertini, Apologia e crescita
dell’identità francescana (1255–1279) (Rome, 1990), esp. pp. 20–42; Y.M. Congar, ‘Aspects
ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et séculiers dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe
siècle et le début du XIVe’, AHDLMA, 28 (1961), 35–151.
58
A life in context
became a target for the secular masters, amid accusations that he was too
close to the mendicants – more monk than king. Possibly as a conse-
quence, it was at his request that Alexander finally banished the leading
seculars from the city and peace was, for the time being, restored. It was
during, or shortly after, these events that Bacon took the habit.126
Nothing is known about where he was at the time, but even if he was
not in Paris, echoes of the trouble were heard in Oxford.127 It is not clear
whether the controversies of the 1250s influenced his decision to enter the
order, but they undoubtedly affected his later experiences.
Virtually every specific piece of information about Bacon’s life as a friar
comes from several agitated passages in which he was excusing his lack of
progress in writing to Pope Clement IV. As will be seen, there are many
reasons to exercise caution in drawing inferences from this material
beyond the very specific context and purpose for which it was penned.
Bearing this in mind, we can – probably – glean the following from it.
During the first ten years that Bacon was in the order, his superiors did not
ask him to produce new works. Instead, they wanted him occupy himself
with other pursuits. He did not tell Clement what these were, but they
may have included both teaching and preaching. He certainly thought
much about how to preach effectively, both to Christians and non-
Christians, and read pagan and patristic writings on the art of rhetoric in
order to understand their didactic methods.128 There is no reason to
imagine that he was actively prevented from either research or writing:
on the contrary, he told Clement that it was generally supposed that he
was putting together new works, or re-writing the treatises he had
composed in secular life. Given that these earlier works dealt with arts,
rather than theology, it is easy to see why he was not particularly encour-
aged by his superiors to pursue his former interests. It is possible that this
gave him the space to reflect; to develop his overarching schemes of
knowledge within a Franciscan context, with the result that when he
finally came to write he produced the works of enduring power and
novelty upon which his reputation rests. In practice, the little that he
had written was mostly produced at the request of friends and did not
amount to much: ‘I have sometimes compiled some chapters in a cursory
126
On Bacon’s loss of faith in the secular masters, and its possible impact on his decision to enter the
order, see Hackett, ‘Attitude’, p. 61.
127
A.G. Traver, ‘Thomas of York’s Role in the Conflict between Mendicants and Seculars at Paris’,
FS, 57 (1999), 1–24. That Bacon’s decision to become a friar was due to a purely Oxford
experience is the view of Bettoni (‘L’aristotelismo’, p. 543), Easton (Roger Bacon, pp. 137–43)
and Lindberg (in Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy, p. xx, n. 32).
128
On teaching see OM, vi.i, 2:170–1; OT, pp. 60–2; on preaching see MP, vii.iv.1–vi, pp. 187–267.
59
fashion, now concerning one scientia, now concerning another.’ He had
not always kept them, as he had been dissatisfied with them.129
There were several reasons, he said, for this lack of productivity. In
addition to the alleged lack of formal encouragement he suffered from
poor health. He had felt that he could not ask for help from ‘my dear
friends and closely involved assistants, without whom I can do nothing’,
since his poverty meant that he could no longer repay them for their
labours. Yet he could not work without them, for ‘no one has the capacity
to achieve great things alone’.130 One of the most serious obstacles to the
communication of his ideas was something that affected the whole order.
In 1260 the Council of Narbonne confirmed the emergency measures that
had been taken by John of Parma in 1254. The friars were forbidden to
publish new writings outside the order ‘unless they have first been exam-
ined thoroughly by the Minister General or the Provincial Minister and
diffinitors in the Provincial Chapter’. The penalties for disobedience were
considerable: ‘anyone who contravenes this order must fast three or more
days on bread and water and lose that work’.131 As a consequence, it
became virtually impossible for the brothers to use scribes who were not
members of the order, seriously hampering their ability to write. Scribes
were not trusted, for they had the habit of making their own copies
without the consent of the author, and disseminating them. Bacon told
Clement that the indiscretions of scribes had already led to the disclosure
of several ‘most secret’ writings.132 For all these reasons, he did not write
the major work that occupied his thoughts. What he seems to have done
instead was to adopt a different medium for the development and
communication of his plan for the reform of studies: that of the teacher.
He continued to teach after he had become a friar, carefully devising
and offering an efficient course of study which would encompass subjects
outside the university curriculum that he believed to be absolutely neces-
sary.133 He believed that education was fundamental to the capacity of
129
‘sed proculdubio nichil composui, nisi quod aliqua capitula, nunc de una scientia nunc de alia ad
instanciam amicorum aliquando more transitorio compilavi’: EFRB, p. 78 [Gasq, p. 500].
Roughly the same information is given at OT, p. 13. For some of the work that may have
occupied Bacon around 1257–63 see Anheim et al., ‘Exégèse judéo-chrétienne’.
130
‘amicis meis carissimis et coadiutoribus necessariis sine quibus nichil possum’; ‘Nullus enim per se
sufficit in rebus eximiis’: EFRB, pp. 80, 82 [Gasq, p. 500].
131
‘nisi prius examinatum fuerit diligenter per generalem ministrum vel provincialem et diffinitores
in capitulo provinciali. Et quicumque contrafecerit, tribus diebus tantum in pane et aqua ieiunet et
careat illo scripto’: ‘Constitutiones generales narbonensis (1260)’ in Constitutiones generales, vi.21,
p. 84. Bacon said that offenders would have to fast on bread and water for ‘pluribus diebus’ (OT,
p. 13).
132
EFRB, p. 80 [Gasq, p. 500]; N. Şenocak, ‘Book Acquisition in the Medieval Franciscan Order’,
Journal of Religious History, 27.1 (2003), 14–28, pp. 24–7.
133
See esp. OT, pp. 58–9, 63–7; Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon: His Life’, 10–11.
60
A life in context
individuals to engage in the crucial activities of the Latin West – a view
certainly espoused by the leaders of his order and the popes of his day. He
put tremendous efforts into his teaching so that his students would be
‘useful vessels in the Church of God; so that they may reform the whole
academic curriculum of the Latins through the grace of God’.134
He seems to have spent time in both Oxford and Paris – in the former
he would have lived in the new convent, built into the city walls near St
Ebbe’s in 1236. In Paris the Franciscans had a convent on land lent by the
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, some ten minutes walk from Notre
Dame, near the present-day Sorbonne; well placed for the university.
Their new, large church was completed with the financial support of
Louis and dedicated in 1262.135 Bacon had common interests with friars
living in both convents. Like Bacon, many Franciscans in Oxford had
been impressed by Grosseteste’s general approach to the study of nature,
particularly his emphasis on practical observation and investigation –
scientia experimentalis – and his interest in mathematics and optics. Adam
Marsh, Thomas of York, Thomas Docking and Bartholomew Anglicus
were prominent in this group, but there may well have been others, inside
and outside the order.136 Bacon’s scientific interests were also shared by
John Pecham, future Archbishop of Canterbury, who may have been
among his students in his days as a secular master, and who certainly lived
with him in Paris in the 1260s and 1270s. Pecham’s later work on optics,
astrology and astronomy was influenced by Bacon.137 Another enthusiasm
Bacon shared with the brothers in Paris was Seneca. Two Franciscan
masters of theology, Guibert of Tournai and John of Wales, were using
the newly uncovered manuscript of the Dialogues about which Bacon
would write to Clement with such open delight. Reynolds suggests that
134
‘vasa utilia in Ecclesia Dei, quatenus totum studium per gratiam Dei rectificent Latinorum’: OM,
vi.i, 2:170–1.
135
J.C. Murphy, ‘The Early Franciscan Studium at the University of Paris’ in L.S. Domonkos and R.
J. Schneider (eds.), Studium Generale (Notre Dame, 1967), 159–203; L. Beaumont-Maillet, Le
Grand Couvent des Cordeliers de Paris: étude historique et archéologique du XIIIe siècle à nos jours (Paris,
1975), pp. 11–19, 38–43.
136
Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 135–9.
137
B. Thompson, ‘John Pecham’, ODNB; John Pecham, John Pecham and the Science of Optics:
Perspectiva communis, ed. D.C. Lindberg (Madison, 1970), pp. 10–11; John Pecham, Fr. Ioannis
Pecham, Quodlibeta quatuor, ed. G.J. Etzkorn and F. Delorme (Grottaferrata, 1989), pp. 244–6; J.
Hackett, ‘Perception and Intellect in Roger Bacon and John Pecham’ in M.C. Pacheco and J.F.
Meirinhos (eds.), Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale (3 vols. Turnhout, 2006), vol. ii,
1232–9; J. Hackett, ‘Astrology and the Search for an Art and Science of Nature in the Thirteenth
Century’ in G. Marchetti et al. (eds.), Ratio et Superstitio (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2003), 117–36,
pp. 126–31; Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 165–7; Tachau, ‘Seeing’, pp. 352–3; D.C.
Lindberg, ‘Lines of Influence in Thirteenth-Century Optics: Bacon, Witelo and Pecham’,
Speculum, 46 (1971), 66–83.
61
the manuscript was kept in the convent, although its subsequent history
and current whereabouts are unknown.138 The order’s minister general,
Bonaventure, resided in the convent when he was not busy elsewhere.
Bacon is thought by historians to have had an uncomfortable relationship
with his superior, but again, this has largely been driven by modern
perceptions of the respective characters of the two men.139 There is no
secure evidence of difficulties and, despite his care for the convent’s
orthodoxy, Bonaventure did not prevent Bacon from communicating
with the papal curia.140
Around the time that Bacon became a Franciscan he received fresh
information on the activities of the Mongols and of places, people and
religions across the continent of Asia. He met a friar called William of
Rubruck, who had undertaken a self-imposed evangelising mission in the
Mongol empire, coming by a series of chances to the court of Mangu
qaghan, at Qaraqorum.141 William had travelled with the blessing of
Louis IX, although not as a royal representative or ambassador. After his
long journey he had been held up by his superiors in Acre, who wished
him to remain there and teach. While he waited to return to France he
wrote a lengthy account of his travels for the king. Louis’ response is
unknown, but the same account came to Bacon’s hands, and Bacon made
much use of it. He also met William when William finally came to Paris,
and they talked about how a mission to the Mongols might be
most efficiently carried out.142 If the matter can be judged by the Opus
maius, William’s experiences were central to Bacon’s conception of the
practicalities of the apostolic vocation.
Meanwhile, at home in England, the long-simmering tensions between
Henry III and his barons exploded into open conflict and civil war. Bacon
138
L.D. Reynolds, ‘The Medieval Tradition of Seneca’s Dialogues’, Classical Quarterly, new ser. 18–2
(1968), 355–72, pp. 361–3. See also J. Swanson, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a
Thirteenth-Century Friar (Cambridge, 2002), esp. pp. 29–34.
139
The most extended discussion of their relationship occurs in Bérubé, De la philosophie; Bérubé, ‘Le
dialogue’. See also Alessio, Mito, pp. 85–97. Hattrup imagined a group of pro-science friars around
Bacon existing in opposition to Bonaventure: Hattrup, Ekstatik, esp. pp. 126–71; D. Hattrup,
‘Bonaventura zwischen Mystik und Mystifikation: Wer ist der Autor von De reductione?’ Theologie
und Glaube, 87 (1997), 541–63, disputed in T.J. Johnson, ‘Back to Bacon: Dieter Hattrup and
Bonaventure’s Authorship of the De Reductione’, FS, 67 (2009), 133–47. See also Finkenberg,
Ancilla theologiae?, pp. 63–8. Finkenberg considers Bonaventure and Bacon to be essentially in
agreement, except over the issues of astrology and Joachite thought that, he considers, made
Bacon suspect in the order.
140
Beaumont-Maillet, Grand Couvent, pp. 28–9.
141
Charpentier suggests that this meeting took place in 1257, in Paris: J. Charpentier, ‘William of
Rubruck and Roger Bacon’ in Hyllningsskrift tillägnad Sven Hedin På Hans 70 (Stockholm, 1935),
255–67, pp. 256–7.
142
For example, OM, iv.iv.16, 1:400.
62
A life in context
wrote of the war with distress: he focused on the resulting carnage among
Christians, and feared that many of the dead were in hell. He saw the
violence in England as one part of the wider outbreak of fighting and
discord that spread across Christendom in the wake of the dreadful comet
that flamed across the skies in the summer of 1264.143 His immediate
family supported the king, and their loyalty was to bring disaster upon all
of them. His eldest brother was captured more than once and forced to use
most of the family’s wealth to pay his ransom. The consequence was
impoverishment, and Bacon’s mother and brothers were driven into exile
after the baronial victory at Lewes in 1264. When Bacon later attempted
to get in touch with his brother, he received no reply.144 Yet, as Bacon
was at pains to point out, the potency of the heavens travelled in complex
ways in the dense sublunary atmosphere. It may have been the war, and
perhaps even the ruinous commitment of his family, that facilitated his
contact with the legate sent by Pope Urban IV to mediate between the
warring factions: the Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, Gui Foulques – the
future Pope Clement IV.
pope clement iv
Foulques’ instructions were hardly those given by an impartial mediator:
the outraged pope sent him expressly to restore the king and quieten the
country. Prevented from landing in England, however, he could do little
more than place the country under interdict and wait in Boulogne. It was
while he was in France, early in 1265, that he was himself elected pope and
departed for Italy. It seems likely that it was during his period as a legate,
perhaps while he was in Paris in the spring of 1264, that he encountered
Bacon and first asked to read the friar’s work. When Bacon communicated
with him later on it was through William of Bonecor, the envoy sent by
Henry III to the papal curia in 1266 to ask for further assistance in the
disordered affairs of the kingdom.145 That Bacon’s message was carried
and expounded by the king’s own envoy may be indicative of the esteem
in which he or his family – or both – were held. Bacon later several times
143
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:385–6. He also mentioned wars in Spain and Italy, which he said had begun
around that time.
144
OT, p. 16.
145
Bonecor was dispatched in March 1266 and was still there when Clement wrote to Bacon:
Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Henry III (1258–1266) (London, 1910),
pp. 566–7, 633. See Flores historiarum, ed. H.R. Luard (3 vols. London, 1890), vol. ii, pp. 500–2,
505, vol. iii, pp. 8–9; Roger Bacon, Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Quaedam Hactenus Inedita, ed. J.S.
Brewer (London, 1859), p. 1; N. Kamp, ‘Clemente IV’ in Enciclopedia dei Papi (3 vols. Rome,
2000), vol. ii, 401–11, p. 408.
63
told Clement of his family’s suffering in the service of the crown, although
it is unclear whether this was meant to be new information for the pope
or merely a reminder designed to give pungency to one of his various
excuses for delays in sending his work.146 There has been a great deal of
necessarily inconclusive debate over the nature of the relationship
between the two men.147 It is important, nonetheless, to recognise that
the specificities of the contact between friar and pope, obscure to us, gave
Bacon the confidence to speak of his secret and controversial researches.
Furthermore, Bacon’s perception of the character, history and interests of
Clement must have played a crucial role in the way that he framed and
constructed his major works. Bacon observed that princes and their
councillors were few in any given kingdom: ‘and are public figures,
known to everyone: their conduct is highly visible to the whole king-
dom’.148 Gui Foulques was such a figure within the kingdom of France.
Before he entered the Church Foulques had been a lawyer, working
closely with Louis IX and his brother Alphonse of Poitiers.149 He had
been born in the Camargue, and was involved in the massive operation
of consolidation and centralisation of royal control in the aftermath of
the Albigensian Crusades. He was also much occupied by projects of
reform in the community, particularly the activities of the fledgling
mendicant-run inquisition into heresy. He took holy orders relatively
late in life, probably around 1255 – not long before Bacon became a
Franciscan – but his rise was rapid. He returned briefly to the south as
Archbishop of Narbonne, where, among other things, he worked with
Jewish converts to Christianity and encouraged investigations into rabbi-
nic literature. He seems to have shared Louis’ notoriously punitive attitude
to Jews and, as pope, was often harsher and more interventionist towards
Jewish communities than his predecessors had been.150 Also like Louis, he
surrounded himself with friars and lived a life of public and private
asceticism. He made a point of stopping in Assisi to visit St Francis’
tomb on his way to assume the throne of St Peter.151
Clement’s elevation to the papal see raised the hopes of those in the
monastic sphere who looked to him for programmes directed at internal
146
EFRB, pp. 92–4 [Gasq, p. 502]; OT, p. 16. 147 OT, p. 16; Massa, Ruggero Bacone, pp. 7–8.
148
‘et sunt publicae et notae omnibus, quorum more relucent toti regno’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:253.
149
The following outline is based on Y. Dossat, ‘Gui Foucois, enquêteur-réformateur, archevêque
et pape (Clement IV)’ in Les Évêques, les clercs, et le roi (Toulouse, 1972), 23–57 and Kamp,
‘Clemente IV’.
150
R. Chazan, ‘Archbishop Guy Fulcodi of Narbonne and his Jews’, Revue des études juives: Historia
judaica, 132.4 (1973), 587–94; S. Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews (8 vols. Toronto,
1988–91), vol. i, pp. 225–41, vol. vii, pp. 24–5, 55, 101, 201, 233–5, 310–12, 345–7.
151
Joinville, Vie, 729, p. 360; A. Franchi, Il conclave di Viterbo (1268–1271) e le sue origini: saggio con
documenti inediti (Ascoli Piceno, 1993), p. 53; Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, p. 682.
64
A life in context
reform and the expansion of the spiritual and temporal dominion of the
Roman Church.152 Bacon probably knew that the new pope would be
sympathetic to his arguments in favour of increased centralisation and a
papally led reform of Christendom. He was well aware that Clement had
been ‘occupied for a long time with ecclesiastical administration and the
management of arduous affairs’.153 One of Bacon’s great concerns was the
erosion of studies by the dominance of a secularised legal profession,
together with many abuses springing from it. Since Clement had been a
lawyer himself, he seemed to Bacon to be the best person to take control
of the situation: ‘only you can bring about the remedy, because there was
never a pope who truly knew the law as you do; nor do I believe there will
be’.154 On the wider stage, Clement seemed also to promise action: in
1267 he wrote to the Greek emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus proposing
a joint assault on the Muslims, and suggesting that the Greeks return to the
unity of the Roman Church.155 Much of his pontificate was occupied by
the endgame of the long struggle of the popes with the Hohenstaufen
dynasty but, in 1268, the last of Frederick’s heirs was killed. Some thought
that it had been Clement’s ‘vigils, fasting, prayers and other good works’
that inclined God to put an end to many of the tribulations afflicting the
Church during the previous century.156 Bacon certainly felt, in 1268, that
the time was propitious for reform. He wrote to Clement:
While the predecessors of Your Holiness were occupied with other troubles of
the Church, in addition to being heavily burdened with multiplying insolences
and tyrannies, souls have not been opened up to the regime of study. Yet now,
with the authority of God, the reward of virtue has caused your triumphal banner
to be unfurled from heaven. Virtue has banished the sword and thrown down
both hostile parts into Hell. It has restored peace to the Church and brought the
greatest joy to all the faithful.157
152
Kamp, ‘Clemente IV’, p. 409; C. Vasoli, ‘Il programma riformatore di Ruggero Bacone’, Rivista di
Filosofia, 47 (1956), 178–96, p. 178; Bigalli, Tartari, pp. 132–41.
153
‘a longis temporibus . . . in regimine ecclesiastico et negotiorum arduorum tractatu fuerit occu-
pata’: EFRB, p. 114 [Gasq, p. 505].
154
‘quia solus potestis remedium adhibere, eo quod nunquam fuit Papa qui ita veraciter sciret jus sicut
vos; nec credo quod erit aliquis’: OT, pp. 84–6, quotation at p. 86.
155
J. Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy 1198–1400 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1979), pp. 112–19. See
A. Power, ‘The Importance of Greeks in Latin Thought: The Evidence of Roger Bacon’ in
R. Gertwagen and E. Jeffreys (eds.), Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean
(London, 2012), 351–78.
156
‘vigiliis, ieiuniis et orationibus ac aliis bonis operibus’: Salimbene, Cronica, vol. ii, p. 721. The same
sentences appear in a continuation of Matthew Paris’ chronicle: see Matthaei Paris monachi
Albanensis angli Historia Major, ed. W. Wats (London, 1640), p. 1005; J. Dunbabin, Charles I of
Anjou: Power, Kingship and State-Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (London, 1998), pp. 129–36.
157
‘Praedecessores quidem vestrae beatitudinis aliis ecclesiae negotiis occupati, insuper contumacibus
et tyrannis multipliciter gravati, animos ad studii regimen non laxarunt. Sed auctoritate Dei dextra
65
Beyond the personal, Bacon seems to have had a genuine faith in the
potential of the papacy to effect necessary reform. The Pope was, he
wrote, ‘the mediator of God and humanity, and the vicar of God on earth,
to whom the whole human race is subject, and who must be believed
without contradiction . . . he is the lawgiver and the high priest, who has
fullness of power in spiritual and temporal matters, “a human god”, as
Avicenna says . . . “whom it is permitted to adore after God”.’158 Nothing
could be done to address the problems of Christendom without him, ‘but
where such great authority takes the lead, there can be no difficulty, since
its power penetrates the heavens, unbinds purgatory, tramples down hell,
overwhelms the whole world’.159 Bacon was one of the earliest people to
record the expectation that a reforming pope, the pastor angelicus, would
soon come to purify the universities, the Church and Christendom in the
last days before the Apocalypse.160 He wrote to Clement:
It was prophesied forty years ago – and there have been many visions to the same
effect – that there will be one pope in these times who will cleanse canon law and
the Church of God from the sophistry and fraudulence of lawyers, and bring
justice to everyone without the rattle of lawsuits. And due to the goodness, truth
and justice of this pope it might happen that the Greeks will revert to the
obedience of the Roman Church, and the greater part of the Tartars will be
converted to the faith, and the Saracens will be destroyed; and there will be one
flock and one Shepherd . . . And certainly these things could happen in less than a
year if God wished it, and the greatest pontiff wished it, and they could happen in
less time still: they could happen in your day. God preserve your life so that they
might happen through you.161
virtutis vestrae vexillum triumphale de coelo laxavit, gladium exemit utrumque contrarias partes
in infernum dejecit, pacem restituit ecclesiae omnibus fidelibus acquisivit laetitiae principatum’:
OT, pp. 9–10; EFRB, p. 68 [Gasq, pp. 498–9].
158
‘mediator Dei et hominum, et vicarius Dei in terra, cui subiciatur totum genus humanum, et cui
credere debeat sine contradicione . . . et iste est legis lator et summus sacerdos, qui in spiritualibus
et temporalibus habet plenitudinem potestatis, tanquam “Deus humanus”, ut dicit Avicenna in
decimo Methaphisice, “quem licet adorare post Deum”’: MP, i.i, 8–9.
159
‘Sed ubi tanta presit auctoritas, nulla potest esse difficultas, quoniam eius potentia celos penetrat,
purgatorium solvit, inferna obculcat, mundum premit universum’: EFRB, pp. 64–6 [Gasq, p. 498].
It is possible that this enthusiasm might reflect Bonaventure’s emphasis on papal power (see above,
p. 58).
160
CSP, p. 402.
161
‘Sed prophetatum est a quadraginta annis, et multorum visiones habitae sunt, quod unus Papa erit
his temporibus qui purgabit jus canonicum et ecclesiam Dei a cavillationibus et fraudibus
juristarum, et fiet justitia universaliter sine strepitu litis. Et propter istius Papae bonitatem,
veritatem, et justitiam accidet, quod Graeci revertentur ad obedientiam Romanae Ecclesiae, et
quod pro majori parte convertentur Tartari ad fidem, et Saraceni destruentur; et fiet unum ovile
et unus pastor . . . Et certe infra annum unum possent fieri si Deo placuerit et summo Pontifici, et
infra minus: unde temporibus vestris possunt fieri. Et Deus conservat vitam vestram ut haec per vos
fiant’: OT, pp. 86–7.
66
A life in context
The question of the extent to which Bacon and Clement were personally
acquainted has been discussed and is hard to resolve. There has been a
tendency to present their relationship as, at best, distant, if not
positively reluctant on the part of the Pope. However, this reading is
subjective; on much the same evidence Wadding, for example, described
Clement as Bacon’s ‘friend’ [familiaris] both before and after becoming
pope.162 Part of the problem is the difficulty in knowing how much
time Foulques spent in Paris, and how much Bacon had to do with the
French court. Bacon’s Ciceronian flourishes certainly create an image of
exile, isolation and disempowerment that has often been taken at face
value. Yet although he emphasised his obscurity and humility, he was
sufficiently well connected to send messages to the Pope care of a king’s
envoy.163 He described his attempts to find financial support for his
writing among the most wealthy and influential people in the city.
Some of these were, it seems, acquaintances that he shared with
Clement: ‘You know some of their faces well’, he told the Pope,
adding darkly, ‘but you do not know their minds.’164 He knew the
physician of the ‘greatest prince in France after the king’, presumably
Alphonse of Poitiers. This physician told Bacon about a highly successful
treatment that he had carried out on the prince. Bacon recorded that it had
entirely changed Alphonse, and described the prince’s manner both
before and after, in a degree of detail that suggests he was at least aware
of courtiers’ gossip.165 He was also sufficiently familiar with Clement’s
practices to comment on his asceticism and to caution him against it in a
direct fashion: ‘it is not advantageous that you are greatly abstinent, nor
that you keep many vigils, because the exercise of the body in moderation
is healthy’.166
For all this, and despite the possible connection with Foulques’ role
as legate to England, we do not know how the two men came to discuss
the perilous state of Christendom and what should be done about it.
Bacon alluded at the beginning of the Opus maius to a letter that he
had written previously to the Pope, in which he had offered to explain
how Christians might attain the sapientia necessary for all the major tasks
162
Crowley, Roger Bacon, pp. 37–8; Annales minorum, vol. iv, p. 296.
163
OT, p. 7. Kamp suggests that Bacon and Foulques may have met as early as 1257, and then again in
Boulogne: ‘Clemente IV’, p. 409.
164
‘et aliquorum faciem bene cognoscitis, sed non mentem’: OT, p. 16.
165
‘majorem principem in regno Francie post regem’: SS, p. 105. C.C.J. Webb, ‘Roger Bacon on
Alphonse of Poitiers’ in H.W. C. Davies (ed.), Essays in History Presented to Reginald Lane Poole
(Oxford, 1927), 290–300. By contrast, Matthew Paris recorded only that the prince was expected
to die of his malady: CM, vol. v, p. 354.
166
‘Et ideo non expedit quod sitis magnae abstinentiae, nec vigiliarum magnarum, quia exercitatio
corporis ad modicum valet’: OT, p. 87.
67
of the Church.167 This was presumably the letter carried to Viterbo by
Bonecor. We do not know precisely what he said, but we do know that in
July 1266 Clement replied. He told Bacon: ‘We have received your
devoted letters gladly: and indeed we have attended carefully to the
explanation of them which our beloved son Sir William, called
Bonecor, related orally to us, as accurately as he could.’168 The role of
Bonecor as an intermediary is significant. He had served Henry III as an
envoy to the papal curia for several decades. He had also spent time in
Paris, and was in general a man of education and experience; ‘a knight and
skilled in the law’, who had often dealt with delicate matters.169 Bacon’s
message to the Pope had therefore been delivered in a serious context by a
discreet and intelligent man who knew the ways of the curia and was
hardly likely to lend his authority to a suspect or marginal figure.
Whether due to Bonecor’s support, or because he had his own
reasons for taking Bacon seriously, Clement seems to have trusted
Bacon enough to suspend the normal chain of authority and discipline
to enable the friar to speak directly. He wrote: ‘So that we can obtain a
clearer idea of what you intend, we command you by apostolic letters,
notwithstanding [non obstante] the contrary instruction of any prelate, or
any constitution of your order, to send to us as soon as you can a fair copy
of that work which, when we were in a lesser office, we asked you to
communicate to our beloved son Raymond of Laon.’ Clement’s word-
ing had a specific force in law. The non obstante clause was used to set
aside all legal impediments and bring to bear papal plenitudo potestatis.
Bacon understood this, writing explicitly of being bound by it.170 If
Clement had in mind the constitution forbidding the publication
of work outside the order, he would have known that it had been put
167
OM, i.1, 3:1. On the earlier letter see Thorndike, History, pp. 622–6; and on the whole sequence
of events that followed see Massa, Ruggero Bacone, pp. 7–23. On the relationship between Clement
and Bacon see Bigalli, Tartari, esp. pp. 132–40.
168
The full text of the letter was: ‘Dilecto filio, Fratri Rogerio dicto Bacon, Ordinis Fratrum
Minorum. Tuae devotionis litteras gratanter recepimus: sed et verba notavimus diligenter quae
ad explanationem earum dilectus filius G. dictus Bonecor, Miles, viva voce nobis proposuit, tam
fideliter quam prudenter. Sane ut melius nobis liqueat quid intendas, volumus, et tibi per
Apostolica scripta praecipiendo mandamus, quatenus, non obstante praecepto Praelati cujuscun-
que contrario, vel tui Ordinis constitutione quacunque, opus illud, quod te dilecto filio
Raymundo de Lauduno communicare rogavimus in minori officio constituti, scriptum de bona
littera nobis mittere quam citius poteris non omittas; et per tuas nobis declares litteras quae tibi
videntur adhibenda remedia circa illa, quae nuper occasione tanti discriminis intimasti: et hoc
quanto secretius poteris facias indilate’: Roger Bacon, Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera, p. 1.
169
‘militem et jurisperitum’: CM, vol. v, p. 555; see also p. 576. For example, in 1265 he had
conducted an inquisitio into the circumstances of two killings (Calendar of the Patent Rolls,
pp. 415, 424).
170
B. Tierney, ‘Grosseteste and the Theory of Papal Sovereignty’, JEH, 6.1 (1955), 1–17, pp. 2–3;
EFRB, p. 74 [Gasq, p. 499]; OT, p. 11.
68
A life in context
into place precisely in order to avoid the dissemination of heretical or
otherwise dangerous material. He may also have been thinking of the –
much disregarded – constitution forbidding unmediated contact
between a friar and princes or prelates.171 In either case, it seems unlikely
that he would have suspended them lightly, or for the benefit of a friar
whose work was already deemed unorthodox. The damage done by the
scandal of a decade before was not forgotten. Finally, Clement instructed
Bacon: ‘explain to us the remedies that you think we should adopt to
address those issues that you have recently described as the occasion of
such great danger, and do this quickly and as secretly as possible’.
References to secret, or at least confidential, communications were
not infrequent in Clement’s letters, but that he should have asked
Bacon to write secretly suggests that he was aware of the sorts of subjects
that Bacon intended to address.
On receiving Clement’s letter, Bacon was agitated by a mixture of
feelings. He was full of gratitude and intellectual excitement at the
opportunity before him: ‘I receive an intoxication of the spirit, I arise in
vigour, I rejoice with the fullest feeling.’172 He even likened himself to
Cicero, recalled from exile. He also seems to have identified with the
Aristotle of the Secretum secretorum, advising an ecclesiastical Alexander.173
Even so, there were shadows on his pleasure and excitement, probably
from the very beginning. He was determined to respond as quickly as
possible, as Clement had asked, but it was difficult. He had not written
much in his years as a friar, and the writings requested by Clement did
not exist. Bacon had spoken to Raymond of Laon about the ideas
that possessed his mind, not about finished works. He had not meant
to mislead anyone: ‘As God is my witness,’ he wrote urgently, ‘when I
told Your Highness that I was prepared, I meant: prepared to produce
writings, not to offer completed treatises.’174 However, he set to work
to create what had been requested. ‘After I received the papal letter,
I thought hard – in great secrecy – about what would be pleasing to
the Vicar of Christ.’ He began to gather fresh material and compose
various drafts, but was daunted by his consciousness, he confessed, of
Clement’s position and wisdom. He also came to feel that to make
such far-reaching recommendations was not the job of a single individual
such as himself, or any other, ‘but requires the combined work of
171
‘Constitutiones generales narbonensis’, vi.7, p. 82.
172
‘Concipio spiritus fervorem, assurgo in vigore, congratulor affectu plenissimo’: EFRB, p. 64 [Gasq,
p. 498].
173
OT, p. 7; OM, vi.xii, 2:222; OT(Little), p. 53. See Roest, Franciscan Literature, pp. 532–5.
174
‘Nam, teste deo, quando vestre celsitudini obtuli me paratum, intellexi pro scripturis faciendis,
non tunc factis’: EFRB, p. 82 [Gasq, p. 501]; OT, p. 13.
69
many wise people’.175 Due to his own inadequacies, he confessed, he
always made four or five drafts when dealing with difficult subjects. He
needed scribes and assistants to check his work for errors, to provide skilled
drawings and figures, to help with languages – and without this, ‘nothing
can be clear and splendid’ – as, he said, Clement would be able to see from
the deficiencies of the manuscript before him. In short, the project that he
had outlined could not be properly realised without a level of finance that
was not accessible to him, especially since his family and friends had lost all
their money supporting Henry III in his wars and he was not able to reveal
the situation to his superiors.176
This was the situation as it stood when he wrote what appears to be a
preface to the Opus maius.177 This work, as those that followed, was
marked by his sense of haste. It was only ‘everything that I can put
together at this moment in a plausible form, until a more definite and
fuller version may be completed’.178 He presented the composition as
something of a moral obligation, telling Clement that, even if his ideas
were not implemented, ‘I rejoice because my conscience has been
freed by showing the Vicar of God what is advantageous for the
whole human race . . . I consider myself absolved before God’.179
This underlying tranquillity did not, however, last. When he came to
describe his circumstances again in the Opus tertium, he wrote in a very
different vein – one not unmarked by resentment against Clement.180
In it, he related that trouble had arisen with his superiors, ‘who, when
you wrote nothing in my defence and I was not able to reveal your
secret to them – nor ought I to have done because of your order of
secrecy – insisted with unspeakable force that like others I should obey
their will. But,’ he went on, ‘I have been unable to do so, due to the
fetters of your command, which have bound me to your work,
notwithstanding [non obstante] any command of my prelates. And
175
‘sed consensus plurium requiritur sapientum’: EFRB, pp. 80–94, quotation at p. 86 [Gasq,
pp. 500–2].
176
‘nichil magnificum poterit fieri, nec planum’: EFRB, p. 90 [Gasq, p. 502]. Bacon’s manuscripts are
certainly indicative of the economy with which they were produced: the diagrams are rudimen-
tary or missing – often simply sketched in the margins by later hands.
177
Gasquet thought that he had discovered, in his ‘Fragment’, a lost preface to the Opus maius,
although he noted its close relationship with sections of OT (pp. 496–7). Its subsequent editors and
translators, Bettoni and Bottin, were inclined to agree (respectively EFRB, pp. 9, 56–7; La scienza
sperimentale, p. 50). Little thought it was part of OMin (‘Roger Bacon’s Works’, pp. 388–9).
178
‘quod possum ad praesens probabili persuasione, donec certius scriptum et plenius compleatur,
vestrae Celsitudini praesentare conabor’: OM, i.i, 3:1.
179
‘gaudeo tamen quod meam conscientiam liberavi presentans Vicario Dei utilia humano generi
universo . . . apud Deum me reputo excusari’: EFRB, p. 104 [Gasq, pp. 503–4].
180
Little suggests that this manuscript may not have been sent to the curia: ‘Introduction on Roger
Bacon’s Life’, p. 20.
70
A life in context
inevitably, since I was not excused by you, I have received such
frequent and severe hindrances that I cannot express in words.’181
Caught in a labyrinth of conflicting loyalties, and considering himself
bound to the secret task by papal plenitudo potestatis, Bacon was faced with
some grave difficulties. Clement, believing that Bacon only needed to make
a ‘fair copy’, had also neglected to finance the work that needed to be done
before Bacon could fulfil his command. Given that Bacon could not get in
touch with his impoverished family in England, this meant that he had to
beg the money from others, which proved embarrassing and futile. ‘I
troubled many and great people,’ he reported. ‘I told them that there was
a certain enterprise of yours to be done which had to be managed for you in
France, by me, which I was not allowed to describe, and the execution of it
would require much money. But how often I was reckoned impudent, how
often repulsed, how often delayed with vain hope, what confusion I suffered
within myself, I cannot express.’ Given the command to secrecy, it was hard
for him to convince anyone: ‘Even my friends did not believe me, because I
could not explain the business to them.’
Begging for money without being able to specify its purpose was clearly
impossible:
Therefore, distressed above all that can be imagined, I compelled my friends, even
those who were impoverished, to contribute all that they had, to sell much, to
pawn the rest, even frequently to raise money at usury, and I promised them that I
would write to you about the separate parts of the expenses, and that in good faith
I would bring about a perfect solution with you. And yet because of their poverty I
frequently abandoned the work, frequently I despaired and neglected to proceed;
wherefore if I had known that you had not approved the rationale of these expenses
I would not have proceeded for the whole world: for I would sooner have
surrendered myself to prison. Nor was I able to send my own messengers to you
for the expenses, because I did not have the means to send them.182
181
‘Et primum impedimentum fuit per eos, qui mihi praefuerunt, quibus cum nihil scripsistis in
excusationem meam, et eis non potui revelare vestrum secretum, nec debui, propter vestrum
mandatum de celando, instabant ineffabili violentia ut cum aliis eorum voluntati obedirem; sed
nequivi, propter vinculum vestri praecepti, quod obligavit me ad opus vestrum, non obstante
aliquo mandato praelatorum meorum. Et certe cum non fui excusatus per vos, ego recepi
impedimenta tot et tanta quod enunciare non possum’: OT, p. 15.
182
‘sollicitavi multos et magnos; et aliquorum faciem bene cognoscitis, sed non mentem; et dixi quod
negotium quoddam vestrum debuit tractari in Francia per me, licet illud non expressi, cujus
executio indiget pecunia magna. Sed quotiens reputatus improbus, quotiens repulsus, quotiens
dilatus spe vana, quantum confusus in meipso, non possum exprimere. Etiam mihi non credebant
amici, quia non potui eis negotium explicare; unde per hanc viam non potui procedere.
Angustiatus igitur supra id, quod potest aestimari, coegi familiares homines et pauperes expendere
omnia, quae habebant, et multa vendere, et caetera impignorare, etiam multotiens ad usuras, et
promisi eis quod ego vobis scriberem partes singulas expensarum, et quod bona fide procurarem
apud vos perfectam solutionem. Et tamen propter istorum paupertatem multotiens dimisi opus, et
71
Clement had, undoubtedly, unwittingly placed Bacon in an extremely painful
situation. Yet the anguished passages in the Opus tertium should not blind us to
the facts. Bacon was able to assemble the Opus maius, Opus minus and Opus
tertium, which together fill well over a thousand pages in printed editions.183
These were, he claimed, the product of four or five drafts along the way,
although some of the work was sent initially in an unrevised form.184 He also
sent copies of his treatise De multiplicatione specierum and another on burning
mirrors: De speculis comburentibus, together with four treatises on alchemy and
one on astrological judgements.185 Committing the alchemical material to
paper required considerable care, and he took elaborate precautions to
prevent the material falling into the wrong hands. The four treatises,
which were sent separately, were carefully composed so that they would
only be comprehensible if read side by side. Even so, he preferred to reserve
some parts for personal communication.186 That he could afford to pay for
multiple journeys to the curia suggests that some of the financial problems
had by this time been addressed. On the whole, it seems most unlikely that
such a complex project could really have been carried out and the works
dispatched without the consent and even support of his superiors. We know
that his writing was not confiscated and that he was ultimately permitted to
send it to the papal curia. In 1266 Bonaventure had softened the earlier ban,
in a way that may have facilitated Bacon’s efforts. From then onwards a work
was not considered to be published outside the order if it were given to a
scribe to be copied and precautions taken to ensure that he did not transcribe
it for himself or for others.187
In the end, rather than punishing him, the friars in the Paris convent,
including his superiors, seem to have shared his interests, drawn on his
writings and developed his ideas in their own studies. His allusions to the
poverty of his friends surely suggests that many were mendicants them-
selves. Hackett has demonstrated that there was a great similarity between
the arguments occurring in Bonaventure’s Collationes and the Opus
maius.188 Matthew of Aquasparta, later minister general, was teaching in
multotiens desperavi et neglexi procedere; unde si vos scivissem non pensasse rationem expen-
sarum harum pro toto mundo non processissem: citius enim me carceri dedissem. Nec potui
nuntios proprios mittere vobis pro expensis, quia non habui unde mitterem’: OT, pp. 16–17.
183
There has been much discussion about every aspect of the chronology and composition of the
three works. See in particular Lindberg, ‘Introduction’ to Roger Bacon’s Philosophy, pp. xxiv–xxv;
Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 157–66; Alessio, Mito, pp. 272–5, 295–315; Massa, Ruggero Bacone,
pp. 57–80; Little, ‘Introduction’ to OT(Little), esp. pp. viii–xi. See also Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon
on the Classification of the Sciences’ on how the Opus maius fitted with Bacon’s wider corpus.
184
EFRB, p. 90 [Gasq, p. 501]; OT(Little), p. 61. 185 Little, ‘Roger Bacon’s Works’, p. 393.
186
OMin, p. 322; OT(Little), pp. 81–3.
187
‘Explanationes Constitutionum Generalium Narbonensium’, ed. F.M. Delorme, AFH, 18 (1925),
511–24, p. 524.
188
Hackett, ‘Aristotle, Astrologia’, esp. pp. 81–90.
72
A life in context
Paris during the time when Bacon was composing his works for Clement.
He knew, and used, Bacon’s work on perspectiva and the multiplication of
species.189 Other friars, such as William de la Mare and John Pecham, were
similarly influenced by the work he was doing at this time.190 Nor was he
left to struggle with Clement’s commission alone: his friends went to great
lengths to finance his activities; he had assistance in revising his work; the
scribe who took down the Opus tertium was, he said, ‘close to my heart’;
and his pupil John carried the manuscript all the way from Paris to
Viterbo, ready to expound on any part of it.191
a time of polemics
The works were despatched in separate batches throughout late 1267 or
early 1268, and did reach the papal court, as Witelo, a Polish scholar
associated with the papacy, used the optical material they contained. It
seems probable that William of Moerbeke was asked to read and assess the
works, an activity which may have stimulated his own interest in the
subject of optics.192 They may, too, have been consulted there by Giotto,
who appears to have made use of Bacon’s ideas on perspective to complete
the decoration of the basilica in Assisi, which housed the remains of
St Francis.193 Bacon’s various discussions of methods for prolonging
human life seem also to have been well received at the curia, where
there had been considerable interest in the question, together with an
189
K. Tachau, ‘Some Aspects of the Notion of Intentional Existence at Paris, 1250–1320’ in S.
Ebbesen and R. Friedman (eds.), Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition (Copenhagen, 1999),
331–53, pp. 339–47; Matthaei ab Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de gratia, ed. V. Doucet
(Florence, 1935), pp. xiv–xviii, 213.
190
On William, see L.J. Bataillon, ‘Guillaume de la Mare: Note sur sa régence parisienne et sa
prédication’, AFH, 98 (2005), 367–422, p. 373; B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages
(3rd edn. Oxford, 1952), pp. 335–6. Lindberg’s doubt (John Pecham, John Pecham and the Science of
Optics, p. 11) about whether Pecham would have had contact with Bacon in the convent is
entirely based on the view that Bacon would have been kept in isolation.
191
He may have had the assistance of Peter of Limoges. See J. Hackett, ‘The Hand of Roger Bacon,
the Writing of the Perspectiva and MS Paris BN Lat. 7434’ in J. Hamesse (ed.), Roma, Magistra
Mundi, Itineraria Culturae Medievalis (3 vols. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998), vol. i, 323–36; ‘secundum
cor meum’, OT(Little), p. 83; EFRB, pp. 194–8 [Gasq, p. 517].
192
Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy, p. xxv; Lindberg, ‘Lines’, pp. 73–5; A. Paravicini Bagliani,
The Pope’s Body, trans. D.S. Peterson (Chicago, 2000), pp. xiii–xv, 196–8. On William’s role at the
curia see A. Paravicini Bagliani, Medicina e scienze della natura alla corte dei papi nel Duecento (Spoleto,
1991), pp. 141–75. Another possible connection through the curia was with the Dominican
surgeon Teodorico Borgognoni. See M.R. McVaugh, ‘Alchemy in the Chirurgia of Teodorico
Borgognoni’ in C. Crisciani and A. Paravicini Bagliani (eds.), Alchimia e medicina nel medioevo
(Florence, 2003), 55–75, pp. 65–7.
193
K. Bergdolt, ‘Bacon und Giotto: Zum Einfluß der franziskanischen Naturphilosophie auf die
Bildende Kunst am Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Medizinhistorisches Journal, 24 (1989), 25–41.
73
active pursuit of the requisite disciplines of medicine, astronomy,
astrology and alchemy, since the pontificate of Innocent III.194 It is harder
to obtain a sense of the effect, if any, of his comments on public affairs,
since they were so thoroughly embedded within the concerns of the day.
Certainly, both Clement and his cardinal Eudes of Châteauroux spoke of
matters that Bacon had addressed, but surely they would have done so in
any case.195 Yet for all the interest his work sparked at the curia, its
intended recipient died in November 1268, and we do not know whether
he had time to read the material, or to resolve any of Bacon’s difficulties –
moral or financial.
Much more will be said in the following chapters of the argument and
contents of the works produced for the Pope. However, it is worth
emphasising at this point that they were written in response to the
question that Clement had asked: ‘explain to us in your letter the remedies
you think that we should adopt to address that great danger’. The main
structure of the texts seems to reflect the frequent papal declarations about
the types of problems facing the Church.196 Bacon began by stating that
the four purposes of sapientia were the government of the Church; the
regulation of the Christian community; the conversion of non-Christians;
and the defence of Christendom against those who could not be con-
verted. Throughout, he tried to demonstrate how this sapientia was
obtained, and how it should be used to achieve these ends.197 In his
view, Christendom was beset by a sea of threats from within and without,
each exacerbated by the others. From the world outside came the menace
of Islam; of other intractably hostile forces; and above all of Antichrist
himself, who might be expected at any time. The ignorance and blindness
of Christian leaders, scholars and clergy intensified the peril by leaving the
faithful exposed to the deceptions, manipulation, violence and invasion of
superior and more sophisticated enemies. Christian defences could only
be improved by a thorough reform of learning, which meant primarily the
incorporation of the sapientia found in Greek, Arabic and Hebrew
thought. Some of Bacon’s proposals were unusual, especially those in
his section on scientia experimentalis, where he argued for the controlled use
of magic. In order to make his suggestions as palatable as possible, the first
two of his seven books in the Opus maius were devoted to an Augustinian
analysis of knowledge and a defence of the Christian uses of philosophy.
194
Paravicini Bagliani, Medicina, pp. 281–326; Paravicini Bagliani, Pope’s Body, esp. pp. 177–211.
195
It has been suggested that Clement developed his evangelical projects as a result of his ‘relations
épistolaires et littéraires’ with Bacon. See A. Charasonnet, L’université, l’église et l’état dans les
sermons du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux (1190?–1273), vol. i, tome 1 (published online: Université
de Lyon 2, Faculté d’Histoire, 2001), pp. 622–5.
196
E.g. Wolter and Holstein, Lyon I, p. 63. See Power, ‘Importance of Greeks’. 197 OM, i.i, 1:1.
74
A life in context
After that, he discussed in sequence the necessity for learning languages,
the uses of mathematics, geography, astronomy, astrology, optics, the
science of ‘experience’, pagan moral philosophy, knowledge of other
religions and classical rhetoric. The Opus minus and Opus tertium were
essentially restatements of and elaborations on these matters.
Bacon had been keenly conscious of the dangers that threatened
Christendom as he wrote during Clement’s pontificate. With the Pope’s
death, affairs became considerably worse. The cardinals were too divided
to elect a successor, and the vacancy dragged on for three years.198 In Paris
the continuing tensions between mendicants and seculars broke out into a
new round of open conflict.199 The friars were once again under serious
attack. Bonaventure arrived in the city to defend the mendicant cause,
supported by John Pecham, by then regent master of theology. They
produced fierce polemics: Bonaventure began his by likening the thought
of their opponents to ‘a foul and horrible vapour rising out of the putrid
abyss’.200 Each side presented the positions of the other as indicative of the
evil times in which they lived. Bacon shared their perception, and in the
third year of the vacancy he started to write another plea for reform,
commonly known as the Compendium studii philosophiae. He was still
writing when Gregory X was elected in the autumn of 1271, to a flurry
of relieved prophecy.201 His concern was once again sapientia and reform,
and this work was, once again, meant as an introduction to a larger, more
summative enterprise.202 In his analysis of the wider state of affairs and his
response to it one can hear more clearly than ever the voices of generations
of critics and reformers, and, loud among them, those of the prominent
friars of the 1250s.203
As Grosseteste had done two decades before, Bacon looked for the
‘causa, fons et origo’ of the appalling condition of the world, and found
it in Rome. Indeed, the analyses and tone of the two men were so
198
Franchi, Il conclave, pp. 61–79.
199
Douie, Conflict, pp. 16–26; Lambertini, Apologia, pp. 65–106; G.J. Etzkorn, ‘John Pecham, OFM:
A Career of Controversy’ in E.B. King et al. (eds.), Monks, Nuns, and Friars in Mediaeval Society
(Sewanee, 1989), 71–82.
200
‘tanquam fumus teter et horridus, e puteo abyssali prorumpens’: Apologia pauperum contra calum-
niator in Bonaventure, Opera omnia, vol. viii, p. 234.
201
In some parts Bacon spoke as though the vacancy was persisting, while elsewhere he referred to
‘this pope’, meaning Gregory X. He also referred to Clement as ‘praedecessoris istius papae’: CSP,
p. 414. On the prophecy see Salimbene, Cronica, vol. ii, pp. 730, 746–7. For background see
R. Burkhard, Das Zweite Konzil von Lyon (1274) (Paderborn, 1990), pp. 33–59.
202
CSP, p. 393. See Little, ‘Roger Bacon’s Works’ (pp. 402–7) for an attempt to reconstruct this
larger work, which he thought might have been Bacon’s putative scriptum principale, in which
Brewer’s CSP was the first book.
203
See Power, ‘Franciscan Advice’. For a very different view see Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 69–70. He
also considers this work to be evidence of Bacon’s Joachite sympathies (pp. 136–7, 188–91).
75
similar that one wonders whether Bacon had read Grosseteste’s notes
in the Franciscan library in Oxford – which he had almost certainly
done by 1292.204 Bitterly and explicitly he described the nature of his
times, when the dust from the struggle of papacy and empire hung like a
thick cloud over Christendom, and the degeneracy of the curia seemed to
poison the whole world:
Everywhere we find infinite corruption, and above all in the head. For the
Roman Curia, which was in the past ruled – as it must be – by the wisdom of
God, is now perverted by the decrees of secular emperors, which are issued for
the exigencies of ruling the laity, and are confined to civil law. The Holy See is
torn to pieces by the frauds and deceptions of people who care nothing for justice.
Justice ceases to exist; peace is entirely destroyed; innumerable scandals arise. All
this results in the most pernicious conduct: pride rules; avarice is ablaze; envy eats
away at everyone; dissipation has the whole curia in its grip; gluttony is master of
all. And yet these evils are not the full account, since in addition the Church is
denied its vicar through negligence, and the world left without its guardian, as it
has been now for many years, during which the See has remained vacant because
of jealousies, and partisanship, and the appetite for offices, for this curia is enslaved
by these things, and strains itself to lead its people with them, just as everyone
knows who wants to know the truth. If therefore the head is in this condition,
what of the members? Let us reflect on the prelates, how eager they are for
money, neglecting the care of souls, promoting their nephews, other carnal
friends and deceitful lawyers, who dismantle everything with their advice; for
they despise students in philosophy and theology, and impede the two orders, so
that those who gave themselves freely to the Lord are not free to live and work for
the salvation of souls.205
204
Robert Grosseteste, ‘Grosseteste at the Papal Curia’, quotation at p. 355. Cf. CST, i.ii.12, p. 44/45
with ‘Memorandum’, para. 6 in ‘Grosseteste at the Papal Curia’, p. 353. Although Adam Marsh
generally attributed the state of affairs to the workings of the devil in the last days, his descriptions
were so similar that they should also be considered as a likely influence. See particularly Letter 90
in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, pp. 230/1–232/3; Letter 246 in Adam Marsh, Adae de Marisco
Epistolae, in J.S. Brewer (ed.), Monumenta Franciscana (2 vols. London, 1858), vol. i, esp. pp. 420–2.
Matthew Paris reported that Sewal, Archbishop of York had, in about 1258, written an intensely
criticial letter to the Pope on the subject of failures in pastoral care: ‘exemplo Roberti Lincolniensis
episcopi provocatus’: CM, vol. v, p. 692.
205
‘inveniemus corruptionem infinitam ubique, quod primo apparet in capite. Nam Curia Romana,
quae solebat et debet regi sapientia Dei, nunc depravatur constitutionibus imperatorum laïcorum,
factis pro proprio laïco regendo, quas jus civile continet. Laceratur enim illa sedes sacra fraudibus et
dolis injustarum. Perit justitia, pax omnis violatur, infinita scandala suscitantur. Mores enim
sequuntur ibidem perversissimi; regnat superbia, ardet avaritia, invidia corrodit singulos, luxuria
diffamat totam illam curiam, gula in omnibus dominator. Nec haec sufficiunt nisi Vicarius Dei
denegetur negligentia suae ecclesiae, et mundus desoletur rectore, sicut jam accidit per multos
annos, vacante sede propria invidiam, et zelum, et appetitum honoris, quibus servit illa curia, et
quibus nititur se et suos introducere, sicut omnes sciunt qui volunt noscere veritatem. Si igitur
haec fiant in capite quid fit in membris. Respiciamus praelatos, quomodo student pecuniae,
negligunt curam animarum, nepotes et caeteros amicos carnales promovent, ac dolosos legistas,
76
A life in context
Since all parts of the body were connected the evils flowed downwards,
and the contamination spread from the cardinals and prelates who lacked
both virtue and moral guidance, through the clergy and religious orders
into the laity. The regular clergy were full of vice and spent their time in
quarrelling violently, as they did in Paris and Oxford. The old religious
orders had fallen far from the intentions of their founders, while the new
orders had been horribly corrupted. Meanwhile, princes, barons and
knights attacked and despoiled each other even of duchies and kingdoms,
while subjecting their people to unending wars and exactions. Bacon
was thinking particularly of two recent occurrences. One was the refusal
that very year of Philip III of France to allow Edward I of England to
inherit the lands of Alphonse of Poitiers and his wife, Joan of Toulouse,
which belonged to England by the 1259 Treaty of Paris. The other
was the long attempt by Charles of Anjou to wipe out the heirs of
Frederick II, which had culminated with the 1268 execution of the
sixteen-year old Conradin. ‘It is not cared what is done, or how it is
done, whether lawfully or unlawfully, so long as anyone may satisfy his
own will.’206 With such rulers, the lay population was rebellious and
faithless, following them in attacking and defrauding one another – ‘as
we perceive everywhere with our own eyes’ – and sinking into the depths
of sin.207 Merchants and artisans were similarly full of lies and deceit.
To Bacon, living in such a world, it seemed that only divine intervention
could restore order. One form of divine intervention was readily available
in the Eucharist: ‘we make [the consecrated host] everywhere and con-
tinuously whenever we wish’.208 He was sure that if people had the proper
faith in this sacrament they would be far less sinful, and instead be filled
with wisdom and truth. Beyond this immediate remedy, Bacon looked
to prophecy; to the advent of awaited apocalyptic figures. ‘Many wise
men’, he wrote, ‘have estimated that the time of Antichrist presses hard
upon our age. On account of this it is necessary that evil be uprooted, and
the elect of God appear; or perhaps one most blessed pope will come first,
who will remove all corruptions from academic life, and the Church, and
the rest, and will renew the world, and the fullness of peoples will enter in,
quia consiliis destruunt omnia; studentes enim in philosophia et theologia contemnunt, [et]
impediunt ordines duos, ut non possint libere vivere et agere ad salutem animarum, qui gratis se
ingerunt propter Dominum’: CSP, pp. 398–9.
206
‘Non curatur quid fiat, nec quomodo, seu per fas, seu per nefas, dummodo quilibet suam expleat
voluntatem’: CSP, p. 399.
207
‘ut ubique conspicimus ad oculum’: CSP, p. 400.
208
‘ubique et continue facimus illud quum volumus’: CSP, p. 400. Although heartfelt, these views
were not remarkable: see M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture
(Cambridge, 1991).
77
and the last Jews be converted to the faith.’209 God, he believed, had, in his
goodness and wisdom, deferred his vengeance on the wickedness of
humanity until it had reached the point of saturation – as it palpably now
had. Therefore, it should be expected that the Church would soon be
purged, if not by the most perfect pope and most perfect prince at last
uniting the temporal and spiritual swords against the sins of Christendom,
then by Antichrist, or by civil war among Christians, or through the
Mongols, Muslims and other Eastern kings.210
The Compendium contains a familiar mixture of strong criticisms and
optimistic suggestions, with many of the subjects of the works for
Clement succinctly revisited. It was, however, far more attentive to the
role of sapientia in the various centres of learning. ‘One may see [wisdom]
as it is being kindled in study’, he wrote, ‘in the useful and splendid
occupations of the studies of the doctors, lecturing and disputing in
every faculty, and in the other exercises of scholastic disciplines.’211 It
seems probable that he was in Paris at the time.212 The fantasy of an
alliance of a ‘perfect prince’ and ‘perfect pope’ was surely stimulated by
memories of the close relationship between Louis IX and Clement IV –
the loss of which was so painfully emphasised by the vacancy and must
have been felt in Louis’ capital as he prepared for a new crusade.213 For all
this, the intended audience of the Compendium is not clear, and the work,
at least as it is now extant, was not completed, surviving in a single
manuscript of the fourteenth or fifteenth century.214 There is no way of
knowing whether it circulated during Bacon’s lifetime: an important
consideration in view of the tendency of historians to assume that his
contemporaries knew its contents and disliked him for them. It is, never-
theless, evidence that Bacon continued to work on his scheme for the
reform of studies, and that, like many others, he was profoundly troubled
by the state of the Church.
One of Gregory’s earliest acts as Pope was to summon a council to be
held in 1274, which would address the schism with the Greek Church, the
Muslim occupation of the Holy Land, the general decline of morals, and
209
‘multi sapientes . . . aestimabant quod his temporibus instarent dies Antichristi. Quare necesse est
ut exstirpetur malitia, et appareant electi Dei; aut praeveniet unus beatissimus papa, qui omnes
corruptiones tollet de studio, et ecclesia, et caeteris, et renovetur mundus, et intret plenitudo
gentium, et reliquiae Israel ad fidem convertantur’: CSP, p. 402.
210
CSP, pp. 403–4.
211
‘videlicet prout ventilatur in studio, occupationibus studii doctoralis utilibus et magnificis, in omni
facultate legendo et disputando, et caeteris exercitiis scholasticae disciplinae’: CSP, p. 395.
212
CSP, p. 403. 213 Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 218–20, 310.
214
British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius C V, fos. 120–51. Thorndike, among others, considered the
possibility that some of the more outspoken attacks on named contemporaries were later inter-
polations: History, vol. ii, p. 639; see also Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 218–19.
78
A life in context
other matters requiring correction and reform.215 He solicited treatises of
advice on these subjects. Bacon’s writings would, of course, have been
relevant, and may have affected the ideas of those who responded.216
There is, however, no surviving trace of an attempt by Bacon to partici-
pate in the preparations for the council. Indeed, we know very little of
what happened to him for the two decades after his work on the
Compendium. A brief reference in a book of preaching exempla, composed
by a friar in Cork somewhere between 1275 and 1279, suggests that he was
a well-known and reputable figure in the order.217 Most of the works that
he appears to have written or at least re-worked between 1270 and 1292
have not been dated much more securely than that.218 He continued to
move between Oxford and Paris in pursuit of manuscripts.219 He is
thought to have written most of the Communia naturalium and several
other works or parts of works, including his edition of the Secretum
secretorum, around this time. Some of these, together with his material
for Clement, were meant to draw attention to a range of errors that were
in his view impeding study in Christendom.220 It has recently been argued
that he succeeded in this – and that his attack on the radical Aristotelians,
in particular, may have been taken so seriously in some quarters as to
provoke or at least contribute to the scrutiny that resulted in the
condemnations of 1277.221
The condemnations were the product of a growing anxiety about the
relationship between philosophy and theology, and in particular over
certain philosophical issues with theological implications that had arisen
in the course of digesting material from the Muslim world. Some masters
215
For background see Wolter and Holstein, Lyon I, pp. 137–61.
216
Parts of Humbert of Romans’ Opus tripartitum seem to have been written in response to issues
raised in the Opus maius. See below, p. 240.
217
Liber exemplorum, p. 22; Power, ‘Remedies’, pp. 75–7.
218
See Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and his Edition’, p. 73. 219 SS, p. 39.
220
Bacon attacked Latin Averroists very strongly in the Communia naturalium, and this may have
some relationship to the 1270 condemnation of the same school of thought. See I. Brady,
‘Background to the Condemnation of 1270: Master William of Baglione, OFM’, FS, 30
(1970), 5–48. On the dating of the Secretum secretorum edition see Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and
his Edition’.
221
Hackett calls Bacon ‘the whistle-blower on Latin Averroism at the University of Paris’: ‘Clearly
there is a case to be made for seeing Roger Bacon as one in the Franciscan studium, the emeritus
master of arts of long standing, who had become interested in theology, and who alerted the Pope
and presumably also Bonaventure and others to the dangers in the faculty of arts’ (Hackett,
‘Aristotle, Astrologia’, p. 76). North seems to agree: ‘Comparing his writings with the 219 theses, it
has to be said that Bacon looks remarkably free from taint, and indeed, some of the propositions set
against them could have been taken straight from him’ (‘Roger Bacon’, p. 140). See also
J. Hackett, ‘Practical Wisdom and Happiness in the Moral Philosophy of Roger Bacon’,
Medioevo, 12 (1986), 55–109.
79
seemed alarmingly willing to contemplate the idea that there were pro-
positions that could be true in a philosophical context, but not true in a
Christian context, which would presuppose two different kinds of truth,
one religious and one not. It was in this atmosphere that the arts faculty in
Paris decided to prohibit some lines of enquiry, but the danger seemed so
great that the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, launched an enquiry,
possibly at the request of the pope, John XXI.222 After a few weeks, a
commission of theologians produced a list of errors. Tempier condemned
them all, and said that anyone who had taught, defended or listened to any
of them without reporting the matter to the authorities would be excom-
municated unless they confessed within seven days.223 Eleven days later a
different set of errors was similarly condemned in Oxford by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby.224
It is further inferred that Bacon’s strong criticisms of some of his
contemporaries and their work made him unpopular, and caused him to
find himself, in turn, condemned.225 There is no extant contemporary
evidence to support this proposition, although, as we have seen, some
rumours of a condemnation appear in material of the later decades of the
fourteenth century.226 Bacon himself repeatedly stressed that all specula-
tion ‘must be reduced to the rule of faith so that it is not discordant with
Catholic truth’.227 Little in his writing suggests that he would be likely to
engage in the stubborn resistance to correction that caused trouble for
holders of condemned doctrines. In any case, all that can be said with any
certainty is that it was a time of great tension, and not always a propitious
environment for the discussion of radical ideas. Tempier’s condemnations
both caused and were part of a great deal of intellectual disturbance and
adjustment of ideas.228 At the general chapter of 1279 the existing prohi-
bition on holding unorthodox opinions was extended to include those
reproved by the bishop and masters in Paris. This was supplemented in
1282 with the instruction that friars holding unsound opinions were to be
reported to the minister general. They were also not to read the works
222
There are many accounts of these events: for a useful summary see J.F. Wippel, ‘The Parisian
Condemnations of 1270 and 1277’ in Gracia and Noone (eds.), Companion, 65–73.
223
CUP, vol. i, no. 473, p. 543. 224 CUP, vol. i, no. 474, pp. 558–61.
225
Molland, ‘Roger Bacon’, ODNB. Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon, Aristotle’, extended in ‘Aristotle,
Astrologia’; F. Uhl, ‘Hindernisse auf dem Weg zum Wissen: Roger Bacons Kritik der Autoritäten’
in Uhl (ed.), Roger Bacon, vol. i, 219–35, pp. 232–3.
226
See above, pp. 19–23.
227
‘hoc ad regulam fidei reducendum est, ut a catholica veritate non discordet’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:268.
On obedience see below, pp. 161–2.
228
L. Bianchi, ‘1277: A Turning Point in Medieval Philosophy?’ and J.E. Murdoch, ‘1277 and Late
Medieval Philosophy’, both in J.A. Aertsen and A. Speer (eds.), Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?
(Berlin, 1998), 90–110 and 111–21 respectively.
80
A life in context
of Aquinas unless they were ‘reasonably educated’. Even then, they
were to have by them the correctio written by Bacon’s colleague William
de la Mare.229
Bacon’s own work continued to have an impact, eliciting a range
of reactions from those who studied it. It was around 1280 that the
Paris-trained Franciscan Peter of Limoges used Bacon’s Perspectiva
when composing his preaching manual, the Tractatus moralis de oculo.230
Others worked to refine or refute ideas held by Bacon – particularly
Henry of Ghent and Peter Olivi. Henry, master of theology in Paris from
1276 to 1292, discussed issues raised by Bacon in several works written
during this period, while Olivi, who probably arrived at the Franciscan
convent while Bacon was there, made an important critique of Bacon’s
optical theories in his lectures on the Sentences, although its impact was
delayed by the attacks on his orthodoxy made shortly afterwards.231 The
order was under increasing strain over issues of poverty and relations with
the secular clergy. Meanwhile, the bitter divisions that had characterised
English politics for most of Bacon’s life began to settle and heal through the
1280s under the rule of Henry III’s son, Edward I. It was also Edward who,
in the summer of 1290, ordered the expulsion of the last Jewish commu-
nities from the kingdom of England.232 One wonders what Bacon, who
valued Hebrew scholarship and the spiritual well-being of the Jews, would
have made of this.
When he wrote his final extant work in 1292, the Compendium studii
theologiae, his mind was as keen and fierce as ever. He must have been
at least seventy-two, and perhaps ten years older than that. People, he
said, had been asking him for a long time to write ‘something useful for
theology’, but he had been hindered in various ways – as many knew.233
This statement was probably not intended to be oblique, but is now
impenetrable. In any case, fortified by the counsel of Solomon, Ovid,
Seneca and other luminaries, he embarked on what he hoped would be a
229
‘Constitutiones generales assisienses (1279)’ and ‘Constitutiones generales argentinenses (1282)’ in
Constitutiones generales, vi.22, pp. 126 and vi.22, p. 183 respectively; ‘rationabiliter intelligentes’:
‘Definitiones capituli generalis argentinae celebrati anno 1282’, ed. G. Fussenegger, AFH, 26
(1933), 127–40, p. 139; Etzkorn, ‘John Pecham’, pp. 76–80; L. Bianchi, ‘Ordini mendicanti e
controllo “ideologico”: il caso delle province domenicane’ in Studio e studia, 303–38.
230
R. Newhauser, ‘Inter scientiam et populum: Roger Bacon, Peter of Limoges, and the “Tractatus
moralis de oculo”’ in Aertsen et al. (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung, 682–703; Denery, Seeing, pp. 75–
115. Bonaventure himself made references to the things that ‘Sapientes in perspectiva dicunt . . .’
in his preaching, e.g. in his 1268 Collationes de septem donis spiritus sancti (Opera omnia, vol. v, i.9,
p. 459).
231
Tachau, Vision, pp. 27–54.
232
R.R. Mundill, England’s Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290 (Cambridge,
1998).
233
CST, i.i.4–5, p. 34/35.
81
major treatise. The result has sometimes been characterised as a renewed
tirade against the problems with the Aristotelian system that he had
identified years before.234 It was not fresh work, for it depended on the
thinking in the Opus maius and the Summa dialectices, which he had written
decades earlier, but the ideas had been recast with recent developments in
mind and appear to have proved influential in Franciscan circles.235 From
this at least, it can be seen that Bacon retained an interest in current affairs;
the needs of Christendom as they might be supplied through the uni-
versities; and dramatic reforms of learning. Some of his academic examples
seem to speak of grief and bereavement – he must have by this time
outlived many friends and acquaintances.236
If he wrote anything after the Compendium, we know nothing of it.
Due to his apparent silence and his advanced age, he is assumed to have
died the same year or soon afterwards. A manuscript of the late
fifteenth century relates that he was buried among the friars in
Oxford.237 He may, of course, have lived out the fading century. Lost
in history, he could at best have had a partial sense of the brewing conflicts
about to break loose in those institutions within which he had lived out
much of his adult life. Yet he had always had a quick eye for detecting
turbulence and looming disaster in human affairs, and the readiness of his
era to paint what he saw in the strange, bold and melancholy colours of
ancient prophecies and apocalypticism. Perhaps such reflections agitated
the last days of his life. Perhaps, however, he had the consolation and
satisfaction of knowing that younger scholars were already engaging
seriously with his writings on a whole range of topics and that he would
not soon be forgotten.
Before long he was also in the process of becoming a legend. No doubt
those who remembered him told stories about him: he became a part of
the rich, humorous, affectionate web of anecdotes that give life to aca-
demic and institutional histories. His imaginative suggestions for new
technologies were in close harmony with fantastical and magic devices
234
Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 204–5.
235
Maloney, ‘Introduction’, CST, pp. 9–10; J. Andonegui, ‘Rogerio Bacon: su ultima obra sobre el
significado’, Antonianum, 74.2 (1999), 253–305.
236
He gave the example of the grammatical inaccuracy of referring to a corpse by its former name: ‘If
on the occasion of someone’s death one should cry in anguish: “John is dead,” . . . neither the
speaker nor [anyone] listening perceives the renewed imposition nor thinks about it . . . because a
greater preoccupation of a soul obscures a lesser . . . the soul of the speaker is principally
occupied with the sense of a highly charged expression communicating grief’: CST, ii.v.125–6,
pp. 104/5–106/7.
237
John Rous, Joannis Rossi Antiquarii Warwicensis Historia regum Angliae: E codice MS. in Bibliotheca
Bodlejana, ed. T. Hearne (2nd edn. Oxford, 1745), p. 82. Rous gave the date of his death as 1292.
82
A life in context
common to popular romances.238 It is not surprising to find his ideas
drawn back into a more literary sphere, or that he should himself even-
tually become a literary character in his own right. It is not difficult to
imagine the process of satirical amplification that lay behind this
Elizabethan verse:
. . . Bacon can by books
Make storming Boreas thunder from his cave,
And dim fair Luna to a dark eclipse.
The great arch-ruler, potentate of hell,
Trembles when Bacon bids him, or his fiends,
Bow to the force of his pentagon.239
That such stories were told was no surprise, but their tellers would have
been flattered and astonished had they been able to anticipate the quantity
of ink that would be poured out in attack and defence of a reputation so
lightly spun around a few tales and a quantity of old manuscripts contain-
ing the hopes and ideas of a medieval friar.
238
S.J. Williams, ‘Public Stage and Private Space. The Court as a Venue for the Discussion, Display
and Demonstration of Science and Technology in the Later Middle Ages’, Micrologus 16 (2008),
459–86, pp. 484–5.
239
Robert Greene, The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, ed. G.B. Harrison (London,
1927), p. 20.
83
Chapter 2
TRACES ON PARCHMENT
from parchment to flesh

I want now to return to the years between about 1266 and 1268, when
Roger Bacon wrote three works for Pope Clement IV. The first of these,
the Opus maius, has become one of the better-known texts of the medieval
period. The other two, the Opus minus and Opus tertium, were summaries
and expansions of the central ideas of the earlier work.1 This body of
material has been variously interpreted by successive generations, all of
whom seem to have found something in it which resonated with their
own concerns and principles. At its most essential level it offered hope for
the future that did not underestimate the difficulties that human nature
would put in the way. Within the parameters of its day it was a plea for the
unbiased use of knowledge and reason for the good of all humanity,
Christian and non-Christian alike; for intellectual honesty without regard
for the immediate social or political cost. It had the capacity to speak to a
certain idealism that has never been entirely absent from scholarly pursuits.
In practice, this universal quality has, over time, divorced the text from
its context. The stringent contextualising subsequently provided by
modern historians has nearly all been in the direction of the medieval
universities and the intellectual activities specifically associated with them.
Yet it is very doubtful whether the Opus maius belongs in such a setting,
and attempts to place it there may have confused more than clarified our
sense of its nature. As we have seen, Bacon had abandoned his career as a
master twenty years before writing it, and had entered the religious life in
the meantime. The purpose of writing was to urge reform in an eschato-
logical context, and the tone suited the purpose – one reason why some
later readers accustomed to the cool intricacies of contemporary scholastic
treatises have found it extreme and repellent. Moreover, it was written for
1
OT, pp. 5, 67–9.
84
Traces on parchment
a man at the centre of public affairs. Clement’s was a world in which the
unceasing demands of the moment met and complicated more enduring
ideas in an endless battle between short-term expediency and long-term
ambition. Bacon seems to have understood this, promising Clement
useful innovations on both fronts. He largely avoided the academic
language of his day, which may account at least partly for the enduring
accessibility of the work.2 In short, the Opus maius was far more than a
product of Oxford and Paris: as we will see in the following chapters, it
forged a close connection between sapientia, scientia, current affairs and the
temporal mission of the Church. It derived from the vigorous spiritual life
of the age; the institutions of the Roman Church; a consciousness of the
wars and politics that tore apart Christendom; the expanding horizons and
concomitant urgent need to formulate effective foreign policy; the recur-
ring apocalyptic fears; and many other streams and cross-currents in
thirteenth-century European life. And at the centre of these overlapping
contexts was a person: an individual of flesh and blood as well as of mind
and intellect.
As a man and a personality, Roger Bacon can only be seen in the most
shadowy outline. We know something of how he looked in those days: he
was tonsured and wore a brown habit and sandals. His like can be seen in
illuminations and frescoes, and indeed emerging from certain Franciscan
convents today. Everywhere he went – as he walked the crowded streets
of Paris; as he leaned over the side of a departing ship to watch the
wheeling gulls; as he knelt to pray in the dusty light of a church – people
who saw him would recognise what he was by what he wore.3 They
would see that he was a friar, a representative of Church and pope; a man
of God; a man of a certain power: a man who had, and could give, access
to salvation. His habit carried many implications which may or may not
have been true of him as an individual, but which would automatically
suggest a whole probable network of allegiances, enmities, aspirations and
commitments to any observer who did not know him personally. He
would have been well aware of the significance of his habit when he chose
to assume it.4 There were other, more specific things to be seen in Bacon.
Those who talked to him must have seen in his manner that he had grown
up as a member of the nobility, an educated man, and they probably heard
2
This also explains why admirers of the Opus maius found the contents of Steele’s Opera hactenus
inedita so disappointing by comparison: Power, ‘Mirror’, pp. 689–90. On the effects of Bacon’s
‘marginality’ see the brief remarks in I. Rosier-Catach, ‘Roger Bacon, al-Farabi et Augustin:
Rhétorique, logique et philosophie morale’ in G. Dahan and I. Rosier-Catach (eds.), La rhétorique
d’Aristote: Traditions et commentaires de l’antiquité au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1998), 87–110, pp. 94–5.
3
See Perspectiva, ii.iii.7, p. 232/233 for his description of watching the shore from a moving ship.
4
On the self-consciousness of the friars see Denery, Seeing, pp. 19–38.
85
in his voice when he spoke the vernacular that he was a man of England,
although his Latin pronunciation is thought to have been Continental. To
a lesser extent than his habit, but nonetheless, all these things would
convey specific meanings, particularly in the fluctuating climate of
Anglo-French relations. As he noted: ‘when [a stranger] is seen, sight
falls on all of his properties. For if he is the son of Robert and a Frenchman,
born at Paris in the first hour of the night, and called Peter, the person who
sees him sees Peter the Parisian, born in the first hour of the night, son of
Robert, since these things coexist with colour, shape, and the other
visibles.’5 Bacon’s public existence was thus shaped by the need for a
perpetual negotiation with the expectations, experiences, prejudices and
loyalties of other people.
One cannot read so many words from the mind of one man without
forming some impression of personality; equally, the artifice that shaped
his words must not be forgotten. He wished to show the best of himself.
He spoke of himself as an obedient man, a man who laid down his pen
when his superiors did not command him to write, even though he
implied that this was a deprivation that may have caused all the more
obvious deprivations of the religious life to pale by comparison.6 He wrote
of the temptations of food, women and wealth without much regret, and
with a moderate detachment.7 He believed that the true scholar needed to
be as pure in body and soul as human nature allowed. The most important
reason, however, for striving towards moral purity was ‘on account of
future joy and the horror of eternal punishment’.8 He therefore seems on
the whole to have observed the outer forms of the religious life – partly by
inclination, partly by determination.
He also felt that moral failings had an impact on the physical condition
of the body, reducing its strength and shortening the span of life. He may
have taken particular care with his health. He had studied the practical
advice offered in the Secretum secretorum: ‘moderation in the consumption
of food and drink, exercise and relaxation, sleeping and waking, evacua-
tion and retention, climate, and the passions of the mind’.9 It is difficult to
tell whether he was speaking of himself when he asserted that everyone
neglected their health when they were young, although some began to
5
Perspectiva, i.x.1, pp. 146/147–148/149; S.A. Hirsch, ‘Roger Bacon and Philology’ in Little (ed.),
Roger Bacon, 101–51, p. 131; P. Kibre, The Nations in the Mediaeval Universities (Cambridge, MA,
1948), esp. pp. 14–28.
6
EFRB, p. 82 [Gasq, p. 500]; OT, p. 13.
7
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:218–19. On this and the following points see below, pp. 132–41.
8
‘propter futuram felicitatem et horrorem eterne pene’: MP, iii (proemium), p. 45.
9
‘Et hoc regimen consistit in temperato usu cibi et potus, motus et quietis, somni et vigiliae,
evacuationis et retentionis, aeris et passionum animae’: OM, vi.xii, 2:205.
86
Traces on parchment
worry about it when they were old and afraid of death – by which time it
was too late. He did consider that the ‘age of human beauty and strength’
only lasted until about forty-five or fifty – roughly his own age at the time
of writing – after which the physical signs of ageing began to manifest
themselves.10 Self-interest must surely have fuelled his enthusiasm for
research into methods of extending the human lifespan. Nevertheless,
there were certain intellectual advantages that came only with the years;
he had these.11
In temperament, he was a man capable of both broad enthusiasms and
an intense contemplation of the smallest details around him. He had
watched the light moving in the iridescent feathers of a dove’s neck or
peacock’s tail; the reflection of the stars in the river; the reflection of water
in a mirror; the swollen moon swimming just above the horizon on
humid evenings as the year waned towards autumn.12 He had often
noticed the strong sparkle of ‘a cross made of electrum on a bell tower
or other high tower’ when sunlight or moonlight shone down on it.13 ‘I
have observed a cat’, he reported, ‘that coveted some fish swimming in a
large stone container, and when it could not catch them because of the
water, it pulled the stopper and allowed the water to run out until the
container was dry, so that, with the water gone, it could catch them.’14 He
carried his scientific perplexities with him through daily life. He was
troubled by his ignorance of what caused the scintillation of the stars:
‘Every night we can look at things in which this problem confronts us;
thus we see nothing so often of whose cause we are more ignorant.’15
His experimentation (often carried out in imitation of his Greek and
Arabic authorities) must surely have seemed a little eccentric to his con-
temporaries, however unselfconsciously he reported it to Clement. On at
least one occasion he had spent the long hours of the summer twilight
watching the fixed stars while opening and closing his eyes in turn, trying
to understand the consequences for perception of having two eyes.16 He
discovered that it was impossible for anyone, when standing on flat land,
to see at once a star overhead and the earth below, ‘however hard he tries’,
and that ‘when a man turns himself around many times and then stops, he
imagines that sight and other things continue to spin’.17 He did acknowl-
edge that he might be inattentive to his own behaviour when absorbed:
‘those who . . . are preoccupied with an intense study of something, too
10
‘aetas pulchritudinis et fortitudinis’: OM, vi.xii, 2:206. 11 OT, pp. 63–5.
12
Perspectiva, i.v.1, p. 60/61, iii.i.5, p. 278/279, i.x.2, p. 152/153, iii.ii.4, p. 312/313.
13
Perspectiva, iii.i.5, p. 282/283. 14 Perspectiva, ii.iii.9, p. 248/249.
15
Perspectiva, ii.iii.7, p. 232/233; Southern, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 154–7.
16
Perspectiva, ii.ii.4, p. 190/191, ii.iii.8, p. 242/243.
17
Perspectiva, i.viii.3, p. 22/23, ii.iii.6, p. 232/233.
87
much do and say other things of which . . . being preoccupied, they do not
take notice because of a greater preoccupation with other things’.18 He
had been astonished by some of the things that he had observed, reporting
that since seeing the magnetism that caused a stone to leap into vinegar of
its own volition and bitumen to be ignited by fire placed nearby, ‘nothing
has been difficult for my intellect to accept, so long as it had a dependable
authority’.19
Bacon was a man of strong feelings, capable, like most people, of
coruscating anger, harsh appraisals of those around him, and moments of
self-aggrandisement. He has, as already noted, been much criticised for
exhibiting these traits in his writings. His preface to Clement suggests that
he himself was aware of some, at least, of his stridencies of tone, ‘words of
excessive praise or disparagement’, but considered that he was simply
representing the situation as it was, so that Clement could know the
truth.20 His tone was undoubtedly influenced by the language of those
around him. It must be remembered that the scholarly world of the day
was a place of heightened tensions, jealousies, outbursts of temperament
and general watchfulness, as is evident from many aspects of its history.
Campanus of Novara, for example, anticipated that his Theorica planetarum
would be subjected to ‘the tooth of envy’ and ‘the razor of malice’, but
had sufficient confidence in the truth of its contents to caution his readers
that if they tried to inflict a wound on it their teeth would be ‘damaged
and blunted’.21
Bacon possessed a similar expectation that his ideas would be attacked
by those too imperfect to understand them, while maintaining a dogged
confidence in his own judgement. His belief in the value of his work was
not merely intellectual self-assurance, but was closely related to his faith.
He felt obliged by his commitment to the Church to speak out about the
failings he detected around him. One essential quality of a convinced
believer is an absolute certainty about the truth of his or her beliefs. No
one is more humble than the person who has glimpsed a universe turned,
in Dante’s image, by God’s love; and no one is less likely to compromise
on any matter related to that universe. If there was one quality possessed
by all the saints in their hour of glory, and the prophets in times of crisis, it
was an absolute refusal to compromise. This was the prevalent mode of
discourse for those seeking to critique and reform medieval society.
18
CST, ii.v.126, pp. 106–7.
19
‘nihil fuit meo intellectui difficile ad credendum, dummodo habuit auctorem certum’: OM, vi.xii,
2:219.
20
‘verba excessive laudis vel vituperii’: EFRB, p. 98 [Gasq, p. 503].
21
Campanus of Novara, p. 134/135.
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Traces on parchment
Similarly, if Bacon’s anger or bitterness is to be understood, one must
look at where it was directed; what aroused it; and the models it followed.
Ever since God cast Adam and Eve out of Paradise with curses; ever since
Christ threw down the tables of the merchants in the Temple, anger had
been used to mark out the boundaries of sin. A common theme in the
philosophical and theological discussions of preceding generations was the
proper role of anger – and, indeed, even of hatred – in the reproof of vice
and the avoidance of evil.22 Among Bacon’s contemporaries, clerical and
lay alike, a violent outburst of anger and grief was the most ordinary
reaction to failings, abuses and sins. Reflecting on this matter, Adam
Marsh wrote: ‘I can see no way of opposing the follies of worldly
fashion . . . except by accusing, pleading, chiding, hastening, arousing
people to the severe demands of salvation, and by every means acting to
scatter the dread armies of death’.23 Pope Innocent III had told the clergy
that anger was ‘like a purgative force, because it expels evil, drives out
darkness, and vomits out impiety’. He described it as a natural power of
the soul, and opposed it to the vice of negligence.24 The compulsion to
speak the truth when it was necessary overrode all other considerations,
just as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and their kind were forced by God to see
wickedness and reprove it, or to have the blood of sinners demanded from
them. Augustine also wrote: ‘I contemplate the saints more pleasantly
when I envisage them as the teeth of the Church cutting off men from
their errors and transferring them to her body after their hardness has been
softened as if by being bitten and chewed’.25 In the same year that Bacon
began compiling the Opus maius Bonaventure had circulated an encyclical
letter in which he reminded the brethren that it was ‘a cruel mercy that
spares a rotten member, allowing corruption to spread and putrefying the
whole body’.26
In Bacon’s day all the great confrontations and much of the daily
preaching were characterised by the rhetoric of outrage. ‘We have
often seen’, he wrote, observing his society, ‘various sicknesses
attack otherwise healthy men when they are stirred up with boiling
22
See S. Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford, 2004), pp. 227–36; S.D.
White, ‘The Politics of Anger’ in B. Rosenwein (ed.), Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in
the Middle Ages (New York, 1998), 125–52; A. Classen, ‘Anger and Anger-Management in the
Middle Ages: Mental-Historical Responses’, Mediaevistik, 19 (2006), 21–50.
23
Letter 44 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, p. 120/121.
24
‘irascibilitas, quasi vis expulsiva, malum abjicit, tenebras repellit, et profanum respuit’: ‘Sermo VII’,
Sermones de diversis, PL, 217, col. 0681A.
25
DDC, ii.6.7.
26
‘dum crudeli misericordia uni membro putrido parcitur, in totius corporis sospitatem putrens
corruptio diffundatur’: ‘Epistola II: Ad omnes Ordinis Ministros provinciales’ in Opera omnia,
vol. viii, p. 470.
89
rage.’27 The thunderous background to the contested intricacies of phi-
losophy; the harsh treatment of those suspected of heresy; the hysterical
language of fear and hatred spat out by one faction to another: this was the
world in which Bacon lived. He was not afraid to write bitterly to the
Pope when he was discussing serious issues that endangered the work of
scholarship, and therefore – in his eyes – the work of God. While he
certainly regarded uncontrolled anger as a kind of madness that ran against,
even subsumed, human nature – regaling Clement with the stoical phi-
losophies of Seneca’s De ira – he would have been doing less than his duty
if he had spoken mildly of things that put human souls at risk and exposed
them to the wrath of God.28 For that wrath, he knew, would unleash the
horsemen of the Apocalypse; make black the sun and blood-red the
moon; damn the ungodly to unceasing tortures. Bacon’s business, like
that of Christ, St Paul and the severe St Francis, of St Peter and his heirs,
was not to compromise, but to salvage what could be salvaged from the
impending wreck of humanity. He quoted God’s command: ‘You will
not follow the multitude to do evil, nor acquiesce to the verdict of the
majority in a judgement so that you diverge from the truth.’29 Where the
shrill sound of personal vanity and professional rivalry ran through his
denunciations it was not the sum of the man, but rather the utterance of
his inescapable human nature woven into a more complex polyphony.
Bacon knew a great deal about human nature, and felt the burden of his
own nature, ensnared from birth in the consequences of the Fall. He
wrote about the scriptural and cosmological problems associated with the
punishment of Adam and Eve when they were cast out of Paradise.30 His
grief over that first terrible loss of sapientia resonated through his writings.
He wrote about the causes of error – the subject of the first book of the
Opus maius – with a sober self-knowledge. The difference between him
and those whom he criticised was at best a capacity for recognition and
self-improvement. The ignorant were in a position of terrible danger:
wrapped in darkness, they would ‘fall into sin, like a blind person falling
into a pit’.31 The person who knew the truth at least had, when she or he
sinned, the capacity to recognise it, to repent, and to avoid future derelic-
tions. With sadness, he implicated himself in his description of the human
failings that impeded sapientia: deference to false authority, conformity,
prejudice, concealment of ignorance and vulgar displays of knowledge,
saying: ‘Every man is involved in these; every part of society is mastered by
27
‘Et vidimus sanos multociens homines egritudines varias incurrere, fervenciore ira permotos’: MP,
iii.iii.1, p. 75.
28
MP, iii.iii, pp. 72–103; OT(Little), pp. 60–1. 29 Exodus 23.2; OM, i.5, 3:13.
30
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:193. 31 ‘ruit in peccatum, sicut cecus in foveam’: EFRB, p. 70 [Gasq, p. 499].
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them.’32 ‘We prove by experience in our own acts what has just been said
about the various types of people,’ he acknowledged later:
Let anyone review his life from his infancy, and he will find that in most of his acts
he was more easily led into his habits by what was evil and wrong . . . For in most
actions, unless special grace and divine privilege intervene on behalf of someone
who is already perfect [i.e. a saint], human corruption continues assiduously in
what is contrary to truth and salvation . . . Even if someone should apply himself
from his earliest years to truth in life and learning, he continues to be in a state of
imperfection in most of his activities, and rejoices in it. In fact it is perfection that
more frequently saddens him, for very few find delight in it, particularly in the
case of perfection in virtue and learning; and therefore it happens that the young
rarely guard themselves against error, and the old climb to perfection in anything
at all only with the greatest difficulty.33
It was human nature that kept everyone imprisoned and struggling against
weakness, longing to be able to love only the highest, most perfect things
and reject the rest, but constantly attracted to petty or sinful pursuits. So it
was that Bacon saw the struggles of a lifetime that spanned some half a
century. The hope that he saw for the future was not embodied in himself,
but in his students; in the unspoiled soul of an innocent boy. He wrote to
Clement that everything he had discovered in the course of thirty or forty
hard years of intensive study could be summarised and taught to a
responsive pupil in the course of just one year. Having undertaken this
task, he had already been surpassed by one of his own young students – ‘so
how shall I boast about my learning?’34 The reason why this boy could
succeed where Bacon had failed was because of the guidance and protec-
tion of his mentor, because he had been given solid intellectual founda-
tions ‘from which he may expect flowers and vigorous fruits which I shall
never obtain’, but above all because of the unsullied purity of his soul.35
32
‘His omnis homo involvitur, omnis status occupatur’: OM, i.i, 3:2.
33
‘. . . probamus per experimentiam in actibus nostris, quod nunc dictum est in exemplis personarum.
Revolvat quilibet vitam suam ab infancia sua, et inveniet quod in pluribus ejus operibus facilius
mala et falsa duxit in consuetudinem . . . Nam ut in pluribus actibus, nisi gratia specialis et
privilegium divinum in aliquibus perfectis obvient, humana corruptio diligenter continuat ea
quae veritati et saluti sunt contraria . . . Quod si aliquis a juventute applicetur ad vitae et scientiae
veritatem, hic ut in pluribus suis occupationibus continuat imperfectionem, et in ea jocundatur;
perfectio vero contristat eum frequentius, nam paucissimos delectat, et maxime in virtutum et
scientiarum plenitudine; et ideo accidit quod aetas juvenilis vix cavet ab errore, et senectus cum
summa difficultate ad perfectionem in aliquo transcendit’: OM, i.iii, 3:8. His feelings were
unchanged in old age. See CST, i.ii.11, p. 42/43. Compare with 1Cel, i.1; FoAED, vol. i,
pp. 182–3.
34
‘Quare igitur gloriabor de scientia?’: OM, i.x, 3:23–4, quotation at 24.
35
‘ex quibus potest flores et fructus salubres expectare, ad quos ego nunquam pertingam’: OM, i.x,
3:24, vi.i, 2:170–1.
91
Bacon’s sense of the limits to his own sapientia gave an extra dimension
to his appreciation of the complexity and elusiveness of knowledge. He
was in considerable awe of the brilliant thinkers whose works he had read
so attentively over the years: ‘I admire their genius more than I understand
it,’ he confessed.36 Beyond the learning of previous generations there
were ‘the secrets of God and the mysteries of eternal life – which the
Apostle saw in some inexplicable way, when he was caught up to the third
heaven, not knowing whether he was in his body or outside it – which are
so great that it is not permitted for man to speak of them’.37 But there was
also the wisdom that came from simplicity: ‘we see that the wiser a man is,
the more humbly he is inclined to respect the teaching of another, nor
does he reject the simplicity of their teaching, but is humble towards
rustics, old women and children; since the simple and those thought to be
ignorant often know a great deal that has escaped the wise . . . For as
Scripture says, it is among the simple that God preaches.’38 Bacon could
spend his energies teaching poor and ignorant youths; he could bow his
head before the glorious inscrutability of Creator and creation; he could
learn from those whom everyone would consider his inferiors. It was the
absence of any kind of wisdom or true desire for it that enraged him
against those whom he called the ‘multitude’: those who had some
learning, but not enough to know or care what it was or could be.
Their minds, lost in vanity and triviality, were incapable of recognising
the divine truths, and turned anything they glimpsed of them to evil. The
best that could be hoped for the multitude was that it might be kept from
sin, and he was not very optimistic about achieving even that.39
It was partly decontextualised reading of his expressed resentment
against this element in society and partly his specific criticisms of a
few contemporary scholars that led to the portrayal of Bacon as a
rather lonely and misunderstood man; a man whose short-tempered
outbursts annoyed and estranged his colleagues.40 A person known
36
‘quorum ingenia magis admiror quam intelligo’: OM, vi.xii, 2:219.
37
‘sunt secreta Dei et arcana vitae aeternae, quae utcunque vidit apostolus ad tertium coelum raptus,
nesciens utrum in corpore vel extra corpus, quae tanta sunt, ut non liceat homini loqui de illis’:
OM, i.x, 3:22; 2 Cor. 12.1–4.
38
‘ideo videmus homines quanto sapientiores sunt tanto humilius se inclinare ad doctrinam alterius
suscipiendam, nec dedignantur simplicitatem docentis, sed ad rusticos vetulas et pueros se humi-
liant; quoniam simplices et idiotae aestimati sciunt multoties magna quae latent sapientes . . . Nam
cum simplicibus est sermocinatio Dei secundum scripturam’: OM, i.x, 3:24. The ‘little old lady’
who was more knowledgeable about salvation than the most learned scholar was something of a
trope in medieval theology. See Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 28–9.
39
OM, i.iv, 3:8–11.
40
On Bacon’s attack on the ‘boy theologians’ see Hackett, ‘Attitude’; Crowley, Roger Bacon, esp.
pp. 50–62; Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 30–2; and below, pp. 185–9.
92
Traces on parchment
only through a corpus of writing, some of which was strongly critical
and probably antagonistic toward intellectual rivals; someone who was
barely mentioned by name in any extant contemporary source and was for
a long time remembered chiefly through a series of escalating fantasies is
apt to seem isolated. Yet, in the first place, this impression is hardly
supported by his glancing references to the people around him. From
his anecdote about his Spanish students we have a glimpse of the noisy
warmth of a classroom where the teacher not only learnt from his own
pupils when they laughed at his mistakes, but remembered the story
against himself so vividly that he told it several times in later years. He
was willing to acknowledge: ‘I did not understand what I was reading.’41
Similarly, his dedication to the education of his student, John, was extra-
ordinarily comprehensive: ‘he learned everything that he knows through
my advice, guidance and help, and I have taught him much through
discussions and treatises’.42
When he spoke of his brother and other close friends who would read
anything he wrote, he evoked the eternal generous networks of scholar-
ship. He also inhabited wider networks of support. He knew that he could
rely on the members of his order in very particular ways. One of the
problems he faced in preparing his ideas for the Pope was in securing the
services of trustworthy scribes. Since his enterprise was not sanctioned by
his superiors, he could only go to scribes ‘unrelated to our order’, who
would then have copied his work for themselves, or others, against his
wishes, ‘just as writings are very often published through the fraud of
Parisian scribes’.43 It is evident from this complaint that in ordinary
circumstances he could use the scribes of his order, relying on their skills
and loyalty. Moreover, for all his trouble with scribes, he told Clement
that the one who was taking down the Opus tertium for him was ‘close to
my heart’.44 He could call on his family and many other people for
financial assistance, and he had friends who would go into debt to help
him keep on writing. In the course of his studies he had encounters with
some of the most interesting people of his day. He had visited great
intellectuals, obscure alchemists and learned Jews. He knew Petrus de
Maricourt, that innovative scientist; the translator Hermann Alemannus,
‘who kept Saracens around him in Spain’; and William of Rubruck, who
had seen more of the world than almost anyone and had conversed with
41
‘non intelligebam quae legebam’: OM, iii.i, 1:82.
42
‘omnia quae scit didicit meo consilio et regimine et adjutorio, et multa ipsum docui verbo et
scripto’: OM, i.10, 3:24.
43
‘alienos a statu nostro’; ‘sicut saepissime scripta per fraudes scriptorum Parisius divulgantur’: OT,
p. 13.
44
‘secundum cor meum’: OT(Little), p. 83.
93
Buddhists and Mongol qaghans.45 He heard the gossip of Louis IX’s court
and described a barrage of Greek fire so vividly that he must have talked to
crusaders returned from Damietta.46 A surgeon, Peter of Ardene, told him
and a companion an uncanny, yet moral, tale of devilry later included in
an Irish liber exemplorum.47 Bacon had been among the young Franciscans
listening to the lectures of Adam Marsh in Oxford, and pressed in the mass
of a staring Parisian crowd as the leader of the Pastoureaux walked past.
Through his brother, who was Henry III’s knight, and through the
political activities of his family, he was linked to the bloody, turbulent
realm of war and destruction. His interests were represented by William of
Bonecor, Henry’s envoy, and Clement IV solicited his views on future
directions for papal policy. He entirely accepted the central tenet of
ancient civic morality, quoting Cicero and Plato: ‘We were not born for
ourselves alone . . . humans were born for the sake of humans, so that they
would be able to help each other’.48
When Bacon’s writings are read, we must consider them as a product
both of the wider culture within which they were conceived and com-
posed and also of the incalculable and impenetrable web of the particular
which is wrapped tightly around every individual. There are many moods
in the Opus maius. An attempt has been made here to indicate some of the
probable factors that conditioned Bacon’s daily experience at the time
when he was writing, and which must therefore have left their traces on
the shape and content of his work.
from flesh to parchment

The private request from pope to friar for rapid and secret counsel was the
most personal and immediate context in which the Opus maius was
produced. Bacon began to work in earnest, despite the difficulties that
beset him. The process of setting down and illustrating his ideas trans-
formed them from the fluid perceptions of an active and inquiring mind to
words on parchment. These words were at once an expression of his
thought and, increasingly, something separate and concrete which would
continue to exist in a static form as he grew older, saw things differently,
and times changed. Incrementally, their original context slipped away
from human memory. When people later came to read his work, they
could do no more than imagine the world in which it had been composed.
45
‘quia Sarascenos tenuit secum in Hispania’: CSP, p. 472.
46
OM, vi.xii, 2:218; cf. Joinville, Vie, 206, p. 100. 47 Liber exemplorum, 38, p. 22.
48
‘Non nobis solum nati sumus . . . homines autem hominum causa esse generatos, ut ipsi inter se alii
aliis prodesse possint’: MP, iii (premium), p. 46.
94
Traces on parchment
There is something rather extraordinary about the long endurance of what
had once been an integrated element of that world, just a thick sheaf of
hastily written pages sent southwards by a friar to a pope, along the same
roads that had carried so many other messages.
Bacon, remaining behind in Paris, kept writing and worrying, continu-
ing to develop and express his ideas, producing the Opus minus, Opus
tertium and, a little later, the Compendium studii philosophiae. Meanwhile,
the drafts and completed manuscript of the Opus maius existed discretely
and began to be read by others, to be copied, and to proliferate.49 As it
survives in manuscript form today, it is spread chaotically through a mass
of separate bundles of parchment pages, which are scattered across the
libraries of Europe. The oldest pages were written almost seven hundred
and fifty years ago, while the newest are not quite three hundred years old.
They have lasted through the destructive ferment of history; floods, fire,
reformation, revolution, wars, bombs and human indifference have failed
to obliterate them. To look at, they are faintly shiny and a little brittle,
turning reluctantly in their later bindings, often curving slightly as if in
ghostly memory of the shape of the animal whose skin they once were.
Between generous margins, the lines of Latin script stand in neat blocks. In
some, the surface of the parchment gives a curious impression of depth, so
that the ink stands out on the page with an almost luminous quality. Here
and there, diagrams have been drawn to illustrate the geometrical pro-
blems described in the text: sometimes by the scribe; sometimes by other
hands. Due, perhaps, to the lack of funding and the absence of skilled
artists from the enterprise, the texts are utilitarian and simply presented,
rarely using more than two colours of ink.50 Most are well preserved,
although the oldest manuscript bears the worst scars: some of its pages are
partially burned or smoke-blackened from the fire that devastated the
Cotton collection in 1731. None is complete; most contain fewer than
half of the books. Those that duplicate material inevitably display disparate
lacunae and overlapping variants.51 Such is the confusion of versions and
fragments that it has been asked whether there was ever such thing as
Roger Bacon’s Opus maius.52 Although the text as historians have come to
49
For an example of the editorial process see Hackett, ‘Hand’.
50
EFRB, pp. 90–2 [Gasq, p. 502]. The early Baconian MSS (British Library Cotton MS Julius D V,
fos. 71–167 and Royal 7 F vii; Vatican MS Lat. 4086) are in fact typical of late medieval scholastic
texts. On the production of books in Paris see C. de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (2nd
edn. London, 1994), pp. 108–41, esp. pp. 127–38. For a general description of the appearance of
such manuscripts see B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. D. Ó
Crónín and D. Ganz (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 8–11, 16–32, 136–45.
51
On the manuscripts see Little, ‘Roger Bacon’s Works’; Bridges, ‘Preface’, OM, 1:xiii–xx; ‘Preface’,
OM, 3:v–xiv; Massa, ‘Praefatio’, MP, ix–xliii; Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, Perspectiva, pp. c–cv.
52
Bridges, ‘Preface’, OM, 3:xiii.
95
know it in the last century has assumed a well-known and apparently
definitive form, this is somewhat misleading. His drafts were probably not
destroyed: they may have been copied and circulated, existing now in
fragments among the extant manuscripts.
For all this, the Opus maius as we have it today is coherent and in general
tightly argued, and will be considered in what follows to offer an ade-
quate, even relatively complete, representation of the vision that Bacon
offered to the Pope.
the causes of error

The main text of the Opus maius opened decisively:
A complete consideration of wisdom consists of two things: first, grasping what is

needed to enable us to acquire it most effectively; then seeing how it should be
applied to all matters, so that they can be directed by it in the proper ways. For by
the light of wisdom the Church of God is governed; the public affairs of the
faithful are regulated; the conversion of unbelievers is brought about; and those
who are obstinate in their malice can be restrained by the power of wisdom, so
that they can be driven away from the borders of the Church in a better way than
by the shedding of Christian blood. Everything that requires the guidance of
wisdom can be included within these four categories.53
The rest of the work was devoted to demonstrating and elucidating these
propositions. He went on:
Therefore, so that this wisdom might be known not only relatively but abso-
lutely, along the lines indicated in my previous letter, I will try to present to your
Holiness everything that I can put together at this moment in a plausible form,
until a more definite and fuller writing may be completed. However, since the
matters under discussion are serious and unusual, they will need to be read with
the grace and favour which human fragility requires.54
53
‘Sapientiae perfecta consideratio consistit in duobus, videlicet ut videatur quid ad eam requiritur
quatenus optime sciatur, deinde quomodo ad omnia comparetur, ut per eam modis congruis
dirigantur. Nam per lumen sapientiae ordinatur ecclesia Dei, respublica fidelium disponitur,
infidelium conversio procuratur, et illi qui in malitia obstinati sunt valent per virtutem sapientiae
reprimi, ut melius a finibus ecclesiae longius pellantur, quam per effusionem sanguinis Christiani.
Omnia vero quae indigent regimine sapientiae ad haec quatuor reducuntur’: OM, i.i, 3:1. Bacon
was presumably echoing both the beginning of Augustine’s DDC (1.i.1, p. 12/13) and the opening
reflections on sapientia in Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon – a work with which the Opus maius had
something in common in purpose and construction.
54
‘De hac igitur sapientia tam relate quam absolute scienda nunc secundum tenorem epistolae
praecedentis, quod possum ad praesens probabili persuasione, donec certius scriptum et plenius
compleatur, vestrae Celsitudini praesentare conabor. Quoniam autem illa de quibus agitur sunt
grandia et insolita, gratiam et favorem humanae fragilitatis requirunt’: OM, i.i, 3:1.
96
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Bacon thought of the Opus maius as an intermediate work: a sketch of
something larger and more effective; a plea for support. The subject
matter was not easy: difficult, perhaps, for the pope to digest, and suffi-
ciently controversial to make Bacon exercise some caution in writing it
down. The mind of the reader had to be carefully prepared to receive
challenging ideas, and every unorthodox proposition had to be presented
as the logical outcome of arguments sanctioned by the most respected and
orthodox authorities. The first two books were written specifically to
provide this preparation.
The first book argued that the Latin West suffered from a terrible
and complacent ignorance which had to be addressed as a matter of
urgency, for
from these deadly plagues come all the evils of the human race; for the most
useful, the greatest, and most beautiful teachings of wisdom, and the secrets of all
the sciences and arts are unknown. But what is worse is that men blinded in the
thick gloom of these [errors] do not perceive their own ignorance, but disguise
and defend it with every trick so that they do not find a remedy; and what is worst
of all, although they are in the densest shadows of error, they imagine that they
are in the full light of truth.55
The errors, Bacon said, were caused by people readily accepting any
authority just because of its antiquity or popularity, and asserting any
conventional or fashionable opinion regardless of its intrinsic worth.
Attempts to use reason in this environment were inevitably futile, because
no one was willing to admit that they had spoken in ignorance. Rather
than being open to reason and truth, people refused to examine or revise
their false beliefs. They lacked the necessary humility. Bacon implored
that these almost universal tendencies be recognised and eradicated as far as
possible from the universities, since their present contamination of scho-
larship was disastrous. As it was, ‘they get in the way of everyone, however
learned, and prevent nearly everyone from reaching a true claim to
learning’.56
Of course, he explained, his condemnation of the indiscriminate use
of authorities was quite aside from his recognition of the ‘solid and true’
authority given by God to his Church, to the saints, to the most
55
‘Ex his autem pestibus mortiferis accidunt omnia mala generis humani; nam ignorantur utilissima et
maxima et pulcherrima sapientiae documenta, et omnium scientiarum et artium secreta; sed pejus
est quod homines horum quatuor caligine excaecati non percipiunt suam ignorantiam, sed eam
omni cautela palliant et defendunt, quatenus remedium non inveniant; et quod pessimum est, cum
sint in tenebris errorum densissimis, aestimant se esse in plena luce veritatis’: OM, i.i, 3:2–3.
56
‘omnem quantumcunque sapientem impediunt, et vix aliquem permittunt ad verum titulum
sapientiae pervenire’: OM, i.i, 3:2.
97
perfect philosophers and to other sapientes, not all of whom were
Christians.57 In support of his distinction between true and false autho-
rities he cited the authority of Seneca, Aristotle, Cicero, Averroës
(Ibn Rušd), Sallust, Gellius and Plato as well as the scriptures, Jerome,
Augustine, John Chrysostom, Cyprian, Isidore of Seville and his
countryman Adelard of Bath. Ultimately, however, the only authority
was God, since even leading scholars made mistakes, and knew only a
tiny fragment of what was to be known. Bacon emphasised this because
there were some useful branches of study that the greatest authorities
in the Church had neglected. His contemporaries, refusing to consider
that even the greatest might not be perfect in knowledge, had taken this
as a reason for neglecting the subjects themselves. They did not, he
complained, recognise that such studies might not have been appropriate
or possible in the age in which the ancient authorities lived, but were
now useful and necessary.58 Furthermore, it was likely that God had
wanted the early Church to be built on faith alone, which was why
there had been prophecies and miracles in those days, and Christians had
turned away from philosophy and science. Even in the twelfth century,
the most admirable people – such as Hugh and Richard of St Victor – had
disregarded and condemned some parts of mathematics and philosophy
out of sheer ignorance. But in the present day such ignorance was
inexcusable, since many works had recently been translated and the best
scholars had recognised that they contained wisdom and truth.59 After all,
Aristotle and his interpreters Avicenna and Averroës had been banned in
Paris for long periods within living memory, but they were now
accepted.60
Bacon concluded by denying that he wanted to cause trouble by asking
the Pope to interfere in the universities. All he wanted was to be
authorised to study freely; to ‘gather crumbs necessary to me as they fall
from the Lord’s table, which is heaped up with the dishes of wisdom’.
Meanwhile, Clement and his successors should investigate the long-
neglected branches of learning. When the Pope was satisfied that he was
sufficiently informed to commit himself, he could persuade a chosen few
scholars to start work in these areas, while shielding more ordinary people
from their dangers. Bacon urged Clement at least ‘to place the founda-
tions, dig out the sources, and make firm the roots’ so that his successors
would be able to build on what he had begun.61
57
OM, i.i, 3:3–4. 58 OM, i.xii, 1:24–6 59 OM, i.xv, 1:30–1. 60 OM, i.ix, 1:20.
61
‘ut mensa Domini ferculis sapientalibus cumulata, ego pauperculus micas necessarias mihi
colligam decidentes’; ‘poterit Vestra Magnificentia locare fundamenta, fontes eruere, radices
figere’: OM, i.xvi, 3:34–5.
98
Traces on parchment
in defence of philosophy
The next book of the Opus maius explained the nature of the sapientia
perfecta, which had been obscured for so long by human frailty and the
shortcomings of the Latin West. Bacon’s understanding of this wisdom
was single-minded and pressing. Its source was God alone, and it had been
given to the whole of humanity for the single purpose of guiding humans
to salvation: ‘for wisdom is the way to salvation. Every consideration of
man that is not to do with salvation is full of blindness and leads in the end
to the blackness of hell.’62 All the sciences were necessary to the study of
sapientia perfecta, but they were subordinate to it, and could achieve
nothing without it. Unless turned to the highest Christian purposes,
sciences merely paved the broad road to hell. And in Bacon’s eyes many
in the universities of his time were walking every day further along that
smooth and easy road into the hot and smothering darkness of eternal
night.
In his defence of unusual studies, Bacon depended on an argument
made long before. In order to preserve Christian access to the great edifice
of pagan learning in the face of an aggressive fundamentalist purism,
Augustine had maintained that Christians ought to take what was good
and useful from pagan philosophy, since anything valuable in it had
originated with God. Bacon argued that every science existed through
the influence of divine illumination: that which philosophers called the
active intellect.63 The active intellect flowed into the human mind from
outside, and was separate from both the soul and the inherent capacity of
the mind for knowledge. Bacon had heard the Bishop of Paris, William of
Auvergne, as well as Robert Grosseteste, Adam Marsh and other impor-
tant contemporary scholars express the same idea. He had also found it in
the writings of Augustine. Thus authorities pagan and Christian, ancient
and modern, agreed on the nature of divine influence on the human mind
and soul, and thus on the works of sapientes.64 Bacon needed to establish
beyond doubt the divine origin and Christian potential of every science,
no matter how discredited it was in his own day. Philosophy, science – all
useful knowledge – had to be Christianised beyond doubt.
The whole point of philosophy, Bacon wrote, was to know the Creator
by knowing his creation, so that one could contemplate the gifts of life,
existence and the hope of salvation with the proper reverence; worship
God as he ought to be worshipped; and live with moral purity, in
62
‘ab uno Deo data est tota sapientia et uni mundo, et propter finem unum . . . via salutis una est, licet
gradus multi; sed sapientia est via in salutem. Omnis enim consideratio hominis, quae non est
salutaris, est plena caecitate, ac ad finalem inferni deducit caliginem’: OM, ii.1, 3:36.
63
OM, ii.v, 3:45. 64 OM, ii.v, 3:46–9.
99
accordance with law.65 Echoing Augustine in De civitate dei, Bacon
unrolled the great list of philosophers who had been divinely inspired
through all the ages since the beginning of time. Like Augustine’s, it was a
peculiar list, including many figures from the mythologies of the ancient
Mediterranean as well as biblical patriarchs and prophets, distinguished
Athenians and other renowned intellectuals. He pointed out that since
philosophy had been revealed to all of them by God, they had inadver-
tently proved the Christian truth, and their ideas might now be used to
prove it to present-day infideles.66
These two books established the basis on which the rest of the Opus
maius was argued. At the beginning of the third book Bacon explained
that there were five parts of philosophy that were particularly useful for
the exposition of sapientia perfecta: languages, mathematics, optics, experi-
mental science and moral philosophy. Nothing could be known, either
sacred or profane, without these disciplines, while knowledge of them
would make it easy to know everything.67 A book was devoted to each,
and these five books made up the rest of the Opus maius.
the necessity of languages

Bacon began his book on languages by reminding Clement of the central
place that they must occupy in the scheme of human understanding:
For it is impossible for the Latins to reach what is necessary in divine and human
matters without knowing other languages, and nor will they be able to uncover
wisdom, either in absolute terms, or as it relates to the Church of God, and to the
remaining three matters already mentioned [i.e. to the government of the
faithful, the conversion of non-Christians and the defence of Christendom].68
Bacon then elaborated on each of these areas in turn, beginning with the
study of scriptures and philosophy. He pointed out that all the necessary
texts had been written in Hebrew, Greek or Arabic, and despite being
the sole means by which Christians could approach the highest truths of
the universe, they were only known in the Latin West through faulty
translations. Bacon explained why translations – especially those currently
available – were inadequate. There was an inherent difficulty in
65
OM, ii.viii, 3:50.
66
OM, ii.xix, 3:76–9. See G. Molland, ‘The Role of Aristotle in the Epistemological Schemata of
Roger Bacon and Thomas Bradwardine’ in J. Marenbon (ed.), Aristotle in Britain during the Middle
Ages (Turnhout, 1996), 285–97.
67
OM, iii.i, 3:80.
68
‘Impossibile enim est quod Latini perveniant ad ea quae eis necessaria sunt in divinis et humanis nisi
per notitiam aliarum linguarum, nec perficietur eis sapientia absolute, nec relate ad Ecclesiam Dei,
et reliqua tria praenotata’: OM, iii.i, 3:80.
100
Traces on parchment
conveying the idiomatic qualities through translation, while the Latin
language lacked the necessary words to convey the meanings of foreign
scientific terminology. Those with the linguistic skills were rarely accom-
plished enough in particular sciences to make really effective translations.
This applied to the scriptures as much as to philosophical texts.69 Beyond
this, an enormous number of important works were not translated at all
and therefore unknown: extra books of scripture; Greek patristic texts;
Greek and Arabic works of science; scientific commentaries. They would
be extremely useful for various reasons, but above all because they were
capable of drawing the mind towards higher matters, arousing the desire
to perform good works and seek salvation.70
These opening remarks were followed by a lengthy section devoted to
Hebrew and Greek. Bacon began by giving the alphabets and explaining
how they worked and sounded.71 The most important reasons for knowing
these languages were to clarify confusing points in the scriptures and to
correct the many corruptions in the popular Paris edition of the Bible. The
Franciscans and Dominicans had undertaken the project, but they were not
doing so systematically with proper reference to older manuscripts and
ancient languages, so the situation was simply getting worse.72 Bacon
explained that even an accurate translation would not be immune to mis-
interpretation, or from multiple conflicting interpretations, and therefore it
was better to know the original languages.73 Such knowledge would also
lead to a better understanding of Latin itself, together with the etymologies of
words, which were often given wrongly.74 Finally, he noted that ignorance
among Latins of correct pronunciation, and especially of how the Greek
diphthong worked, led to numerous errors.75 His views on the academic
uses of languages were characteristic of the circle of Franciscans around
Grosseteste and Adam Marsh, and may well have derived from them.76
69
It has been suggested that Bacon’s critique of contemporary translations was part of a long tradition,
patristic in origin, of translation theory that had never entirely matched practice. See R. Copeland,
Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts
(Cambridge, 1991), pp. 42, 51. His criticisms, although often resented by modern historians, seem
to be borne out in at least some cases when the translations themselves are studied. See for example
M.C. Weber, ‘Gerald of Cremona: The Danger of Being Half-Acculturated’, Medieval Encounters,
8.2–3 (2002), 123–34.
70
OM, iii.ii, 3.86. 71 OM, iii.iii, 3:88–94.
72
OM, iii.iv, 3:95–6. See L. Light, ‘Roger Bacon and the Origin of the Paris Bible’, Revue Bénédictine,
3.3–4 (2001), 483–507, pp. 485–6; G. Lobrichon, ‘Les éditions de la Bible latine dans les universités du
XIIIe siècle’ in G. Cremascoli and F. Santi (eds.), La Bibbia del XIII secolo: Storia del testo, storia dell’esegesi
(Florence, 2004) 15–34. Lobrichon is scathing about Bacon’s assessment of the situation (p. 17).
73
OM, iii.vi, 3:101–5. 74 OM, iii.vi, 3:105–8. 75 OM, iii.x, 3:113–14.
76
D.A. Callus, ‘Robert Grosseteste as Scholar’ in D.A. Callus (ed.), Robert Grosseteste: Scholar and
Bishop: Essays in Commemoration of the Seventh Centenary of his Death (Oxford, 1955), 1–69, p. 37. A
note in a mid-thirteenth-century manuscript ‘secundum fratrem Adam de Marisco’ spoke of ‘the
101
Having established the necessity of languages in the realm of pure
knowledge, Bacon then turned to practical applications. First, there was
the running of the Church. There were many Greek, Hebrew and
Chaldean (Aramaic) words in the liturgy, which were not understood
by those who spoke them, and certainly not pronounced properly. The
effect, Bacon said, was like hearing magpies and parrots mimicking human
speech. Similarly, a true and devout understanding of the Ave Maria
required a thorough knowledge of the meanings of the name ‘Maria’.
The borrowed words in the psalms and other prayers must also be
properly known.77 Priests and prelates responsible for administering the
sacraments, carrying out exorcisms and other sacred duties must know the
meaning and pronunciation of the words they uttered, since the mysteries
of God were contained in them. Many priests throughout the whole
Church undertook these tasks without having any idea what the sounds
they uttered meant, which was impious and inexcusable.78
Of a different kind of importance was the necessity of knowing con-
temporary languages. Bacon pointed out that there were many Christians
subject to the Latin Church whose native languages were unknown to the
Latins, such as Greeks, Chaldeans, Armenians, Syrians and Arabs. The
Church constantly needed to discuss important matters with them and
instruct them in various ways, but could not do so without command of
their languages. The Latin failure was exposed by the weakness of faith
and morals among these people, and their indifference to doctrines of
salvation. The result was that evil Christians were found everywhere in
those regions and the Church was not governed properly.79
Finally, he explained how languages could be useful to the Church for
predicting the future. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet were held to
have particular strengths and powers which could reveal the history of the
Jewish people through the ages. If the same method could be applied to
the Latin alphabet and the results used to supplement prophecies and other
statements by trustworthy people – by the grace of God – much could be
discovered.80
Bacon then gave reasons why languages were necessary for Christian
people in general. The first was to do with commerce – absolutely vital,
since the Latin West imported most of its medicines and luxury items from
foreign lands. Due to their dependence on poor or untrustworthy trans-
lators, Latins were easily cheated, vulnerable to unjust treatment and
almost unavoidable necessity of a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew for the understanding of the
sacred scripture, and especially of Greek’. Quoted in R.W. Hunt, ‘The Library of Robert
Grosseteste’ in Callus (ed.), Robert Grosseteste, 121–45, p. 126. See Power, ‘Importance’.
77
OM, iii.xi, 3:116. 78 OM, iii.xi, 3:116–18. 79 OM, iii.xi, 3:118. 80 OM, iii.xi, 3:118–19.
102
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unable to seek redress in the law courts of these lands. Clerical envoys
were just as defenceless in this respect as merchants. Latin ignorance made
it difficult to negotiate treaties. Letters on important matters were drawn
up and carried to foreign princes without achieving anything, since they
were not written in the right language. All this was not only damaging
to Latin interests, it was humiliating when important Christian leaders
had no one around them who could understand a letter written in Arabic
or Greek. This had happened recently, he said, when the Sultan of
Babylon had written to Louis IX of France and no one in the whole
kingdom could explain what the letter said, much less write a reply. Bacon
added that the king had been disgusted by the ignorance of the clergy on
this occasion.81
Languages were also indispensable for missionary work. The inability of
Christians to use Hebrew in preaching to Jews, expounding the scriptures
to them, or in discussion and disputation meant that the souls of these
people, who lived in Christendom, were being destroyed for lack of
the Christian truth. Bacon regarded this situation with horror: ‘Oh the
indescribable loss of souls, when innumerable Jews might easily be
converted!’82 He added that it was worse still because their faith laid
the foundation for the Christian faith, and Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary,
the apostles and many sacred writers of the Church were Jews. In
addition, Greeks, Russians and other schismatics, together with
Muslims, pagans, Mongols and other infideles, continued to be estranged
from the Church because their errors were not addressed in their
own languages. They were further antagonised by the endless attacks
made on them by Christians, especially the military orders. This meant a
great loss of souls, and it also meant that Christians were failing in
their evangelical responsibilities, for which they would be held to account
by God.83
The last part of his argument on languages considered how they might
be used to defend Christendom against people who could not be con-
verted. He provided a stringent, pragmatic critique of the weakness of
crusading. Rather, Christianity should be preached by learned men
who were either skilled linguists or who had the best and most loyal
translators. If the infideles proved resistant, such men should accompany
the crusading army to consolidate the Latin position by subjugating the
whole population permanently to the Christian truth. In suggesting this,
81
OM, iii.xii, 3:119–20.
82
‘O damnum ineffabile animarum, cum facile esset innumerabiles Judaeos converti!’: OM, iii.xiii,
3:121.
83
OM, iii.xiii, 3:122.
103
Bacon had more in mind than simple preaching or disputation. Language
was complex and multivalent: words had a power and a binding strength
far beyond the might of armies. Long ago, the saints had suspended the
laws of nature and performed miracles through words; the dominion of
tyrants had been broken by bold speaking of the truth. Nor had the arm of
the Lord been shortened since those days, for there were certain formid-
able arts – shrouded in secrecy – which would allow good Christians, in
good faith and with the authority of the Church, speaking in the correct
way at the correct time, to harness divine and natural forces to holy ends.
By these arts Moses and other saints had inflamed men with the zeal to act,
without compromising their freedom of will. But more Bacon would not
say until after he had explained the basic sciences that underlay these
occult arts.84
This paraphrase of Bacon’s argument highlights the important themes
of the third book of the Opus maius. The ignorance of the Latin West was
dangerous: dangerous for Christians, and dangerous for the rest of human-
ity. In the first half he showed how the scholars of the Latin West were
straining to glimpse the great and beautiful truths of the cosmos through
the dark glass of imperfect translations and inadequate knowledge; how
the offices of the Church, the sacraments, the private prayers of individuals
were muffled by incompetence. In the second part he presented a bleak
image of a world where comparatively few had access to truth, salvation
and eternal life and, through laziness, short-sighted or greedy policies of
violence and a lack of insight, did little to prevent their fellow humans
from living and dying in spiritual darkness. The evangelical imperative was
central to Christianity, and medieval Christians were betraying it. God
would call them to account for their neglect, and they would have no
defence to offer, for their lack of action was indefensible.85 The prelimin-
ary remedy for this shameful situation was the study of languages.
on mathematics
The fourth, and much the longest, book of the Opus maius dealt with the
subject of mathematics. Bacon believed that it was the ‘gate and key’ to all
the sciences, as well as to an understanding of matters secular, ecclesiastical
and divine. He claimed that although mathematics had been used by saints
and sapientes since the beginning of the world, and was still well under-
stood by the laity who used it all the time in daily life, it had been
neglected in the universities of the Latin West for thirty or forty years,
84
OM, iii.xiv, 3:122–5. See below, p. 112.
85
This disturbing vision was, once again, strikingly similar to that of Adam Marsh.
104
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to the destruction of scholarship.86 People had been using dialectical
methods to approach branches of learning that could only be understood
through mathematics. Only those few scholars – Grosseteste, Adam Marsh
and others – who had harnessed ‘the power of mathematics’ really knew
how to show ‘the causes of all things’ and give plausible elucidations of
matters human and divine.87
Like Grosseteste, Bacon believed that all things in the cosmos were
bound together in a series of relationships that could only be explained
mathematically. This concept was so central to his understanding of the
workings of the universe that he had already written a separate treatise of
explanation, De multiplicatione specierum, which was sent to Clement along
with the Opus maius and Opus minus.88 The fundamental idea was that
everything that existed had been caused by something else. The chain of
causation stopped only with God. To cause something was, of course, not
the same thing as to create it – only God could create. But the heat of the
sun, for example, caused the growth of plants. The force by which one
thing caused an effect in another was called its species. The species of
something was, for Bacon, a kind of power which constantly emanated
from it in all directions. The strength of this power, and its ability to
influence the things it came in contact with, depended very much on the
kind of thing that was producing the species. Higher things affected lower
things, but not the other way around: ‘the sun and stars cause everything
here below, and the angels move the heavens and stars, and the soul its
own body’.89 This happened on various levels and was moderated in
various ways. For example, the planets and stars had an effect on the
minds of humans (this is the premise of astrology), but since every
individual also had free will the outcome was not entirely predictable.
The species moved and interacted with other things through a process of
constant multiplication which could be investigated mathematically since
species travelled in straight lines or angles or refractions, depending on the
medium through which they were passing. The diversity of nature was
caused by the different rays of species falling in different ways. Simply by
applying these principles and some others that he lacked time to include, it
86
OM, iv.i.1, 1:97–8. The laity understood mathematics ‘utiliter et pulchre’: OM, iv.i.3, 1:104. A
century earlier John of Salisbury had complained about Latin ignorance of mathematics: Joannis
Saresberiensis: Metalogicon, ed. J. B. Hall (Turnhout, 1991), iv.6, p. 145.
87
‘per potestatem mathematicae sciverunt causas omnium explicare’: OM, iv.i.3, 1:108.
88
Lindberg estimates that it was written in the late 1250s or early 1260s: in Roger Bacon, Roger
Bacon’s Philosophy, p. xxxii, see also pp. xxxv–liii; Lindberg in Perspectiva, pp. lxviii–xciv; Lindberg,
‘Roger Bacon on Light’, esp. pp. 245–56; Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 106–16, 144–7; Denery,
Seeing, esp. pp. 86–9ff.
89
‘sol et stellae faciunt omnia hic inferius, et angeli movent coelum et stellas, et anima corpus suum’:
OM, iv.iii.1, 1:120.
105
would be possible to verify every action of nature, since ‘every truth about
the operation of an agent in a medium, or in all created material, or in the
heavens, and in the whole scheme of the world, has its intermediate or
absolute cause in [these] principles’.90
Bacon explained how the principles could be demonstrated by simple
experiments with light, glasses and mirrors, although naturally it was more
complicated when it took place in a human being. He gave a number of
geometrical figures – which owed much to Euclid – to make the move-
ments and relationships clearer. He also wanted to demonstrate that
human art could replicate what nature achieved on its own: for example,
fire could be started by catching the rays of the sun in a concave mirror and
focusing the beams on something flammable. Such power, once under-
stood, could be harnessed to the ends of the Church to remarkable
effect.91
The chapters that followed showed how the principles of the multi-
plication of species and of geometry could be applied to clear up long-
standing difficulties about the nature of the cosmos and the earth. These
included such questions as whether the moon and the stars had their own
light, or merely reflected the sun; how the rays of light from the sun
moved through the different substances in the atmosphere of the earth;
how to verify the varying temperatures across the earth’s surface; how
species affected the nature of places and caused regions and people to differ
from one another; how to understand the movements of the tides; and
how the heavens and other influences affected the health of the human
body. Without geometry and the mathematical proofs it offered, scholars
could only attempt a cautious reconciliation between numerous conflict-
ing opinions. Such methods could be dangerous: more than a few philo-
sophers and theologians were ‘philosophising’ about matter and universals
in a way that would lead them towards heretical conclusions about God.92
Mathematical reasoning, on the other hand, could do nothing but
demonstrate the orthodox truth in a straightforward fashion: such was
its nature. Among other examples, Bacon demonstrated how mathematics
proved that the earth was a sphere positioned at the heart of the universe,
and that there was only one universe and it was finite.93 The reason why
mathematics was so much more effective than philosophy in establishing
90
‘omnis veritas circa operationem agentis in medium, vel in materiam generabilem, vel in coelestia,
et in totam mundi machinam, sumit ortum mediate vel immediate ex jam dictis’: OM, iv.iv.1,
1:127.
91
OM, iv.ii–iii, 1:109–27. 92 OM, iv.iv.8, 1:144.
93
OM, iv.iv.10–13, 1:152–65. Much of this section depends overtly on Euclid and, rather more
silently, on Sacrobosco. Compare, for example, OM, iv.iv.x, i.152, 156 and L. Thorndike, The
Sphere of Sacrobosco and its Commentators (Chicago, 1949), pp. 80–1, 83.
106
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such facts was because mathematics was capable of proving causes while
natural philosophy could only observe outcomes as they manifested
themselves in nature.94
After arguing the necessity of mathematics in secular affairs and human
sciences he went on to show that it was also essential to religious and
ecclesiastical concerns – ‘and this is the greater matter, since human
concerns are worth nothing unless they are applied to the divine’.95
Mathematics had the power to elevate the mind towards God through
the sciences that depended on it, as many philosophers had demonstrated.
For example, logic was based in mathematics, and ‘the point of logic is the
composition of arguments which move the practical intellect to faith and
the love of virtue and future happiness’. Furthermore, if the principles of
music – another science dependent on mathematics – were used to
enhance the arguments of logic, one could create such poetic beauty
that ‘the soul of man would be seized by the truths of salvation, suddenly
and without preparation’.96 The theologian’s grasp of the scriptures,
especially of the primary literal sense, depended on knowledge of proper-
ties and natures of the things of the world, which could not be known
without mathematics.97 Without astronomy many verses or events in the
Bible were opaque. Consideration of the heavens was of further impor-
tance because it elevated the Christian mind towards its future home.
Without information about the physical nature of places it was impossible
to draw the allegorical meaning from them. Without chronology the
history and development of religion in the world could not be known –
even the dates of the Nativity and Passion of Christ were uncertain – and
without urgent reform of the calendar, impious and embarrassing errors
about the dates of feasts and fasts could not be corrected.98 This last was an
especially pressing matter since the extent of the slippage of moveable
feasts over the centuries meant that in the year that this part of the Opus
maius was written – 1267 – Christians were unwittingly eating meats
during the first eight days of the Lenten fast and fasting right through
the Easter feast. This was an appalling state of affairs, not least because it
made Christians a laughing-stock among other peoples, who in their
contempt for Christians would hardly be likely to convert. Bacon
added: ‘And while these things are horrible in themselves, they are all
94
OM, iv.iv.15, 1:169.
95
‘Et hoc est magis considerandum, quia humana nihil valent nisi applicentur ad divina’: OM, iv.
iv.16, 1.175.
96
‘Nam finis logicae est compositio argumentorum quae movent intellectum practicum ad fidem et
amorem virtutis et felicitatis futurae’; ‘ut rapiatur animus hominis ad salutiferas vertitates subito et
sine praevisione’: OM, iv.i.2, 1:100.
97
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:175. 98 OM, iv.iv.16, 1:179–210.
107
the more stupid and worthy of derision because it was due to ignorance
and negligence that the Devil was able to make this befall the Church
of God.’99
Moreover, he went on, the geometrical forms and numbers in the
scriptures – including, of course, the Trinity itself – were intended to be
visualised and examined in the most literal fashion.100 He wrote exultantly
about the possibilities for geometrically precise depictions of certain places
or objects, such as the new Jerusalem which God showed Ezekiel in a
dream, or the vestments of Aaron – on which ‘according to scripture, the
whole world and the deeds of the forefathers were represented’ – which
had been described with such precision in the Bible that if an artist had
mastered the principles of Euclid, Theodosius, Milleius and others he
ought to be able to replicate them perfectly for the contemplation of
Christians, who could then draw spiritual truths and even achieve mystical
ecstasy by examining them. Ancient writers had used pictures and figures
in this way: Bacon had seen examples.101
Geometry could also offer ‘beautiful analogies about grace and glory and
future punishment, and guarding against vices’.102 Bacon gave examples of
how this might be done, showing how rays of light could be compared to
different moral states; how the species of sinful temptation operated on
humans; how the Trinity might be explained in geometrical proportions;
and much else. This section is rich with an extraordinary diversity of
information, ideas and moral reflections, all backed up with mathematical
observations.103 Yet despite the pertinent quotations from respected autho-
rities and carefully constructed arguments he had offered in support of each
of his propositions, Bacon was still worried that Clement might reject his
ideas because of the conservative attitude to mathematics among scholars of
the Latin West. In the following pages he offered a more direct defence in a
subsection he called ‘de excusatione mathematicae’.104 The problem, he
said, was that people had been suspicious of mathematics for a long time,
partly because they associated it with astronomy.105
Bacon’s discussion of astronomy is somewhat confusing for the modern
reader, since he shared the modern perception that there are ways of
99
‘Et cum haec sunt horribilia ex se, sunt magis stulta et derisione digna; quia propter ignorantiam et
negligentiam diabolus procuravit quod sic accideret ecclesiae Dei’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:275.
100
For precedents see R.E. Reynolds, ‘“At Sixes and Sevens” – and Eights and Nines: The Sacred
Mathematics of Sacred Orders in the Early Middle Ages’, Speculum, 54.4 (1979), 669–84.
101
‘ut dicit scriptura, erat descriptus orbis terrarum et parentum magnalia’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211.
102
‘in comparationibus pulchris respectu gratiae and gloriae et poenae futurae, et cautela vitiorum’:
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:212.
103
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:175–238. 104 He referred to the section by that title at OM, iv.iv.16, 1:286.
105
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:239.
108
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studying and interpreting the heavens that range from the scientific
through to the fraudulent, but did not use our distinction between
astronomy and astrology to differentiate them.106 Instead, he divided
what we would call astrology into two parts. The first type of astrology
was an aspect of astronomy – a science worth serious attention, which
could only be undertaken by good Christians in accordance with a set of
principles. The second was the province of fortune-tellers, magicians and
other disreputable people; a travesty of the true science, used for deception
and other malign purposes. Both attempted to explain past events or
predict the future on the basis of the influence of heavenly bodies on
things below, but only the first type could produce reliable answers. This
was a commonplace division.107 Moreover, elements of astrology, espe-
cially the signs of the zodiac, were everywhere to be seen in those days,
placed conspicuously in the newly constructed churches and cathedrals:
rimming the tympana under which the congregation would pass or
radiant in the glass of windows.108
Bacon divided the types of mathematics similarly, distinguishing them
by method and intention. There was a ‘true’ mathematics which was vital
to Christians and a ‘false’ mathematics which was a part of magic, together
with divination, necromancy, illusion and sorcery.109 As he was going to
recommend the study of some parts of magic, he introduced a further
distinction, one that was of vital importance: that of predestination and
free will. False mathematicians entirely excluded free will from their
interpretations, and so assumed that they could predict the future abso-
lutely. A true mathematician would offer only general predictions, while
insisting on the power of the individual to control his or her destiny.110
A second reason for the condemnation of false mathematicians was
their ‘utterly wicked’ habit of summoning demons through invocations
and sacrifices. They also practised frauds and deceptions designed to
beguile the gullible. Equally contemptible, for Bacon, was their tendency
to taint their studies of the heavens with ‘circles, figures, totally absurd
characters, the most foolish charms and the irrational prayers in which they
have confidence’.111 But the worst thing that they had done, he said, had
106
The difficulty is much exacerbated by J.H. Bridges’ unwarranted editorial intervention. The
heading ‘Judicia astronomiae’ is given to 1:239–69 and ‘Astrologia’ to 1:377–403, although this
distorts Bacon’s purpose, since these parts were not intended to be separate treatises.
107
Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on Astronomy-Astrology’, pp. 176–87.
108
For example, at Notre Dame de Chartres the signs of the zodiac are represented in glass as well as
twice in stone: they are depicted in the tympana of both the north and west porches.
109
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:239–40. 110 OM, iv.iv.16, 1:240–9.
111
‘per circulos et figuras et characteres vanissimos et carmina stultissima, et orationes irrationabiles in
quibus confidunt’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:241.
109
been to hinder the spread of the Christian faith in the early days of the
Church. They had done this partly by an obstinate adherence to a fatalistic
acceptance of the power of the heavens to determine the shape of their
personalities and the course of their lives; and partly by saying publicly that
the miracles of the apostles, martyrs and saints were achieved by magic,
rather than by the power of God.112
Bacon went on to explain the views of ‘true’ mathematicians such as
Aristotle, Avicenna, Ptolemy, Hali, Messehalac and, above all, Abuˉ
Ma’shar. He made it clear that they had all recognised that any astrological
predictions might in the event be subverted by human free will or the will
of God. He noted that patristic writers had accepted that the heavens
foretold particular events, and that there were even statements in the
scriptures confirming this view.113 Anyone who denied this was either
ignorant or dishonest. Until recently ‘Catholic doctors’ had studied
mathematics. It was only ‘certain theologians’ who were currently attack-
ing it in their lectures and preaching, and in public and private discussions.
They were the ones who were destroying philosophy and theology and
thereby undermining the government of the Church, regulation of the
faithful and conversion of non-Christians.114
Bacon, proceeding with caution, then came to the central contention
on which much of the rest of the book depended. The heavenly bodies did
influence terrestrial matters, and the rational soul was strongly affected by
them, even if it was not absolutely compelled:
For the diversity of those living under different parallels of the heavens is reflected
in the variety of their customs, as those who live near the pole, such as the
Scythians, have different customs from those that live towards the south, such as
the Ethiopians; and different again from these are those that live in the fourth
climate . . . But this diversity does not come from the people themselves because
of a difference in their rational souls, but is rather due to the way that the innate
complexions of the body are affected by the nature of the heavens – the diverse
parallels and stars under which they live – and by the diversity of their locations in
relation to the position of the planets.115
112
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:241–2. Bacon was doubtless thinking of Simon Magus, the archetypal obstructive
magician, whose putative attempts to turn the emperor Nero against the apostles Peter and Paul
had been hotly described only a few years before by the Italian Dominican Jacopo de Voragine in
his Legenda sanctorum. Preaching exempla featuring magicians and conjurers of demons as inad-
vertent witnesses to cosmic truths were popular among the friars, and presumably their audiences.
113
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:247. Of the many possibilities, Bacon gave Matthew 16.2–3; Luke 21.25; Joel
2.31 ‘etc.’.
114
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:248.
115
‘quod secundum diversitatem habitantium sub diversis coeli parallelis variantur mores, sicut
habitantes versus polum, ut Scythae, alios habent mores, quam habitantes versus meridiem, sicut
Aethiopes; et alios ab his habent illi, qui in quarto climate . . . Hoc autem non est ex ipsis
110
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The view that people were not fundamentally different in their ‘rational
souls’, but had been shaped by the influence of the stars on their environ-
ment, had a number of encouraging implications. It meant that, on the
one hand, a skilled astronomer who was able to determine how heavenly
influences would affect different regions would be able to produce a set of
useful working assumptions about all the different peoples of the world.
These would provide rough guidelines on what to expect of them, in war
and peace, and how to approach them. Yet, on the other hand, because of
the capacity of the will to free itself from the influence of the stars and of
any rational mind to open itself to the same persuasions as the mind of a
Christian, missionaries would be able to work among them, gently freeing
them from error and leading them to the truth.
Bacon next considered the various benefits of using astrology to antici-
pate potential directions in human activity and chart the unfolding of
eschatological events as different planets moved through the houses of the
heavens by the command of God. It was not wrong to do this, especially
since God had deliberately written the future in the skies so that it could be
read, just as he had allowed certain conjunctions to mark the conception
and nativity of Christ, and had darkened the sun at the Passion.116
Astronomy had other practical applications: Bacon then gave a fuller
explanation of what was wrong with the calendar, suggesting ways that
the errors could be remedied without entirely rejecting the authority of
the Council of Nicaea, where, he said, the present cycle had long ago been
approved.117 He begged Clement to act: ‘If this glorious work was done
during the pontificate of your Holiness, then one of the greatest, best and
most beautiful things that was ever undertaken in the Church of God
would be accomplished.’118
In order to be able to use astrological techniques with precision, it was
necessary to amass as much detail as possible about the nature of the planet
and its regions. As he had already said, everything on earth was affected by
the influences – the species – pouring down from the heavens. Every point
across the earth’s surface could be envisaged as the apex of a pyramid of
celestial influence, but to understand this properly the astronomer had to
know about regional diversity in the world, and the way that seasonal
changes altered regions, and of diversity within regions. He devoted a
lengthy section to a preliminary survey of what was known, beginning
hominibus a parte diversitatis animae rationalis, sed propter complexiones corporum innatas a
natura coeli, sub cujus parallelis diversis et stellis situantur, et secundum diversitatem situs eorum
respectu planetarum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:250.
116
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:267. 117 OM, iv.iv.16, 1:269–85.
118
‘Si igitur istud opus gloriosum fieret temporibus Vestrae Sanctitatis, tunc una de majoribus rebus et
melioribus et pulchrioribus consummaretur quae unquam in ecclesia Dei fuerunt attentatae’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:285.
111
with the sort of geometrical description of the heavens and earth that
could be found in all De sphaera treatises and on which numerous other
cosmological works were also based.119 He next described, and apparently
included, a map of the known world, which appears not to have sur-
vived.120 The bulk of the material, however, was a treatise on geography
which blended traditional Latin cosmography with the insights of newly
received Graeco-Arabic works and eyewitness accounts.121 He empha-
sised that knowledge of places was very important for all Latins who had
anything to do with the lands beyond Christendom. A great variety of
dangers threatened unprepared travellers: ‘for he who is ignorant of the
places in the world not only does not know where he is going, but does
not know what course of action to follow’.122 Nor was staying at home
any protection against the menace of the wider world: Christendom itself
was threatened by Antichrist and his allies, who might come from any
direction at any moment. Such things needed to be clarified through a
better knowledge of geography and greater attention to world affairs.123
However, the immediate purpose of Bacon’s treatise was to demonstrate
the limitations of existing information, ‘so that Your Wisdom might see
that more work is needed here’.124
After he had surveyed the known world, ending in Spain, he discussed
the linked subjects of astrology, medicine, prophecy and magic more
fully. Much of this was designed to impress upon the Pope the benefits
of these arts to the Latin West, using a similar general argument to his
earlier sections on the same subjects. However, backed by what had gone
before, his examples had become considerably more daring. Many of
them were drawn from the Secretum secretorum. He argued that activities
such as surgery, peace-keeping and moral reform were more effective
when their timing was confirmed by astrological observation, and recom-
mended the use of incantations and charms against dangerous animals and
human enemies.125 He warned Clement that the Muslims and Mongols
119
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:288–94. He had already written at greater length of the relative sizes of the
heavenly bodies and earth, the nature of the spheres and so on in his application of mathematics to
sacred subjects: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:224–36. See E. Grant, Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos,
1200–1687 (Cambridge, 1994), esp. pp. 20, 33–4.
120
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:294–300; Woodward and Howe, ‘Roger Bacon on Geography’, pp. 200–1, 210,
215–17; D. Woodward, ‘Roger Bacon’s Terrestrial Coordinate System’, Annuals of the Association
of American Geographers, 80 (1990), 109–22.
121
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:305–76. On this see below, pp. 214–27.
122
‘Deinde qui loca mundi ignorat, nescit non solum quo vadit, sed quo tendat’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:301–2.
123
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:302–4.
124
‘ut Vestra Sapientia recognoscat quod major labor hic requiritur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:305.
125
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:376–403.
112
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were already using such methods, and that Antichrist, when he came,
would certainly do so. Christians should be equipped to recognise what was
going on and to retaliate in kind. He appreciated that these were disturbing
suggestions, but pointed out that a knife that could kill was useful for eating,
and that the law, which was so frequently corrupt, was the only recourse of
good men.126 The same fine, yet absolute, distinction lay between the
perverted magic of charlatans and the holy miracles of saints. Just because
magic was associated with witches, magicians and demons did not mean that
it might not yet save Christendom from great peril.
Bacon ended his book on mathematics on a tentative note: ‘but on other
wonders, it is better to reflect than write, until greater certainty is desired by
apostolic authority, and these things are possible. And if you and the
successors of your Holiness wish, all these things can be brought to frui-
tion.’127 He knew how risky it was to make such suggestions; that he did so is
evidence both of courage and conviction. The fourth book was a somewhat
untidy, repetitive and disorganised piece of work, but was full of enthusiasm
about the possibilities that mathematics offered to the Latin West.
perspectiva
The fifth book of the Opus maius was an extended discussion of perspectiva,
the branch of learning to do with vision and perception.128 The calm
authority and logical structure of this book are in sharp contrast to the
erratic structure and defensive enthusiasm of the preceding book. It is
likely that it had been a separate treatise before incorporation into the
larger work.129 Bacon had a great love for this scientia: ‘if our deliberations
to this point have been beautiful and delightful, the matters now to be
considered are far more beautiful and delightful’; ‘although some other
sciences might possibly be more useful than this one, none possesses utility
of such charm and beauty’.130 He did not spend much time on the
126
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:394–5.
127
‘Sed in aliis mirabilibus melius est cogitare quam scribere, donec apostolica auctoritate requiratur
major certitudo, et haec possibilia sunt. Et si vos et successores Vestrae Beatitudinis velint, poterunt
omnia adimpleri’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:403.
128
Seven manuscripts contain an alternative opening passage which describes the treatise on perspec-
tiva as a compendium of the essential points in Euclid, Alkindi (al-Kindıˉ), Tideus (who wrote a
treatise On the Mirror), Alhacen (al-H : asan) and Ptolemy. See Lindberg in Perspectiva, ‘Appendix 1’,
p. 336/337 and n. 641, pp. 391–2.
129
Easton, Roger Bacon, p. 111; Lindberg in Perspectiva, pp. xxiii–xxiv. For a study of a probable earlier
draft of the Perspectiva see Hackett, ‘Hand’.
130
‘si pulcra et delectabilis est consideratio que dicta est, hec longe est pulcrior et delectabilior’; ‘Potest
vero aliqua scientia esse utilior, sed nulla tantam suavitatem et pulcritudinem utilitatis habet’:
Perspectiva, i.i.1, p. 2/3, 4/5.
113
justifications with which he prefaced all the other books, but almost
immediately launched into a detailed and practical discussion (supported
by various Arabic and Greek authorities) of the anatomy and functioning
of the brain, eyes and optical nerves, the senses, perception and mem-
ory.131 The next part explained how vision worked – namely, through the
multiplication of species. When the eye received the species of the light and
colour of an object, the object could be seen, through a complicated
process taking place in the optical nerves and brain. Bacon clarified aspects
of this process at some length.132 Species were not the only necessity for
perception of an object: other things were required, such as light, appro-
priate distance, unimpeded line of sight, sufficient size and density and a
healthy eye, as he went on to explain.133 He then moved on to particular
‘modes and causes’ of vision, beginning with those that operated in
straight lines, such as short- and longsightedness. He investigated why
things were sometimes seen in double; the influence of the other senses
and assumptions based on prior knowledge; and the perception of dis-
tance, magnitude and scintillation.134 The next part concerned reflected
and refracted vision – essentially, the effect on perception of seeing an
object indirectly, by means of a mirror or anything that functioned like a
mirror, such as water. He considered the effects produced by different
shapes of mirror, especially concave and convex mirrors.135 Although he
provided intricate geometrical descriptions at each stage, many of his
examples were based on observation of stars and planets with the naked
eye, so that although he was talking about the functioning of vision, there
are constant evocations of a great cosmos in motion. Practically all of this
came straight from his sources, but there is no doubt that he had entered
imaginatively into such methods of investigating vision and had tried them
for himself. We are left with a vivid, tranquil picture of the visual
experience of living in a world where the heavens circled in their
slow, intricate dance above, their radiance dimmed only by natural
vapours rising in the air; the darkness of night relieved only by the small
glimmering of fires and candles.
When he had completed his discussion of perspectiva, he devoted the last
pages of the book to explaining the importance of this scientia to the wider
project at hand. First, it was needed in order to understand the frequent
scriptural references to the eye and to vision. For example, King David
had pleaded in Psalm 17: ‘Preserve me, O Lord, as the pupil of your eye’,
but those who did not know in a literal sense how the pupil of the eye was
131
Perspectiva, i.i.2–i.iv.4, pp. 4–59. 132 Perspectiva, i.v.1–i.vii.4, pp. 60–107.
133
Perspectiva, i.viii.1–i.ix.4, pp. 108–45. 134 Perspectiva, ii.i.1–ii.iii.9, pp. 160–251.
135
Perspectiva, iii.i.1–iii.ii.4; pp. 252–321.
114
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preserved would not know that it was preserved in seven ways, and so
would not be able to draw the spiritual meaning from the verse – which
Bacon went on to do in a masterly fashion.136 He drew parallels between
all that he had been saying about the requirements for corporeal vision and
what was necessary for spiritual vision. He explained how vision was weak
in this life, and would grow stronger when the soul was in heaven, but
would not be perfect until after the resurrection of the body at the end of
time: ‘according to what the apostle says: “now we see dimly through a
mirror, but in glory face-to-face”.’137
He concluded on a practical note. Understanding the mechanisms of
reflection and refraction was the first step to important innovations.
Carefully arranged mirrors could give enemies the impression that they
were faced by many armies, or by strange apparitions. If one could find out
how to make the air dense so that it would reflect things, in the way that it
was believed that demons did, one could discover the locations of hidden
dangers. Socrates had used this method to find the mountain lair of a
poisonous dragon. Mirrors set up in high places could serve the same
function: as did the mirrors supposedly set up along the coast of Gaul by
Julius Caesar on the eve of his invasion of Britain. Transparent substances
could be shaped to distort the sizes of things, so that large things would
appear small and small things large.138 ‘Moreover, we could make the sun,
moon, and stars appear to descend to the terrestrial realm and appear over
the heads of enemies. And we could perform many similar feats, so that the
mind of a mortal ignorant of the truth could not withstand them’ – thus
Bacon proposed to confuse the warriors of Islam, the Mongol hordes and
the armies of Antichrist to the point of insanity.139 All this was very
satisfying: ‘not only can we produce results useful to friends and terrifying
to enemies, but these results are able to offer the great comfort of
philosophy, so that every vanity of jesters will be obscured by the beauty
of the marvels of wisdom, and people will rejoice in the truth, banishing to
a great distance the fallacies of the magicians’.140
learning from experience

The next, and sixth, book of the Opus maius explained the fundamentals
of scientia experimentalis. Bacon’s thinking on this subject was strongly
influenced by the work of Grosseteste, who had himself been stimulated
by Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. It was also shaped by discussions with
136 137
Perspectiva, iii.iii.1, pp. 322–5. Perspectiva, iii.iii.2, pp. 326–31, quotation at 328/329.
138 139
Perspectiva, iii.iii.3–4, pp. 330–5. Perspectiva, iii.iii.4, p. 334/335.
140
Perspectiva, iii.iii.3, p. 332/333.
115
Petrus Peregrinus of Maricourt, and probably with the friars of Oxford, who
were themselves exploring directions suggested by Grosseteste.141 Bacon
explained that it was not so much a branch of learning as a methodology,
but it is important not to equate it directly with experimental science in the
modern sense. It was at least as much to do with simple observation, and
attention to the details of one’s experiences, as with the deliberate activity
of experimentation. He explained: ‘There are two ways of finding things
out: through reasoning and through experience. Reasoning provides a
conclusion and makes us concede the conclusion, but it does not prove it
nor does it remove doubt so that one can rest in consciousness of the truth,
unless one discovers it through experience.’142 Much contemporary knowl-
edge was based on spurious reasoning which could be disproved by simple
observation, such as the fallacy that diamonds could only be broken by the
application of goat’s blood or that hot water would freeze more quickly
than cold water.143 Nevertheless, not all investigation could be carried out
directly with one’s own eyes: study of the heavens required instruments, and
knowledge of distant lands depended on the testimony of others. Moreover,
all observers, however acute they were, needed grace, faith and divine
illumination if they were to understand fully what they saw. Scientia experi-
mentalis was the art of engaging with experience on every level from the
practical to the mystical in order to establish truths in the realms of both
human and spiritual knowledge in ways that would be useful both to
scholarship and the government of the whole world.144
This scientia was the tool that would enable good Christians to keep
control of the programme of study that Bacon was advocating. It could
distinguish between true, godly and honest practices and the undesirable
alternatives. It had three main prerogatives, the first of which was that of
testing and confirming the conclusions of all other scientiae.145 He gave the
example of how experiment could elucidate the various phenomena of
the rainbow, indicating the extent to which older authorities (especially in
dubious translations) were correct in their observations.146 He pointed out
141
Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 139–62; J. Hackett, ‘Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon on the
Posterior Analytics’ in M. Lutz-Bachmann et al. (eds.), Erkenntnis und Wissenschaft: Probleme der
Epistemologie in der Philosophie des Mittelalters (Berlin, 2004), 161–212.
142
‘Duo enim sunt modi cognoscendi, scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Argumentum
concludit et facit nos concedere conclusionem, sed non certificat neque removet dubitationem ut
quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat via experientiae’: OM, vi.i, 2:167. See
J. Hackett, ‘Experientia, Experimentum and Perception of Objects in Space: Roger Bacon’,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 25 (1997), 101–20.
143
OM, vi.1, 2:168–9. 144 OM, vi.i, 2:171–2. 145 OM, vi.ii, 2:172.
146
OM, vi.ii–xii, 2:172–201, esp. 2:193, on authorities. Bacon’s work on the rainbow has been extensively
analysed: see in particular D.C. Lindberg, ‘Roger Bacon’s Theory of the Rainbow: Progress or
Regress’, Isis, 57 (1966), 236–49; Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis’, esp. pp. 297–306.
116
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that what he was doing was showing that most of what he had said could
not be confirmed by a process of reasoning, but only through meticulous
experiment. He did not think that he had uncovered the whole truth about
rainbows because he had not yet made all the necessary experiments. The
purpose of his discussion was essentially to persuade Clement to encourage
this type of study, rather than to teach him about rainbows.147
Experimentum, wrote Bacon, had the further prerogative of uncovering
truths that could not be discovered in any other way. It dealt with matters
that had nothing to do with established principles and which would not
even occur to anyone through a reasoning process because they were not
the sort of things that would occur to anyone to consider. For example, if
one had never heard of the concept of magnetism, one would never find
out by any intellectual process that a magnet attracted iron: experience
alone would reveal the fact. He offered three examples of things that he
thought had been discovered solely by experiment. The first example was
an instrument that ‘would be worth the treasure of a king, would replace
the existing instruments of astronomy, and clocks, and would be the most
exquisite spectacle of sapientia’.148 It was a spherical astrolabe, constructed
with the greatest accuracy so that everything of importance in the heavens
and on earth could be carefully marked and seen in relation to each other.
It would also be able to do what an ordinary astrolabe could not – move
naturally with the daily motion of the celestial bodies.149
The next example was the secret of extending human life, which had
become significantly shorter than it had been at the beginning of the
world when it had been quite common for biblical patriarchs to live for
hundreds of years.150 The usual explanation for this was the general decay
of the universe: the slow shifting of heavenly constellations from the
perfect positions in which they had been created. Bacon suspected, how-
ever, that an important factor was widespread neglect of health among the
general population and a lack of attention to the problem on the part of
medical doctors, together with the moral laxity in society.151 Aside from
147
OM, vi.xii, 2:202.
148
‘Et tunc thesaurum unius regis valeret hoc instrumentum et cessarent instrumenta astronomiae, et
horologia, et esset pulcherrimum spectaculum sapientiae’: OM, vi.xii (exemplum i), 2:202–3,
quotation at 203.
149
Hackett thinks that Bacon was describing the celestial armillary sphere: ‘Roger Bacon on Scientia
Experimentalis’, p. 306. See S. Schechner Genuth, ‘Armillary Sphere’ in R. Bud and D. Warner
(eds.), Instruments of Science: An Historical Encyclopedia (New York, 1998), 28–31.
150
Methuselah held the record at nine hundred and sixty-nine years: Gen. 5.
151
OM, vi.xii, 2:204–5. See F. Getz, ‘Roger Bacon and Medicine: The Paradox of the Forbidden
Fruit and the Secrets of Long Life’ in RBS, 337–64; F. Getz, Medicine in the English Middle Ages
(Princeton, 1998), esp. pp. 49–64.
117
following the practical advice offered by ‘Aristotle’ in the Secretum secre-
torum, remedies for the situation depended largely on the secrets that could
be uncovered through the ‘extraordinary and ineffable utility and magni-
ficence’ of scientia experimentalis.152 Many authorities had given tantalising
hints of mysterious potions to prolong life, and practitioners of the science
had tried to discover more by observing carefully the ways in which
animals lengthened their lives – ‘recently in Paris there was a sapiens
who looked for snakes, took one, and sliced it into small pieces, except
that the skin of its belly, on which it crawled, remained intact. This snake
crawled as best it could to a particular herb, and was immediately healed
by touching it.’153 Bacon reported on a potion described rather cryptically
in De regimine senum and gave some indication of the true meaning of the
enigmatic phrases.154 The idea was that the potion would contain a perfect
equality of elements, thereby preventing any decay of the body by
simulating the condition of the body after its resurrection at the end of
time. Bacon thought that the potion had similar properties to the fruit on
the tree of life, which would have ensured Adam’s immortality if he had
not sinned.155 A man living during the reign of King William of Sicily had
swallowed such a potion and lived for several hundred years. Bacon was
careful to note (twice) that this person had letters of authentication from
the pope of the day to prove that there had been such a miracle.156
Bacon’s third, closely related, example of a branch of learning depen-
dent on experientia was alchemy. This was a subject that, while always
excluded from the university curriculum, seems to have been controver-
sial only intermittently. Indeed, the papal curia was not immune to its
allure.157 Bacon nevertheless reported that the secret art of producing gold
of quite extraordinary purity out of base metals had only ever been known
152
‘mirabilis et ineffabilis utilitas et magnificentia Scientiae Experimentalis’: OM, vi.xii, 2:204. This
text was most widely used as a source of advice for princes. See S.J. Williams, ‘Esotericism,
Marvels, and the Medieval Aristotle’, Micrologus, 14 (2006), 171–91, p. 181.
153
‘Nam Parisius nuper fuit unus sapiens, qui serpentes quaesivit et unum accepit et scidit eum in
parva frusta, nisi quod pellis ventris, super quam reperet, remansit integra, et iste serpens repebat ut
poterat ad herbam quandam, cujus tactu statim sanabatur. Et experimentator collegit herbam
admirandae virtutis’: OM, vi.xii, 2:208.
154
De regimine senum was part of Ali ben Rodwon’s commentary on Galen’s Ars parva. See La scienza
sperimentale, p. 184 n. 25.
155
OM, vi.xii, 2:211–12. Cf. DCD, xiii.20–3; C. Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in
Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), esp. pp. 94–104.
156
OM, vi.xii, 2:209–10, 213.
157
Paravicini Bagliani, Pope’s Body, pp. 199–211, 227–31. Albertus Magnus and Vincent of Beauvais,
among others, wrote on it without being particularly defensive. See W. Newman, ‘Technology
and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages’, Isis, 80.3 (1989), 423–45, pp. 425–33. On
Albertus see P. Kibre, Studies in Medieval Science: Alchemy, Astrology, Mathematics and Medicine
(London, 1984), essays 3–9.
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to a few but, with the aid of the Secretum secretorum, it could be discovered
through experimental processes. ‘It truly is the greatest of secrets,’ Bacon
wrote, ‘since not only would it benefit Christendom and give everyone
what they wanted because there would be a sufficiency of gold, but what
is infinitely more, it would extend life.’ The process of refinement that
removed impurities from metals could also eradicate the corruptions of
the human body, since it worked by producing the necessary perfect
equality of elements.158 Although many of his contemporaries wrote on
alchemical subjects, Bacon’s specific linkage of alchemy and medicine was
novel and would have great influence in the following centuries.159
The final prerogative of scientia experimentalis was to provide knowledge
of the past, present and future through a method far less fallible than
ordinary astronomy. There were great difficulties in obtaining and using
accurate astronomical instruments and verified tables; difficulties reflected
in the quality of the results. ‘However, this science has discovered the
criteria and methods by which every question can be answered easily – as
far as the nature of this particular philosophy is able – and by which it can
reveal to us the forms of celestial power and the influences of heavenly
bodies on this world, without the difficulties of ordinary astronomy.’160
Bacon was no more specific than this, but indicated that others were
thinking along the same lines, speaking of ‘the way of experiment, which
proceeds according to the course of nature, to which many of the
Christian philosophers are directing their thoughts’.161
Bacon described some practical functions of scientia experimentalis. There
were ways of influencing both nations and individuals through arcane
powers. Since the character of a people was shaped by the climate of their
land, one way to influence them was to change their climate, thereby
inclining them to adopt good morals. Bacon also described various inven-
tions, such as ‘perpetual baths’ that did not need to be refilled and lamps
that never went out. There were mysterious and destructive weapons that
could not be detected, or could only be detected by their smell, and
158
‘et vere est secretum maximum, nam non solum procuraret bonum reipublicae et omnibus
desideratum propter auri sufficientiam, sed quod plus est in infinitum, daret prolongationem
vitae’: OM, vi.xii, 2:214–15.
159
Newman, ‘Overview’, esp. p. 335. See also Newman, ‘Philosopher’s Egg’; C. Crisciani,
‘Experience and Sense Perception in Alchemical Knowledge: Some Notes’ in Pacheco and
Meirinhos (eds.), Intellect, vol. iii, 1813–22.
160
‘Haec autem scientia definitiones et vias adinvenit, per quas expedite ad omnem quaestionem
respondeat, quantum potest philosophiae singularis potestas, et per quas ostendat nobis figura-
tiones coelestium virtutum; et impressiones coelestium in hoc mundo, sine difficultate astronom-
iae vulgatae’: OM, vi.xii, 2:216.
161
‘via experimentalis, quae vadit secundum cursum naturae, ad quam intendunt multi fidelium
philosophorum’: OM, viVI.xii, 2:215–16.
119
worked by means of an infection; there was malta, a kind of bitumen that
burnt the skin on contact; there was yellow petroleum that could burn
anything and could not be extinguished by water; there were means of
producing explosions of terrifying violence.162 There were methods of
killing poisonous animals and antidotes for their poison; there were
curious experiments with magnetism, such as water divination with
hazel twigs (everyone thought this was done by incantations, but Bacon
had tried it without incantations and found that it was a natural, not a
magical, process).
The last pages of this section of the Opus maius were devoted to
showing how important this scientia was to theology and other needs of
the Church. ‘It is clear to anyone that this science is the most useful apart
from that of morals,’ he said. It was capable of elucidating the literal truth
of the Bible far beyond what could be achieved by any process of reason-
ing.163 The various functions that he had outlined would be valuable to
both Church and secular kingdoms. Through demonstrations of what this
scientia was capable of, non-Christians could be brought to the true faith.
They could be shown things that defied reason, and taught in that fashion
to believe, even if they did not understand. The capacity of scientia
experimentalis to distinguish between magical illusions and the truth
would be of further service in making conversions because ‘infideles are
obsessed by these insane things and are confident in them and believe in
them, and they believe that Christians used such means in working
miracles’. Those who were unwilling to be converted could also be
‘reproved’ by the ‘violent means’ already discussed.164 Above all, this
scientia gave life and direction to the other scientiae: ‘just as navigation
does to carpentry and the art of the knight to the forge’.165 He concluded:
‘The Church ought to consider employing it against infideles and rebels so
that Christian blood might be spared, and especially because of the future
dangers which will come in the times of Antichrist, which, with the grace
of God, it would be easy to oppose, if prelates and princes were to
promote study and investigate the secrets of nature and of art.’166
162
Bacon reported in his geographical treatise that ‘malta’ had been used by the Romans and could be
aquired in Commage, a city near Cicila: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:344.
163
‘cuilibet patet quod utilissima est haec scientia post moralem’: OM, vi.xii, 2:220.
164
‘Sed infideles occupantur his insaniis et confidunt in eis, et crediderunt Christianos uti talibus in
operibus miraculorum’: OM, vi.xii, 2:221.
165
‘sicut navigatoria ad carpentariam, et sicut ars militaris ad fabrilem’: OM, vi.xii, 2:221.
166
‘Et hoc deberet ecclesia considerare contra infideles et rebelles, ut parcatur sanguini Christiano, et
maxime propter futura pericula in temporibus Antichristi, quibus cum Dei gratia facile esset
obviare, si praelati et principes studium promoverent et secreta naturae et artis indagerent’: OM,
vi.xii, 2:222.
120
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the greatest part of wisdom
Bacon now reached the climax of the Opus maius with his book on moral
philosophy: ‘the ultimate inner purpose of human wisdom’.167 Here, the
essential purpose of the Opus maius – to demonstrate that all areas of
academic learning could be drawn together to the great advantage of the
Church and the Christian faith – began to gather its final momentum.
Moral philosophy was a practical science which had human perfection and
salvation as its ultimate aim ‘as much as philosophy can’.168 It was closely
related to theology, although it was slightly different since theology
worked specifically within the Christian faith whereas moral philosophy
supported Christianity powerfully from outside. It collected together and
made explicit all the moral and ethical ideas diffused through every other
branch of scientia, by both Christian and non-Christian authors.169
Bacon started by outlining the principles on which the universe was
constructed and the laws and obligations that underpinned the whole of
existence. They were as follows: God must exist; his existence must be
naturally known to all humans; he was infinitely powerful and infinitely
good; he was one in essence but also three; he created everything,
including angels and rational, immortal souls in humans; human salvation
was the greatest good and was within human capacity, under the direction
of God; salvation and damnation depended on human conduct in life;
God must be worshipped, other people respected and one’s own integrity
maintained; humans could not find out these truths unassisted, but
required revelation; God made known his will through the pope, to
whom the whole human race was subject and who possessed plenitudo
potestatis. It was important that all these points be agreed upon by every-
one, so that no one fell into doubt or heresy.170 Bacon then ‘proved’ the
nature of the Trinity, referring to various non-Christian philosophers who
had come close, he believed, to understanding it. It was a crucial part
of God’s plan that they had been able to glimpse elements of the great
truths – ‘whether they were to be saved or not’ – so that ‘the world might
be prepared and set in order for this perfect truth, so that it would be more
167
‘sapiencie humanae finis intra’: MP, i (proemium), pp. 3, 4.
168
‘que ordinat hominem in Deum et ad proximum et ad seipsum, et probat has ordinaciones et ad
eas nos invitat et excitat efficaciter. Haec enim sciencia est de salute hominis, ad illam salutem,
quantum potest philosophia’: MP, i (proemium), p. 4.
169
For a more detailed view of Bacon’s engagement with the various schools of moral philosophy see
Hackett’s discussions in ‘Roger Bacon on Magnanimity and Virtue’ in B.C. Bazán et al. (eds.), Les
philosophies morales et politiques au moyen âge (Ottawa, 1995), 367–77; ‘Roger Bacon and the
Reception’; ‘Practical Wisdom’; ‘Philosophy and Theology in Roger Bacon’s Opus maius’ in
R.J. Long (ed.), Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Toronto, 1991), 55–69.
170
MP, i.i, pp. 7–9.
121
easily accepted when the time came’.171 Similarly, they clearly had some
knowledge of the virgin birth; the Antichrist; the Last Judgement;
the creation of the world; guardian angels; demons; the immortality of
the soul; heaven and hell; the necessity to subordinate bodily desires in the
search for spiritual purity; worship, prayer and fasting.172
The second part of moral philosophy dealt briefly with the laws that
governed human relations within marriage and social hierarchies, the
proper functioning of the state and the justice system and the sort of
person who should be selected as a law-giver. It was largely dependent on
Avicenna.173 The third part discussed personal conduct, both in the
context of secular society and Christian morality. This was an area in
which non-Christian philosophers had excelled: ‘every Christian can only
be disturbed when we see that unbelieving men had such a sublime
conception of the virtues and we ourselves seem to fall shamefully away
from the glory of the virtues’.174 However, Christians ought to be inspired
to do even better than their pagan exemplars, since they had the particular
assistance of divine grace. In one of the longest sections of the Opus maius
Bacon quoted extensively from some of the most prominent moral
philosophers of antiquity, especially from Seneca. He had only recently
managed to find Seneca’s Dialogues, although he had been looking for
them for years. ‘Since I do not know whether they have come to the hand
of Your Glory,’ he wrote, ‘I have undertaken to copy them out in
abundance.’175 He did: collating passages on virtue; sin; the insignificance
of worldly matters; sensual pleasures; anger; adversity; misfortune; suffer-
ing; the shortness of human life; grief; death; happiness; peace of mind.176
He took enormous pleasure in the reflections of antique thinkers.
‘Everything that they wrote leads one to a disdain for riches instead of
to avarice, or to a contempt of honours rather than to pride, or to an
avoidance of pleasures rather than to luxury and gluttony, or to the
fortification of the emotions and passions of the mind against anger,
envy and sloth so that the seven mortal sins can be avoided’.177 It is
obvious that Bacon, like his fellow Franciscans John Pecham and John
171
‘sive salvarentur sive non, quatinus mundus prepa[ra]retur et disponeretur ad hanc veritatem
perfectam, ut facilius reciperetur, quando tempus daretur’ MP, i.iii, p. 14.
172
MP, i.iii–viii, pp. 15–35. 173 MP, ii.i–ii, pp. 39–42.
174
‘quo omnis christianus confundi potest, quando infideles homines tam sublimia virtutum habuisse
conspicimus et nos turpiter a virtutum gloria cadere videmur’: MP, iii (proemium), pp. 46–7.
175
‘nescio si ad manus Vestre Glorie pervenerunt; propterea habundancius hic scribere sum conatus’:
MP, iii.v, p. 133. He sent a corrected version later. See OT(Little), p. 61.
176
MP, iii.i–viii, pp. 47–184.
177
‘Omnia vero reducuntur ad contemptum diviciarum contra avariciam, vel ad despectum hon-
orum contra superbiam, vel ad fugam deliciarum contra luxuriam et gulam, vel ad motus et
passiones animi contra iram et invidiam et accidiam ut sic septem peccata mortalia devitentur’: MP,
122
Traces on parchment
of Wales, was moved and excited by such rich, sophisticated moral
thought: so skilful in its expression; so vigorous and noble in its asser-
tions.178 He found in these pagan ethical writings thorough confirmation
of every ideal towards which he, as a Franciscan, struggled to devote his
life, and thus he understood that God had given wisdom and virtue to the
wise throughout history.
The greatest application of Bacon’s programme was to the task of
proving so irrefutably that Christianity was the true religion that non-
Christians could not help but agree and thus be guided to salvation.179 In
the fourth part of the book he examined the main sectae of the world,
which he considered to be six: Saracens, Tartars, Pagans, Idolaters, Jews
and Christians. He described their beliefs and evaluated them against the
Christian truth according to the objectives of each, the extent and accu-
racy of their knowledge of God and the astrological influences that
affected them.180 He then considered how to convert them, chiefly
through intellectual persuasion: ‘a method common to them and us,
which is in our power [unlike miracles] and which they will not be able
to deny, because it proceeds along the paths of human reason and by the
means of philosophy, which is the particular property of infideles, since we
have all our philosophy from them’.181 He gave examples of how one
might demonstrate the truth of Christian doctrines and the failings of
other faiths by argument.182
Yet even after the truth of the Christian faith had been proved and
accepted in broad terms, the convert would have to be persuaded to
accept its various doctrines. Bacon thought that the doctrine of the
Eucharist would present the greatest difficulty, since even some devout
Christians felt perplexed and uneasy about it. He supplied arguments and
anecdotes of the kind used in mendicant preaching, which would serve to
confirm the miraculous nature of that sacrament, and then addressed the
range of issues that hindered Christians from embracing it properly. He
wrote on this subject with urgency, wanting to show ‘that this sacrament is
iii.ii, p. 60. This was an important topic within the universities as well as for preachers: many
scholastic authors were preoccupied with questions about the seven deadly sins. See S. Wenzel,
‘The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research’, Speculum, 43.1 (1968), 1–22.
178
‘nos philosophantes christiani nescimus de tanta morum sapiencia cogitare nec tam eleganter
persuadere’: MP, iii.v, p. 132; Swanson, John of Wales, pp. 172, 190–1. See John of Salisbury on
Seneca at Metalogicon, i.21, p. 49.
179
‘consistit in persuasione secte fidelis credende et approbande, quam debet genus humanum
recipere’: MP, iv.i, p. 187.
180
MP, iv.i, pp. 188–95.
181
‘per viam communem eis et nobis, que est in potestate nostra et quam non possunt negare, quia
vadit per vias humane raciocinacionis et per vias philosophie, que eciam propria est infidelibus:
quoniam ab eis habemus totam philosophiam’: MP, iv.ii, p. 195.
182
MP, iv.ii, pp. 195–223.
123
the most true and certain one, and that which ought to be most ardently
desired and most urgently sought for, which we must wait for most
steadfastly, worship with all reverence, hold with all rejoicing and devo-
tion, contemplate with the most certain faith’.183
It was possible that convincing arguments alone might not be enough
to persuade people who were already Christians to work towards perfect-
ing their own souls in preparation for salvation – the subject of the fifth
part of the book.184 Urging the population of Christendom towards
individual moral reform was a pressing task that required skill. Bacon
suggested that the best way to encourage people to love what was good
and behave accordingly was for preachers to use the techniques of the
classical art of rhetoric. He believed that the orators of the ancient world
had extraordinary power to influence their audiences through the way
that they spoke; through their words and gestures. Much of this section
was drawn from Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, but Bacon also strongly
recommended the use of such newly discovered texts as Aristotle’s Poetics
and the comparatively obscure De oratore of Cicero.185
Finally, Bacon briefly indicated in the sixth part that there was an art to
pleading a case in law, which was not yet known among the Latins, but he
excused himself from setting it out since the work was already so long.186
He proposed that scholars in the Latin West should study Aristotle’s
Rhetoric and Alfarabi’s (al-Faˉ raˉ bıˉ’s) commentary on it (both already
known in what Bacon felt were bad translations), together with the
writings of Cicero and Seneca on rhetoric.187 This final section of the
Opus maius as we know it today is only a page long, and ends unempha-
tically. It is unlikely that this was the conclusion intended by Bacon.
Nevertheless, it is clear enough that he believed that in the past some
individuals had possessed the ability to convey moral sentiments with a
persuasive force that he thought was beyond the present capacity of his
own society, but which could be learnt from ancient books. It was the
responsibility of Christians to master every art and science that could assist
them in carrying out the will of God on earth.
183
‘quod hoc est verissimum et certissimum, et quod debet ardentissime desiderari, et instantissime
peti, quod firmissime debemus expectare, cum omni reverencia colere, cum gaudio et devocione
tenere, fide certissima contemplari’: MP, iv.iii, pp. 223–43, quotation at p. 223.
184
‘que nititur persuadere ut ametur et operibus debitis conprobetur in observa[n]cia legum et
morum honestate, cum desiderio future felicitatis, ut omnia contraria legibus et virtutibus et
beatitudini abhorreamus’: MP, v, p. 247.
185
MP, v, pp. 247–63. See E.N. Tigerstedt, ‘Observations on the Reception of the Aristotelian
Poetics in the Latin West’, Studies in the Renaissance, 15 (1968), 7–24, p. 8; Reynolds, Texts,
pp. 102–9.
186
He did not remedy the deficiency in either the Opus minus or the Opus tertium.
187
MP, vi, p. 267.
124
Traces on parchment
In his rhetorical construction of the Opus maius Bacon had built on a
long tradition of pedagogical thought. His system of dependent disciplines
leading towards the highest ends – but ends that were also practical – had
its roots in works such as Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon and John of
Salisbury’s Metalogicon, as well as the profound influence of Grosseteste’s
many treatises.188 It owed much in conception to Augustine’s De doctrina
christiana. Bacon’s system was obviously a partial one in that it focused on
areas that were not at that time part of the scholarly enterprise of the Latin
West but which he felt ought to be included. It did not aspire to provide
the kind of complete and coherent survey offered by Hugh, since its
purpose was quite other. The point of the Opus maius was to instruct the
papacy on how the Church and the community of Christendom might be
properly organised and equipped to carry out their essential tasks on earth.
These tasks were the strengthening of Christian society through various
reforms and the improvement of its position in relation to the rest of the
world so that it would have the power to defend itself and to spread the
true faith among the nations, leading as many people as possible to
salvation. This programme had little to do with the world of institution-
alised scholarship – it was far too dangerous and difficult for the majority of
students – or the improvement of learning as an end in itself, and every-
thing to do with the wider Franciscan agenda of the thirteenth century. It
should be stressed that Bacon had been very clear on exactly who should
and should not be involved in what he was suggesting, and that holiness of
life was a major criterion.189 The insistent eschatological motif and the
exalted passages that imagined the elevation of the soul through sapientia
give a very particular tone to Bacon’s vision. In writing the Opus maius
Bacon was straining every sinew in support of the unstable structure of the
Church, not, in his own way, unlike Francis of Assisi in the dream of
Innocent III.
188
Southern, Scholastic Humanism, vol. ii, pp. 54–9, 167–77; Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, esp.
pp. 45–60, 139–65; Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on the Classification of the Sciences’, pp. 53–65.
189
See in particular OM, i.xvi, 3:34.
125
Chapter 3
FROM THE WORLD TO GOD
Bacon’s relationship with the Franciscan order, and even more so, his
sense of himself as a Franciscan, have been somewhat troubling and
subterranean elements in the wider discussion of his thought. The frag-
ments of direct information on the subject in his writing mostly relate to
the specific circumstances of around 1266–8. Together with the story of
the condemnation, they give an impression of drama that has always
greatly distracted from engagement with the nature of his life as a
Franciscan outside those intense periods.1 Possibly as a consequence, the
reasons for Bacon’s decision to enter the order have seemed elusive to
many of his modern biographers. It has been variously attributed to the
influence of the Oxford Franciscans in general, and that of Adam Marsh
and Robert Grosseteste in particular; a desire for ‘leisure’ to study; the
order’s reputation for scholarship; a hope that the purity and holiness of its
lifestyle would be conducive to ‘proper philosophising’; and the workings
of other, less readily identifiable motives.2
It is likely that some of these considerations played a part in attracting
Bacon, or at least shaping his life in a direction compatible with that of the
order. Yet it is probably not enough to look for primarily instrumentalist
explanations for his embrace of a way of life that was, intermittent
controversies notwithstanding, firmly dedicated to the pursuit of ‘apostolic’
poverty, the reform of society, the support of the Church and other
difficult demands such as the submission of the will to superiors and to
God.3 In the cosmology of medieval religious thought the soul stood
between heaven and hell and could not hide. The way to salvation was
1
See above, pp. 15–23, 59–60, 69–72.
2
Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy, p. xx; Perspectiva, p. xviii; Crowley, Roger Bacon, pp. 34–42,
67–71; Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 118–26; Daniel, Franciscan Concept, pp. 66, 55–7; Molland, ‘Roger
Bacon’, ODNB; Alessio, Mito, p. 85.
3
Burr has demonstrated that the evidence for continuous controversy in the order before 1274 is
weak. See Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 11–41.
126
From the world to God
hard, but the alternative once fully imagined was unthinkable – and this
was the context within which the ideal of spiritual perfection was pursued.
Doubtless there were men who became Franciscans for reasons primarily
connected with vanity, pragmatism or ambition in the days of the order’s
high prestige, but there is little in Bacon’s work to suggest that he was one
of them. The burden of proof must ultimately rest with anyone denying
the sincerity of a vocation, and in the absence of such proof it ought to be
supposed that Bacon’s honest commitment to the order was the sine qua
non of his entrance and life within it.4 Moreover, there is an abundance of
material in his writings to render speculative approaches more or less
unnecessary and to create an entirely different picture: one of a strong,
active and inventive vocation.5
Uncovering this vocation is a delicate task for many reasons, not least
because his character, understanding and interests were formed in the world
and he had reached intellectual maturity before he became a Franciscan.
Then, some ten years before he wrote the Opus maius, he entered the order.
In the course of that uncharted decade, adjustments of many kinds must have
been made. Hard work, ill health and certain imposed silences we know
about; much else particular to the new direction of his life can be assumed.6
Bacon’s great works were written part way along his mind’s journey to God
and speak to us with unconscious eloquence about the process of his mental
and spiritual evolution. Arresting fusions of thought bear witness to both the
sincerity and the awkwardness of his attempt to harmonise two mental
worlds and unite his past and present within the compass of the vita apostolica.
To be a Franciscan was, in the early days, to have chosen a life of double,
entwined emulation: the imitation of the apostles and the imitation of St
Francis. Being a Franciscan in the university towns of the north from the
latter part of the 1250s meant seeking models for emulation through a haze
of reimaginings.7 The friars inhabited the memories of others and made
4
The doubts expressed (e.g. Knowles, Religious Orders, vol. i, p. 216; E. Gilson, The Philosophy of Saint
Bonaventure, trans. I. Trethowan and F. J. Sheed (London, 1938), p. 114; Moorman, History, p. 252;
even Daniel, Franciscan Concept, pp. 66, 55–7) seem to relate more to wider debates and preconcep-
tions than reflection on Bacon himself.
5
The modern conception of a religious ‘vocation’ does not entirely correlate to the medieval
understanding, although vocatio, ‘calling’, was used in this sense. The concept was more commonly
expressed by words such as conversio, conversatio and propositum. See G. Constable, The Reformation of
the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 7–15 on terminology.
6
OT, pp. 15, 65; EFRB, pp. 76–82 [Gasq, p. 500].
7
See Brooke, Image. On models see G. Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought
(Cambridge, 1995); C. Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle
Ages (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 82–109; C. Walker Bynum, ‘Franciscan Spirituality: Two Approaches’,
Mediaevalia et Humanistica, new ser., 7 (1976), 195–7; I. van’t Spijker, ‘Model Reading: Saints’ Lives
and Literature of Religious Formation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’ in G. Renard (ed.),
Scribere sanctorum gesta (Turnhout, 2005), 135–56; Denery, Seeing.
127
them their own. Nor was passivity implied by these choices: men became
friars through an unpredictable alchemy of their own individuality and
attempted conformity with notions of Christian sanctity.8 Bacon had to
surrender to the claims of obedience and the ideals of his order, but equally, it
is clear from the fragments of interiorised narratives visible in his writings that
he had his own sense of what the order had been, was, and ought to be.9 It is
this uniquely, untidily interwoven vision that will form the subject of this
chapter and those following.
It is not easy to reconstruct a conversion to the religious life that was
never properly described. In order to do so here, many of Bacon’s
scattered thoughts have been drawn together and given a form that
seems plausible and not in violation of the wider spirit of his writing. It
can be assumed that he was steeped in the narrative-based religious
writings of previous generations and that linear narrative would be a
natural way for him to conceive of spiritual development.10 Equally, the
construction of specifically historical narratives was already becoming
characteristic of the order by the 1260s, and echoes of this method can, I
think, be discerned in his writings.11 The first stage of all such narratives
concerned the renunciation of the world; the details of temptations
identified and fought; and the path to moral perfection. The first part of
the chapter looks at what Bacon wrote on these subjects. Yet for the
medieval friar, outward perfection of life, difficult as it might be to
achieve, was merely a prelude to an inner ascent to the sapientia that was
perfect understanding, self-surrender and pure union with God. The
desire for sapientia ran through the spiritual history of the Latin West, in
the yearnings of the most ascetic monks and the most learned scholars
alike. It will be proposed here that it was the very density of ideas about
sapientia and how to approach it that caused, in large part, the well-known
troubles over learning in the order. This is the backdrop to an investiga-
tion of Bacon’s second major preoccupation: the mind’s progress from
scientia to contemplation and sapientia. The third of his concerns, the
application of private spirituality to public affairs, will be the subject of
8
In some senses a concept familiar to Bacon, who had written: ‘everything received by another thing
has the mode of existence of the recipient’ (Perspectiva, i.vi.4, p. 86/87). See A. Gurevich, The
Origins of European Individualism (Oxford, 1995), esp. pp. 197–8; Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 499–512.
9
M. R. Somers, ‘The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach’,
Theory and Society, 23.5 (1994), 605–49.
10
On these narratives see I. van’t Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life: Religious Literature and Formation of
the Self in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Turnhout, 2004).
11
On the construction of Franciscan narratives see Roest, Reading; Kehnel, ‘Narrative Tradition’;
J.-C. Schmitt, ‘Recueils Franciscains d’ “exempla” et perfectionnement des techniques intellec-
tuelles du XIIe au XVe siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 85 (1977), 5–21.
128
the final two chapters of this book. As I will argue, Bacon’s most funda-
mental concerns as a friar revolved around the state of the mendicant
orders, what ought to be expected of them and what was needed for their
renewal and future work.
renouncing the world

But first, what did it mean to become a Franciscan? The concept of
metamorphosis has exercised a long fascination on humanity.12 It is central
to Christian thought, implicit in the mysteries of resurrection, conversion,
baptism, the Eucharist, consecration, absolution, redemption and, of
course, entering a religious order. Bacon’s contemporaries, like most
believers, were excited by stories in which the course of a life was altered
beyond recognition by the sudden intervention of divine power. Such
stories offered models and explanations for what were, on the face of it,
extraordinary transitions from one state of life into another. The friars
liked to remember examples of vivid dreams, strange events heavy with
meaning, inspired exhortations or minor miracles through which people
had been drawn abruptly to the order.13 Yet those apparently impulsive
and unregretful submissions to the will of God, those whirlwind court-
ships, were expected to inaugurate a lifelong commitment to stringent
poverty, service and self-sacrifice. Entry into a religious order changed an
individual’s relationship to everything: in medieval society the distinction
between secular and religious was meant to be absolute and permanent.14
The fact of the change created a new identity. The world, that alienated,
postlapsarian ‘land of unlikeness’, had been left behind and the friars were
to be ‘pilgrims and strangers’ as they passed through their former home-
land.15 ‘He is perfect,’ wrote Hugh of St Victor, ‘to whom the whole
world is a place of exile.’16 The destruction of the old, secular identity
might be symbolised by a rejection of family ties, the taking of a new name
or more dramatically, an altered body, as the English novice of whom it
12
See C. Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York, 2005).
13
See DAFM for examples from the English province. See also A. Gransden, Historical Writing in
England (2 vols. London, 1996), vol. i, esp. pp. 487–94. For Dominican parallels see J. van Engen,
‘Dominic and the Brothers: Vitae as Life-forming exempla in the Order of Preachers’ in K. Emery,
Jr. and J. Wawrykow (eds.), Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the
Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers (Notre Dame, 1998), 7–25.
14
RegB, 2, p. 228. See M. T. Dolso, ‘Le voeu et l’entrée dans l’ordre franciscain au moyen âge:
D’après les commentaires sur la Règle de François et l’hagiographie’, Les Cahiers du Centre de
Recherches Historiques 16 (1996) (URL http://ccrh.revues.org/index2641.html.); R. C. Trexler,
Naked Before the Father: The Renunciation of Francis of Assisi (New York, 1989).
15
‘regione dissimilitudinis’: 2Cel, ii.146; FF, p. 613; ‘advenae in hoc saeculo’: RegB, 6, p. 231.
16
‘perfectus vero, cui mundus totus exsilium est’: Hugh of Saint Victor, Hugonis de Sancto Victore:
Didascalicon de studio legendi: A Critical Text, ed. C. H. Buttimer (Washington, 1939), 3.19, p. 69.
129
was reported: ‘God let grow in him another heart.’17 In some senses it
would be a violation of these sensibilities to hypothesise a slower and
deeper psychological context for entry into the order when every indivi-
dual Franciscan must have attributed his vocation to the impenetrable,
glorious workings of God.18
The two approaches are not, of course, mutually exclusive. Bacon
himself was capable of imagining more than one path to salvation. If
there was a particular, Damascene experience that had transformed him,
the memory of it is lost beyond our recovery. There was, however,
undoubtedly a point that marked the change, since he would later speak
of the time when he was ‘in another state’ and being as studious ‘after, as
before’.19 He certainly believed in miraculous and supernatural conver-
sions, and recorded some that he had heard about, ‘which are absolutely
certain and subject to no doubt’. In one case, complete character reversal
ensued: ‘the heretical bishop became a true Christian, and immediately
began to preach the faith of Christ and confound heretical depravity’.20
Such stories obviously belonged in the genre of exempla – in this instance, a
Eucharistic miracle – employed by mendicant preachers in their sermons.
Although Bacon had recounted them in the context of demonstrating the
power of the Eucharist, the fact was that he also took them seriously as
conversion stories and expected that the Pope would too. Again, he
related that, during the pontificate of Alexander IV, a pious Muslim of
Beröe had been visited by an angel who advised him to convert to
Christianity, whereupon he had been baptised by a priest attached to
the Genoese merchants there. ‘This was known to Lord Alexander and
17
‘et immisit ei Deus cor aliud’: DAFM, p. 41. According to Thomas of Celano (2Cel, i.6, FF, p. 452),
Francis’ heart was ‘completely changed’ [mutatus perfecte] and had the stigmata impressed on it long
before he manifested physical wounds. Taking a new name was not especially common at this time,
but some did, Salimbene de Adam among them (Cronica, vol. i, p. 56). Francis’ rejection of his
family, especially his father, through the complex gesture of stripping in the marketplace, captured
the imagination of contemporaries. See Brooke, Image, pp. 17, 130–1, 153–5. Salimbene described
his own rejection of his father (Cronica, vol. i, pp. 57–9); many other examples could be adduced.
18
Bacon was irritated by the fraudulent claims of those who practise magic, those who ‘asserunt
alterationes subitas indifferenter fieri per homines quoscunque’ (OM, iv.iv.16, 1:399), since they
seemed to deny the role of virtue or the divine in ‘sudden alterations’.
19
‘in alio statu’, ‘postea fui ita studiosus sicut ante’: OT, p. 65.
20
‘que certissima sunt et nulli dubitacioni subiecta’; ‘Tunc episcopus hereticus factus est verus
christianus, et statim incepit fidem Christi predicare et hereticam confundere pravitatem’: MP,
iv.iii.1, pp. 225, 226. He was interested ‘in libro, qui dicitur de mutatione vitae Ovidii’, the De
vetula seu de mutatione vitae suae – ‘qui ascribitur Ovidio’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:263, 256, although perhaps
more as an instance of Christian prophecy than the matter of conversion per se. See The Pseudo-
Ovidian De Vetula, ed. D. M. Robathan (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 1–14. In a later version of the same
story, a demon-conjuring cleric becomes a Franciscan: see Le Speculum laicorum: édition d’une
collection d’exempla, composée en Angleterre à la fin du XIIIe siècle, ed. J. T. Welter (Paris, 1914),
pp. 54–5. I am grateful to Catherine Rider for drawing my attention to this source.
130
many others, and many remember it still,’ he asserted.21 However, on a
number of occasions he emphasised that Christians could not depend
upon miracles and divine intervention; that they must find other ways
of ensuring that successful evangelism occurred. Perfection was not
usually bestowed: it was something towards which every individual had
to struggle, with difficulty and with hope. ‘For consent and the exercise of
free will are required,’ he wrote, ‘along with the grace of God, if we are to
see and gain the state of salvation.’22
Using the geography of the Holy Land allegorically, he explained:
He who . . . wishes . . . that his manner of living were in heavenly Jerusalem in this
life, and that in death he would be transported to that holy city . . . must first
abandon the Jordan, that is, the world, either by subordinating it to himself, like
the holy lay brothers and sisters [sancti seculares], or withdraw from it by renoun-
cing everything, like those in religious orders. This step is the first stage of the
spiritual life and is easier than the others. Next, he must attack the flesh, because it
is not as easy to defeat as the world. It is a familiar pestilence and does not leave its
subject. However, he must not destroy the flesh and master it by force, but
gradually and prudently tame its pride. On this account the flesh is considered to
be Jericho with its plain; and therefore the penitent must proceed by the level
path . . . After a man has really subjugated the world, and tamed the flesh as one
ought to; then, and not before, he is ready to ascend to the excellence of the
spiritual life and the sweetness of devotion. For from there he is able to ascend the
Mount of Olives, arrive at the summit of perfection, and immerse himself in the
sweetness of prayer and contemplation. When he has been sufficiently exercised
in the ascent and circuit of that high place, he must still pass through the valley of
Jehoshaphat, that is, he must bring his whole life to an end in perfect humility, so
that he will be poor and humble in spirit in the sight of God, not in his own eyes
or those of men. For many seem humble to themselves and others, and are most
proud in the presence of God and the angels.23
21
‘Hoc Domino Alexandro et multis notum fuit, et adhuc recolunt quamplures’: OM, ii.xvii, 3:74–5.
22
Perspectiva, iii.iii.1, p. 324/325.
23
‘Qui . . . vult . . . ut sit ejus conversatio in coelesti Jerusalem in hac vita, et transferatur in morte ad
illam civitatem sanctam . . . debet primo Jordanem, id est, mundum, aut sibi subjiciendo relinquere,
ut sancti seculares, aut omnino renunciando recedere, ut religiosi. Ibi enim est primus gradus vitae
spiritualis et aliis facilior. Quo facto, oportet aggredi carnem, quia ipsam non est ita facile vincere
sicut mundum. Est enim pestis familiaris et non relinquens subjectum. Debet autem ipsam non
destruere et cum impetu frangere, sed paulatim et discrete ejus superbiam domare. Propter quod
consideratur Jericho cum sua planitie; et ideo debet poenitens plana via procedere . . . Postquam
vero homo mundum subjugaverit, et carnem ut oportet domuerit, tunc et non ante est aptus ut
ascendat ad excellentiam vitae spiritualis et dulcedinem devotionis. Ex tunc enim potest ascendere
ad montem Oliveti et ad cacumen perfectionis attingere, atque in suavitatem orationis et con-
templationis se immergere. Cum fero fuerit sufficienter exercitatus in ascensu et circuitu istius
celsitudinis, adhuc oportet vallem Josaphat transire, hoc est, totam vitam suam in perfecta humi-
litate debet concludere, ut sit pauper et humilis spiritu in conspectu Dei, non in oculis suis vel
hominum. Multi enim apparent humiles sibi et aliis, et sunt coram Deo et angelis superbissimi’:
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:186–7. Cf. OT, p. 204.
131
If this passage with all its conventionality can be read autobiographically –
and it was written with authority – it seems that in Bacon’s view the
renunciation of the world was the decisive preliminary step that inaugu-
rated the long journey to God. Bacon, of course, renounced the world in
two stages, but it was after he had become a Franciscan that the patient
discipline of the flesh and its pride had to be carried out: a protracted
trudge across a flat place.
The world was signified by the Jordan, he wrote, ‘due to its properties,
because it flows into the Dead Sea, which is an image of Hell’.24 It was a
potent image: the souls of the damned swept easily along with the flow
into the bitter, sterile, enclosed sea that filled the valley in which the
blasted ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah were thought to lie.25 To leave the
world was to clamber out of the river, turn away and begin the long walk
across the plain. Yet all the while, the seductions of the world called out to
the flesh to which the soul was bound. It was through the five senses that a
person was most vulnerable, particularly touch and taste. ‘The delectable
things of this world are to us just like mousetraps,’ he lamented, ‘by which
we are made captive to sin . . . and like the bait on the fishhook of the
Devil, with which we would be choked, except insofar as God considers
us worthy to protect.’26 Chief among these ‘delectable things’ were
women, food and wealth: ‘for which human desire burns and in which
proud ambition glories’.27 Anyone who took delight in the things of the
world could not keep himself away from them, so subtle and powerful
were their influences; everyone was deceived by them. Those who sought
to free themselves in pursuit of holiness therefore had to follow a course of
vigorous avoidance: ‘so that not only do they not touch them, but neither
see them nor hear reference made to these things, in case the species
multiplying in the senses compel the spirit to serve carnal allurements’.28
On occasions when some proximity could not be avoided, such as when it
24
‘propter ipsius proprietates, quia currit in mare mortuum, quod est instar inferni’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:185.
25
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:337–40; B. Kreiger, The Dead Sea: Myth, History, and Politics (Hanover, 1997),
pp. 3–28.
26
‘Nam cum res delectabiles hujus mundi sint nobis sicut muscipula, quibus capiamur ad
peccatum . . . et sicut esca in hamo diaboli, qua strangulemur, nisi quantum Deus dignatur nos
custodire’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:218. He adopted a more violent tone in CSP (pp. 410–13), reporting
the expulsion of some Paris theologians for the sin of sodomy.
27
‘in quibus humana cupiditas aestuat et ambitio superba gloriatur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:218. We know
nothing of the degree of Bacon’s acquaintance with women, but his assertion that Aristotle’s well-
known claim that the species of a menstruating woman cause a new mirror to cloud over has been
endorsed ‘by experience’ raises some questions. See OM, iv.iv.16, 1:398.
28
‘ut non solum non tangent, sed nec videant nec audient de his fieri mentionem, ne species
multiplicata in sensus spiritum cogat servire carnis illecebris’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:219. On Bacon’s
concept of species see above, pp. 105–6.
132
was necessary to speak to women in confession or for some other reason,
the greatest care must be exercised. ‘For all men, however saintly, are
disturbed by strong species in this regard’ – except, he added, those whom
God protected.29
These heartfelt, if commonplace, sentiments were similar to those
attributed to St Francis by Thomas of Celano in his second version of
the saint’s life, the 1247 Memoriale in desiderio animae; and elaborated
upon by Bonaventure in his Legenda maior (1263). Thomas presented the
‘contagion’ of female company as ‘an obstacle to those who want to
undertake the hard journey, and look on the face full of grace’.30
Bonaventure added: ‘[Francis] did not think it was safe to drink into
one’s interior such images of woman’s form, which could either rekindle
the fire in an already tamed flesh, or stain the brightness of the pure
heart’.31 Elsewhere, Bonaventure had explained: ‘man . . . has five senses
that serve as five portals through which the knowledge of all things
existing in the visible world enters his soul’.32 Bacon had a similar view:
‘the species of tangible things run through the twisting threads of the nerves
from the skin of the body through winding paths to the instrument of
touch, which has its seat near the heart’.33 For these men, the body was
terrifyingly permeable by influences that might bring about the damna-
tion of the soul. Indeed, Aquinas had pondered the extent to which
demons could manipulate human minds and souls through the sensory
organs and the body.34 Only the grace of God could protect the pilgrim
soul from the infinitely multiplying species of the temporal world.35
29
‘Nam omnes homines quantumcunque sanctos species fortes in hac parte turbarent’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:219.
30
2Cel, ii.78, FF, pp. 545; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 322. In contrast, the Rule was more concerned
with the avoidance of scandal than with temptation itself: RegNB, 12, RegB, 11, pp. 264–5, 236. See
H. Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the
Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the
Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. S. Rowan (Notre Dame, 1995), pp. 109–17, 121–4,
130–7.
31
LM, v.5, FF, p. 817; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 563.
32
Although in this case, sensory perception elevated the soul towards God. ‘Homo igitur . . . habet
quinque sensus quasi quinque portas, per quas intrat cognitio omnium, quae sunt in mundo
sensibili, in animam ipsius’: Itinerarium mentis, ii.3, p. 300. Augustine wrote about the five senses
in both ways: Augustine, Confessions, ed. J. J. O’Donnell (3 vols. Oxford, 1992), vol. i, esp. x.12–41.
Aristotle regarded the senses as the gateway to the soul in De sensu et sensato: On the Soul, Parva
Naturalia, On Breath, trans. W. S. Hett (Cambridge, MA, 1964), i, pp. 214–19.
33
‘Unde species tangibilium currunt per fila nervorum tortuosa ab ipsa cute corporis per vias flexuosas
usque ad instrumentum tactus, quod radicatur iuxta cor’: DMS, p. 102/103. See also E. Sears,
‘Sense Perception and its Metaphors in the Time of Richard of Fournival’ in W. F. Bynum and
R. Porter (eds.), Medicine and the Five Senses (Cambridge, 1995), 17–39.
34
The De malo of Thomas Aquinas, ed. B. Davis, trans. R. Regan (Oxford, 2001), question 16, articles
8–12, pp. 912–59.
35
MP, iv.iii.3, p. 429.
133
Yet the relationship between the body and soul was ambiguous: not
merely were they yoked together until death, but the full experience of
heaven would be enjoyed through sensory perception after the freed soul
was reunited with the resurrected body. ‘For the soul will not be equipped
with fullness of vision until it is united with its body,’ wrote Bacon, ‘just as
there are other attributes that it will not fully possess until that time . . .
since the soul possesses a certain natural appetite for its body, which cannot
be satisfied except at the resurrection.’36 The post-mortem experience
evoked by Bacon anticipated that he would ‘sit in the beauty of peace in
the tabernacles of faith or in opulent repose’ – a very physical imagining.37
Moreover, it was the body, specifically, that gave identity to the indivi-
dual; gave matter to the form of the soul.38 Bacon was very clear that the
destruction of the flesh through excessive mortification had dangers for
the soul.
Most of the early sources for the order indicate that the issue of
asceticism worried the friars nearly as much as it attracted them. They
were reluctant to interfere with the admirable penitential activities of their
brothers, but neither could they wholeheartedly encourage extreme
behaviour where it seemed to threaten life and health. Even St Francis
was said to have cautioned the friars to have regard for the body so that it
could carry out its holy duties, although Thomas of Celano, reporting it,
added: ‘this was the only teaching in which the most holy father’s actions
were not in harmony with his words’.39 Bacon urged a similar perspective:
‘so that [the body’s] submission is moderate, for fear that if the flesh is
foolishly overwhelmed, it will not be able to reach out to the higher things
of the spirit’. These were not idle remarks. He went on: ‘this is written
against the many converts to penitence who destroy their bodies in the
first or second year, and afterwards become useless, so that they are not
strong enough to help themselves or others’.40 He argued that it was
necessary for the mind and the soul that the body be relaxed from time to
36
Perspectiva, iii.iii.2, p. 328/329. On scholastic understandings of the relationship between body and
soul see Walker Bynum, Resurrection, pp. 230–71.
37
‘sedebit in pulchritudine pacis in tabernaculis fiduciae vel requie opulenta’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:186.
38
‘Et ideo posuerunt corpus aliquando coniungi cum anima, ut utrumque perficeretur secundum sui
proprietatem’: MP, i.5, p. 24.
39
2Cel, ii.92, FF, p. 561; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 332. Both Rules made provisions for the
abandonment of fasting. See RegNB, 3, RegB, 3, pp. 248, 229–30.
40
‘ut rationabile sit ejus obsequium, ne si carnem stulte obruat, non possit spiritus ad altiora
pertingere. Hoc enim est contra multos ad poenitentiam conversos, qui primo anno vel secundo
corpora sua destruunt, et postea fiunt inutilies, ut nec se nec alios valeant juvare’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:186. Thomas of Celano had a friar convincing Francis with the same argument (2Cel, ii.160, FF,
pp. 625–7); Bacon used it on Clement, citing Cicero to support the view that extreme papal
asceticism would not be for the public good: OT, p. 87. For Adam Marsh’s cautions to Grosseteste,
see Letter 39 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, p. 112/113.
134
time; otherwise the spirit would become ‘languid with the tedium of
goodness’. Aware of this, the most holy men ‘occasionally relaxed spiritual
cares into relief and occasionally loosened the rigours of abstinence, and
indeed regulated excessive vigils’. He cited the example of St Benedict,
who, according to Cassiodorus, had likened an excessive observance of
the monastic life to stringing a bow too tightly, arguing: ‘that he could
compel his monks into such rigours of penitence that they could not
endure it – but they would simply be broken by the violence to
themselves’.41
The problem of temptation was, in many ways, made worse by the
mendicants’ new interpretation of departure from the world. They were
not carrying out their spiritual discipline in a desert wilderness or in quiet
cloisters behind high walls.42 They spent many of their days amid the
crowded urban jostle: the smells of cooking food; the casual presence of
women going about their daily business; the laughter of lovers; the visible
wealth and luxury of the rich. How then had Bacon managed the
discipline of his own desires; how did he think the friars ought to achieve
the necessary subjugation of the flesh, with moderation, amid the intox-
icating lures of the world? There is some indication that he looked for
models of behaviour: ‘an example of perfection’, he reported, ‘is drawn
upon by some to form habit’.43 He was almost certainly particularly
influenced by Adam Marsh and Robert Grosseteste, who were both
widely regarded as exemplary figures, as much from a moral perspective
as an intellectual one. Bacon described them as ‘perfect in divine and
human wisdom’.44 As we will see, in his view sapientia in its various forms
was essential to the condition of holiness.
In a different sense, he looked to the Virgin Mary and found comfort in
her, as so many did. He wrote that the name Maria could be interpreted as
stella maris – ‘star of the sea’ because she pointed the way to a safe port and
as amarum mare – ‘sea of sorrows’: ‘because she lived in this world in
41
‘cum tedio boni languens’; ‘aliquando curas spirituales laxabant in solacia et rigorem abstinencie
solvebant aliquando, nec non vigilias temperabant excessivas’; ‘quod in tantum posset cogere
monachos suos ad rigorem penitencie, quod sustinere non possent, sed ipsa violencia frangerentur’:
MP, iii.vii.8, p. 181.
42
See Andrews, Other Friars, on how other mendicant groups experienced and addressed the tensions
of living a vocation of rejection within the world.
43
‘Nam exemplum perfectionis trahitur ab aliquo in consuetudinem’: OM, i.4, 3:9. The ‘some’ was
opposed to the ‘vulgus’, suggesting strongly that Bacon numbered himself among those who
followed the example of perfection.
44
‘perfecti in sapientia divina et humana’: OT, p. 75. Gieben has persuasively rejected the idea that
Grosseteste’s influence on the English Franciscans was detrimental to their pursuit of Francis’ ideas.
See S. Gieben, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Evolution of the Franciscan Order’ in J. McEvoy (ed.),
Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on his Thought and Scholarship (Turnhout, 1995), 215–32.
135
absolute poverty and temporal sorrow, and at last, in the death of her son,
a sword passed through her soul, so that she is an example to us of
unlimited patience, and a comforter in every adversity of this world’.45
It is significant that Bacon chose to emphasise her extreme paupertas, a
preoccupation of the Franciscans.46 She was also someone to whom
devout Christians could look for aid against the temptations of sin. Her
name, he explained, came from the Syrian Maron, meaning ‘master’ and in
her case dominatrix, or mistress, because ‘she is mistress over all the
uncleanness of sin, thrusting it away from us, and over all diabolic cunning
and iniquity, because she is the terror of sin and of demons. She is like the
ordered battle-lines of an army; and not only her, but everyone who truly
trusts in her.’47
Everyone must remember, Bacon stressed, that there were some imped-
iments to salvation against which humans had to depend on divine aid
because ‘repelling them is not within human power’. Among these were
‘the corrupt state of human weakness, and . . . the violent, continuous and
invisible temptation of the Devil’.48 This was why humanity had been
taught to pray ‘lead us not into temptation’, continually begging that the
dangers might be ‘removed or mitigated’.49 Aside from heartfelt prayer for
protection, the greatest source of strength could be found in the Eucharist.
Partaking of this sacrament enabled a person to ‘make reparation to God
the Father for the sins of the world’ and be one with Christ – even to ‘be
changed into him’ – in effect, becoming Christ.50 ‘And what more can a
man strive for in this life’, asked Bacon, ‘except that he becomes God and
Christ?’51 Like Francis, Bacon was agitated by human neglect of the
Eucharist, and widespread misunderstanding – even horror – about the
nature of transubstantiation.52 Without the sacrament no one could
45
‘quia in omni paupertate et amaritudine temporali vixit in hoc mundo, et tandem ipsius animam
pertransivit gladius in morte Filii, ut sit nobis in exemplum omnis patientiae, et confortatrix in
omni adversitate hujus mundi’: OM, iii.11, 3:116. R. Fulton, From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to
Christ and the Virgin Mary 800–1200 (New York, 2002), esp. pp. 264–5.
46
Celano reported Francis’ reaction– ‘groaning with sobs of pain and bathed in tears’ – to a reminder
of the Virgin’s poverty: 2Cel, ii.151, FF, p. 617; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 375.
47
‘quia dominatur super omnem immunditiam peccati expellendam a nobis, et omni diabolicae
fraudi et nequitiae, quia ipsa est terribilis peccato et daemonibus, sicut castrorum acies ordinata; et
non solum ipsa, sed omnes qui in ea veraciter confidunt’: OM, iii.11, 3:116.
48
‘remocio non est in hominis potestate’; ‘primum est corrupcio humane fragilitatis, secundum est
temptacio diaboli violenta et continua et invisibilis’: MP, iv.iii.3, p. 239.
49
‘removeat vel mitiget’: MP, iv.iii.3, pp. 239–40.
50
‘oportet quod hec hostia satisfaciat Deo Patri pro peccatis mundi’: MP, iv.iii.1, p. 228; ‘non solum
participamus Christum sed in eum convertimur’: MP, iv.iii.2, p. 233. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, vii.10.
51
‘Et quid potest homo plus petere in hac vita, nisi quod fiat Deus et Christus?’: MP, iv.iii.2,
p. 233.
52
MP, iv.iii, pp. 223–43; Francis of Assisi, Opuscula sancti patris Francisci Assisiensis, ed. K. Esser
(Grottaferrata, 1978), pp. 96–153.
136
remain in a state of grace or find salvation, for ‘just as the created would fall
into a state of non-existence without the presence of the Creator,’ wrote
Bacon, ‘the re-created would fall into a state opposite to grace, unless he
were held fast by the presence of the Redeemer’.53
There were other sources of intimate succour to the soul yearning for
holy illumination. Angels played a delicate role in preparing the mind for
God’s revelations. ‘They purify our minds, and illuminate and inflame them
in many ways’; ‘they are to our souls as stars are to the corporeal eye’, wrote
Bacon, comparing them with the more direct influence of God. If God
acted on the human mind like ‘the flood of sunlight falling through a
window’, it was the angel who opened the window to this flowing
radiance.54 Bacon had been greatly pleased, in his readings among the
pagan philosophers, to find among them a detailed knowledge of the
functions of angels and demons. He gave at some length passages taken
from Apuleius on Plato’s purported views of guardian angels. Each soul had
its own angelic guardian, who, in addition to protecting it from evil and
urging it to good, would act as a witness before God at the time of
judgement. These truths, wrote Bacon, had been revealed to Plato by divine
revelation and stood as independent confirmation of Christian beliefs.55
In addition to these unexceptional, although important, supports
against original sin and the dangers of the world, Bacon had his own
ways of seeing things. His extended discussion of temptation, which
occurred in the context of the application of mathematics to spiritual
matters, is idiosyncratic enough to give some idea of how he – educated
and formed among the arts and sciences – might have devised his own
methods for rationalising and resisting it. ‘Great assistance against the
trickery of sins is to be found through the consideration of . . . geometrical
multiplication,’ he reported.56 Once the means by which tempting things
affected the senses had been understood, then methods of avoidance were
clearer. Species moved according to mathematical rules and, like rays of
light, operated most powerfully in direct lines. ‘The first and principal
53
‘sicut creatura caderet in non esse nature, nisi esset presencia Creantis, sic recreatum cadet in non
esse oppositum gracie, nisi per presenciam Redemptoris teneatur’: MP, iv.iii.1, p. 227. Bacon’s
ideas about the Eucharist, in particular, on creation and restoration, owe much to Hugh of St
Victor’s De sacramentis.
54
‘Et quamvis angeli purgent mentes nostras et illuminent et excitant multis modis, et sint ad animas
nostras sicut stellae respectu oculi corporalis, tamen Augustinus ascribit Deo influentiam principa-
lem sicut soli influentia luminis cadentis per fenestram’: OM, ii.5, 3:48.
55
MP, i.4, pp. 18–21. For further discussion on the subject of the nature, motion and influence of
angels and other immaterial entities see OT, pp. 167–98.
56
‘De cautela vero peccatorum magnum adjutorium est per considerationem hujusmodi geometri-
carum multiplicationum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:218. He had earlier quoted Cassiodorus to the same
effect: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:177.
137
remedy available to man is not to receive the species of delectable
things . . . into his five senses according to their principal multiplication;
since even indirect contact is enough to send a man to damnation, when it
is received greedily and abundantly.’ Most of all, it was necessary to avoid
species falling ‘at equal angles into the senses . . . especially if the cone of the
short pyramid meets it’, as happened to Eve, when she was exposed
directly to the species of the apple.57 Although all this mathematical
manoeuvring amounted to much the same thing as the various embargoes
on physical contact with temptation – anecdotes about the startling
consequences of touching, or even thinking about touching, coins were
a staple among Franciscan exempla – it offered a theoretical explanation for
the physical function of temptation that satisfied Bacon’s mind on a
philosophical level.58 Besides, calculating angles was probably a good
way of distracting himself in the vicinity of temptation.
The capacity of mathematics to educate and fortify the soul was, to
Bacon, ‘of almost infinite wonder and unutterable advantage’.59 A crucial
aspect of its power was the way in which such sciences encouraged a cool,
controlled and detached mentality in which temptation could be met by an
appeal to reason. Bacon believed that logic and reason more generally could
be invaluable in fighting off the ‘irrational’ impulses that would lead a person
to sin. He discussed the sorts of influences that might act on an individual to
undermine or destroy their reason. ‘We see men alter their purpose very
considerably,’ he wrote, ‘as a consequence of association with other men,
counsel, fear, love and such influences, and then they wish wilfully for
things that they had not wanted before, although they are not compelled to
do so – just like someone who, in the hope of deliverance, flings out the
most priceless goods into the sea.’ On other occasions species might ‘so
strongly arouse men to hunger for things that they did not previously care
about that, on occasion, they become entirely indifferent to death, dishon-
our, or fear, so long as they can fulfil their desires’. This was all because ‘they
are influenced against the judgement of reason, like unreasoning animals,
randomly choosing that towards which they are inflamed’.60
57
‘primum et principale remedium quod in homine sit est ut in quinque sensus suos species rerum
delectabilium . . . non recipiat secundum multiplicationem principalem; nam accidentalis sufficit
homini ad damnationem, quando recipitur avide et abundanter’ ‘ad angulos aequales in sensum . . .
praecipue si conus pyramidis brevis occurat’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:218–19. Peter John Olivi was worried
by such arguments because they seemed to suggest that the human had to be a passive receptor of
species, a theory with negative implications for the exercise of free will. See Denery, Seeing, pp. 121–4.
58
2Cel, ii.35–8, FF, pp. 503–7.
59
‘quasi infiniti miraculi et utilitatis ineffabilis’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:253.
60
‘nos videmus homines per societatem consilia timorem et amorem et hujusmodi multum mutare
de proposito, et gratis velle ea quae prius non volebant licet non cogantur, sicut ille qui spe salutis
projicit merces in mare carissimas’; ‘fortiter excitant homines ad volendum quae prius non
138
It did not need to be so. In the universe, where higher and nobler
entities could influence and even direct lower ones, the soul could take
command of the body. ‘Since the rational soul is more noble than the stars,
so too, in the same way that the stars and all things can impress their virtue
and species on external things . . . the rational soul, which is the most
active substance among all excluding God and the angels, is capable of
impressing – and continually does impress – its species and virtue on the
body, of which it is the mover, and on external things,’ he wrote, ‘and
most effectively when it is motivated by strong desire, clear purpose, and
great confidence.’61 This last point was of particular importance. It was
through the will that a person could find salvation, and those who did not
exercise their will or used it perversely would find themselves among the
damned. Whether exercised for good or ill, it was powerful: ‘for every
action of a man is stronger and more impetuous when thought and will are
directed to it, and with fixed purpose he forms his resolution, and firmly
hopes that he can accomplish his purpose’.62 Rationality, clarity of
thought and self-consciousness were thus for Bacon allies against tempta-
tion and against evil actions, necessary qualities for the safe passage of the
soul through the world.
As Bacon was well aware, this sensibility was as old as philosophy itself.
He believed that the dedication of the philosophers of antiquity to virtue,
detachment and self-control offered a crucial example to his own
society.63 He commented, following Cicero, that Aristotle had gone
into exile with fifteen followers ‘in order to be free with those few for
[the pursuit of] wisdom, because this life is more similar to the life of God
and the angels’.64 Indeed, in contemporary romance Aristotle was also
associated with withdrawal and humility, as were other wise individuals –
Jacques de Vitry, for example, characterised the ‘Gymnosophistes of India’
as ‘naked sapientes’: ‘They go about in nakedness, poverty and humility,
curabant, quod aliquando nec mortem nec infamiam nec timorem aestimant dummodo suas
compleant voluntates . . . quasi bruta animalia moventur contra judicium rationis, gratis eligentes
ea ad quae excitantur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:249.
61
‘Et quoniam anima rationalis dignior est stellis, ideo sicut stellae et omnia faciunt virtutes suas et
species in rebus extra . . . potest ergo anima rationalis, quae est substantia maxime activa inter omnia
post Deum et angelos, facere et facit continue speciem suam et virtutem in corpus, cujus est actus, et
in res extra; et maxime quum ex forti desiderio et intentione certa et confidentia magna operatur’:
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:396. See also OT, pp. 96–8.
62
‘Omnis enim operatio hominis est fortior et impetuosior, quando ad eam est multum sollicitus et
voluntarius, et fixo proposito format intentionem, et sperat firmiter se posse consequi quod
intendit’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:398.
63
A view shared by many others, among them, Albertanus of Brescia, whose De amore et dilectione Dei
(1238), looked to Seneca for moral models suitable to secular society. See J. M. Powell, Albertanus of
Brescia: The Pursuit of Happiness in the Early Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 37–55. See
also M. L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (2 vols. Leiden, 1985).
64
CST, i.ii.13, pp. 44/5–46/7. See also OM, ii.13, 3:66; SS, i.1, p. 36.
139
despising the illusory and transient vanities of this world’.65 Bacon
found it compelling and inspiring that pagan philosophers and their
Muslim successors – who were all ‘without that gift of grace that makes
a man worthy of eternal life, into which we enter at baptism’ – had
gained such moral heights, chiefly through careful discipline and the
distant echoes of divine knowledge, when Christians, who had the
direct advantage of God’s grace, fell so short.66 The force of ancient
writings must have been magnified in a mind trained from infancy to be
sensitive to the words of authorities. He believed, as we have seen, that
the reflections of these men could be of the greatest service in under-
standing and unravelling the subtle bonds of the world. ‘Sublimely
indeed’, he wrote, ‘do the philosophers determine the causes on
which account we are impeded from knowledge of eternal life.’67
Much of the material excerpted and discussed by Bacon dealt with
the intemperate urges, instincts and emotions of the mind and body,
and ways in which they might be resisted, tamed and subdued. In some
respects, Bacon felt, other monotheists such as the Islamic philosopher
Avicenna dealt more perceptively with the relationship between body
and soul than had the pagans. They wrote on the need for the soul to
surrender its natural desire to rule over the body; elevate the mind away
from worldly matters; and look to revelation and prophecy for clarifica-
tion of things that could not otherwise be understood.68 Indeed, many
ancient philosophers also appeared to have things in common with the
Franciscans. They understood that ‘the soul becomes languid amid
riches, honours and pleasures’. ‘To be in want of nothing is a quality
of God,’ Bacon quoted from Xenophon, ‘but to need as little as
possible is the nearest thing to God.’69
Of particular service in this regard were thinkers influenced by
Stoicism, such as Seneca. They saw harmony between virtue, reason
and nature, and sought to detach themselves from the vicissitudes of
65
‘In nuditate enim et paupertate et humilitate ambulant, contempta fallaci et transitoria mundi huius
vanitate’: Historia orientalis, ed. J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008), 92, p. 384/385. C. Gaullier-
Bougassas, ‘Alexander and Aristotle in the French Alexander Romances’ in D. Maddox and
S. Sturm-Maddox (eds.), The Medieval French Alexander (Albany, 2002), 57–73; C. L. Vitto, ‘The
Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 79.5
(1989), 1–100. As applied to Muslims, see J. Tolan, ‘“Saracen Philosophers Secretly Deride Islam”’,
Medieval Encounters, 8.2–3 (2002), 184–208.
66
‘sine gratia gratificante, quae facit hominem dignum vita aeterna, in qua nos ponimur in baptismo’:
CSP, p. 401; MP, iii (proemium), pp. 46–7.
67
‘Pulcre quidem determinant phylosophi causas quare impedimur a cognitione vite eterne’: MP,
i.vi, p. 25.
68
MP, i.vi, pp. 26–8.
69
‘languet animus in diviciis et honoribus et deliciis’; ‘Nichil egere est Dei, quam minimum autem
proximum est Deo’: MP, iii.ii, pp. 60, 62.
140
fortune and vagaries of human nature.70 The determination of the philo-
sophers and the Franciscans to separate themselves from the world – often
while physically living in the world – in order to obtain purity and
elevation of mind made the ancient reflections singularly valuable to the
Franciscans, an opinion shared by others in the order. John of Wales made
a popular series of compendia along these lines and John Pecham described
the Franciscans approvingly as ‘poor as the Socratics, barefoot and pure
like the Platonists, sharp as the Academics, ceaseless in pursuit of wisdom
like the Peripatetics’.71 Seneca’s thoughts on the mastery of emotions,
especially anger, could help those in authority who were cautioned by the
Rule that ‘they must be careful not to be angry or disturbed on account of
the sin of another, for anger and disturbance impede charity in themselves
and in others’.72 Examples could be multiplied: the fact was that Bacon
saw these writings as of the greatest service in disciplining the mind and,
thereby, the body during the struggle to free oneself from the power of
worldly temptations.73 That he thought so is indicative of his own
approach to spirituality: St Francis had used quite different methods –
more immediate, dramatic and savage. The saint rolled naked in the snow;
the scholar roused his spirit through reading and reflection. But the battle
was essentially the same: to conquer the sensual, wayward body so that it
did not impede the soul’s flight to God.
traditions of unease
Nevertheless, saint and scholar had never been comfortably accommo-
dated within the same paradigm of spirituality. The eternal question
‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ had echoed down the ages: it
was built into Christian culture and consequently it was reborn with every
surge of spiritual renovatio.74 Here, perhaps more than anywhere, there was
70
On Seneca’s stoicism see French, Ancient Natural History, pp. 166–78. St Jerome thought Seneca
had converted to Christianity. See M. L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual
Tradition (New Haven, 2005), p. 24.
71
Swanson, John of Wales, pp. 2–3, 8–16, 167–226; John Pecham, Canticum pauperis (Quaracchi,
1949), p. 140, trans. in J. I. Catto, ‘Theology and Theologians 1220–1320’ in EOS, 471–517, p. 496.
Bonaventure used Seneca in his sermons (e.g. Coll.hex, xix.5, p. 421). The model of the
philosophical life had been drawn upon by some early Christian asetics and monks (R. A.
Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 34–8, 73–5) and again from the
twelfth century (M. Lapidge, ‘The Stoic Inheritance’ in Dronke (ed.), History, 81–112, pp. 88–99).
72
‘cavere debent, ne irascantur et conturbentur propter peccatum in alicuius, quia ira et conturbatio in
se et in aliis impediunt caritatem’: RegB, 7, p. 233; MP, iii.iii–iv, pp. 72–118, esp. iii.iii.6–7, pp. 92–8.
73
See MP, i (proemium), p. 5; OT, p. 87.
74
‘Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?’ See Tertullian, Traité de la prescription contre les hérétiques ed.
F. R. Refoulé (Paris, 1957), 7.9, 12, pp. 98–100. See Colish, Medieval Foundations, pp. 6–15; R. R.
Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 47–58; E. Grant, Science and
Religion 400 BC–AD 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (Baltimore, 2006), esp. pp. 102–14, 230–43.
141
a clash of competing models, all with high spiritual claims, that had to be
negotiated by individuals and groups such as the Franciscans. From the
earliest days, as orthodoxy was formulated in opposition to heresy against a
backdrop of all-pervasive, dangerously sophisticated pagan thought,
Christian purists had been on the defensive against reason-based investi-
gations of God’s creation. Paul, for example, had written: ‘My speech and
my proclamation were not in persuasibilibus sapientiae verbis, but with a
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest
on sapientia hominum but in virtute Dei.’75 Such men felt that independent
inquiries into the nature of the universe required justification, since the
scriptures contained everything necessary for salvation. The desire to
engage in scholarly research and speculation might variously seem to
arise from vanity, idle curiosity, lack of faith or actual impiety. It was
dangerous because it might distract from the proper concerns of the
Christian and offer explanations that might supplement – or possibly
contradict – revealed truth. Encounters in which simple people con-
founded the wise, who were blinded by their own learning, were a staple
of the anti-intellectual genre.76 Intellectuals worried that learning and
pride in learning might hinder them in following the example of the
unlearned, who, allegedly, surrendered so readily to God.77 These reasons
for rejecting secular knowledge, or at least being wary of it, were articu-
lated in the first centuries, and touched nerves among some of the
intellectuals of the early Church, who had been educated in the rich
cosmopolitan traditions of the ancient Mediterranean and faced, with
their subsequent conversions, an austere demand to reject them almost
outright. In response they formulated an effective, if still restrictive and
rather piecemeal, defence of learning that was to be the basis of Christian
scholarship through the centuries to come.
They argued that pagan learning, like the scriptures, had its origin in
divine revelation and therefore contained truths that God intended
humanity to know.78 Furthermore, philosophy, especially, was necessary
to Christians in order to provide the intellectual tools to define and defend
the faith against its opponents and to clarify pressing theological perplex-
ities, such as the nature of the Trinity, or the problem of evil. The literary
heritage was necessary for the study of grammar and eloquent preaching.
They maintained that it was perfectly possible to take from pagan culture
75
1 Cor. 2.4–8.
76
E.g. Acts 4.1–22, 6.8–7.60; Athanasius, Vita di Antonio, ed. G. J. M. Bartelink (Milan, 1974), chs.
72–80, pp. 138–52; D. Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 245–65. Even the
‘wisdom’ books of the Old Testament have strong ambivalences: ‘All is vanity . . . For in much
sapientia is much vexation and those who increase scientia, increase sorrow’ (Eccl. 1:12–18).
77
Augustine, Confessions, viii.xviii.19. 78 DDC, ii.xl.60, p. 124.
142
everything that it was worth having without compromising the faith,
since, as Augustine wrote, ‘a good and true Christian should realise that
truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found’.79 Yet built into this was
the essential condition for such divinely sanctioned pillage: all secular
study was to be absolutely subordinate to the needs of the faith.
Despite their conviction that everything valuable in pagan learning
belonged to and could serve Christianity, Christian scholars remained
anxious. It was not always easy to be confident that they – or even more
so, their contemporaries – were not being led astray by the worthless and
dangerous parts that did not come from God. The various trials and
condemnations arose from this fear. More generally, they were worried
about motivation. Akin to the temptations of the flesh, for the scholar, was
the temptation of knowledge. Augustine regarded it as more dangerous
than the other kinds of temptation because it was more complicated: ‘the
mind is also subject to a certain propensity to use the sense of the body, not
for self-indulgence of a physical kind, but for the satisfaction of its own
inquisitiveness. This futile curiosity masquerades under the name of
science and learning . . . since it derives from our thirst for knowledge.’80
The learned stood poised on the edge of spiritual disaster: ‘They lapse into
pride without respect for you, my God,’ Augustine wrote, ‘and . . .
although they can predict an eclipse of the sun so far ahead, they cannot
see that they themselves are already in the shadow of eclipse.’81
Anxiety about the distinction between scholarship and curiosity ran
through subsequent centuries, and only intensified with the emergence of
the schools. Bernard of Clairvaux denounced curiositas, which he consid-
ered to be the cause of the Fall, and castigated people who exhibited it by
lifting their heads and looking around them: ‘How dare you lift your eyes
to heaven, you who have sinned against heaven?’ he demanded.82 The
skills and prestige that education provided seemed to some to be produ-
cing new generations of proud, combative, ambitious and amoral men.83
Various writers laid careful emphasis on the distinction between what was
79
DDC, ii.xviii.28, p. 90/91; quoted by Bacon at OM, ii.1, 3:37.
80
Augustine, Confessions, x.xxxv.54; trans. R. S. Pine Coffin (Harmondsworth, 1964), p. 241. See
E. Peters, ‘Libertas inquirendi and the vitium curiositatis in Medieval Thought’ in G. Makdisi et al.
(eds.), La notion de liberté au moyen âge: Islam, Byzance, Occident (Paris, 1985), 89–98.
81
Augustine, Confessions, v.iii.4; trans. Pine Coffin, p. 93.
82
‘Ut quid audes oculos levare ad caelum, qui peccasti in caelum?’: De Gradibus Humilitatis et Superbiae
in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq et al. (8 vols. Rome, 1957–77), vol. iii,
x.28–38, pp. 38–45, quotation at x.28, p. 38.
83
John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, esp. prologus-i.10, iv.33–42, pp. 9–29, 170–84; C. Nederman, John of
Salisbury (Tempe, 2005), esp. pp. 62–75. See also Adelard of Bath, Conversations, p. 102/103;
Adelard of Bath, ‘Liber de naturis inferiorum et superiorum’, ed. G. Maurach, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch,
14 (1979), 204–55, i.i, p. 212.
143
empty and vain and what was most glorious and necessary: the hunger to
draw closer to the restoration of the pristine, pre-lapsarian sapientia.84 The
scholar’s road to God was, in a sense, to undo the effects of the first fault of
humanity, who had after all fallen from grace precisely by desiring the
wrong kind of knowledge and obtaining it in the wrong way.85 Yet, the
belief that education outside the cloister was a worldly temptation and a
burden on the soul that might actually bar it from obtaining sapientia was
persistently articulated by monks. For Bernard of Clairvaux, renunciation
of secular scholarship was part of the transformation that was entry into a
religious order. It was necessary to stop looking outwards and instead look
inwards, to gain the self-knowledge essential for holiness.86
This complex sensibility about any learning that went beyond biblical
study was the inheritance of the Latin West. A thousand years of entwined
argument, topically embellished in the preceding century, was the bed-
rock of Bacon’s mental landscape long before he became a friar, as it must
have been for all educated mendicants.87 Even those lacking learning had
apparently imbibed the long prejudice. It was inescapable – embedded in
one way or another within the justification of every branch of scientia and
integral to the very texts from which they were studied. It is most unlikely
that Bacon, or his fellow scholars, would have been capable of thinking
outside the old paradigm of moralised epistemology, and there is certainly
no sign that he did so. It was all the more relevant for his generation, given
that, in these decades, the Latin West was confronted by the need to
integrate the new Graeco-Arabic material into existing thought, and
consequently scholarly friars had cause quite outside Franciscan considera-
tions for revisiting old concerns about non-Christian scientia. The ambiva-
lence over learning sometimes articulated within the order derived not
from some novel sensitivity born in Assisi that century but from the same
ancient patterns of thought. Imaginings of sanctity, renunciation, mon-
asticism and solitary retreat had their roots in the Egyptian desert: a place
of stark rejection, where, in St Anthony’s taunt to the philosophers,
‘although we do not know how to read, we believe in God’.88 Every
rejection of this kind carries with it the vestiges of what it rejected, just as
84
E.g. Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, 1.
85
On this as a project see Southern, Scholastic Humanism. For Bacon’s view see esp. OM, i.6,
3:13–16.
86
Ep. 104: ‘Ad Magistrum Gualterum de Calvomonte’ in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera,
vol. vii, pp. 261–3.
87
He was conscious of it, writing: ‘Quoniam vero prima fundamenta jecerunt, est eis non solum
regratiandum, sed quasi totum cum quadam reverentia ascribendum’ (OM, i.5, 3:13).
88
‘ecce nos, qui non didicimus litteras, credimus in Dominum’: Athanasius, Vita, ch. 78, p. 148. Cf.
Anthony’s reference to Paul’s teaching (1 Cor. 2.1–5); A. Boureau, ‘Vitae fratrum, vitae patrum:
l’ordre dominicain et le modèle des pères du desert au XIIIe siècle’, Mélanges de l’École Française de
144
all texts are inseparable from the mores of the education that permitted
their writing. It is surely no coincidence that the anti-scholastic
Franciscans of the late thirteenth century voiced their concern by resur-
recting the Tertullian dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem in
the famous lament: ‘O Paris, you who have destroyed Assisi.’89 Even
rejections had their traditional vocabulary.
the franciscans on the plain of jericho

Francis modelled his life and teaching on a complicated medieval imagin-
ing of the ‘apostolic’ life that neither encouraged nor excluded scholarly
activity. His task and that of his followers was to preach penance, knowing
that the kingdom of God was at hand.90 This inevitably involved making
the usual attacks on corrupt prelates, lax priests and learned clerics together
with various other criticisms of society. He was, however, eager to be
assigned a formal place within the Church, to write a Rule, to be
recognised, orthodox and influential. He could not be any of these things
if he distanced the order too far from the great theological structures on
which the Church depended or from the theological endeavours that it
sponsored. The ecclesiastical hierarchy would not permit those untrained
in theology to preach for fear that they might, as so many did, slide into
heresy. This was a restriction that might have been suspended in Francis’
case, but would not be for his followers if they lacked the proper quali-
fications and guidance.91 If Francis had been content to let his order
remain a simple group of penitents, simply exhorting others to penance,
none of this might have mattered. As it was, he aspired to reach the whole
world, even infideles, and that he could not do without the institutional
Church. Much of the unreconciled tension in the order was a result of the
incompatibility between the anarchic spirituality of the gospels, for which
Rome 99 (1987), 79–100. McGinn suggested that the Vita might be called ‘the magna carta of
Christian hagiography’: B. McGinn, ‘The Influence of St Francis on the Theology of the High
Middle Ages: The Testimony of St Bonaventure’ in F. de A. Chavero (ed.), Bonaventuriana (2 vols.
Rome, 1988), vol. i, 97–117, p. 106. For a further refinement of these competing models see
Markus, Ancient Christianity, esp. Part iii.
89
‘Mal vedemo Parisi, che àne destrutt’Asisi’: Jacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. F. Mancini (Rome, 1974),
no. 91, p. 293; Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 102–7.
90
R. Pazzelli, St Francis and the Third Order: The Franciscan and Pre-Franciscan Penitential Movement
(Chicago, 1989); M. Cusato, ‘To Do Penance/Facere poenitentiam: Franciscan Identity and Ecclesial
Identity’ reprinted in M. F. Cusato, The Early Franciscan Movement, 1205–1239: History, Sources and
Hermeneutics (Spoleto, 2009), 49–67.
91
On responses to attempts of the unlearned to preach see B. Bolton, ‘Poverty as Protest: Some
Inspirational Groups at the Turn of the Twelfth Century’, reprinted in B. Bolton, Innocent III:
Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot, 1995).
145
Francis and many of his followers hungered, and in which they believed,
and the entrenched, hegemonic Church of the day.92
Recent studies have shown that Francis was rather better educated than
he admitted, but he was eager to present himself as a man who embraced
and exemplified the unlettered state, a description adopted by his fol-
lowers.93 This was a gesture of humility, rather than one about learning,
but it also served to put Francis in command of the apostolic authority that
had belonged to supposedly illiterate men such as Anthony. The elites of
the Church valued this kind of inspiration in properly canonised saints, but
they were watchful of it in others, and mistrustful. Augustine had warned
about the dangers posed by the example of unlearned men who claimed to
understand the scriptures through divine revelation. He was afraid that such
stories might cause people to repudiate education in the arrogant hope of
receiving the same advantage, or to feel that they were imperfect Christians
because the Holy Spirit had not come to them in such a way.94 Francis spent
his life negotiating this treacherous moral terrain, in which every spiritual
achievement risked engendering a deadly pride. He recognised that educa-
tion could not easily be undone, but he sometimes suggested that it was
akin to other possessions and temptations – better renounced, if possible.95
It is striking that Francis’ most confident pronouncements against scho-
larly activity exclusively concerned the shallow, idle, vain and worldly
intellectualism that all serious-minded intellectuals as well as their critics
had been condemning for centuries. In the Rule of 1221 he warned:
Let all the brothers beware of all pride and vainglory. Let us guard ourselves from
the wisdom of this world and the prudence of the flesh; since the carnal spirit . . .
does not seek the interior piety and holiness of the spirit, but only wants to possess
the semblance of piety and sanctity among men . . . The spirit of the Lord,
92
Dalarun, Misadventure, esp. pp. 184–90, 206–19; Dalarun, Francis, esp. pp. 32–43. See also Landini,
Causes, esp. pp. 56–76, 103–26.
93
Robson, ‘Early Manuscript’, pp. 218–20. 94 DDC, preface, 4–6, pp. 4/5–8/9.
95
For provisions for the learned, see RegNB, 3, pp. 246–7. Some of the early accounts reported that
the friars used whatever they had in common, specifying books in particular, ‘just as it was done in
the primitive church of the apostles’. See Anonymous of Perugia, ‘L’Anonimo Perugino tra le fonti
francescane del secolo XIII: Rapporti letterari e testo critico’, ed. L. di Fonzo, Miscellanea
Franciscana, 72 (1972), 435–65, ch. 6, FF, p. 1331; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 46; 3Soc, 11, FF,
pp. 1414–18. On the question of renunciation of learning, there is little direct evidence. Francis was
quoted as saying: ‘There are many who willingly climb to the heights of knowledge; that person be
blessed who renounces it for the love of God’. See CA, 104, FF, p. 1646 ; trans. FoAED, vol. ii,
p. 209. Merlo suggests that Francis became more receptive to education as time passed (Nel nome,
pp. 113–18), while Landini (Causes, p. 55) asks whether Francis, with his great reverence for priests,
was not ‘something of a “crypto-clericalizer”’. See the survey of attitudes in D. Berg, Armut und
Geschichte: Studien zur Geschichte der Bettelorden im Hohen und Späten Mittelalter (Kevelaer, 2001),
pp. 52–114. On Francis’ ambiguity, and the complexity of Franciscan attitudes to learning, see
Maranesi, Nescientes litteras.
146
however . . . strives for humility and patience . . . Above all, it desires the divine
fear, the divine wisdom and the divine love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.96
One of the testimonies sent by Francis’ early companions in response to

the 1244 request elaborated on this, claiming: ‘It grieved him when
brothers sought learning while neglecting virtue . . . He said: “those
brothers of mine who are led by curiosity for knowledge will find
themselves empty-handed on the day of reckoning”.’97 Francis wrote in
his Epistola ad fideles that he was afraid for those who ‘do not have spiritual
wisdom because they do not possess the Son of God, the true wisdom
of the Father, within them’.98 Aside from these quite traditional concerns,
he respected theologians so long as they had the right motivation and
priorities, and were careful.99 He instructed the friars to ‘honour all
theologians’, just as they did the priests who administered the
Eucharist.100 In his much-analysed letter to Anthony of Padua he licensed
the study of theology within the order, ‘providing that in the midst of
these studies you do not extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion’.101
The Franciscan studia system was already emerging before his death.
After Francis had died, a kind of h: adıˉth tradition grew up. Those who
had known him quoted his opinions on various subjects, deriving author-
ity from their degree of intimacy with the saint. Many of the brothers
claimed to remember sentiments that he had expressed on the subject of
learning, including the dampening responses to those who asked for books
(‘he offered him ashes instead of a Psalter’) – although these anecdotes
ought also to be read in the context of the wide-ranging renunciations
demanded by Francis, which included small pillows because they were
likely to contain the Devil.102 The appearance of classical tropes against
96
‘Omnes ergo fratres caveamus ab omni superbia et vana gloria. Et custodiamus nos a sapientia
huius mundi et a prudentia carnis; spiritus enim carnis . . . quaerit non religionem et sanctitatem
interiori spiritu, sed vult et desiderat habere religionem et sanctitatem foris apparentem
hominibus . . . Spiritus autem Domini . . . studet ad humilitatem et patientiam . . . Et semper
super omnia desiderat divinum timorem et divinam sapientiam et divinum amorem Patris et Filii
et Spiritus Sancti’: RegNB, 17, p. 273. See also Adm, 7, p. 68.
97
CA, 47, FF, pp. 1519–20; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 147, repeated 2Cel, ii.147, FF, pp. 613–14.
98
‘Sapientiam non habent spiritualem, quia non habent Filium Dei in se, qui est vera sapientia Patris’:
EpFid2, p. 125.
99
Celano even reported that ‘he considered doctors of sacred theology to be worthy of even greater
honour [than preachers]’: 2Cel, ii.122, FF, p. 588; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 352.
100
‘omnes theologos . . . debemus et venerari’: Test, p. 309.
101
‘dummodo inter huius studium orationis et devotionis spiritum non exstinguas’: Opuscula, p. 95;
ChrXXIVGen, p. 132. The authenticity of the letter remains uncertain. On theology in the order
see J. G. Bougerol, ‘Le origini e la finalità dello studio nell’Ordine francescano’, Antonianum 53
(1978), 405–22.
102
Quotation from 2Cel, ii.147, FF, p. 614; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 372, based on a story in CA, 104,
FF, pp. 1645–6. On pillows see 2Cel, ii.34.
147
learning in these texts is revealing. One story recounted that a learned
Dominican went away from a conversation with Francis ‘greatly edified’,
saying: ‘the theology of this man, held aloft by purity and contemplation, is
a soaring eagle, while our learning crawls on its belly on the ground’.103
Some of the early companions went further and attributed to him an
ominous foreknowledge: ‘he could smell in the air that a time was coming,
and not too far away, when he knew learning would be an occasion of
ruin, while dedication to spiritual things would serve as a support to the
spirit’. Yet even these kind of remarks generally confirmed the nature of
Francis’ specific reasons for worrying: ‘He did not say these things out of
dislike for the study of Scriptures,’ the same passage related, ‘but to draw all
of them back from excessive concern for learning, because he preferred
that they be good through charity rather than be dilettantes through
curiosity.’104 Thomas of Celano added: ‘He considered a true philosopher
the person who never set anything ahead of the desire for eternal life.’105
Meanwhile, educated friars took every opportunity to remind their
hearers that holiness was a prerequisite for the scholar and that scholarship
was essential to the Church.106 Jean de la Rochelle, regent master of
theology in Paris, was saying nothing new when he remarked that ‘a
trick of demons is to destroy the study of philosophy, because they do not
wish Christians to have an acute mind’.107 Thomas of Eccleston reported
that Grosseteste ‘sometimes said . . . that unless the friars encouraged
learning and had time for the study of the Divine Law, for a certainty
we would become the same as the other religious, whom, alas, we see
walking in the shadow of ignorance’. Thomas himself was delighted by
the recruitment of intellectuals: ‘thus the English province was inundated
with the gift of wisdom’.108 Like many others, Adam Marsh distinguished
between ‘the darkness of worldly wisdom, which the word of God so
fearfully curses . . . earthly, sensual, devilish’ and ‘that wisdom which
103
CA, 36; 2Cel, ii.69, FF, pp. 1509–10, 537–8; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, pp. 141, 315.
104
CA, 47, FF, p. 1520; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 147, quoted verbatim in 2Cel, ii.147, FF, pp. 613–14.
The discussion continued through CA, 102–5, FF, pp. 1639–47. See also 2Cel, ii.32, FF, p. 500.
105
2Cel, ii.68, FF, pp. 536–7; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, pp. 314–15.
106
On holiness of life and learning see John of Parma (quoted in DAFM, p. 92); Hugh of Digne’s Rule
Commentary, pp. 186–7; DAFM, p. 33; Coll.hex, esp. ii, xix, pp. 336–42, 420–4; Bougerol,
‘Origini’; Maranesi, Nescientes litteras, esp. pp. 90–146.
107
‘Cautela ergo demonum est dissipare studium philosophiae, quia nollent quod christiani haberent
acutum ingenium’: John of La Rochelle, ‘Tres sermones inediti Joannis de Rupella in honorem
S. Antonii Patavini’, ed. Balduinus ab Amsterdam, CF, 28 (1958), 33–58, pp. 50–1. Bacon also
blamed the Devil for Christian ignorance: e.g. OT, p. 269.
108
‘Dixit enim ei aliquando, quod nisi fratres foverent studium et studiose vacarent legi divinae, pro
certo similiter contingeret de nobis, sicut de aliis religiosis, quos videmus in tenebris ignorantiae,
proh dolor! ambulare’; ‘ita inundavit in provincia Anglicana donum sapientiae’: DAFM,
pp. 114, 63.
148
shines from above’. He felt that it was the profession as a religious that took
someone from the former to the latter.109 According to Salimbene, after
Hugh of Digne had thoroughly defeated a learned Dominican in debate
he told the spectators: ‘now [the Dominicans] cannot say that they go
among stupid men [when they visit Franciscans], because I did as the wise
man teaches in Proverbs, when he says . . . “Study wisdom”’.110 But
perhaps the most elegant approach to the problem was that of
Bonaventure, who wrote that he loved the life of Francis ‘because of
the resemblance it has to the beginning and the completion of the
Church, which first began with simple fishermen and soon advanced to
most distinguished and learned doctors’.111 He came full circle by saying
that Francis, like the apostle Peter, had not been left in ignorance, but had
been illuminated by God: ‘For when the simple men were unskilled in
letters, they were made illustrious by the teaching of the Holy Spirit.’
Francis had not needed to study precisely because of his singularity; his
ecstatic comprehension of divine mysteries. However, he insisted, the rest
of the order were not so blessed, and needed to study in order to learn and
to know.112 In the Legenda maior he rewrote the older material to have
Francis say that he was pleased to have learned men in the order, and
wanted them to progress in knowledge ‘without separating the simplicity
of the dove from the wisdom of the serpent’.113
Historians are, of course, well aware of the impact of later developments
and controversies upon the successive representations of Francis’ views on
scholarship. What has perhaps been less considered is that, within the
dynamic context of Franciscan spirituality, anxieties about the proper
place and practice of learning within the order, however strongly felt,
were essentially mimetic.114 When examined over the long span of
109
Letter 90 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, pp. 234/5–236/7.
110
‘modo non poterunt dicere quod per homines ydiotas transierint, quia feci quod docet Sapiens in
Proverbiis, dicens . . . Stude sapientie’: Cronica, vol. i, p. 383.
111
‘Fateor coram Deo, quod hoc est, quod me fecit vitam beati Francisci maxime diligere, quia similis
est initio et perfectioni Ecclesiae, quae primo incepit a piscatoribus simplicibus et postmodum
profecit ad doctores clarissimos et peritissimos’: ‘Epistola de tribus quaestionibus’ in Bonaventure,
Opera omnia, vol. viii, 331–36 , p. 336. See M. Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of Absolute
Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order, 1210–1323 (London, 1961), pp. 114ff.
112
LM, xi.14, FF, p. 879; Coll.hex, xxii.21, p. 440; Dalarun (Misadventure, esp. pp. 224–58) sees
Bonaventure’s reworking as the culmination of the ‘misadventure’ of Francis. See also McGinn,
‘Influence of St Francis’, pp. 115–17. Le Goff traced a line of development, rather than seeing this
as a debate: ‘Enfin, avec un Roger Bacon . . . il n’y a plus de contradiction entre une science totale
et la spiritualité franciscaine la plus ardente’ (J. Le Goff, Saint François d’Assise (Paris, 1999), p. 190).
113
LM, 11.1., FF, p. 870; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 613.
114
For the more usual view that learning, especially involvement in the universities, presented the
order with a specifically Franciscan rather than a generically Christian problem see Roest,
Franciscan Education.
149
Christian thought, Franciscan controversies over education lose much of their
apparent specificity and nearly all of their originality. They begin to seem
inevitable; part of an enduring mentality that even the Dominicans – who
addressed the matter with such clarity – did not entirely manage to escape.115
It is surely significant that Bonaventure attempted to deal with the anxieties of
the brothers by contextualising the intellectual development of the order.116
The friars were not alone in their unease or their attempts to reconcile what
seemed to some to be irreconcilable – learning and the apostolic life. Their
queasiness was mirrored in the fury and horror that spilled from the pens of
their enemies, so that even the bitter treatises of William of Saint-Amour
seem part of the same discussion. The agents of Antichrist ‘are to be sought
among the studious – not among just anyone, but specifically those
whose counsel is reputed as precious, most worthy and best’, he wrote.117
The underlying difficulty expressed by the Franciscans through disagree-
ments about learning and poverty was the sheer complexity of the models
left to them by their founder. The enterprise of encouraging spiritual
renewal and even conversion from other religions through a combination
of verbal and non-verbal preaching seemed on the face of it to tie in neatly
enough with the individual quest for perfection through poverty. But these
twin emphases quickly proved to have competing requirements. How far
Francis realised it is not easy to determine, but for all the energy of his
successive stages of renunciation, it is quite clear that he tried and combined
a variety of approaches. Nor did the world, the Church, Christian spiri-
tuality or even his own followers offer a static background to his developing
vocation. When tensions began to emerge in the order during his prolonged
absence in the eastern Mediterranean, he more or less withdrew from an
active vocation carried out in the world and threw himself into a contem-
plative existence removed from urban life. In a letter to Brother Leo – if
genuine – he created a dichotomy between success in the world, among the
infideles, even at working miracles, and the true joy of his heart: being cold,
wretched and turned out by his brethren from shelter on a winter’s night –
and finding the strength to remain patient through it all. Only in the
endurance of that brutal penance could salvation be found.118 This perspec-
tive was ultimately endorsed by God with the gift of the stigmata.
115
The role of study and measures for its protection were laid down in the Dominican constitutions.
See Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, trans. S. Tugwell (Mahwah, 1982), pp. 455–68. Yet there
were many Dominican exempla marked by anxiety about learning and simplicity and almost
indistinguishable from those of the Franciscans. Van Engen, ‘Dominic’, pp. 17–18. See also
Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow’, pp. 54–71.
116
‘Epistola de tribus quaestionibus’, p. 336.
117
William of Saint-Amour, De periculis, p. 108/109.
118
‘De vera et perfecta laetitia’ in Francis of Assisi, Opuscula, p. 325.
150
When the Franciscans tried to think about education within the some-
times incompatible spiritual ideals explored by their founder, the issue
could easily become a troubling indication of an underlying irresolution.
It was the old difficulty: the irreconcilable nature of the vita activa and vita
contemplativa. The friars understood this. Bonaventure recognised the two
distinct approaches, writing in the Itinerarium that Francis, by the end of his
life, was ‘offered as an example of perfect contemplation, just as previously
he had been of action’. Similarly, Adam Marsh likened pastors of souls to
Moses, permitted ‘now to ascend the mountain for the contemplation of
truth, and now to descend to the plain for the business of dispensing
charity’.119 Yet the fact remained that friars who were intent on carrying
out a public mission of verbal preaching, spiritual renewal and conversion
required education. Those who focused on the non-verbal preaching of
the physical suffering and mystical exaltation of Francis’ later years would
naturally expect education to be at best futile, and possibly an obstacle.120
ascending the mount of olives

It should already be obvious that Bacon’s writings were part of these
various entanglements of ideas, none of which were as new as they
sometimes seemed. His arguments for radical additions to the curriculum
were based on those devised by Augustine, Jerome and others. He made
repeatedly and at length the distinctions over questions of motivation and
personal virtue that had their roots in ancient Athens. He was a vigorous
critic of the sin of indulging one’s own curiositas or stimulating it in others:
‘as God himself sweeps away inquisitiveness from his Church’.121 His
sense of what was necessary to the Church and what constituted holiness
of life had grown out of the ideologies of his day, specifically those of the
Franciscans. He believed that the sinful could not study properly and that
no one could free themselves from evil unless they were ‘one of the very
few to whom God has given special grace’.122 Like his predecessors and
brethren he did not count the battle for scientia won; instead, he wrote
hundreds of pages meticulously outlining and defending the role of
learning within salvation history. For himself, he was confident that he
was seeking the right knowledge in the right way and for the right reasons,
according to criteria that were the very fabric of his intellectual being. He
119
‘positus est in exemplum perfectae contemplationis, sicut prius fuerat actionis’: Itinerarium mentis,
vii.3, p. 312; Letter 98 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, p. 254/255.
120
On the relationship between vita and regula see Van Engen, ‘Dominic’. See Dalarun, Francis, on
the tensions caused by Francis’ often unresolved approaches to the government of the order.
121
‘quam curiositatem Deus ipse auferat ab ecclesia sua’: OT, p. 309.
122
‘nisi sint aliqui paucissimi, quibus Deus gratiam dat specialem’: CSP, p. 412.
151
was inured to the arguments that might be made against learning, for he
heard them echoing through history from the earliest days of the
Church.123 They would not shake him even though it was his business
to answer them all over again: ‘for,’ he wrote, ‘in renewing study they
always received contradiction and impediments, and yet still truth is
gathering strength and will gather strength continually until the days of
Antichrist’.124 For these reasons the fusion of his new vocation with
his lifelong commitment to learning – which in the light of much
modern historiography of the order ought to have been the most
difficult element of his soul’s journey to God – was probably the easiest.
He was convinced that in order to obtain ‘the blessings of the other
life . . . there must be faith and religion and the worship of God and the
consideration of wisdom, and a multitude of books and letters’.125 The
most heartfelt, beautiful and powerful reflections of the greatest saints
and philosophers down the ages told him that the way to God was
through sapientia. It was entirely straightforward and not susceptible to
doubt. ‘There is one way to salvation,’ he wrote simply; ‘wisdom is the
way to salvation.’126
It is here, I think, that we have the key to Bacon’s vocation as a
Franciscan. Most of what he thought he was, wanted to be, saw the
order as and envisaged Christendom requiring came from the many senses
of the concept of sapientia.127 His hopes, desires and expectations were
enfolded within its intricate and convoluted promises. In several different
senses it was his desire for sapientia that made him identify himself as a
pauperculus, like Francis.128 As we have seen, his few remarks about his
own past seem to suggest two stages of renunciation which correspond to
an intensifying moral and perhaps intellectual ambition. In around 1247
he abandoned the ‘way of thinking of the multitude’ in order to concen-
trate on the kind of studies that seemed most important for sapientia, and to
be free to pursue them with the purity of life and intention befitting a
123
OM, i.9, 14–15, 3:18–22, 30–4.
124
‘Nam renovantes studium semper receperunt contradictionem et impedimenta, et tamen veritas
invalescit et invalescet usque ad dies Antichristi’: OM, i.9, 3:20.
125
‘bona alterius vitae . . . debentur fides et religio et cultura Dei et consideratio sapientialis, et
librorum et epistolarum multitudo’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:255.
126
‘Caeterum via salutis una est . . . sapientia est via in salutem’: OM, ii.1, 3:36.
127
For Bonaventure’s elaboration of the modes of wisdom see Coll.hex, ii, pp. 336–42; J. Ratzinger,
The Theology of History in St Bonaventure, trans. Z. Hayes (Chicago, 1971), esp. pp. 59–75;
G. LaNave, Through Holiness to Wisdom: The Nature of Theology According to St Bonaventure
(Rome, 2005), esp. pp. 147–96.
128
OM, i.xvi, 3:34–5, vi.1, 2:170–1. On the close relationship between Lady Poverty and sapientia see
Sacrum commercium sancti Francisci cum domina Paupertate, ed. S. Brufani (Assisi, 1990), prologue,
p. 130; K. B. Wolf, The Poverty of Riches: St Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford, 2005), pp. 31–2.
152
philosopher.129 In about 1257 all this was crystallised in his far greater
renunciation. He explained to Clement that after he became a Franciscan
he continued to be absorbed in his studies, but differently; less frenetically
perhaps: ‘because it was not necessary for the practice of wisdom’.130 This is
a very slight hint, but suggests an important shift when put together with
his scattered references to the mystical aspects of sapientia: the pure heights
of contemplation; the quality of understanding not accessible through
ordinary investigation because it was obtained through grace alone. With
the end of the world coming nearer, the new, late flowering of knowledge
in the West had its part in the wider struggle for the salvation of humanity
that was the business of the mendicant orders. The stated purpose of the
Opus maius and related works was to lay out a framework for the ‘full
contemplation of wisdom’: how to obtain it and how to apply it to the
affairs of Christendom.131
For Bacon sapientia was both a supreme state of learning towards which
an intellectual and spiritual elite might work for the benefit of the faithful
and the ecstatic union with God achieved by the penitent soul. The two
main senses overlapped very considerably, but were not precisely the
same; and they were not straightforwardly stages of spiritual evolution.
The first probably corresponded to the intellectual project of recovering
lost knowledge; while the second, with its many stages of ascent towards
God, was part of the mystical tradition of the interior illumination of the
soul by the Holy Spirit. It did not necessarily require learning, and could
also be obtained, if passingly, through the Eucharist.132 In the first sense,
an expanded range and improved quality of scientiae was the main objec-
tive. Furthermore, the project, far from being wholly interiorised,
depended upon the support of temporal leaders. ‘It is clear’, Bacon
wrote, ‘that major works on the wisdom of philosophy cannot be
produced by one man or many unless the authority of prelates and
princes were to support the wise with considerable generosity.’133 It was
129
‘specialiter laboravi in studio sapientiae, neglecto sensu vulgi’: OT, p. 59; ‘Et ideo ipse Aristotiles,
omnium phylosophorum excellentissimus, omnibus renuntiavit quatinus contemplationi sapien-
tiali vacaret, quia hec vita est simillima vite divine’: MP, i.6, p. 28. His description of Petrus
Peregrinus of Maricourt was probably indicative of his ideals during that period of his life. See
above, pp. 50–1.
130
‘Sed non tantum laboravi, quia non fuit necesse propter exercitium sapientiae’ (my italics): OT,
p. 65.
131
OM, i.i, 3:1. On sapientia humana see OT, p. 51.
132
OM, i.16, 3:35 (the intellectual project); MP, esp. iv.iii.4, pp. 242–3 (Eucharistic union).
133
‘Et ideo patet quod scripta principalia de sapientia philosophiae non possunt fieri ab uno homine
nec a pluribus, nisi manus praelatorum et principum juvent sapientes cum magna virtute’: OT,
p. 56.
153
therefore both for the world and of the world, albeit for the most exalted
enterprise of Christendom.
By contrast, sapientia in the second sense could only be reached when
the world and all positive knowledge had been surrendered. Thomas
of Celano wrote of Francis: ‘Although this blessed man was not educated
in scholarly disciplines, still he learned from God wisdom from above
and, enlightened by the splendours of eternal light, he understood
Scripture deeply. His genius, pure and stained, penetrated hidden
mysteries.’134 Describing the same thing from his own perspective, the
learned Bonaventure wrote about the passing over ‘into God in a transport
of contemplation’, during which ‘if it is to be perfect, all intellectual
activities ought to be relinquished’. Those who wished to reach that
state should ‘ask grace, not learning; desire, not understanding; the
groaning of prayer, not diligence in reading . . . darkness, not clarity; not
light, but the fire that wholly inflames and carries one into God’.135
Mysteriously, this oblivion, this perfect union, this darkness, was the
sapientia perfecta. It was, Bonaventure wrote, ‘the most difficult,
because it is without form, which would seem destructive of the [stages
of wisdom] that came before, but is not . . . this is the culmination of
Christian wisdom.’136 Bacon advanced no theology of wisdom, but
his thought and his desire were imbued with the complex understanding
of sapientia held by all Christian scholars and so carefully worked out for
the order by Bonaventure in different intellectual contexts through the
years of his generalate. The next chapter will examine the public and
practical aspects of Bacon’s perception of sapientia and the Franciscan
order, about which there is rather more to say. Before doing so, it is
important to recover the scattered and shadowy presence of this second,
mystical, element in his thought if the nature of his vocation is to be
properly grasped.
In his geographical allegory, it was only after a man had ‘really sub-
jugated the world, and tamed the flesh’ that he could ‘ascend to the
excellence of the spiritual life and the sweetness of devotion’. The
Mount of Olives – a range of hills not far from Jerusalem – from which
134
2Cel, ii.68; FF, pp. 536–7; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 314, based on Vita S. Antonii.
135
‘in Deum transiit per contemplationis excessum’; ‘si sit perfectus, oportet quod relinquantur
omnes intellectuales operationes’; ‘interroga gratiam, non doctrinam; desiderium, non intellec-
tum; gemitum orationis, non studium lectionis . . . caliginem, non claritatem; non lucem, sed
ignem totaliter inflammantem et in Deum excessivis unctionibus et ardentissimis affectionibus
transferentem’. For Bonaventure, as for many before him, this state was a kind of death:
‘Moriamur igitur et ingrediamur in caliginem,’ he concluded (Itinerarium mentis, vii.3–4, 6,
pp. 312–13).
136
‘difficillima, quia est nulliformis, quod videtur destructivum praecedentium, non tamen est . . .
quod hic est status sapientiae christianae’: Coll.hex, ii.28–9, pp. 340–1.
154
Christ was carried up to heaven (Luke 24.50–1) was used by Bacon, as by
Richard of St Victor, to symbolise the labour and ecstasy of the ascent to
contemplation.137 Yet, for Bacon, in mortal life contemplation was the
way to God, but it was not a final homecoming. Before reaching
Jerusalem, which ‘signifies the vision of peace, and . . . the sanctified soul
who has peace of heart’ the soul had still to clamber down from the heights
and cross the valley of Jehoshaphat. That valley ‘signifies humility . . . and a
journey in the presence of the eyes of majesty, because the interpretation
of this name Jehoshaphat is in the sight of the Lord’.138 So, first the friar was to
subdue the flesh; then he was to devote himself to prayer and contempla-
tion; then he was to walk in the way of true humility; and finally he would
come, in death, to the presence of God. And as reality was not organised as
distinctly as a moral allegory, the friar would doubtless be striving in all
things at once, although he would perhaps also develop within them at
different paces.
There were kinds of learning and wisdom that went with, and per-
meated, each of the stages or elements in the soul’s journey. ‘There are
seven stages of this interior knowledge, the first of which is achieved
through illuminations purely to do with scholarship,’ Bacon wrote.139
Possibly this correlated to his endeavours in the decade between leaving
the university world and entering the order. The next stage required a
man to become virtuous – this doubtless corresponded to the soul’s
journey across the plain of Jericho, and to Bacon’s first years as a
Franciscan. ‘The third stage is in the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,
137
Richard de Saint-Victor, Les Douze Patriarches ou Beniamin minor, eds. J. Châtillon and M. Duchet-
Suchaux (Paris, 1997), esp. chs. 75–83, pp. 306–32. The literal, rather than spiritual, nature of the
‘Mount’ was well known, and it was depicted as a range of hills on maps: see the plates in A.-D.
von den Brincken, ‘Jerusalem on Medieval Mappaemundi: A Site Both Historical and
Eschatological’ in P. D. A. Harvey (ed.), The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and their
Context (London, 2006), 355–79 and E. Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers
Viewed Their World (London, 1998), p. 122, fig. 6.6 (Matthew Paris’ Palestine map). See Roest,
Reading, pp. 140–2, 153–8 on the Victorine influence on Franciscan thought.
138
‘significat humilitatem propter rationem vallis, et viam coram oculis majestatis, propter hoc quod
interpretatio hujus nominis Josaphat est, in conspectu Domini’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:185–6. This
valley, mentioned only as the site of the Last Judgement (Joel 3.2, 12) and otherwise not located,
was said by Eusebius and Jerome to be ‘inter Jerusalem et montem Oliueti’, and associated with the
Kidron valley: Eusebius, Onomasticon: The Place Names of Divine Scripture Including the Latin Edition
of Jerome, ed. and trans. R. Steven Notley and Z. Safrai (Leiden, 2005), p. 114; cf. pp. 113, 159, 164.
See John 18.1. It is worth noting that in both Benjamin Minor and Benjamin Major Richard of St
Victor saw the ecstatic heights of contemplation as the point where a person fell into God, dying
to all ordinary things – there was no subsequent journey; the transfiguration had occurred.
Bernard of Clairvaux made the association with humility: ‘Superbus in hanc vallem [Josaphat]
corruit, et conquassatur; humilis descendit, et minime periclitatur’ (‘Liber ad milites Templi de
laude novae militiae’, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. iii, p. 227).
139
‘Et sunt septem gradus hujus scientiae interioris, unus per illuminationes pure scientiales’: OM,
vi.1, 2:170.
155
which Isaiah enumerates,’ he went on.140 ‘The fourth is in the Beatitudes,
which the Lord set out in the Gospels. The fifth is in the spiritual senses.
The sixth is in the fruits, among which is the peace of the Lord, which
passes all understanding. The seventh consists in raptures, and their types
according to the various different ways that people are snatched away so
that they might see many things of which it is not permitted for men to
speak.’141 How much of this had Bacon experienced himself; how far had
he come in his decade as a Franciscan? He was not specific about himself,
but said that ‘he who is assiduously trained in these experiences, or in most
of them, can assure himself and others not only about spiritual matters, but
every branch of human learning’.142 This seems to suggest that Bacon
might not have believed that he had experienced the mysterious ecstasies
and revelations of the highest stage, but that he had felt the interior
illumination of grace and the spiritual exaltation that it engendered.
Importantly, he believed that his experiences made him more able to
convey to others matters of both spiritual and temporal significance.
Without it, even if a man ‘were to live through infinite ages in this mortal
life, he could never reach with certainty perfection of wisdom in the
multitude of things that might be known’.143
There was a long tradition within monastic thought of seeking to
induce states in which visions and ecstasies might occur.144 How did
Bacon, as an individual, rouse his mind to receive such illumination? It
was not easy. ‘We all willingly eat from the tree of knowledge of good and
evil, but we come with difficulty to the tree of life,’ he admitted.145
140
‘Tertius gradus est in septem donis Spiritus Sancti, quae enumerat Isaias [Isaiah 11.2; Romans
12.6–8; 1 Cor. 12]’: OM, vi.1, 1:171. Bonaventure was to give his series of sermons, Collationes de
septem donis, as Bacon was finishing his works for Clement. He discussed the gifts of scientia and
sapientia (Opera Omnia, vol. v, iv and ix, pp. 473–9, 498–503 respectively).
141
‘Quartus est in beatitudinibus, quas Dominus in evangeliis determinat [Matt. 5.3–10; Luke 6.22].
Quintus est in sensibus spiritualibus. Sextus est in fructibus, de quibus est pax Domini quae
exsuperat omnem sensum. Septimus consistit in raptibus et modis eorum secundum quod diversi
diversimode rapiuntur, ut videant multa, quae non licet homini loqui’: OM, vi.1, 1:171; 2 Cor.
12.1–4. He reiterated these levels on several occasions, especially in the context of preparing
oneself for Eucharistic union with God. See MP, iv.iii.3, 4, pp. 239, 242. See also OT, p. 187. On
the types of ecstasy see Richard of St Victor, Benjamin Major in PL, vol. cxcvi, books iv–v.
142
‘Et qui in his experientiis vel in pluribus eorum est diligenter exercitatus, ipse potest certificare se et
alios non solum de spiritualibus, sed omnibus scientiis humanis’: OM, vi.1, 1:171.
143
‘secreta Dei et arcana vitae aeternae’; ‘antequam videatur Deus facie ad faciem, nunquam homo
sciet aliquid in fine certitudinis. Et ideo si per infinita seculorum secula viveret in hac mortalitate,
nunquam ad perfectionem sapientiae in multitudine scibilium et certitudine pertingeret’: OM,
i.10, 1:22–3.
144
B. Newman, ‘What Did it Mean to Say “I Saw”? The Clash between Theory and Practice in
Medieval Visionary Culture’, Speculum, 80 (2005), 1–43.
145
‘Libenter enim omnes gustamus de ligno scientiae et boni et mali, sed difficiles sumus ad lignum
vitae’: OM, iii.ii, 3:86.
156
He does appear to have been profoundly affected by the contemplation
and consumption of the consecrated host, which was, he believed, ‘the
culmination of the glory and the goodness and the beauty of wisdom’. He
said that people who ‘train themselves in faith and love of this sacrament
cannot restrain their devotion, which arises from pure faith, but dissolve
into tears and the soul melts completely in the sweetness of devotion,
lifted above itself, not knowing where it is, or who it is’.146 Music also
inspired him: he reported that the prophet Elisha prepared himself to
receive divine revelations by listening, and ‘blessed Francis’ had asked one
of the brothers to play the harp in order that ‘his mind might be elevated to
the celestial harmonies’.147 Even without music, contemplation of the
heavens could overwhelm him with love and desire for God, for ‘the
vastness of [celestial] things inflames us to reverence for the Creator’. This
was characteristically Franciscan, as Bacon would have known. ‘If we are
truly Christians,’ he wrote, ‘we believe that we will live corporeally and
eternally in the heavens – so nothing should be known by us more than
the heavens; nothing in human experience should be so greatly
desired.’148
Only slight indications of a method particular to him can be detected, but
they do allow a glimpse of his delight in the activity. He imagined drawings
of such geometrical perfection that contemplation of them would enrapture
the soul. The focus on visualisation was not new, but for Bacon
the geometrical precision seems to have been particularly important.149
146
‘in fine gloriae, et bonitatis, et pulchritudinis sapientiae’: CSP, p. 401. ‘Nam illi, qui exercitant se in
fide et amore istius sacramenti, non possunt sustinere devocionem, que ex pura fide nascitur, quin
defluant in lacrimas et dulcedine devocionis totaliter liquescat animus super se elevatus, nesciens
ubi sit nec de quibus’: MP, iv.iii.2, p. 232. Although Bacon spoke impersonally, the passionate
quality of his language throughout this section reveals the intensity of his involvement in the
sacrament. ‘Mira Dei bonitas!’ he exclaimed constantly, writing about the glory of this possible
union with God: MP, iv.iii.2, p. 230.
147
‘beatus Franciscus . . . quatenus mens excitaretur ad harmonias coelestes’: OT, p. 298. In the event,
the friar refused, and Francis was instead consoled by mysterious, heavenly lute-playing. See CA,
66; 2Cel, ii.89; LM, v.11, FF, pp. 1565–7, 558–9, 821.
148
‘rerum magnitudo excitet nos ad reverentiam creatoris’; ‘si sumus vere Christiani, atque aspiramus
et credimus nos fore mansuros corporaliter in coelo et perpetue. Quapropter nihil deberet tantum
sciri a nobis sicut coelum, nec aliquid in humanis tantum desiderari’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:180–1.
149
The emphasis on precision related to the context of the passage, in his book on mathematics, but
was nonetheless crucial for spiritual ends. Important recent precedents for his ideas came from
the Victorines, from whom Bacon borrowed much, and Joachim – a more uncertain but
plausible influence. See the discussion in B. McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism (London, 1994),
esp. pp. 337–51, 363–421; E. A. Zaitsev, ‘The Meaning of Early Medieval Geometry: From
Euclid and Surveyors’ Manuals to Christian Philosophy’, Isis, 90.3 (1999), 522–53. It is remi-
niscent of Alain of Lille’s image of Genius, assisted by Truth, painting historical scenes on his
robes. See Alan of Lille, ‘De planctu naturae’, ed. N. Häring, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 19.2 (1978),
797–879, pp. 875–9.
157
The mere anticipation of what could be revealed by mathematics caused
him to write with strong emotion:
Oh how the indescribable beauty of divine wisdom would shine and infinite
profit would accrue, if this geometry, which is contained in the Scriptures, were
put before our eyes as physical figures. For by these means the evil of the world
could be swept away by a flood of grace, we would be exalted with Noah and his
sons and all living things assembled in their places and orders. And we would keep
watch with the host of the Lord about the tabernacle of God, and the table of the
unleavened bread, and the altar, and the holy of holies, and the cherubim thick
about the throne of God, and we would see all the other symbols of that ancient
people as if we were present.150
Attempts at geometrically precise drawings of the scene at the tabernacle

had appeared among biblical illuminations for centuries, and the taberna-
cle had long been used allegorically to represent the highest point in the
journey of the meditative soul to God.151 The particular innovation of
Bacon’s link between mathematics and mystical contemplation becomes
more apparent when it is considered that it was only a few years since
Bonaventure had used the tabernacle as an extended metaphor for the
spiritual ascent of the Franciscan in his Itinerarium.152
Such methods could make even prophecies and visions tangible: ‘with
Ezekiel, in a spirit of exultation, we will see with our senses what he
himself understood only spiritually’: the new Temple that he had been
shown when he was brought ‘in visions of God, to the land of Israel’.153
150
‘O quam ineffabilis luceret pulchritudo sapientiae divinae et abundaret utilitas infinita, si haec
geometricalia, quae continentur in scriptura, figurationibus corporalibus ante nostros oculos
ponerentur. Nam sic mundi malitia diluvio gratiae deleta, attolleremur in sublimi cum Noe et
filiis et omnibus animantibus suis locis et ordinibus collocatis. Et cum exercitu Domini in deserto
excubaremus circa tabernaculum Dei, et mensam propositionis, et altare, et sancta sanctorum, ac
cherubim obumbrantia propitiatorium, et caetera illius antiqui populi insignia tanquam praesentia
videremus’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211. See also OT, pp. 226–7; OMin, esp. pp. 358–9; Heb. 9.1–5;
Gen. 6–8 (Noah’s ark); Exod. 25–7 (dimensions of the tabernacle and its contents), 28 (Aaron’s
vestments); Ezek. 40–8 (New Jerusalem); Augustine’s mathematical analysis of Noah’s ark in
DCD, xv.26–7, vol. i, pp. 114–20; G. A. Zinn, ‘Hugh of St Victor and the Ark of Noah: A New
Look’, Church History, 40 (1971), 261–72. On the history of these images see A. R. Meyer, Medieval
Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem (Cambridge, 2003), esp. pp. 16–23, 60–5, 83–6.
151
An early example occurs in the Visigothic-Mozarabic Bible of 960, fo. 50r, held in the collection at
San Isidoro in Léon. The depiction was echoed in the Romanesque Bible copied there in 1162. In
the former, a group of people stand outside the frame of the miniature, looking in, as if engaged in
precisely the contemplation envisaged by Bacon.
152
In writing the Itinerarium, Bonaventure was much influenced by the work of another author
whom Bacon admired, Richard of St Victor – in particular Richard’s Benjamin Maior, where the
same metaphor appeared. For a detailed study of this allegory see S. Chase, Angelic Wisdom: The
Cherubim and the Grace of Contemplation in Richard of St Victor (Notre Dame, 1995), esp. pp. 98–100.
153
Ezek. 40.2; ‘Et cum Ezechiele in spiritu exultationis ad sensum intueremur, quod ipse tantum
spiritualiter intellexit’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211.
158
Bacon explained: ‘Undoubtedly the simulacrum perceptible to the senses
would itself be beautiful, but all the more beautiful because we would see
the form of our truth in its actual presence, and beautiful above all because,
when inflamed by visible instruments, we would delight in the contem-
plation of the spiritual and literal understanding of Scripture’ – the draw-
ing would show the New Jerusalem as if it were already arrived – and ‘we
would know that everything now in the Church of God had been
brought to fulfilment’.154 It was a way found by the saints and the wise
to reverse time, so that they might see the wisdom of God both literally
and spiritually. This was no idle fantasy: ‘I have seen such things with my
own eyes. For I have seen the whole sphere of the world portrayed in the
vestments of Aaron.’155 ‘Therefore, I consider nothing more valuable to
someone striving eagerly in the wisdom of God, than to have geometrical
figures of this kind displayed before his eyes.’156 It is pleasant, in light of
these words, to know that Bacon’s work on perspectiva assisted Giotto in his
depictions of the central events and meanings of Franciscan history –
images that over the years must have moved and inspired thousands of
viewers in precisely the way that Bacon described. Once again, Bacon
came to God through the old loves – geometry, optics – of his old life,
transforming and elevating their purpose and capacity, just as his own
purpose and capacity were transformed by his new identity.
in the valley of jehoshaphat

Bacon’s allegory did not anticipate ‘peace of heart’ in mortal existence.
Before death it could only come fleetingly through the Eucharist, taken
‘so that in this life we may be at peace just as in the sweetness of eternal
life’.157 The rest of the time, the struggle, the suffering and the ambivalent
realities of postlapsarian existence went on. Critics of Bacon’s commit-
ment to his order, perhaps, forget this. Nearly all medieval spiritual writing
154
‘Certe ipsa visio sensibilis esset pulchra, sed pulchrior quando figuram nostrae veritatis videremus
praesentialiter, pulcherrima vero quando scripturae intellectum spiritualem et literalem contem-
plantes gauderemus visibilibus instrumentis excitati, quod scimus omnia nunc in ecclesia Dei esse
completa’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211. On the Temple in Judaeo-Christian thought see S. Goldhill, The
Temple of Jerusalem (London, 2005), esp. pp. 42–6, 104–5, 124–42, on reconstructions and images
of the Temple.
155
‘Et ego vidi hujusmodi oculis meis. Nam vidi in veste poderis Aaron totum orbem terrarum
describi’: OT, p. 226; OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211.
156
‘Et ideo nihil reputo dignius studioso in sapientia Dei, quam hujusmodi figurationes geometricas
ante ejus oculos exhiberi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211–212. Cf. Ezek. 43.1–2: ‘Then he brought me to the
gate, the gate facing east. And there, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east; the
sound was like the sound of mighty waters; and the earth shone with his glory.’
157
‘ut in hac vita quiescamus sicut in dulcedine vite eterne’: MP, iv.iii.2, p. 229.
159
was meant to instruct, to inspire and to provide material for the reflections
of readers. This was certainly true of the Franciscan texts, from the letters
of admonition and the Rules to the recollections, vitae, legendae and
constitutions of the following decades. The order’s normative sources
offer a censorious commentary on the lazy, the greedy, the opportunistic,
those who used sophistry to moderate or circumvent the injunctions of
the Rule, and many other failings.158 What we have in Bacon’s works is
something more revealing, more natural. They expose, sometimes pain-
fully, the practical limits of the imagined metamorphosis against which the
persistence of a friar’s old faults might be measured. Few such voices from
those days still survive, and they are drowned out in the order’s historio-
graphy by the official texts. One of the richest portraits of human nature in
the first century of the order is the chronicle written by Salimbene de
Adam. It is full of the refractory, the faint-hearted, the worldly, the
greedy, the comic and the essentially ordinary among the Franciscans. It
should, therefore, not surprise anyone to find in Bacon the many agita-
tions and inconsistencies visible amid his lofty sentiments. His quick
impatience, arrogance, vanity, anger and contempt are often visible,
only thrown into sharper relief by his castigation in other places of all
those qualities and his apparent recognition of them in himself.159
Perhaps more unusual and interesting in this context is the regret,
frustration and resentment about the consequences of his own choices.
While only the most minor of themes in his writing, these feelings obtain a
certain prominence by their presence among his opening effusions in the
Opus tertium and their colouring of his sparse autobiographical remarks.
The fact appears to have been that despite his earnest desire to renounce
the world and devote himself to the pursuit of wisdom, Clement’s atten-
tion delighted him because it was ‘now recalling me from ten years living
in exile from the high reputation in study that I possessed in times past’. He
was bitter at that moment. He spoke of himself as ‘now unknown to
everyone, and as if already buried and blotted out into oblivion’.160
Behind these brief but unhappy remarks, there must have been many
times when he, not lacking vanity, suffered from his own deliberate
renunciations. However much he told himself that ‘more secrets of
158
Expositio quatuor magistrorum, pp. 138–9, 149.
159
The passage beginning ‘Nam quantumcunque parum sciamus, et licet vile, illud tamen extollimus;
celebramus etiam multa quae ignoramus’ (OM, i.9, 3:18) may perhaps be read confessionally,
although Bacon did not always include himself when he wrote in the first person plural (e.g. OM,
i.12, 3:26–7). His criticisms of other scholars sometimes contained expressions of regret and
softening explanations: e.g. OMin, p. 327, on which see below, pp. 185–7.
160
‘recolens me jam a decem annis exsulantem, quantum ad famam studii, quam retroactis tempor-
ibus obtinui’; ‘jam omnibus inaudito, et velut jam sepulto et oblivione deleto’: OT, p. 7.
160
wisdom have always been uncovered by the simple and neglected, than by
those famous among the vulgus, because famous men are occupied with
public affairs’, it cannot have been easy for so intellectually ambitious a
man to observe the standing and success of those around him, especially
other mendicants.161 He clearly felt that his achievements were superior to
theirs. He wrote as much to Clement, claiming that neither Albertus
Magnus nor even William of Sherwood, who was ‘far wiser than
Albertus’, could have composed such works as he had himself.162
This aspect of Bacon’s life – or his description of his life – is difficult to
interpret. Entering the order did not silence everyone, and it did not,
ultimately, silence Bacon. As we have seen, there were simple explana-
tions for the restrictions that he faced in the early 1260s. Hundreds of
manuscript pages bear witness to the fact that Bacon could and did,
eventually, write. He offered Clement a barrage of excuses for a lack of
productivity; but rather than dramatising this, we should recognise that he
was really apologising for not yet having written a magnum opus, worthy of
attention at the papal curia. He was trying to find justifications, and did so
in the small restrictions of his life as a friar. These were partly financial,
partly to do with obedience and partly because, as a friar, he had other
tasks to fulfil. He said he had decided to stop writing for various reasons,
‘especially as none of my superiors had compelled me to write anything’.
He also remarked on ‘the habitual insistence of my prelates that I should
submit myself to other occupations’.163 He evidently chafed, some of the
time, at the restrictions placed on him. Yet, in the final analysis, he
undoubtedly believed that ‘the best and most difficult thing is to submit
oneself entirely to the will of another’. It was this demand upon the
faithful, he thought, that made Christianity superior in its practice to all
other religions: ‘For neither virginity, nor poverty, nor perfect obedience,
which are the three parts of perfection, are found in the religions of Moses
and Muhammad’.164 Furthermore, it was precisely the restrictions of
obedience and poverty that made the religious superior to the secular
clergy.165
161
‘plura secreta sapientiae semper inventa sunt apud simplices et neglectos, quam apud famosos in
vulgo; quia homines famosi occupantur in eis quae vulgantur’: OM, i.10, 3:24. That Bacon would
have found this difficult is part of Crowley’s explanation for his ‘rancour and ill-temper’ (Roger
Bacon, pp. 26–7).
162
‘longe sapientior Alberto’: OT, p. 14.
163
‘precipue cum nullus de superioribus meis ad scribendum me coegit’; ‘instantia prelatorum
meorum cotidiana, ut aliis occupationibus obedirem’: EFRB, p. 82 [Gasq, p. 500].
164
OT, p. 15; ‘sed maximum quid et arduissimum est subicere se voluntati alterius omnino’: MP,
iv.ii.8, pp. 222–3; ‘Nam nec virginitas, nec paupertas, nec obedientia perfecta, que sunt 3es articuli
perfectionis, reperiuntur apud Moysen et Machometum’: OT(Little), pp. 73–4.
165
CSP, pp. 430–2.
161
It is very important to pay attention to the value that Bacon placed on
obedience. Throughout his account of his forced defiance of his order’s
constitutions, it is clear that he was trapped between two systems of
obedience that demanded opposite actions from him. Here we have the
problem so frequently faced by the friars in one form or another: that of
papal intervention. Bacon benefited enormously from his papal privilege;
but, as papal privileges tended to do, it compromised his obedience to his
vows and put him at odds with those around him. His articulation of the
difficulty is a rare and interesting insight into how a friar felt when placed
in this sort of situation. It is a great shame that we do not know by what
means matters were resolved. We must, however, stop assuming that
Bacon was the only flawed, ambitious, troubled friar in the Paris convent.
Instead, we must recognise that he lived in a community of men who
must all have struggled with themselves. Adam Marsh wrote wearily of
‘the battle we feel constantly raging within us, fought by us, and against
us’.166 It is a major theme even in the lives of the saints who were believed
to have special assistance from God. The unsatisfied hunger for such
victories over fallen human nature is visible in the vast array of preaching
exempla in which a single divine intervention ends the long turmoil of a
soul and sets it free to travel the righteous path unhindered by doubt or
temptation.167 It cannot have happened much in real life.
In his Memoriale – still the most authoritative legenda when Bacon
entered the order – Thomas of Celano had written:
Once [Francis] said that if an ‘eminent cleric’ were to join the order, he should in
some way renounce even learning, so that having renounced even this possession,
he might offer himself naked to the arms of the Crucified. ‘Learning’, he would
say, ‘makes many hard to teach, not allowing them to bend something rigid in
them to humble disciplines. And so I wish an educated man would first offer me
this prayer: “Look, Brother; I have lived for a long time in the world and have not
really known my God. Grant me, I pray you, a place removed from the noise of
the world, where I may recall my years in sorrow and where I may gather the
scattered bits of my heart and turn my spirit to better things.” What do you think
will become,’ he asked, ‘of someone who begins in this way? He will emerge an
unchained lion, strong enough for anything, and the blessed sap which he tapped
in the beginning will grow in him through constant progress. To him at last the
true ministry of the world will be given safely, for he will pour out what bubbles
up in his heart.’168
166
167
For example, Bacon’s story of the unbaptised friar. See MP, iv.3, pp. 226–7.
168
2Cel, ii.146, FF, pp. 612–13; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 371.
162
This, I think, was a great part of what Bacon and the other learned
mendicants hoped for. The retreat from the world to the wilderness, the
mountains or, allegorically, the Mount of Olives, was necessary if the spirit
was to rid itself of, in Celano’s phrase, ‘the worldly feelings stamped and
ground in for a long time’; but it could not be the only end of Franciscan
desire. The sapientia that bubbled up in the restored heart was, as Bacon
recognised, also for ministry; for the wider good of Christendom. Bacon’s
view of sapientia is revealing of his sense of what the highest things were
and were for, but remains well within the mainstream of scholarly aspira-
tion as contemporaneously legitimised for the order by its minister gen-
eral.169 When Bonaventure ascended Mount Alverno and had his vision
of the Seraphim, he embarked on a meditative journey that was to take
him to the obliteration of the soul in God that was sapientia perfecta.
Afterwards, he came down from the mountain and immersed himself in
the conflicts of the order and the world beyond it.
169
See esp. Coll.hex, xix.21, p. 432.
163
Chapter 4
THE CRISIS OF CHRISTENDOM
So far, Bacon’s spiritual and intellectual development among the

Franciscans has been considered as an interiorised narrative; an inward
striving after models of perfection. It is time to address his sense of the
outer, public world of his vocation. His criticisms of the state of learning
and of his contemporaries, together with his proposals for reform, are
some of the best-known elements of his writings. They have been much
studied for their contribution to the development of Western thought,
but not primarily as the ideas of a thirteenth-century Franciscan. The friars
were great critics of their society, dedicated with a harsh love to its reform
and renewal, as demanded by their imagining of the vita apostolica. Bacon
must be read in this context if his ideas are to make sense on their
own terms.
As we have seen, the journey of an individual soul to God might differ
enormously in the details, but was largely unchanging in the way that it
was imagined through the centuries. Bacon’s thoughts on worldly temp-
tation, the elevation of the soul and the attainment of sapientia were part of
a sensibility so fundamental to medieval Christianity that it could stand
relatively quiet and firm in the surge and flow of history and individual
experience. Institutions were not so immune: on the contrary, at least
superficially, from day to day, they were vulnerable to the slightest uneasy
shift of current. Bacon always wrote of the Franciscan order with a marked
sense of its existence within very immediate contexts. He saw it affected
by political, ecclesiastical and social affairs; he saw how public opinion
might assault or mask its failings; he saw how good intentions could be
dangerous. At the same time he looked to the larger patterns of salvation
history for explanations, detecting the perilous future seeping into the
present and darkening it. As we have seen, his main emphasis was on the
sapientia that ran through time with all its potential to succour embattled
humanity. He situated his own programme of reform within this complex
historical sensibility. He was hungry to change the world; he observed,
164
The crisis of Christendom
raged, feared and hoped. His dearest wish in his works for Clement was
that his ideas might provide a bridge between the present condition
of mounting crisis and a desired future, in which an intellectually and
morally reinvigorated Christendom stood strong against temporal and
eschatological threats.
Our current struggles to understand the nature of history, as discipline,
experience, construct and memory, are absorbing and yet have a febrile,
quicksilver quality, lacking the weight and authority so essential to more
lasting concepts of history and time. On principle, perhaps, we do not seek
to be definitive, but rather to erode orthodoxies; to question assumptions –
a product of the mingled ambition and doubt of the postmodern condi-
tion. One might oppose to our state the powerful continuities of the
medieval sense of time: a single, carefully wrought narrative that took
humanity from creation to apocalypse, unified by the constant presence of
God and given momentum by the unfolding stages of human salvation.
By the thirteenth century the incongruities and discontinuities in the
mingled cosmographical traditions of the ancient world had been worked
over so exhaustively that they were all but smoothed away. There was
broad consensus among the learned on the nature of God and the
universe, and a range of relatively effective mechanisms for dealing with
disagreements.1 Conformity was enforced at the extremes by the processes
of inquisitio and a range of public punishments; social norms linked with
Christian orthodoxy – such as the proper place of women – were estab-
lished with a marginally lighter touch. Allegorical and typological study of
the scriptures had revealed that the central events of Christianity were
prefigured in the Old Testament.2 Great chains of knowledge and fore-
knowledge had been forged, so that visionaries dead for centuries before
the birth of Christ could be seen to have prophesised him, and saints who
were dust and bones gave counsel to the living. In a cosmos where death
merely removed people from the temporal sphere to await, in the eerie
labyrinths of the afterlife, the resurrection of their bodies, all voices were
potentially omnipresent, and might speak at any time. And if they spoke,
they would confirm and add details to what was known: the truths of the
Church.3 The main purpose of ‘history’ was the redemption of humanity.
1
See R. Brague, The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought,
trans. T. L. Fagan (Chicago, 2003).
2
On this see Smalley, Study, esp. pp. 24–5; and H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. M. Sebanc and
E. M. Macierowski (3 vols. Edinburgh, 1998–2009), vol. ii, pp. 127–226.
3
P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981); C. S.
Watkins, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2007), esp. pp. 170–201; J.-C.
Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. T. L. Fagan
(Chicago, 1998), esp. pp. 123–48. The Church acted swiftly where it could to suppress the
165
The heavenly spheres would cease their revolutions when the full number
of the elect had come in; the universe would be ‘unbound into glowing
ashes’; time itself would dissolve into eternity.4
living in the last days

Yet this is in some respects to simplify matters. For all the enduring
certainties of Christian salvation history, there were incessant discussions
and unresolved disagreements. Even the scriptures were unstable, existing
in various versions and containing lengthy interpolations.5 The introduc-
tion of the natural philosophy of Aristotle and his Muslim commentators
had troubled and stimulated Latin scholars. Bacon’s thought matured in an
environment of intense speculation about matters such as the nature of
time and the longevity of the world.6 There were explosive tendencies in
these and other debates; anxieties ready to flare up into dangerous con-
flagrations, sometimes resulting in outright condemnations of particular
positions. The thirteenth-century process of institutionalising learning
was closely related to the determination of the papacy to maintain and
promote a single doctrinal orthodoxy. From the beginning there was a
strain in maintaining the balance between the many functions of the
universities and the needs of the Church.7 Even within the universities
the stakes were very high: the debate over the eternity of the world,
for example, was so heated partly because of its implications for the
interpretation of Aristotle and the proper relations of philosophy and
theology – fundamental to the whole enterprise of Latin scholasticism.8
There were also those – Bacon to some extent among them – who were
alarmed by the ‘presumption’, the vana curiositas, the probing into the
unorthodox dead: see for example the confessions of the heretic Arnaud Gélis to Jacques Fournier,
outlined in E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294–1324, trans.
B. Bray (Harmondsworth, 1980), pp. 345–51.
4
‘solvet saeculum in favilla’: Thomas of Celano, ‘Dies irae’; OT, pp. 175–6; Perspectiva, i.9.3, p. 138/
139; Robert Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, ed. R. C. Dales and S. Gieben (Oxford, 1982), 1.17, pp. 76–7;
Brague, Wisdom, pp. 103–4, 166–8.
5
B. Murdoch, The Medieval Popular Bible: Expansion of Genesis in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2003);
Dahan, ‘La critique textuelle’.
6
For example, Robert Kilwardby asked whether time existed outside one’s perception of it and how
experience of time might differ between individuals. See Robert Kilwardby, On Time and
Imagination: De Tempore; De Spiritu Fantastico, ed. P. Osmund Lewry (Oxford, 1987), pp. 7–44.
7
McKeon, ‘Status’; Leff, Paris, esp. pp. 1–11.
8
S. F. Brown, ‘The Eternity of the World Discussion at Oxford’ in A. Zimmermann and A. Speer
(eds.), Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter (2 vols. Berlin, 1991), vol. i, 259–80; L. Dewan, ‘St Albert,
Creation and the Philosophers’, Laval théologique et philosophique, 40.3 (1984), 295–307; J. A.
Weisheipl, ‘The Date and Context of Aquinas’ De aeternitate mundi’ in L. P. Gerson (ed.), Graceful
Reason (Toronto, 1983), 239–71. Bacon had engaged with the problem as early as the 1240s,
adopting a similar line to Alexander of Hales. Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon and the Reception’,
pp. 237–40; CST, i.ii.14, p. 46/47.
166
nature of God’s creation and the speculative methods characteristic of
thirteenth-century theological study.9 Despite our lack of definite knowl-
edge of the impact of such tensions on Bacon’s life and work, his writings
resonate with the anger and frustration of years of involvement in institu-
tions in which disputatio was a pedagogical fundamental. To him it seemed
essentially futile and, at least methodologically, a distraction from the
pursuit of the greater truths that could only be revealed through scientia
experimentalis. For all the timeless security of the overarching vision of
history, scholarly investigation into details could make its elements seem
bewildering and disunified.
Even more volatile was the fecund environment of prophetic and
apocalyptic thought that surrounded and penetrated academic, ecclesiastic
and secular worlds alike. Prophecy in itself was a genre with formidable
authority but, here, radical readings of history flourished – and sometimes
ran wild among public troubles and private fears. Various permutations
of the ideas of Joachim of Fiore, in particular, as well as more mainstream
eschatological expectations, appeared in many contexts.10 The propa-
ganda war waged between the papacy and Frederick II was exceptionally
intemperate – the emperor was the beast from the sea; the Pope was
the red dragon with seven heads – but not discordant with the rhetorical
spirit of the age.11 After such fiery encyclicals, more modest readings of
history must have lost their savour, although they might have been politic.
While many Franciscans and Dominicans began to see themselves filling
the role of the two witnesses called by Christ at the end of the world to
minister to those ‘sitting in darkness and the shadow of death’, their
enemies were more disposed to imagine that they were false prophets
and followers of Antichrist. The controversy was reflected in the illu-
strated Apocalypse manuscripts of the time, which differed sharply on
whether to represent the witnesses or the hypocrites in mendicant
9
K. H. Tachau, ‘God’s Compass and Vana Curiositas: Scientific Study in the Old French Bible
Moralisée’, The Art Bulletin, 80.1 (1998), 7–33; Peters, ‘Libertas’; J. M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and
Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Philadelphia, 1998), esp. pp. 1–5, 123, nn. 8–9.
10
R. W. Southern’s four essays on ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing’
reprinted in R. J. Bartlett (ed.), History and Historians: Selected Papers of R. W. Southern (Oxford,
2004), esp. pp. 48–65; Egger, ‘Joachim’, esp. pp. 140–50; Robb, ‘Joachimist Exegesis’; B. E.
Whalen, ‘Joachim of Fiore and the Division of Christendom’, Viator, 34 (2003), 89–107.
11
Rev. 13:1–2, 12.3–4; M. F. Cusato, ‘“Non propheta, sed prophanus apostate”: The Eschatology of Elias
of Cortona and his Deposition as Minister General in 1239’ in Cusato, Early Franciscan Movement,
421–47; P. Herde, ‘Literary Activities of the Imperial and Papal Chanceries during the Struggle
between Frederick II and the Papacy’ in W. Tronzo (ed.), Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II
Hohenstaufen (Washington, DC, 1994), 226–39; R. E. Lerner, ‘Frederick II, Alive, Aloft, and
Allayed, in Franciscan-Joachite Eschatology’ in W. Verbeke et al. (eds.), The Use and Abuse of
Eschatology in the Middle Ages (Louvain, 1988), 359–81; B. E. Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom
and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 2009), pp. 38–40.
167
costume.12 During the long-running dispute between mendicant and
secular masters in Paris, the production of polemical and heretical apoc-
alyptic readings of history to the detriment of opponents caused scandal
and disaster in both camps. The lives of friars were endangered and their
academic freedom compromised by the necessity to silence both critics
and the more reckless exponents of Joachite ideas.13 It must therefore
be remembered that although the broad orthodoxies were clear, any
sketching of contemporary details over the darker shades of perennial
expectation was to take up arms in an arena of fierce, frequently hysterical,
controversy.
Yet this kind of recourse to particular interpretations of history against
the background of consensus remained the most efficient way to criticise
and perhaps thereby reform the evils of society. The perceptions of
medieval reformers and the very words in which they articulated them
were deep-rooted in scripture. The prophetic books of the Old
Testament reverberated with the wrath of God against his disobedient
people – a wrath that still quivered in the air, palpable in the atmosphere of
their own days. Then, as long before, certain individuals understood that
they had been given the capacity to see the moral turpitude of the world
and the responsibility to speak of it.14 God had made the obligation starkly
clear to the Israelite prophets, who were given no choice: if they did not
summon the wicked to repentance, the blood of sinners would be on their
heads. In order to carry out the divine will they would be given the
necessary courage: an adamantine resolution that would make them ‘like
the hardest stone, harder than flint’, ‘a fortified city’, in the face of their
opponents. They became the voice of the Lord, who would put his words
directly into their mouths.15 And so he did: unleashing torrents of fury
against the ‘abominations’ committed by his people and giving the pro-
phets some of his power so that they could bring down fire from heaven
and raise the dead.
These prophets, who had been reluctant and often fugitive harbingers
of divine vengeance, had a bold afterlife in the Christian imagination.
Across Europe their gaunt, sun-darkened bodies and eyes that had
seen the anger of God peered sadly and ominously down on
medieval congregations from the shadowy frescoes and carvings
12
Rev. 11; ‘sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis’: Annales minorum, vol. iii, pp. 380–1; William of
Saint-Amour, De periculis; Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, pp. 18–61; R. Freyhan, ‘Joachism and the
English Apocalypse’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes, 16 (1955), 211–44.
13
See above, pp. 57–9.
14
See P. Ranft, ‘The Concept of Witness in the Christian Tradition from its Origins to its
Institutionalisation’, Revue Bénédictine 102.1–2 (1992), 9–23.
15
Ezek. 3.9, 18–21; Jer. 1.10, 18–19.
168
above.16 They were the harsh forerunners of the apostles and knew little
of forgiveness. Every discontented observer who sought to take society to
task for its failings found inspiration in their strange, violent bravery and
the language of their denunciations. Reformers saw the world through
their eyes and looked for the promised return of Elijah, who would
‘restore all things’.17 These were the terms in which the Franciscans
were inclined to see themselves: as the servants of God sent to warn and
to reform humanity in the evening of the world. They assumed that, at
times, God had spoken through Francis’ mouth.18 Popes, too, cast their
pastoral, reforming mission as a fearful mandate from God.19 Even the
complacent might be unnerved by the prophets, for their warnings had
long since shaken free from temporal specifics and were diffused through
all time, to be reiterated by anyone at any moment.20
So it happened when, in prophetic guise, Hugh of Digne made his
alarming appearance before the papal curia in 1248. According to
Salimbene, he castigated the cardinals for their decadence and laxity and
their indifference to the care of souls, and called upon them to start living the
lives of apostles. They were furious, but could only gnash their teeth
impotently in the face of the divine wrath for which Hugh was a conduit.21
Two years later Grosseteste made a similar appearance before the curia. For
an hour or more he enumerated all the evils of the world and laid the
responsibility on the curia. He even suggested that when universal obedience
was given to a pope such as Innocent IV, the time of Antichrist must be at
hand.22 To frame and legitimise his opinions he explicitly evoked the
compulsion laid on the prophets. ‘I speak with the most violent fear and
trembling,’ he told them, ‘yet I do not dare to be silent.’ ‘I am compelled by
an intense fear of that woe that so greatly terrified Isaiah.’23 It appears that he
16
M. Fassler, ‘Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres’, Art Bulletin,
75.3 (1993), 499–520; P. Low, ‘“You Who Once Were Far Off”: Enlivening Scripture in the Main
Portal at Vézelay’, Art Bulletin, 85.3 (2003), 469–89. Cf. Heb. 11.32–40 for a Christian perspective
on the fate of the prophets.
17
Matt. 17.11; Mal. 4.5. See R. E. Lerner, ‘Medieval Prophecy and Religious Dissent’, Past and
Present, 72 (1976), 3–24.
18
2Cel, ii.73, p. 318. Many Franciscan texts cited passages from Acts, in which ancient prophecy and
early Christian evangelism were fused. Ezekiel was also used (e.g. CA, 35–6, FF, pp. 1509–10; 2Cel,
ii.69, FF, pp. 537–8).
19
For example, Innocent III’s use of Jer. 1.10 (Moore, Pope Innocent III).
20
Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, p. 348. 21 Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, pp. 341–51.
22
‘Memorandum’, 26, p. 363; McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 31–50; Southern, Robert Grosseteste,
pp. 276–91. See Adam Marsh’s letter to the Pope: Letter 246, Epistolae, 414–37.
23
‘Dicere vehementissime tremesco et expavesco. Silere tamen non audeo, ne incidam in illud vae
prophetae dicentis: “Vae mihi, quia tacui, quia vir pollutus labiis ego sum”’; ‘impulsus timore
vehementi illius vae quod vehementer terruit Isaiam’: ‘Memorandum’, 10, p. 355; 42, p. 369.
Matthew Paris relished the probable fury of the curia against the bishop (CM, vol. v, pp. 97–8), but
169
afterwards regarded his enterprise as a success. Adam Marsh told him that he
had carried out ‘a task so great that it [could] in no way be undertaken except
by apostolic holiness and prophetic inspiration’.24 Bacon, too, believed that
‘the power of prophecy is able to accomplish glorious things’ and it was
necessary for salvation for there to be ‘an abundance of emissaries, such as
prophets, apostles and preachers, who bring suitable reports about the noble
condition of life to come, and who often receive revelations about this life in
dreams, ecstasies and raptures’.25 The faith, he thought, would be defended
‘by such power of eloquence that it will always stand firm in its own
strength’ – until Antichrist ‘disturbs it for a time’.26
From all this it is possible to imagine why it was that the Franciscans
continued to cling to an eschatological interpretation of their mission
despite the difficulties it had brought them. Such ideas could be hazardous
if expressed in the wrong way or in the wrong place, but they also
provided an exceptionally intriguing, even intoxicating, framework
within which to consider the Franciscan identity and purpose. It was a
context in which the popes themselves had been eager to place the friars.
In 1235 Gregory IX had issued the bull Cum hora undecima, which spoke of
‘men possessing purity of spiritual life and the grace of intelligence’, who
would go forth ‘at the eleventh hour’, preaching and prophesying among
all people in every tongue. Innocent IV extended and reissued it a decade
later.27 A commentary on Jeremiah, written in the early 1240s but passing
as the work of Joachim of Fiore, further encouraged the pretensions of the
order.28 The affair of Gerard of Borgo San Donnino did not deter them.
By the time that Bacon was writing, the friars were accustomed to
hearing Bonaventure’s Legenda maior read aloud at mealtimes. Often
enough they would have listened to the prologue as they ate: ‘The
grace of God our Saviour has appeared in these last days in his servant
Francis to all who are truly humble and lovers of holy poverty . . . [Francis]
it seems that papal agents addressed some of Grosseteste’s complaints. See J. Goering, ‘Robert
Grosseteste at the Papal Curia’ in J. Brown and W. P. Stoneman (eds.), A Distinct Voice (Notre
Dame, 1997), 253–76, pp. 268–71.
24
25
‘prophetiae potestas valeat magnifica peragere’: OM, i.14, 3:31; ‘et legatorum, ut prophetarum et
apostolorum et praedicatorum copia narrantium rumores idoneos de nobilibus conditionibus illius
vitae, et revelationes frequentes habentium in somnis et extasi et raptibus de hac vita’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:255.
26
‘tanta potestate eloquentiae defendetur, quod stabit semper in robore suo . . . perturbet eam ad
tempus’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:257.
27
‘viros spirituales vitae munditiam, & intelligentiae gratiam’: BF, vol. i, pp. 269–70, no. 246 and
pp. 360–1, no. 80.
28
M. Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (London, 1976), pp. 30–2, 60–1; R. E. Lerner,
The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 40–2;
H. Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans and Joachimism (Albany,
2007), esp. pp. 11–28.
170
came in the spirit and power of Elijah . . . He is considered, not without
reason, to be like the angel ascending from the rising of the sun bearing the
seal of the living God.’29 This angel, it will be remembered, was to come
between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals in order to mark the
foreheads of the servants of God and thus preserve them from the storm in
which heaven and earth would perish. Similarly, the association of the
order with the two witnesses who were to appear a little later than the
angel provided a dramatic, gratifying and compelling role for the friars. ‘I
will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy,’ God revealed to John
on Patmos. ‘And if anyone wants to harm them, fire pours from their
mouth and consumes their foes.’ They would be ‘a torment to the
inhabitants of the earth’; they would be killed and lie unburied and
mocked for three days, then would be resurrected from the dead, and
ascend to heaven in a cloud, ‘while their enemies watched them’.30 Their
fate would echo Christ’s as their lives were to imitate those of his apostles.
That the friars had such visions of their order’s glory trailed before them
during the mundane hours in which they ate their plain food must have
been very effective in domesticating the eschatological elements trans-
mitted through the imaginations of their leaders, John of Parma and
Bonaventure.
In view of this, it is interesting that the earliest specific episode in the
order’s history referred to by Bacon – very much en passant – was the
occasion on which Francis asked one of the brothers, a former lute-player,
to borrow an instrument and play for him, when he was in pain during his
stay in Rieti in 1225. The story was among those collected after 1244, and
included by Celano in his Memoriale. Bacon connected it with the episode
in which the prophet Elisha called for music when he was asked to
discover the will of God and then ‘the hand of the Lord came upon
him’.31 Bonaventure had already linked Francis and Elisha, but Bacon
seems to have been one of the first to associate these specific episodes,
perhaps because he was using the story to illustrate a different idea from
those of the hagiographers.32 Although it is a comparatively trivial point in
29
LM, prologus, FF, pp. 777–9; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, pp. 525–6. Francis was linked with the prophet
Elijah by Thomas of Celano (1Cel, i.18, pp. 321–2) and in the c. 1228–32 office of Julian of Speyer
(‘Officium rhythmicum s. Francisci’, 5 in AF, vol. x, 375–88; FF, p. 1107).
30
Rev. 11. An interpolation in Eccleston reported that an angel had told Francis that the order would
endure to the end of the world, its enemies would not live long and its true friends would be saved:
DAFM, pp. 93–4. On the witnesses see Adso Dervensis, ‘Epistola adsonis monachi ad gerbergam
reginam de ortu et tempore antichristi’ in De ortu et tempore antichristi necnon et tractatus qui ab eo
dependunt, ed. D. Verhelst (Turnhout, 1976), pp. 27–8; Bede, ‘De temporum ratione liber’ in Bedae
Venerabilis: Opera didascalica, ed. C. W. Jones (3 vols. Turnhout, 1975–80), vol. ii, ch. 69, pp. 538–9.
31
OT, p. 298; CA, 66, FF, pp. 1565–7; 2Cel, ii.89, FF, pp. 558–9; 2(4) Kings 3.15.
32
Bonaventure wrote: ‘[Francis] could foresee future events . . . as if another Elisha’ (LM, xi.6, FF,
171
Bacon’s discussion, it assumes a greater significance for the fact that Bacon
almost never referred to the founder of his order. Such slender evidence as
we possess does, therefore, seem to suggest that Bacon shared the order’s
exalted sense of the saint. One of his more visceral images offers a glimpse
of the evening meal during which, as he ate, he observed the coloured
halo around the candle created by ‘the vapours dissipated from the foods
and drinks on the table’.33 As he did so, he heard the Legenda maior read.
In its essentials, to be a Franciscan was to connect the inner struggle for
perfection to the reform of society and the wider affairs of Christendom.
This must have engendered in most friars strong feelings about contem-
porary affairs and ardent expectations for the future; indeed, the order
probably attracted men with such dispositions. Inevitably, such feelings
took a more extreme form in times of crisis and threat. Interest in Joachite
readings of history flourished among the friars working against Frederick
II in Italy during the wars of 1247–50, as it did in the following decade
during the struggle with the seculars in Paris.34 The end of the world was
to be desired as much as feared – and it must have been very tempting to
see it in motion and working through their vocations. We should not
forget that when Frederick, putative Antichrist, died suddenly in 1250, a
decade before the prophesied time of Antichrist’s arrival, Salimbene was so
disappointed that he would not accept the truth of it for a long time. ‘I
believed, and expected, and hoped that Frederick would accomplish more
evil,’ he admitted.35 Few were deterred for long by the emperor’s death. It
was rumoured that he had not died but, according to a Franciscan eye-
witness, merely descended into hell by plunging into the ocean near
Mount Etna, accompanied by five thousand knights, ‘and the sea hissed
as though they were white-hot metal’.36 For others, the state of the world
was too obvious to be contingent upon the actions of particular figures.
Adam Marsh wrote to Grosseteste in 1252: ‘I know how. . . you ponder
upon the world’s astonishing and headlong descent into ruin. My poor
mind is overwhelmed and rendered dumb by the immensity of this
catastrophe.’37 Like Adam’s, Bacon’s writing was darkly veined with
seams of apocalyptic anticipation: grim convictions that galvanised him
p. 874; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 617). The first life of Francis to make the same association as Bacon
was a reworking of Henri d’Avranches’ Legenda S. Francisci versificata, made after 1283: FoAED, vol.
iii, 78–105, p. 98.
33
‘a vaporibus resolutis a cibis et potibus in mensa’: OM, vi.12, 2:201.
34
Lerner, ‘Frederick II’, pp. 357–69; Lerner, Feast, pp. 40–53.
35
‘credebam et expectabam et sperabam quod adhuc Fridericus maiora mala esset facturus’: Cronica,
vol. i, p. 264. See D. C. West, ‘Between Flesh and Spirit: Joachite Pattern and Meaning in the
Cronica of Fra Salimbene’, JMH, 3 (1977), 339–52.
36
‘crepuit mare, quasi essent omnes ex aere candente’: DAFM, p. 120.
37
172
and operated effectively within his reformist discourse even if their melo-
dramatic cast blunted his capacity for straightforward observation.
Affected by the complicated emotions of his day, he wrote somewhere
between the sublime overarching convictions of Christian salvation
history and the perturbed, controversial and frequently manipulative
speculations and assertions of his own society.
bacon’s historical understanding

The framework of Bacon’s historical understanding was largely conven-
tional. He wrote that ‘the whole course of Scripture runs through times
and generations and ages from the beginning of the world to Christ the
Lord, and everything is ordered in relation to him . . . through whom the
salvation of the human race may be obtained’. The force of history would
shatter the errors of the Jews, Muslims, pagans, idolaters, Mongols, here-
tics and other infideles, and ultimately those of the followers of Antichrist.38
The expectation that Antichrist would come had, Bacon said, been added
to the articles of faith. Furthermore, humanity had not long to wait. ‘It is
believed by all the wise’, he reported, ‘that we are not far from the days of
Antichrist.’39 In his opinion there would be a series of foreshadowing
events, the first of which would be the destruction of Islam. Astrological
predictions, prophecies and recent events suggested that this had begun,
for ‘already the greater part of the Saracens has been destroyed by the
Tartars together with the capital of their kingdom, which is Baldac
[Baghdad], and the Caliph, who was just like our Pope’.40 Although he
offered specific estimates for the duration of Islam calculated from his
reading of Abuˉ Ma’shar (693 years) and the number of the Beast as given in
Revelation 13 (663), he was, as always in his treatments of the future,
careful not to endorse them. In this, he was more circumspect than
Innocent III, who in 1213 had confidently anticipated the demise of
Islam on the same grounds.41 However, Bacon thought it possible that
38
‘Totus enim cursus scripturae currit per tempora et secula et aetates a principio mundi usque ad
Christum Dominum, et omnia sunt ordinata propter ipsum . . . per quem salus humani generis
habeatur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:187–8.
39
MP, i.3 (6), pp. 15–16; ‘creditur ab omnibus sapientibus quod non sumus multum remoti a
temporibus Antichristi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:402.
40
‘Et jam major pars Saracenorum destructa est per Tartaros, et caput regni quod fuit Baldac, et
Caliph qui fuit sicut papa eorum’: OM, iv.iv.16, I, 266; MP, iv.ii.6, p. 215. See J. D. North,
‘Astrology and the Fortunes of Churches’, Centaurus, 24 (1980), 181–211; J. Flori, L’Islam et la Fin
des temps: l’interprétation prophétique des invasions musulmanes dans la chrétienté médiévale (Paris, 2007),
pp. 367–83; Tolan, ‘“Saracen Philosophers”’.
41
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:266; ‘Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum sive epistolarum’ in Innocentii III
Romani pontificis: Opera Omnia, PL, vol. ccxvi, col. 0818B.
173
the Mongols themselves might yet prove to be the wild races of Gog and
Magog, destined to break free from their confinement in the remotest
regions of the world and join Antichrist – although this identification
remained to be established with any certainty.42 Furthermore, as we shall
see, he perceived a near-complete moral collapse in Christendom that
seemed to indicate that the apocalypse was at hand.
The life of Antichrist was well-charted territory.43 Conventionally,
Bacon anticipated that Antichrist
will use sapientia, and will turn everything towards evil. And through words [of
power] and the workings of the stars – and acting out of an immense desire to do
harm, an absolutely fixed intention and a powerful self-assurance – he will inflict
misfortune upon and enthral not only individuals, but cities and whole regions.
And through this remarkable method he will do as he wishes, without war, and
men will obey him just like beasts. He will make kingdoms and states fight against
one another for him, so that friends will destroy their friends, and thus he will
make of the world what he desires.44
The Antichrist would employ the ‘full power of philosophy’, and ‘where
the power of philosophy fails, demons will finish what remains to be
done’.45 His reign of terror would end only with the return of Christ, who
would crush him and his followers. Then, Bacon wrote, ‘the elect of God
will appear, and truth blaze forth in this world’.46 It is unclear whether
Bacon anticipated an age of millennial peace before the end, but he did
speculate about the possibility of a ‘renewal’ of the world during which
time ‘the full number of the Gentiles may come in, and the remainder of
Israel be converted to the faith’.47 After the defeat of Antichrist all beings
would face the ‘impending terrible judgement’. The Devil would be
locked up in hell and then all the wicked would join him. Horrible
torments would be inflicted on the resurrected bodies of the damned.48
Bacon did not discuss the coming of the New Jerusalem in temporal
42
MP, i.3, pp. 16–17.
43
B. McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York, 2000),
pp. 79–142.
44
‘utetur potestate sapientiae, et omnia convertet in malum. Et per hujusmodi verba et opera
stellificanda, et magno desiderio malignandi componenda cum intentione certissima et confidentia
vehementi, ipse infortunabit et infascinabit non solum personas singulares, sed civitates et regiones.
Et per hanc viam magnificam faciet sine bello quod volet, et obedient homines ei sicut bestiae, et
faciet regna et civitates pugnare ad invicem pro se, ut amici destruant amicos suos, et sic de mundo
faciet quod desiderabit’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:399.
45
‘plenam potestatem philosophie’, ‘ubi potestas philosophie deficit, demones adimplebunt residua’:
OT(Little), p. 17.
46
‘appareant electi Dei, et reluceat veritas in hoc mundo’: CSP, p. 430.
47
‘renovetur mundus, et intret plenitudo gentium, et reliquiae Israel ad fidem convertantur’: CSP,
p. 402.
48
‘iudicio terribili venturo’: MP, i.3, p. 17; OMin, p. 371.
174
terms, but referred to it – ‘in a spirit of exultation’ – in another context, as
he did the prospect of eternal life for the virtuous. Ultimately, one would
see God ‘face to face’ and know everything ‘with complete certainty’.49
All these ideas, although in part extra-scriptural, were of long standing in
the West.
In addition to contemporary orthodoxies, Bacon was interested in the
astrological methods of mapping events on to time that had come to the
West through authors such as Abuˉ Ma’shar. An extra authority was given
to them by the De vetula, a thirteenth-century text purporting to have
been written by Ovid, describing his conversion to Christianity before his
death in about ad 17. If the text could be considered contemporary with
Ovid, it was an indication of the potential of methods such as astrology
and prophecy to discover both the future and the foundational truths of
the universe. While Bacon seemed doubtful about the attribution of De
vetula to Ovid, he was willing to close his eyes to evidence of its later
provenance and use it, tentatively, in this fashion.50 Sibylline prophecies of
Christ provided further support. Their authenticity was widely accepted;
the Sibyls even appeared among the prophets in the decorative schemes of
various churches. Augustine had suggested that the famous prophecies of
Christ might have been uttered by the Sibyl of Cumae as long as ago as the
time of Troy.51 John of Parma and Humbert of Romans had quoted the
Erythaean Sibyl in their 1255 encyclical, as if she had foreseen the mendi-
cants and their eschatological role.52 Bacon also alluded to the Testaments
of the Twelve Patriarchs, which were believed to contain prophecies of
Christ made by Jewish patriarchs and subsequently suppressed by Jews.53
Clearly it was possible and licit to have prophetic foreknowledge of the
Saviour.
He was also interested in the possibility of using the Latin alphabet to
read history ‘according to the special influences and power of the letters’,
as people had done with the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. The findings
49
‘in spiritu exultationis’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:211; ‘facie ad faciem’, ‘in fine certitudinis’: OM, i.10,
3:23.
50
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:256, 263–4, 267; P. Klopsch, Pseudo-Ovidius: De Vetula. Untersuchungen und Text
(Leiden, 1976), pp. 78–82.
51
OM, ii.x, xvii, 3:60, 73–4; MP, iv.ii.6, p. 215. Augustine had considered Sibylline prophecy
authentic (DCD, xviii.23, vol. ii, pp. 285–8). The ‘Sibyl’s Song’ was frequently quoted in full
from DCD. See A. Holdenried, The Sibyl and her Scribes: Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin
Sibylla Tiburtina c. 1050–1500 (Aldershot, 2006), esp. pp. 53–67; P. Dronke, ‘Medieval Sibyls: Their
Character and their “Auctoritas”’, Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 36.2 (1995), 581–613.
52
Annales minorum, vol. iii, p. 380.
53
H. J. de Jonge, ‘Die Patriarchentestamente von Roger Bacon bis Richard Simon’ in M. de Jonge
(ed.), Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Text and Interpretation (Leiden, 1975), 3–42,
pp. 2–11.
175
could be integrated with prophecies and ‘worthy testimonies’ to indicate
the future of the Church. Examining the three alphabets in conjunction
with prophecies would lay bare the whole history and varying fortunes of
the Church ‘from the beginning to the end of days’. It was no coincidence
that the ‘epitaph of the Lord’ – nailed above his head on the cross – was
written in all three languages, ‘so that we might be taught that the Church
redeemed by the cross of the Lord should consider the virtues of all three
alphabets’.54 He went on: ‘I cannot admire enough the way in which this
method was devised, although it might seem to those unacquainted with it
that it has weak foundations – in the letters of the alphabet – which are the
first things attempted by children. But,’ he went on, ‘according to the
Apostle, lesser things are more necessary and should be surrounded with
greater honour . . . And so it is with the letters of the three alphabets.’55
In Abuˉ Ma’shar’s works historical events, especially the rise and fall of
empires and religions, were linked to the revolutions of the heavens.
Bacon accepted that Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persians, the
birth of Christ, the appearance of Mani and the emergence and destruc-
tion of Islam were all to be seen in the movements of the planets.56
Furthermore, owing to the effects of heavenly bodies on sublunary affairs,
‘the planets are not only signs, but have some causative influence’. This did
not, however, entirely preclude the exercise of free will – an important
distinction on which Bacon’s defence of astrology depended.57 Bacon
discussed the provocative ideas of Abuˉ Ma’shar at some length, and seems
to have based his own position upon his understanding of them, possibly
nuanced by that of Maimonides.58 He was excited by the independent
proof that they seemed to offer for Christian truths, even of such sacro-
sanct subjects as the virgin birth – foretold, it seemed, among Indians,
54
‘a principio usque in finem dierum’; ‘epitaphio Domini . . . ut doceremur quod Ecclesia cruce
Domini redempta habeat considerare virtutes literarum triplicis alphabeti’: OM, iii.11, 3:118–19.
55
‘nequeo satis admirari qualiter fuit haec consideratio excogitata, cum videatur inexpertis habere
debile fundamentum, scilicet literas alphabeti, quae sunt prima puerorum rudimenta. Sed secun-
dum documentum Apostoli, minora sunt magis necessaria et majori honore circumdanda . . . Et sic
est in his literis triplicis alphabeti’: OM, iii.11, 3:119.
56
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:254–66. See Hackett, ‘Astrology’; J. Agrimi and C. Crisciani, ‘Albumazar
nell’Astrologia di Ruggero Bacone’, ACME, 25.1 (1972), 315–38.
57
‘planetae sic non solum sint signa, sed aliquid faciant in excitando’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:267. See also SS,
pp. 3–4. The extent to which Bacon absorbed and reflected a dangerously deterministic view has
been much discussed. See Hackett’s ‘Roger Bacon on Astronomy-Astrology’ and ‘Aristotle,
Astrologia’.
58
P. Adamson, ‘Abuˉ Ma‘šar, al-Kindıˉ and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology’, Recherches de
Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 69.2 (2002), 245–70; P. Adamson, al-Kindıˉ (Oxford, 2007),
pp. 192–206; J. Hackett, ‘Maimonides and Roger Bacon: Did Roger Bacon Read Maimonides?’
in J. Inglis (ed.), Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition in Islam, Judaism and Christianity
(London, 2002), 297–309, p. 299.
176
Chaldeans and Babylonians through astrology. He was sufficiently con-
vinced to advance the risky speculation that the influence of the stars
might have played some role in Christ’s gestation in the human womb of
the Virgin, although he deferred to Church doctrine on the matter.59 The
purposes of this kind of historical knowledge were, for Bacon, simply
functional: to illuminate the spiritual senses of scripture; to clarify the
present and future; to strengthen the faithful; and to provide solid proofs
of Christianity for missionary purposes.60
The beginning and the end of the world were, very largely, defined for
Bacon by the sapientia that they embodied and that they required. He
maintained that
the power of philosophy was given by God to the same people who received the
sacred Scripture, namely the saints at the beginning, so that it is clear that there is
one, complete wisdom necessary for mankind. Only the patriarchs and prophets
were true philosophers who knew everything – that is, not only the law of God,
but also all the parts of philosophy.61
Since those days the whole universe had been decaying: human lives were
of shorter duration, weakened by neglect of health, neglect of learning,
and by the increase of sins that clouded the soul.62 Angered by human
sinfulness, God had deliberately erased the knowledge of philosophy from
ordinary people. Only a few of the greatest minds had been illuminated by
divine wisdom in the branches of scientia and the foreknowledge of
Christian truths. Otherwise, important aspects of sapientia had been lost
and crucial scientia had been unknown even to the best scholars of the
previous century.63 Yet there was a glimmer of light in the darkness. The
forgotten learning, preserved by infideles, was returning to the Latin West,
giving Christians the means to accomplish the final, crucial work that had
to be done to prepare for the last days. ‘For,’ Bacon wrote, ‘the generosity
of God has always been ready to increase the gift of wisdom through the
generations,’ and would continue to do so until the time of Antichrist.64
59
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:257, 267–8: seen by Sidelko (‘Condemnation’) as a plausible trigger for his putative
condemnation in 1277. See J. Tolan, ‘Reading God’s Will in the Stars: Petrus Alfonsi and
Raymond de Marseille defend the New Arabic Astrology’, Revista Espanola de Filosofia Medieval,
7 (2000), 13–30; O. P. Faracovi, ‘Il tema dell’eclissi di sole alla morte di Cristo in alcuni testi del
tardo Quattrocento’, Micrologus, 12 (2004), 195–215.
60
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:189–90, 268–9.
61
‘eisdem personis a Deo data est potestas philosophiae, quibus et sacra scriptura, scilicet sanctis ab
initio, ut sic appareat una esse sapientia completa hominibus necessaria. Soli enim patriarchae et
prophetae fuerunt veri philosophi qui omnia sciverunt, scilicet non solum legem Dei, sed omnes
partes philosophiae’: OM, ii.9, 3:53.
62
OM, vi.12 (exemplum ii), 2:204–13; MP, iii (proemium), pp. 46–7; Getz, ‘Roger Bacon’.
63
OM, ii.9–14, 3:53–66; MP, i, pp. 3–35; OM, i.14–15, 3:32–3.
64
‘Nam semper bonitas Dei est parata sapientiae donum augmentare per subsequentes’: OM, i.9, 3:22.
177
There were, thus, two kinds of sapientia that related to the end of the
world: the false, inverted sapientia of Antichrist and the true sapientia that
could be recovered and used to defend Christian souls in the final battle.
Unfortunately, there were perennial forces of opposition within society,
distinct from the specific agents of evil. In every era stubborn majorities
opposed those who sought to enlighten them. Moses found even God’s
chosen people unwilling to receive ‘the wisdom of the law’; Christ and the
apostles ‘introduced wisdom to the world’ with much difficulty; the sacred
doctors were distrusted as heretics and liars. The same phenomenon could
be observed in philosophy, with the foolish eclipse of Aristotle’s reputation
in the West for so many centuries. It continued to damage study of both
subjects in Bacon’s day.65 When he came to assess the state of society in the
1260s and early 1270s, it was human corruption more than the assaults of
enemies that seemed to him to endanger the salvation of the faithful. While
he told Clement: ‘I am writing this not only for academic consideration, but
because of the perils that already affect Christians and the Church of God,
and will affect them in the future, because of unbelievers, and most of all
because of Antichrist,’ his overriding concern in all his writings was
undoubtedly with the internal weaknesses that eroded the capacity of
Christians to defend Christendom.66 He began the Opus maius by discussing
the ‘four greatest impediments to comprehending truth’ in contemporary
society, claiming that ‘all the evils of the human race come from these deadly
plagues’.67 In what remains of this chapter we will consider his perception of
these perils and their remedies – both specific to his own day but gaining all
their significance from the wider historical understanding and context that
has been sketched out above.
the mendicant orders in history

Bacon’s works of around 1266–71 offered a serious, insistent criticism of
the state of Christendom together with a wide-ranging programme for
reform. Yet despite the enormous amount of discussion about these
aspects of his writing, they have been patchily contextualised. It has
been assumed that he was writing about the universities and their future
when he was actually writing about the future of the Church and, through
65
OM, i.9, 3:19–21, presumably based on Acts 7. See also A. G. Molland, ‘Medieval Ideas of Scientific
Progress’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 39.4 (1978), 560–77, pp. 567–71.
66
‘Non solum pro consideratione sapientiali haec scribo, sed propter pericula quae contingunt et
contingent Christianis et ecclesiae Dei per infideles, et maxime per Antichristum’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:399.
67
‘Quatuor vero sunt maxima comprehendendae veritatis offendicula’; ‘Ex his autem pestibus
mortiferis accidunt omnia mala generis humani’: OM, i.1, 3:2. He began the OT and CSP in the
same way; the beginning of the OMin is not extant, but it was probably similar.
178
it, of humanity. While he regarded the pursuit and application of sapientia
as absolutely fundamental, there is little sense in his writings that he
located such activities solely within the institutionalised structures of the
university. His understanding of sapientia and how it could be reached
effectively excluded the laity, and even the majority of secular clergy and
prelates, although some were ‘good and holy men’ and ‘occasionally one is
found among them whose holiness is beyond anything found in the
religious orders of the time’.68 The virtuous pagans, ‘perfect philosophers
and other wise men, who are experienced in the study of wisdom to the
limits of human capacity’, became so, in Bacon’s eyes, partly as a conse-
quence of renunciations akin to those made in his own day almost
exclusively by members of religious orders.69 Thus, a programme to
reform learning and put renewed sapientia to the defence of Christendom
would inevitably depend heavily on the moral and intellectual accomplish-
ments of the mendicant orders, and the extent to which they were
supported or hindered by those around them. It was these matters, above
all, that Bacon was addressing. The result is a view of the history of the
Franciscan order that fits into our general understanding of its development,
but which is in some ways alien to the more familiar narrative.
Bacon’s most unequivocal assertions about the condition of
Christendom and the situation of the mendicant orders were written
towards the end of the nearly three-year papal vacancy in 1271. The
Compendium studii philosophiae, like the Opus maius, opened with a con-
sideration of the uses of sapientia, its qualities and the impediments in the
way of those who sought it.70 The Opus maius went on to an all-
encompassing yet somewhat abstract description of the effects of these
impediments: ‘no reason influences, no right judges, no law binds, divine
law has no place, the law of nature is lost, the character of things is
changed, order is disturbed, sin prevails, virtue is extinguished, deceit
reigns, truth is banished’.71 The equivalent passage in the later work lifted
the veil of discretion and located all these disturbances in the particular
events and tendencies of recent decades.
Due to the all-pervasive causes of error, as he had explained in the Opus
maius, people who were actually ‘in the densest shadows of error’ believed
68
‘boni sunt et sancti. Et aliquando invenitur aliquis apud eos cujus sanctitas non invenitur apud
reliquos istius temporis’: CSP, pp. 431–2.
69
‘perfectis philosophis et aliis sapientibus, qui juxta humanam possibilitatem in studio sapientiae
experti sunt’: OM, i.1, 3:3.
70
CSP, pp. 394–8.
71
‘nulla ratio movet, nullum jus judicat, nulla lex ligat, fas locum non habet, naturae dictamen perit,
facies rerum mutatur, ordo confunditur, praevalet vitium, virtus extinguitur, falsitas regnat, veritas
exsufflatur’: OM, i.1, 3:3.
179
themselves to stand ‘in the full light of truth’.72 Men imagined that they
were ‘living in the greatest glory of wisdom’. It seemed that during the last
forty years there had been an unparalleled display of sapientia and burgeon-
ing scholastic enterprise across the Latin West.73 ‘For scholars, especially
theologians, are dispersed through every city, town and borough, princi-
pally through the two student orders – a situation which has only come
about in the last forty years or so. Yet,’ he went on, ‘never has there been so
much ignorance, so much error – as will become entirely clear by the end of
this work – and is already clear through their effects. For more sins reign in
these days than ever before; and sin cannot coexist with wisdom.’74
The dreadful condition of the world flowed downwards from its source
at the head: the Roman curia, which was supposed to be governed by the
sapientia Dei, and was not. Bacon, like so many before him, painted a dismal
picture of corruption spread through every level of society, and sapientia not
valued by those who ought to have valued it. He felt that the prelates and
their friends, especially the lawyers among them, deliberately impeded
studies in philosophy and theology.75 They set obstacles in the way of the
Franciscans and Dominicans so that the friars were not free to do the work of
serving God and saving souls: work to which they had dedicated their lives.
In the Opus maius Bacon had repeatedly insisted that both ecclesiastical and
secular authorities had to give support to reformers, for the kind of reform
he had in mind could not otherwise be carried out. It was disastrous that
almost the opposite was happening. Furthermore, in such a contaminated
environment even the friars themselves were sick and faltering. ‘Let us
consider the religious orders,’ he wrote, ‘I exclude none of them. Let us
see how far they are fallen from their proper state and how far the new
orders are already horribly corrupted from their former standing.’76 The
whole of Christendom was in a state of moral decay and depravity.
He felt that evidence to support these claims could be found in many
places. Like Francis, who wrote repeatedly on the subject, he was worried
about the widespread lack of faith in the saving power of the Eucharist,
which meant that society remained mired in sin, rather than being
72
‘in tenebris errorum densissimis’; ‘in plena luce veritatis’: OM, i.1, 3:3. This seems to echo some of
Francis’ alleged prophecies about the order’s future, for example CA, 102–7; FF, pp. 1639–55.
73
‘sint in maxima gloria sapientiae’: CSP, p. 398; OM, i.1, 3:2–3.
74
‘Ubique enim doctores sunt dispersi, et maxime in theologia in omni civitate, et in omni castro, et in
omni burgo; praecipue per duos ordines studentes, quod non accidit nisi a quadraginta annis, vel circiter.
Cum tamen nunquam fuit tanta ignorantia, tantus error, sicut ex hac scriptura finaliter manifestissime
apparebit et nunc manifestum est hoc per effectum. Nam plura peccata regnant his temporibus quam
unquam temporibus prioribus; sed peccatum non potest stare cum sapientia’: CSP, p. 398.
75
An old complaint: e.g. William of Conches, Dragmaticon, i.i.4, v.i.2–5.
76
‘Consideremus religiosos; nullum ordinem excludo. Videamus quantum ceciderunt singuli a statu
debito, et novi ordines jam horribiliter labefacti sunt a pristina dignitate’: CSP, p. 399.
180
redeemed by the sapientia that the sacrament could impart.77 The secular
clergy were failing in their crucial role of administering the mass, sacra-
ments and consecrations. He reported: ‘lately, throughout the universal
Church, innumerable people pronounce the words as given by the
Church and have no idea what they are saying . . . which cannot happen
without doing great harm to the sacraments’.78 Despite possessing God’s
grace, Christians still fell lamentably short of the high moral standards of
the pagan philosophers and were therefore unable to rise to the intellec-
tual heights of the ancient world. They could not fully comprehend the
thought of the past, much less expand upon it. It was undeniable that ‘all
study has been at the absolute limit of corruption for forty years’ – by the
Devil’s working – for those corrupt in life must necessarily be corrupt in
their studies.79 This state of affairs made the wise consider that the times of
Antichrist were at hand, and that God had merely stayed his hand until this
fullness of corruption had been reached. The Church had now to be
purged in some way, and the faith renewed.80
This grand indictment of the whole Church from the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, clergy and religious orders to lay Christians of every kind was
merely an opening salvo. He developed his themes through the following
pages, writing of the curia and the canon lawyers in forceful terms – terms
similar to those used by earlier Franciscan critics such as John of Parma,
Hugh of Digne and Adam Marsh, and many others within and without
the order: contemporaries, predecessors, and those writing in later years.
Walter of Châtillon had imagined Satan jeering:
Mine the monasteries, mine the monks,
Mine the schools, mine the nuns,
Mine the sceptres of kings, mine the Cardinals
Through whom I put the Church up for sale81
Some of Bacon’s sharpest criticisms echoed papal letters of previous

decades, especially those containing Innocent IV’s very similar indict-
ments of the state of learning and the prominence of lawyers at the
77
E.g. Francis of Assisi, Opuscula, pp. 97–101, 108–28.
78
‘modo per universam Ecclesiam innumerabiles proferunt verba instituta ab Ecclesia et nesciunt
quid dicunt . . . quod esse non potest sine injuria sacramenti’: OM, iii.11, 3:117.
79
‘totum studium est in fine corruptionis a quadraginta annis’: CSP, p. 402.
80
CSP, pp. 402–4.
81
‘Mea sunt cenobia, mei sunt claustrales,/ mea sunt gimnasia, meae moniales,/ sceptra regum mea
sunt, mei cardinales,/ per quos res ecclesie facio venales’ in ‘Cum contemplor animo seculi tenorem’:
Walter of Châtillon, Moralisch-satirische Gedichte Walters von Chatillon: aus deutschen, englischen,
französischen und italienischen Handschriften, ed. K. Strecker (Heidelberg, 1929), 140–5, p. 145; trans.
in B. McGinn, Antichrist, p. 128. Compare with Adam Marsh (Letter 90 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i,
pp. 230/1–232/3) and John of Parma, ‘quoted’ in Salimbene (Cronica, vol. i, p. 462).
181
expense of those studying philosophy and theology.82 Less than two
decades later Bacon saw a great draining of resources away from the
studies that mattered. Lawyers ‘now receive all the good things of the
Church and the provisions of princes and prelates; so that no one else can
be supported in study, or labour at the study of wisdom’.83 He wanted to
end this culture:
Oh, if I could see this come to be with my own eyes! For if the clattering of the
law and the sophistries and abuses of the lawyers were to be silenced, the laity and
clergy would have justice and peace . . . the study of theology, canon law and
philosophy would inevitably be elevated and perfected; since princes and prelates
would then give benefices and financial support to students in these three
faculties; and consequently the studious would be able to have their expenses,
and to advance in life and in the study of wisdom. For there are many, and there
would be even more, who would never cease from the study of wisdom until
they had completed it, if they had financial support.84
Bacon evidently believed that it was acceptable, and indeed necessary, for
the scholars of the orders to receive substantial contributions from lay
authorities in order to fund the pursuit of sapientia. This must not, how-
ever, be confused with any desire to mitigate personal poverty, which, as
we have seen, he thought essential for the spiritual aspect of the enterprise.
Bacon considered that the situation of scholars and friars was bad, but
that they were not free from blame either. His claim that the ‘new orders’
were already in sharp decline is of particular interest because of the intense
focus within both medieval Franciscan and modern historiography on
questions of real or perceived decline in the years after the death of Francis.
In contrast to the prevailing understanding of the fears of the time, Bacon
did not seem to be concerned about poverty, which he appears to have
seen more as an obvious prerequisite hardly worth comment than an issue
for dispute and legislation. Nor, obviously, did he fear the effects of
learning. Instead, like so many of his brethren, he feared the effects
of inadequate learning. Moreover, it should be stressed that he did not
demand full perfection of life from the brethren. He had alluded on
various occasions to the saints as people apart from humanity and their
82
Given in CM, vol. v, pp. 427–9, vol. vi, pp. 293–5.
83
‘recipiunt nunc omnia bona ecclesiae et provisiones principum et praelatorum; ita quod alii non
possunt nec vivere in studio, nec studium sapientiae exercere’: OT, p. 86.
84
‘O si videbo oculis meis hoc contingere! Nam si strepitus juris removeretur, et cavillationes et
abusus juristarum, tunc laïci et clerici haberent justitiam et pacem . . . tunc studium theologiae,
et juris canonici, et philosophiae sublimaretur et perficeretur necessario; quoniam tunc principes et
praelati darent beneficia et divitias studentibus in hac triplici facultate; unde studiosi possent habere
expensas, et in vita, et in studio sapientiae promovendo. Nam sunt multi et erunt qui nunquam
cessarent a sapientiae studio donec complerent eam, si haberent expensas’: OT, p. 85.
182
qualities as fundamentally beyond the reach of most people. This was in
keeping with Bonaventure’s re-casting of Francis as a perfect saint and an
eschatological figure, rather than a moral standard to which the friars
should adhere. The spiritual purity of the saints was, in Bacon’s eyes, a
product of ‘special grace and divine privilege’ and otherwise all but
inaccessible to postlapsarian humanity.85 The examples they provided
were valuable in that they offered an ideal of perfection to which people
could aspire in their behaviour but, in moral terms, it was enough simply
to avoid sin without attaining sanctity. ‘For in no status [lay or clerical] of
the Church is it required that the majority should attain perfection,’ he
wrote. ‘Even among the religious, few are fixed at the centre of perfec-
tion, and the majority are wandering on the circumference.’86 In this
context he would expect that few Franciscans would be able to succeed in
emulating Francis, but that all should draw upon his example as a beha-
vioural model. It was something other than the unavoidable imperfection
of most friars that convinced him that the orders participated in the
corruption of the age.
Bacon’s works, as we have seen, had as their ‘final and principal use’ the
identification of the errors of Christians; the remedies; and the individuals
and the means through which the remedies could be accomplished.87
Absolutely essential to his views on the state of Christendom – indeed, on
temporal affairs in their broadest sense – was the state of sapientia.
Everything that was wrong with the world could be traced to its neglect
and to the sinfulness of humanity which excluded nearly everyone from it.
It is no surprise, then, to find that his analysis of the state of the mendicant
orders – just as his own understanding of himself – was fundamentally
connected with issues surrounding the pursuit and practice of sapientia. He
wrote in detail about the factors that seemed most important to him in the
activities of the orders over the last forty years ‘or thereabouts’: primarily,
those connected with their studies, which he saw as crucial to the salvation
of souls.88 As the measure of forty years given here seems to relate more to
his main argument about the recent deterioration of studies and wider
society than to particular developments within the mendicant orders, it is
probably coincidence that when he began writing his pleas to the papacy it
was exactly forty years since the death of Francis of Assisi. His feeling that
the orders had declined from their ‘former standing’ did not seem to relate
85
‘gratia specialis et privilegium divinum’: OM, i.iii, 3:8.
86
‘In nullo enim statu Ecclesiae requiritur quod ejus perfectionem teneat multitudo. Nam etiam apud
religiosos paucitas figitur in centro perfectionis suae, et multitudo in circumferentia vagatur’: OM,
i.iv; 3:9. His anxiety on this score was greater in 1292. See CST, ii.12, p. 44/45. For the same view
see Adam Marsh, Letter 40 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, p. 114/115.
87
‘finalis utilitas et principalis’: OMin, p. 322. 88 CSP, p. 398.
183
to the deaths of their founders and the supposedly new directions taken
particularly by the Franciscans. Instead, he evidently perceived the entry
of the Franciscans and Dominicans into the university milieu to be bound
up with the current situation of crisis, if only because they were partici-
pants in history and could not stand outside it.
Despite the fact that the mendicants had been setting up their studia in
university towns from the early 1220s, preaching to masters and students,
and being taught by them, Bacon appears, in the Opus minus at least, to
have placed the turning-point in 1236. This was the year that the regent
master in theology at Paris, Alexander of Hales, became a Franciscan. ‘The
order of Minors was new and neglected by the world in those days,’ he
wrote, and so, when Alexander entered, ‘he was the great friar sent by
God’, because he was ‘a good man, and rich; a great archdeacon and
master of theology’ – and because, as a friar, ‘he edified the world and
exalted the order’.89 It seems, then, that for Bacon the order entered the
public sphere with the recruitment of distinguished scholars, rather than,
for example, with the canonisation of Francis. This perspective from a
man born and educated in England, far from the heartlands of Franciscan
spirituality, is revealing. There had been friars in England since Bacon’s
childhood: friars who were working under Grosseteste, of all men, from
1229 until 1235.90 Yet it seems that in Bacon’s eyes it was only with
prominence in the study of theology at the greatest university of
Christendom, and rising influence in high secular and ecclesiastical circles,
that the Franciscans became significant within lay society. Thomas of
Eccleston made a very similar observation about the entrance of Haymo
of Faversham in the previous decade, and Bonaventure agreed.91 This
view was probably an accurate assessment of the order’s status, regardless
of the notoriety and acclaim achieved by Francis personally.92
Yet, as Christian scholars had always recognised, learning had its dan-
gers, and flawed scholarship usually proved to be worse than useless. The
consequence of Alexander of Hales becoming a friar, according to Bacon,
was that ‘from his entry, the brothers and others glorified him to the skies,
and gave him authority over the whole studium, and ascribed to him that
great Summa, which is heavier than a horse, which he did not write
89
‘Novus fuit ordo Minorum et neglectus a mundo illis temporibus, et ille aedificavit mundum et
ordinem exaltavit’; ‘fuit Deo maximus Minor’: OMin, p. 326; ‘fuit bonus homo, et dives, et
archidiaconus magnus, et magister in theologia’: OMin, p. 325. See also ChrXXIVGen, pp. 218–20,
247.
90
In fact, Bacon alluded only to Adam’s teaching in Oxford, not Grosseteste’s.
91
DAFM, p. 34; ‘Epistola de tribus quaestionibus’, p. 336.
92
For a parallel argument see J. M. Powell, ‘Mendicants, the Communes, and the Law’, Church
History, 77.3 (2008), 557–73.
184
himself, but others wrote – and they ascribed it to him out of reverence.’93
These events mattered, Bacon explained, because they laid down the
foundations for the Franciscan study of theology and caused it to develop
within what he had already identified as the second and third failings of the
study of theology. The second was ignorance of crucial branches of
scientia – mathematics, perspectiva, morals, scientia experimentalis and
alchemy – as well as of philosophy and languages, while the third was
dependence on works that had been written by authors who were
themselves ignorant.94 Alexander’s influence on the shape of Franciscan
studies had been so decisive that, as Bacon reported, ‘the studium at Paris
still does not use these five scientiae’.95 It is possible that Bacon’s judge-
ments may have reflected, in part, a critical Oxford perspective on
Continental scholars such as Alexander and later Bonaventure.96 He did
not acknowledge that the friars had, initially at least, been banned from
studying law or ‘physicum’ at Paris, and so could not have followed the
kind of programme that he thought appropriate.97 It had, however, once
been conventional for masters of theology to have begun as masters of arts,
so when the friars, for understandable reasons, avoided the more secular
training in the arts and began their studies in theology without that
preparation, it irritated and worried more people than Bacon.98
The trends Bacon perceived among the Franciscans were in his view
exacerbated by a parallel development among the Dominicans, with the
rise to prominence among them of a master whom he did not name at this
point, but who was probably Albertus Magnus.99 That master, Bacon
related, ‘entered the order of brothers as a young boy and never read
philosophy, or heard it in the schools, or was in formal study before
becoming a theologian – and he could not have been taught in his
93
‘Ex suo ingressu fratres et alii exaltaverunt in coelum, et ei dederunt auctoritatem totius studii, et
adscripserunt ei magnam Summam illam, quae est plusquam pondus unius equi, quam ipse non
fecit sed alii. Et tamen propter reverentiam ascripta fuit’: OMin, p. 326. He was still complaining
about ‘horseloads’ of theological quaestiones in 1292. See CST, p. 48/49.
94
See LeMay, ‘Roger Bacon’s Attitude’, esp. pp. 26–37; Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on the Classification
of the Sciences’, esp. pp. 49–55; Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 11–19, 123–37, 185–96. Bacon also
criticised the faculties of theology for allowing philosophical questions to dictate theological
questions, but did not implicate the friars in this particular problem. See OMin, pp. 322–3.
95
‘studium Parisiense adhuc non habuit usum istarum quinque scientiarum’: OMin, p. 327.
96
R. Wood, ‘Early Oxford Theology’ in G. R. Evans (ed.), Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of
Peter Lombard: Current Research (Leiden, 2002), vol. i, 289–343, pp. 338–43.
97
CUP, vol. i, no. 32, p. 91.
98
M. W. Sheehan, ‘The Religious Orders 1220–1370’ in EOS, 193–221, pp. 204–5; J. M. Fletcher,
‘The Faculty of Arts’ in EOS, 369–99, pp. 370–1. On the conventional path to the study of
theology see Leff, Paris, pp. 116–83, esp. pp. 160–77. On the particular issues of the 1260s and 1270s
see pp. 205–38.
99
Hackett, ‘Attitude’. For other candidates see Catto, ‘Theology’, pp. 491–2.
185
order because he was the first master of philosophy among them. He
teaches the others, and has what he knows from his own study.’100 Nor
was this a simple matter of teaching the writings of the authorities, for he
had made his own version of the Aristotelian corpus for the Dominicans.
As Albertus himself explained, it had been his intention to elucidate the
whole of human learning systematically, rewriting and supplementing
Aristotle’s own works. He was clear that his methodology included
‘[adding] parts of unfinished books, and in some places, books unfinished
or omitted, or those which Aristotle did not write or, if perhaps he did
write them, they have not reached us’. He claimed that he had never
substituted his own ideas, but had ‘expounded the opinions of the
Peripatetics as faithfully as I could’.101 Bacon, too, imagined the ‘thousand
volumes in which [Aristotle] has treated of all the sciences’, which had ‘not
yet been translated nor communicated to the Latins’ – but he did not
believe that the gaps should be filled in as Albertus had done. Instead, he
wrote: ‘If I had power over the current translations of Aristotle, I would
burn every one of them.’102 The effect of Albertus’ activity, according to
Bacon, was that most students believed that Aristotle’s thought had
already been transmitted to the West in its entirety. On the one hand,
Bacon admired him enormously, for he was immensely studious, had seen
a great deal, had read much, and had possessed the financial means to
accomplish great things. Yet he had not been grounded in the scientias
vulgatas, or in languages and, however excusable it was on a personal level,
the fact was that ‘the whole error of studies rages on account of these
two’ – Alexander and Albertus.103 They were regarded as authorities,
and cited, and followed by the multitude, when they should not be.
‘God knows’, wrote Bacon of Albertus, ‘that I have only exposed the
ignorance of this man on account of the truth of studies. For the common
100
‘intravit ordinem Fratrum puerulus, nec unquam legit philosophiam, nec audivit eam in scholis,
nec fuit in studio solemni antequam theologus, nec in ordine suo potuit edoceri, quia ipse est
primus magister de philosophia inter eos. Et edocuit alios; unde ex studio proprio habet quod scit’:
OMin, p. 327. This is not entirely discordant with what is known of his life. See J. A. Weisheipl,
‘The Life and Works of St Albert the Great’ in Weisheipl (ed.), Albertus Magnus, 13–51.
101
‘partes librorum imperfectas et alicubi libros intermissos vel omissos, quos vel Aristoteles non fecit
vel forte si fecit, ad nos non pervenerunt’: Albertus Magnus, Alberti Magni: Physica, ed. P. Hossfeld
(2 vols. Aschendorff, 1987–1993), i, tr. 1, 1, vol. i, p. 1; ‘sed opiniones Peripateticorum quanto
fidelius potui exposui’: Albertus Magnus, Politica, 8.6 in Alberti Magni: Opera Omnia, ed.
A. Borgnet (38 vols. Paris, 1890–99), vol. viii, p. 803; Weisheipl, ‘Life’, pp. 14, 29–32;
O. Weijers, ‘The Literary Forms of the Reception of Aristotle: Between Exposition and
Philosophical Treatise’ in Honnefelder et al. (eds.), Albertus, 555–84, esp. p. 577.
102
CST, p. 46/47. ‘Si enim haberem potestatem super libros Aristotelis [as currently translated] ego
facerem omnes cremari’: CSP, p. 469.
103
‘totus error studii saevit per occasionem istorum duorum’: OMin, p. 325. Bacon’s praise of him is at
p. 327.
186
throng . . . clings to him as it would to angels . . . And worst of all, he who
is still living is called “the doctor of Paris” and is cited in studies just like an
authority.’104
Bacon was sure that the reason for the scholarly deficiencies of both
Alexander and Albertus had largely to do with timing. The Franciscans
and Dominicans had arrived in Paris to found their own schools there in
1219 and 1217 respectively, during the time of formal bans (reiterated in
1210, 1215 and 1231) on many vital texts and forms of study. As a
consequence, those who laid down the foundations of mendicant pro-
grammes of study had been narrowly trained, through no fault of their
own. This fitted into Bacon’s view of history in several ways. It was,
obviously, a consequence of the stifling of the good in the dangerous end-
times, but it was also in keeping with the development of human thought.
Throughout history, Bacon believed, it was evident that ‘the goodness of
God is always ready to augment the gift of wisdom through a succession of
people and to transform the ideas of successors for the better’.105 Thus, the
commentaries of Avicenna and Averroës on Aristotle had been banned in
Paris, ‘through dense ignorance’, but now, as the years unfolded, they
were rightly valued for what they added to the sum of human wisdom and
carefully corrected where they erred.106 The current situation of the
orders had its roots in both human fallibility and the nature of sapiential
progress.
Unfortunately, however understandable within the wider context of
learning, the fact was that the very enthusiasm of these young and
inexperienced orders to learn had made them injudicious, and from this,
errors proliferated. In the Compendium studii philosophiae Bacon elaborated
his earlier remarks in his much-discussed ‘attack’ on the ‘boy theologians’,
naming two friars: Albert and Thomas. Given the difficulties with these
identifications, it is worth noting that the sole manuscript for this work
is of the fifteenth century and may well incorporate interpolations.107 His
words here have been taken as a jealous assault on the reputations of
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Jealousy may well have lent
heat to Bacon’s remarks, but awareness of this possibility should not be
allowed to obscure their internal logic and the serious intent behind them.
They were a reluctant denunciation – ‘although I grieve and sympathise
with these men as much as I can, yet truth must prevail over all other
104
‘Deus autem testatur quod solum exposui ignorantiam istorum hominum propter veritatem studii.
Nam vulgus . . . eis adhaeret sicut angelis’: OMin, p. 327.
105
‘Nam semper bonitas Dei est parata sapientiae donum augmentare per subsequentes et subse-
quentium sententias in melius transformare’: OM, i.ix, 3:22.
106
‘ob densam ignorantiam’: OM, i.ix, 3:21. 107 British Library MS Cotton Tiberius C V.
187
considerations’ – of what he perceived to be a widespread abuse. It was
damaging to those directly involved, as well as to both orders, the study of
theology and Christian society as a whole.108 As already noted, the
Franciscans were at this time attacking the work of Aquinas, so if Bacon’s
objections were directed at him, it would not have been remarkable.109
The situation was, in Bacon’s view, that right across Europe –
‘everywhere from the English sea to the frontiers of Christendom’ –
large numbers of boys aged between ten and twenty were being accepted
into the orders.110 At that stage in their lives they were not only burdened
by the usual causes of human error resulting from original sin, but they
lacked self-knowledge and knowledge of the world.111 Furthermore, they
were certainly not learned in languages such as Greek and Hebrew (which
were necessary for proper study), or any other aspects of philosophy and
wisdom. Many could not read even their psalter or their books of
grammar. ‘Nonetheless,’ wrote Bacon, ‘immediately after taking their
vows, they are put to the study of theology.’112 The inevitable conse-
quence was that their work amounted to very little and was full of errors,
for theology ‘requires all human wisdom’ – and such wisdom, if it came at
all, emerged through long years of experience and thought; impossible to
rush or acquire superficially. Theology, he wrote soberly, bore the hea-
viest responsibilities of all studies: ‘If indeed truth is anywhere, it is found
here, if falsities are to be condemned, it is here.’113 Given the faulty
educational traditions within the orders, the inherent disadvantages of
youth and inexperience were only exacerbated when the education of
these unprepared boys began in the convents. Since the orders carried out
most of their teaching and learning internally, they would never be able to
make much progress: ‘it is impossible that a man can acquire difficult
sciences through himself alone’. No science could be discovered in a
lifetime, ‘but wisdom was produced slowly from the beginning of the
108
‘de quibus licet doleam quantum possum et compatior, tamen quia veritas praevalet omnibus’:
CSP, p. 425. Hackett agrees that the ad hominem nature of Bacon’s remarks should be set aside if
they are to be understood in context: ‘Roger Bacon and the Reception’, p. 221.
109
Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow’, pp. 142–61; Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 188–9; Hackett, ‘Roger
Bacon on Magnanimity’, p. 375.
110
‘Et hoc maxime a mari Anglicano usque ad fines Christianitatis’: CSP, p. 126.
111
Bacon seems to have considered thirty to be the age at which people ‘transeant status juventutis’:
CSP, p. 412.
112
‘sed statim post professionem ponuntur ad studium theologiae’: CSP, p. 426. On contemporary
theologians in error due to ignorance of mathematics see OM, iv.iv.16, 1:199–202, 216 etc. Bacon,
Aquinas and Albertus were in broad agreement about the necessity of philosophy to theology, and
the way in which philosophy ought to function within theology. See Hackett, ‘Philosophy and
Theology’.
113
‘requirit omnem sapientiam humanam . . . Si enim alicubi est veritas hic invenitur, si falsitas hic
damnatur’: CSP, p. 425.
188
world’. The pride of the orders, ‘who presume to teach before they learn’,
made the corruption of their doctrine inevitable.114
Bacon’s criticisms were neither unique nor isolated. As early as 1220
Jacques de Vitry had suggested that the order was ‘dangerous’ because it
sent out ‘young and imperfect men’ to do its work.115 The same sorts of
issues had been raised by prominent friars of the 1240s and 1250s, such as
Adam Marsh, and Bacon’s comments also followed hard on Pecham’s
1270 justification of the practice of admitting into the order boys younger
than fourteen. Pecham was defending the order against charges made by
the seculars, and was thus discussing a slightly different issue.116 Yet the
wider anxieties of the friars were not laid to rest. It had been rumoured
among them that demons held an annual council in which they plotted
against the order. They worked to damage it in three particular ways, one
of which was, according to Thomas of Eccleston, encouraging it in ‘the
reception of useless people’. A later version had ‘the reception of the
youthful’.117 The seriousness of this threat is made clear from the context:
the other ways in which demons sought to erode the holiness of the order
were through familiarity with women and the handling of money.
The education of young friars was also a topical issue among the
mendicants at the time that Bacon was writing. Some models for the
apostolic life had emphasised an instinctive opposition to all secular
learning. According to Jordan of Saxony, Dominic had abandoned his
study of the arts as soon as he could, ‘as if he were afraid of using his limited
time in these less fruitful pursuits’.118 In reality, both orders had recruited
determinedly among those already highly educated in the arts. It was later,
as institutional procedures were increasingly formalised, that it became
necessary to discuss the structure and content of the curriculum. During
the 1250s and 1260s the Dominicans had debated the matter. Humbert of
Romans, whose opinions prevailed in the long run, promoted the study of
secular sciences for pragmatic reasons, a position in many ways very similar
to Bacon’s own. It was around the time that Bacon was writing that the
Dominican order formally introduced natural philosophy into its own
114
‘impossibile est quod homo adquirat scientias difficiles per se’; ‘a principio mundi paulatim crevit
sapientia’; ‘quod praesumunt docere antequam discant’: CSP, p. 429.
115
‘periculosa . . . iuvenes et imperfecti’: Lettres, vi, pp. 131–2.
116
Letter 200 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. ii, pp. 490/1–492/3. John Pecham, ‘De pueris oblatis in
Ordine Minorum’, ed. L. Oliger, AFH, 8 (1915), 389–447; Douie, Conflict, p. 23.
117
‘receptionem inutilium personarum’: DAFM, pp. 102–3; ‘iuvenum receptiones’: ChrXXIVGen,
p. 268.
118
‘tanquam in quibus temporis huius angustias minus fructuose vereretur expendere’: Jordan of
Saxony, Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. H.-C. Scheeben, in Monumenta historica S.P.
N. Dominici, fasc. 2 (Rome, 1935), 1–88, quotation at no. 6–7, p. 28; Roest, Franciscan Education,
pp. 137–52; Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow’, pp. 219–77.
189
educational curriculum although it was not made compulsory for another
forty years.119 Yet Bacon remained unsatisfied by the provisions made by
the two orders. It was the specific problem of the preparation of theolo-
gians that he sought to address many years later in his Compendium studii
theologiae in which he intended to supply ‘all the philosophically spec-
ulative [principles] which are used by theologians, along with many that
are necessary for them but whose use they do not have’.120 By then he had
apparently accepted that it was impossible to do more to supplement the
education of the friars.
In his 1271 indictment he went on to argue that the admission of very
young men combined with the existing weaknesses of the orders in
theology were not merely dangerous at high academic levels but had a
calamitous effect on the friars’ ability to carry out one of their primary
functions: preaching.121 Bacon’s critique seems to have owed much to the
desiderata for preachers outlined in Peter the Chanter’s Verbum
Abbreviatum. Lectio, disputatio and praedicatio, he wrote, were generally
considered the three parts of the theologian’s duty, yet these untried
young men did not make successful preachers.122 They over-complicated
matters. In the worst cases their sermons were nothing but shallow
intellectual game-playing: amid elaborate sophistries, ‘a sort of illusion is
foolishly poured out . . . from boyish invention, empty of all wisdom and
power of eloquence’.123 This fostered in audiences the spiritual unhealthi-
ness of curiositas: ‘hearers are inflamed toward every intellectual curiosity’,
rather than spiritually elevated to the good.124 Others in the order recog-
nised the same sorts of problems. Bonaventure of Iseo lost an audience to
the ‘novelties’ of a young preacher from a rival mendicant order and
believed it to be the work of Antichrist.125 Once again we see the
influence of Adam Marsh, who was always concerned about the provision
of pastoral care, and had asserted that such essential duties should only be
undertaken by ‘those of greater maturity, who are at peace with
119
Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow’, pp. 54–71, 220–38. See also R. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in
the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge, 2009), esp. pp. 94–130.
120
CST, ii.19, p. 50/51. 121 On Bacon’s ideas about preaching see esp. Johnson, ‘Preaching’.
122
‘In tribus autem consistit exercitium sacrae scripturae: in lectione, disputatione et praedicatione’:
Peter the Chanter, Petri Cantoris Parisiensis: Verbum adbreviatum: textus conflatus, ed. M. Boutry
(Turnhout, 2004), i.1, p. 9. On Franciscan preaching see Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 272–324.
123
‘Quoddam enim phantasma est pueriliter effusum, et a pueris adinventum, vacuis ab omni
sapientia et eloquendi potestate’: OT, p. 304.
124
‘excitantur audientes ad omnem curiositatem intellectus’: OT, pp. 309–10. See A. Thompson,
Revival Preachers and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Italy: The Great Devotion of 1233 (Oxford, 1992),
esp. pp. 83–109.
125
Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, pp. 404–7. See B. R. Carniello, ‘Gerardo Segarelli as the Anti-Francis:
Mendicant Rivalry and Heresy in Medieval Italy, 1260–1300’, JEH, 57 (2006), 226–51, esp.
pp. 227–8.
190
themselves and integrated, more pure, active, and hard-working and
stronger in virtue’ – rather than ‘those of younger age, terribly agitated
by the heat of lust, inclined by inexperience to folly, and given to rashness
and presumption’.126 Bacon reported admiringly that Adam had refused
to discuss the agent intellect with his students in the Oxford studium
because ‘they asked in a challenging spirit, and not because they desired
wisdom’.127 Bonaventure went to the trouble of specifying the necessary
qualities in preachers, including maturity.128 The Dominicans were simi-
larly concerned: Humbert of Romans, who believed in the importance of
secular learning, condemned preachers who ‘use subtleties . . . sometimes
novelties, in the manner of the Athenians’.129 Bacon’s were specific
complaints about discernible trends in his own day, but they were also,
however unconsciously, part of the long debate about the proper place of
scholarship in faith and the dangers of curiositas.
Worse still, in Bacon’s view, the evils afflicting mendicant preaching
were spreading outwards among the secular clergy. The prelates of the
Church, who had not been educated in theology or taught how to preach
during their own student days, tended, when they were required to
preach, to ‘borrow and beg for the manuscripts of the boys’. Using these
manuscripts, the prelates could do no more than echo the authors, ‘who
had devised infinite elaboration of preaching, with divisions and agree-
ments and vocal harmonies, where there is neither sublimity of speech nor
greatness of wisdom, but infinite puerile stupidity, and debasement of the
word of God’.130 Christendom could not afford this situation, since ‘the
principal exertion of the Church and its ultimate purpose is the work of
preaching, so that infidels can be converted to the faith, and the faithful
preserved in faith and morals’.131 A strong line had been taken at Lateran
IV on the issue of prelates unable to preach effectively due to lack of
education. More than fifty years before Bacon was writing, the council
ruled that ignorance in bishops was to be ‘altogether condemned, and is
not to be tolerated in the future’.132 These concerns were at the heart of
126
127
‘quia tentando et non propter sapientiam quaesiverunt’: OT, 23, p. 75.
128
Roest, Franciscan Education, p. 280; on preaching more generally see pp. 272–328.
129
Humbert of Romans, Opera de vita regulari, ed. J. J. Berthier (2 vols. Rome, 1888–9), vol. ii,
pp. 394–5 quoted in E. T. Brett, Humbert of Romans: His Life and Views of Thirteenth Century Society
(Toronto, 1984), p. 47.
130
‘mutuantur et mendicant quaternos puerorum, qui adinvenerunt curiositatem infinitam praedi-
candi, penes divisiones et consonantias et concordantias vocales, ubi nec est sublimitas sermonis,
nec sapientiae magnitudo, sed infinita puerilis stultitia, et vilificatio sermonum Dei’: OT, p. 309.
131
‘quoniam principalis intentio ecclesiae et ultimus finis est opus praedicationis, ut infideles ad fidem
convertantur, et fideles in fide et moribus conserventur’: OT, p. 304.
132
Decrees, vol. i, p. 239.
191
Bacon’s distaste for the pre-eminence of Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the
intellectual culture that had grown up around them. Other critics of the
Sentences expressed similar anxieties.133
In practice, Bacon thought, theological sophistication was not necessary
for preaching. Much more important was a good knowledge of Church
doctrine – ‘which is known to anyone’ – together with understanding of
‘vice and virtue, punishment and glory, and things of the kind that bring
salvation, of which knowledge is written in people’s hearts from their
experience of ecclesiastical usage’.134 He maintained that everyone knew
when they had sinned or when they had done well, and understood it in
the same instinctive way as ‘simple people and old women, not only
among Christians but Saracens and other infidels, who know how to
persuade people on the subjects of virtues and vices, punishment and
glory’.135 With this in mind, many theologians actually preached less well
than those who were not; less well than the ‘one simple brother, who
never heard a hundred theological lectures, and who would not bother
about them even if he did’.136 The preacher whom Bacon most admired
was the popular and renowned Berthold of Regensburg, ‘who alone
accomplishes more of splendid utility when preaching than almost all
the other brothers of either order’.137 Some of Berthold’s sermons have
survived, and are notable for their vividness and simplicity, which was
rooted in the stories and parables of the Bible. Bacon may have known
that Berthold was well educated and yet always preached in the German
vernacular.138 These remarks on preaching were by no means the only
context in which Bacon had maintained that simplicity could well prove
superior to the wrong kind of learning, and it is a position with which all
Franciscans would have agreed in principle. Balancing intellectual sophis-
tication and simplicity of heart was a recurring difficulty, and prominent
133
For his views on the use of the Sentences see OMin, pp. 328–30. He had important precursors in
Peter Cantor, Langton and Grosseteste. See McGinn, ‘Influence of St Francis’, pp. 100–1;
B. McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York,
1985), p. 167; R. Lerner, ‘Joachim and the Scholastics’ in Rusconi (ed.), Gioacchino, 251–64, esp.
pp. 251–5.
134
‘quae cuilibet nota est, et a notitia vitiorum et virtutum, poenae et gloriae, et hujusmodi
salutiferorum, quorum notitia scripta est in cordibus ex usu ecclesiastici ritus’: CSP, p. 428. For
immediate antecedents see C. Walker Bynum, Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-
Century Spirituality (Missoula, 1979); Walker Bynum, Jesus, esp. pp. 36–58.
135
‘ita quod rustici et vetulae non solum apud Christianos sed Saracenos, et alios infideles, sciunt
persuadere de virtutibus et vitiis, poena et gloria’: CSP, p. 427. See also OM, i.10, 3:24–5.
136
‘unus simplex frater, qui nunquam audivit centum lectiones theologiae, quas si audivit non tamen
curavit’: CSP, p. 427.
137
‘qui solus plus facit de utilitate magnifica in praedicatione, quam fere omnes alii fratres ordinis
utriusque’: OT, p. 310.
138
Moorman, History, pp. 272, 275–7; Salimbene, Cronica, vol. ii, pp. 840–5.
192
friars such as Bonaventure were concerned to keep the order highly
conscious of it, suggesting that Bacon’s criticisms were pertinent. Yet,
unlike some of his brethren, Bacon did feel that ‘it certainly cannot be
denied that the theologian ought to preach better’. He went on: ‘it is a
compelling argument that the study of theology is corrupt, when those
who have the greater authority preach less well’.139
Defects in education hindered other vital tasks given to or taken on by
the orders. Bacon reported that the text of the scriptures in common use,
the Paris Bible, had become atrociously corrupt: full of errors and contra-
dictions. Recognising this, the friars had been working to restore the
scriptures to their proper form, removing false elements and resolving
inconsistencies. Twenty years ago, Bacon wrote, the Dominicans had
produced a corrected text, but since then new versions had been under-
taken, so that ‘those who endeavour with all the truth that they know to
correct the text – namely, the two orders of Preachers and Minors – have
now formed various scriptures from the corrupted text: more than one
Bible can contain’. He went on to describe the chaos that resulted from
this endeavour: ‘they argue amongst themselves and contradict each other
endlessly – not only order against order, but the brothers within both
orders oppose one another more than the entirety of each order. For every
convent contradicts others, and successive correctors within the same
convent destroy each other’s positions amid infinite scandal and confu-
sion.’140 All this disorder arose from two main causes: failure to consult the
ancient Latin texts, ‘which lie everywhere neglected in monasteries, not
yet glossed or touched’, and lack of the necessary skills in the Greek and
Hebrew languages to be able to work from the uncorrupted originals.141
Improperly prepared for this most important of tasks, the friars were
wasting their time and discrediting the orders – forced to disagree end-
lessly because they had no sound scholarly basis on which to come to a
consensus. Meanwhile, the faithful were deprived of the benefits of a
139
‘licet certe non sit negandum quin bonus theologus multo melius debeat praedicare’; ‘hoc est
magnum argumentum quod studium theologorum corruptum est, cum illi, qui plus auctoritatis
habent, minus bene praedicant’: CSP, p. 428.
140
‘illi qui nituntur cum omni veritate quam sciunt corrigere textum, scilicet duo ordines
Praedicatorum et Minorum, jam de corruptione formaverunt varias scripturas, et plus quam una
Biblia contineat’; ‘contendunt ad invicem et contradicunt infinities; et non solum ordines ad
invicem, sed utriusque ordinis fratres sibi invicem contrariantur plus quam ordines totales. Nam
omnis domus alii contradicit, et in eadem correctores sibi invicem succedentes mutuas eradunt
positiones cum infinito scandalo et confusione’: OM, iii.4, 3:95–6. See the elaboration offered on
OM at OMin, pp. 330–49 and the summary at OT, pp. 88–95, where he claimed that the
Dominicans had added the most errors (p. 93). See also CSP, pp. 374–5 and CUP, vol. i, no.
278, p. 316.
141
‘quae ubique jacent in monasteriis, quae non sunt adhuc glossatae nec tactae’: OM, iii.4, 3:95.
193
reliable text of the word of God. This was just one of the many problems
caused by ignorance of languages among the friars: their inadequacy in this
respect damaged other aspects of their work, especially in foreign lands.142
These tangled problems in the orders, in study and in the faltering of
sapientia were, to Bacon, far more than simply the Franciscan present, but
were among the signs, overt and ominous, of impending doom. The
situation of theology among the religious orders was entirely public and
quite apparent to everyone, he asserted, ‘although few give up their hearts
to the consideration of it, just as they do not to other useful matters, due to
those causes of error . . . by which nearly all men are made shamefully
blind’.143 This was a perennial failing of human nature; one that Bacon
had traced through time. In the first book of the Opus maius he had
discussed at some length the causes of error among the learned. As we
have seen, he presented them in four categories: deference to false autho-
rities, long-standing ideas and contemporary fads, and the deliberate
disguise of ignorance behind a facade of knowledge.144 Yet in the 1260s
and 1270s a swirl of events and times gave these innate human failings an
edgy context. Bacon felt that although the state of theology was really
perfectly obvious to any clear-sighted observer, it appeared to be veiled in
some strange way – a way that God permitted and the Devil carried out. In
part, it was obscured by the fact that the orders gave a ‘great impression of
holiness’ and therefore people assumed that they would not be claiming to
do what they could not do. ‘But we see all states very much corrupted in
these times,’ he lamented.145 Also, forty years of neglect by secular masters
of the ‘true paths’ of philosophy and theology – ‘totally departing from the
ways of ancient wisdom’ – had left the mendicants alone in the field.
Indeed, for ten years everything that the seculars had learned had been
taught to them by the mendicants. ‘Therefore it is hardly surprising if the
orders raise up the horn in study, and appear extraordinary.’146 They had
no competitors or companions in their activities.
142
OM, iii.12–14, 3:120–3.
143
‘licet pauci ponant cor suum ad haec consideranda, sicut nec ad aliqua utilia propter causas
erroris . . . quibus fere omnes homines turpiter excaecantur’: CSP, p. 425.
144
OM, i.i, 3:2.
145
‘speciem magnam sanctitatis’: CSP, p. 426. Given Bacon’s complex sense of the many meanings of
‘species’, he may have meant that they were holy and projected species of holiness or that they
merely seemed holy, projecting a simulacrum of holiness. See DMS, i.i.42–62, pp. 4/5–6/7. Cf.
William of Saint-Amour, De periculis, pp. 106/7–110/11.
146
‘totaliter dimiserunt vias antiquorum sapientum’; ‘Non igitur mirum si ordines elevent cornua in
studio, et appareant miro modo’: CSP, pp. 428, 429. ‘Raising up the horn’ is probably a reference
to Luke 1.69, in which Zachary praised God for raising up ‘a horn of salvation’, ‘horn’ being a
symbol of strength. Cf. 2 Kgs. 22.3; Ps. 17.3; Ecclus. 47.6. See M. Süring, The Horn-Motif in the
Hebrew Bible and Related Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Iconography (Berrien Springs, 1980).
194
All these developments, Bacon pointed out, were taking place within
the further context of the long-running feud between mendicants and
seculars, which had caused so much scandal in Christendom in the pre-
vious twenty years. The impact had been enormous, he wrote: ‘wherever
clerics gather – such as Paris and Oxford – fights, disturbances and other
crimes scandalise the whole of the lay population’. Indeed, ‘the cause has
been taken to the Roman curia and, on account of it, the whole clergy,
prelates, princes and the lay population have been thrown into disorder.
And they have not stopped even now.’147 It had been going on for so long
that he thought it would not end until the time of Antichrist, or until some
great pope called a general council to resolve it. The whole situation was
one more example of the world turned upside down – for the secular
masters ‘who are in a lesser state of life condemn the religious whose state
of life is more perfect, and disciples condemn their masters’. When writing
of this dispute Bacon gave a rare glimpse of himself taking public action
and reproaching those around him directly, rather than in writing. ‘Often,
by listening and by teaching, I tell the truth to the brothers of these orders,’
he reported.148
It was only because the young Franciscans were innocent of vice –
however ignorant they might have been of philosophy and the scientiae –
that they were saved from legitimate accusations of heresy and worse: of
being the disciples of Antichrist. ‘But it is certain that they are not immune
to the corruption of the study of wisdom . . . And therefore God inflicts a
just punishment on them, and permits them to be reproved by their
disciples in sacred study . . . so that at least through being scourged they
will eventually recover from the errors of study.’ They would be chastised
like the ‘sons of Israel’, who had corrupted the law of God and were
punished. God had used the enemies of Israel as a scourge to correct his
people, and – Bacon hastened to add – subsequently destroyed those
enemies: ‘just as God will destroy those seculars who blaspheme the
grace of God, which has been given to the religious orders’.149 The friars,
then, seemed to Bacon to be the favoured children of God, now wander-
ing in error and unwitting rebellion, incurring God’s anger and chastised
147
‘ubicunque congregantur clerici, sicut Parisius et Oxoniae, bellis, et turbationibus, et caeteris vitiis
scandalizant totum populum laïcorum’; ‘ad curiam Romanam delata sit causa, et turbatus est totus
clerus, et praelati, et principes, et populus laïcorum. Et adhuc non cessant’: CSP, pp. 429, 399.
148
‘qui sunt in statu minori damnant religiosos quorum status perfectior est, et discipuli damnant suos
magistros’; ‘Multotiens et audiendo et docendo vel dico veritatem fratribus istorum ordinum’:
CSP, pp. 429–30.
149
‘Sed pro certo non sunt immunes a corruptione studii sapientiae . . . Et ideo Deus justam poenam
intulit eis, et permisit eos exprobrari in solemni studio a discipulis suis . . . ut saltem sic flagellati
tandem resipiscant ab errore studii’; ‘sic destruet Deus istos saeculares, qui blasphemant gratiam
Dei, quae data est religiosis’: CSP, p. 430. Such social disorder was to be expected in the last days:
195
by him; yet loved by him and destined to learn through their suffering and
to return in the end to the ways of perfection.
Bacon’s writings for Clement were intended to make the Pope aware of
a complex, difficult and dangerous state of affairs and to suggest the
remedies. The friars, who already carried great responsibilities, needed
considerable reform to restore them to their full potential as bearers of
sapientia. He did not doubt the moral integrity of most of the friars, but saw
the orders caught up in the long, fraught history of learning in the Latin
West, diverted and paralysed by it. Furthermore, they were ensnared in
the horrors of the age and the general depravity of secular rulers and
elements in the Church.150 They were, essentially, witnessing the final
corruption of humanity: ‘God, in his infinite goodness and long-suffering
wisdom, does not punish the human race immediately, but delays ven-
geance until iniquity is completed, such that it cannot and must not be
endured any longer,’ he explained, giving the example of the transgres-
sions and punishments of the Jews through the ages. He went on:
So for a long time, with many methods and in various periods, God rebuked and
corrected his Church. But now, since the wickedness of humanity is complete it
must be that through the greatest pope and the greatest prince – the temporal
sword joined together with the spiritual sword – the Church will be purged; or it
will happen through Antichrist; or through another tribulation, such as through
the discord of Christian leaders, or through the Tartars and Saracens, and other
kings of the East, as diverse writings and various prophecies warn. For there is no
doubt at all among the wise that the Church must be purged very soon; but
opinions vary about whether it will be in the first way, or the second, or the
third.151
It was generally accepted that this purging of the Church would be so

severe that the institution would be all but destroyed.
see for example Rodulfus Glaber’s description of a ‘guilty blindness’ and prelates attacked by those
who ought to have been their subjects in The Five Books of the Histories, ed. and trans. J. France
(Oxford, 1989), p. 72/73.
150
For example, the conversion of the Eastern pagans by the friars was hindered by the avarice of
‘christiani principes . . . et maxime fratres de domu teutonica’: MP, iv.ii.1, p. 200.
151
‘Deus quidem propter suam bonitatem infinitam, et longanimitatem sapientiae, non statim punit
genus humanum, sed differt vindictam, usquedum compleatur iniquitas, quae non potest nec
debet ulterius sustineri . . . Sic diu cum multis modis et temporibus diversis Deus corripuit et
correxit ecclesiam suam. Sed nunc quia completa est malitia hominum, oportet quod per
optimum Papam, et per optimum principem, tanquam gladio materiali conjuncto gladio spirituali
purgetur ecclesia; aut quod per Antichristum, vel per aliquam tribulationem, ut per discordiam
principum Christianorum, seu per Tartaros et Saracenos, et caeteros reges Orientis, secundum
quod diversae Scripturae sonant, et variae prophetiae. Non enim est dubitatio aliqua apud
sapientes, quin purganda sit cito ecclesia; sed an primo modo, an secundo vel tertio, opiniones
variae sunt’: CSP, pp. 403–4.
196
It is difficult to be sure precisely what Bacon expected, feared or hoped
for. The temptation to look for traces of Joachite thought in all apocalyptic
thinkers of the period appears to be considerable, but this approach has the
effect of making everything look at least roughly ‘Joachite’, when in fact
Joachim himself was part of an evolving tradition of thought, one that
thirteenth-century readers would have encountered in a wide range of
texts by authors not condemned by the Church.152 There is little explicit
evidence in Bacon to suggest that he had drawn on Joachim more than
other thinkers. Easton’s suggestion that Bacon had Joachite tendencies was
little more than an attempt to explain his troubles with his superiors, an
argument rather nullified by Ratzinger’s demonstration that Bonaventure
was influenced by Joachite ideas. It is worth reading Bacon’s ideas first on
their own terms within this broad context of expectation before consider-
ing them in relation to contemporary Franciscan Joachism.153
It seems from the general tenor of his works that he believed in the
imminent necessity for a renewal of the Church and was eager to ensure
that this was carried out in a deliberate fashion from within rather than
through a savage destruction from without. Some of the reforms, he seems
to have imagined, could be initiated at an administrative level. Priorities
could be changed within the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was time: indeed,
Bacon said, there had been a prophecy for the last forty years that ‘there
will be a Pope in these days who will purify canon law and the Church of
God’; ‘destroy all the corruptions in study and in the Church and every-
where else’; converting and uniting the people of the world so that there
would be ‘one flock and one shepherd’. Moreover, he had assured
Clement, ‘these things could happen in less than a year if God wished it,
and [the Pope] wished it’.154 The notion of leaders undertaking serious
152
Roest notes that ‘the heavy emphasis on Joachimism as a unifying theme exaggerates the
uniformity in mental outlook’ in the case of commentators on the Apocalypse (‘Franciscan
Commentaries’, p. 36) an observation that could usefully be tested against the whole study of
Franciscan apocalypticism. McGinn raises similar concerns: B. McGinn, ‘Influence and
Importance in Evaluating Joachim of Fiore’ in G. L. Potestà (ed.), Il profetismo gioachimita tra
Quattrocento e Cinquecento (Genoa, 1991), 15–36. For background see Whalen, Dominion, esp.
pp. 72–103.
153
Easton, Roger Bacon, pp. 127–43; Ratzinger, Theology. Bigalli thought Bacon only used Joachite
prophecies to confirm his existing ideas (Tartari, p. 114) and Daniel essentially shares this opinion:
E. R. Daniel, ‘Apocalyptic Conversion: The Joachite Alternative to the Crusades’ in West (ed.),
Joachim, vol. ii, 301–28, p. 30. Reeves and Vasoli see Bacon’s thought as more distinctively
Joachite. See M. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism
(Notre Dame, 1969), pp. 46–8; M. Reeves, ‘History and Prophecy in Medieval Thought’,
Mediaevalia et Humanistica, 5 (1974), 51–75, p. 64; Vasoli, ‘Il Programma’, pp. 180–1. See also La
scienza sperimentale, pp. 35–8.
154
‘unus Papa erit his temporibus qui purgabit jus canonicum et ecclesiam Dei . . . fiet unum ovile et
unus pastor’: OT, p. 86; ‘qui omnes corruptiones tollet de studio, et ecclesia, et caeteris’: CSP,
197
reform in response to the magnitude of the threats facing Christendom
was not far-fetched: Bacon had lived in Louis IX’s Paris for long enough
to see such ideas being put in practice by a pious king at an administrative
level, nor were these new concepts.155 His suggestions to Clement
included supporting the efforts of scholars in the orders, who would
work along the lines suggested by Bacon so that they might bring sapientia
to completion, for the strengthening, expansion and defence of
Christendom. Thus, in the event of the Church being ‘purged’ through
Antichrist, civil war or attacks from Mongols, Muslims and other enemies,
some people in Christendom would be equipped to protect the faithful
against the worst devastations. It is this last matter that I wish to focus upon
for the rest of the chapter.
the defence of christendom

No one doubted that the end of the world would be heralded by an
intensification of evil. Christ had foretold it.156 ‘The Holy Gospel reveals
as an evident fact’, wrote Rodulfus Glaber in the 1030s, ‘that as the last
days go by charity will be chilled and iniquity will blossom amongst men,
who will face times dangerous for their souls’.157 In 1237 Gregory IX
placed the Franciscans squarely in this context: ‘because iniquity has
abounded and the love of many has grown cold, behold, the Lord has
raised up the Order of his beloved sons, the Lesser Brothers’.158 This was a
theme adopted by the Franciscans. According to Bonaventure, amid the
final wickedness God had ‘bestowed the signs of goodness and mercy on
Saint Francis to enkindle love’.159 Great love was required of spiritual
leaders in those times. Adam Marsh had often described the qualities
needed in the ‘elect’: love, goodness, sapientia, energy and absolute,
unflagging commitment to the care of souls.160 In his discussion of civic
virtues Bacon wrote: ‘love is the greatest virtue; and it is furnished for the
p. 402; ‘Et certe infra annum unum possent fieri si Deo placuerit et summo Pontifici’: OT, p. 86.
This is probably the first extant reference to a prophecy that became an established element in later
medieval apocalypticism: an ‘Angelic Pope’ who would set the Church to rights. See B. McGinn,
‘Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist’, Church History, 47 (1978), 155–73; Reeves, Influence, pp. 45–8,
395–415; Reeves, Joachim, pp. 59–75.
155
Le Goff, indeed, relates Louis’ thought to Bacon’s: ‘Saint Louis, dans le même temps, a même
attitude’ (Saint Louis, p. 45). See also J. Bird, ‘Crusade and Conversion after the Fourth Lateran
Council (1215): Oliver of Paderborn’s and James of Vitry’s Missions to Muslims Reconsidered’,
Essays in Medieval Studies, 21 (2004), 23–48.
156
Matt. 24.3–44. 157 Rodulfus Glaber, Five Books, p. 68/69.
158
‘Quoniam abundavit’ in BF, vol. i, pp. 214–15, no. 224; trans. FoAED, vol. i, p. 576.
159
‘Sermo V’ in Bonaventure, Opera omnia, vol. ix, 590–4, p. 593; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 515.
160
E.g. Letters 47, 74 in Adam Marsh, Letters, vol. i, pp. 126/127, 180/181.
198
good of the community’.161 In the sense that it was used here by his
contemporaries, love was fundamental to his work and his thought. He
took it for granted that the labour of human salvation must be undertaken
by those responsible at whatever cost to themselves. The friars would
sacrifice physical comforts, worldly fame, money, sexual relations, health
and even their lives, if necessary: ‘for faith without works is dead’. Practical
measures were needed for the cure of souls.162 His whole programme was
designed to develop ways of protecting Christians against the dangers that
threatened. He was sure that the greatest possible defence lay in knowledge.
‘I do not want to sound as though I am above myself,’ he wrote, with a
fleeting impulse to caution, ‘but I know that if the Church were willing to
re-read the sacred text and holy prophecies, the prophecies of the Sibyl,
Merlin, Aquila, Seston, Joachim, and many others, as well as the histories
and the books of the philosophers, and would command that the techni-
ques of astronomy be considered, reliable indications and greater certainty
about the time of Antichrist could be acquired.’163 Later, he claimed that
‘many of the wise’, perceiving the corruption of society and pondering on
these prophecies, among other things, had already concluded that it was
upon them. He may have been thinking, once again, of Adam Marsh, and
even perhaps of John of Parma and Hugh of Digne. Salimbene reported
that Hugh had drawn on the prophecies of Joachim, the Sibyls and Merlin
to understand the future, and had firmly defended his use of such ‘infidel’
sources.164 Bacon’s list of prophecies was a mixture of the religious and the
political.165 They contained encouraging promises – ‘[Sextus] will over-
throw the world, he will lead the clergy/ back to their original state . . . he
will renew the Holy Places’ – and useful warnings.166 Bacon suggested: ‘it
161
‘Caritas enim maxima virtus est; et hec ordinatur ad bonum commune’: MP, iii (proemium),
p. 45.
162
‘Nam fides sine operibus mortua est’: OT(Little), p. 75; MP, v.i.7, p. 248.
163
‘Nolo hic ponere os meum in coelum, sed scio quod si ecclesia vellet revolvere textum sacrum et
prophetias sacras, atque prophetias Sibyllae, et Merlini et Aquilae, et Sestonis, Joachim et multorum
aliorum, insuper historias et libros philosophorum, atque juberet considerari vias astronomiae,
inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:268–9.
164
CSP, p. 402; Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, pp. 361–70. See also Adam Marsh, ‘Letter 178’, Letters, vol.
ii, p. 426/427.
165
On Sibylline prophecy see above, p. 175. On the Merlin prophecies see C. Daniel, Les prophéties de
Merlin et la culture politique (XIIe–XVIe siècles) (Turnhout, 2007), esp. pp. 341–68; L. A. Coote,
Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (York, 2000), p. 65. Bacon was probably using
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s version. On Aquila see Reeves, Influence, pp. 319, 328, 349–50; R. E.
Lerner, The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of
the Enlightenment (Berkeley, 1983), p. 191; Coote, Prophecy, pp. 59–64. On ‘Seston’ (probably
‘Sextus’) see See Coote, Prophecy, pp. 51–4; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britannie of
Geoffrey of Monmouth i: Bern Bürgerbibliotek MS 568, ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1985), p. 388.
166
‘Orbem subvertet, reliquo clerumque reducet/ Ad statum primum . . . renovat loca sancta’:
quoted in Coote, Prophecy, p. 32; see also Lerner, ‘Medieval Prophecy’, p. 14.
199
would be extremely useful to the Church of God to give thought to the
time of [the law of Antichrist]: whether it will follow swiftly after the
destruction of the law of Muhammad, or much later,’ but conceded:
‘perhaps God wished that it should not be explained fully, but was a little
obscured, like other things written in the Apocalypse’.167 Yet, on the
whole, he ignored the traditional disapproval of such investigations,
writing confidently: ‘God willed to order his affairs in such a way that
certain things that he foresaw and predestined might be shown to rational
people through the planets.’168 In his view, God intended humans to
have such knowledge, and the pursuit of it was not merely legitimate,
but a duty.
Prophetic and astrological information would not be enough in them-
selves: it was also vital for the Latin West to improve the level of available
knowledge of geography and world affairs. Without mathematics in
particular, it was impossible to understand what was going on in the
world.169 Bacon took the prophecies concerning the tribes of Gog and
Magog very seriously, and maintained that it was imperative that the
Church know their ‘location and condition’:
Since these peoples, confined in specific parts of the world, will emerge into a
desolate region and meet Antichrist, Christians – especially the Roman Church –
must consider well the position of those places. This will make it possible to
comprehend the savagery of these tribes, and through that, the time of
Antichrist’s arrival and the place where he will appear. For their behaviour is
conditional upon his, and so if they come from one part of the world, we will
know that he will be advancing from the opposite direction.170
Bacon was not sure that the Mongols were Gog and Magog, but he did
write: ‘without doubt the Tartars were within those gates [built by
Alexander to confine the savage tribes] and have now come forth’.
Franciscans had confirmed it, and ‘it is known not only to all the nations
of the east . . . but also to those who have a good knowledge of world
167
‘multum esset utile ecclesiae Dei considerare de tempore istius legis, an cito veniet post destruc-
tionem legis Mahometi, an multum longe’; ‘hoc forsan voluit Deus, quod non exprimeretur
totaliter, sed aliquantulum occultaretur, sicut caetera quae in Apocalypsi scribuntur’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:268, 266.
168
‘Voluit ergo Deus res suas sic ordinare, ut quaedam quae futura praeviderit vel praedestinaverit
rationabilibus per planetas ostenderentur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:267.
169
OM, iv.i.1, 1:97.
170
‘situm et conditiones’; ‘Quando igitur hae nationes inclusae in locis certis mundi exibunt in
desolationem regionum et obviabunt Antichristo, multum deberent Christiani et maxime ecclesia
Romana considerare situm locorum, ut posset percipere hujusmodi gentium feritatem et per eos
percipere tempus Antichristi, et originem; nam debent obedire ei: ergo si illi ex una parte mundi
veniant, ipse ex contraria procedet’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:302–3.
200
geography’.171 As Salimbene had been sorry rather than relieved when it
seemed that Frederick could not be Antichrist, Bacon seems to have been
rather disappointed that the Mongols were not clear candidates for
Antichrist’s forerunners. However, he made the best of it, arguing that
even if the advances of the Mongols constituted a false alarm, study of
geography would nevertheless make it possible to anticipate, prepare for,
and perhaps temper the coming ‘persecution by Antichrist’.172
Gathering information was only the beginning of his plan for defending
Christendom against its enemies, especially Antichrist. He wanted
Christians to devise methods of active resistance to the known tactics of
Antichrist. After all, Augustine had written that some would be able to
prevail over the Devil, even once he had been loosed.173 Bacon assumed
that Antichrist would work through arts and powers that were already
known to the wise, even though his mastery of them would be enhanced
by the aid of demons and other forces of evil. ‘Aristotle used [scientia
experimentalis] when he delivered the world to Alexander,’ he reported.
‘And Antichrist will use this wonderful science, far more powerfully than
Aristotle, because he will know far more than Aristotle.’ Alexander
Nequam had already raised the disquieting possibility that Antichrist
would discover and read Aristotle’s ‘most subtle writings, which he
ordered to be concealed in his tomb’.174 Consequently, Bacon’s sugges-
tions for how Christians might withstand Antichrist centred on increasing
Latin expertise in the relevant branches of scientia.
The most straightforward of his ideas was the introduction into
common discourse of proofs of Christian doctrine so that the faithful
would be more able to resist the insinuations of Antichrist. Throughout
the medieval period scholars had periodically attempted to use reason and
philosophy to prove the truth of the Christian faith beyond doubt.
Theologically, this was a controversial and complicated matter, since
salvation could only be won through faith. It was feared that the existence
171
‘proculdubio Tartari fuerunt infra portas illas et exiverunt’; ‘notum est non solum omnibus
nationibus orientis . . . sed et eis qui bene sciunt mundi dispositionem’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:268. See
F. Schmieder, ‘Nota sectam maometicam atterendam a tartaris et christianis: The Mongols as Non-
believing Apocalyptic Friends around the Year 1260?’, Journal of Millennial Studies, 1.1 (1998),
1–11; F. Schmieder, ‘Cum hora undecima: The Incorporation of Asia into the Orbis Christianus’ in
G. Armstrong and I. Wood (eds.), Christianizing People and Converting Individuals (Turnhout,
2000), 259–65.
172
‘persecutionem Antichristi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:365. 173 DCD, xx.8, p. 427.
174
‘hac scientia usus est Aristoteles quando tradidit mundum Alexandro’; ‘hac scientia mirabili utetur
Antichristus, et longe potentius quam Aristoteles, quia sciet plura longe quam Aristoteles’: OT
(Little), pp. 53–4; OM, iv.iv.16, 1:392–3. The idea that demons used the same kind of knowledge
as humans was common. See Watkins, History, p. 210; ‘subtilissima scripta sua jussit in sepulcro suo
secum recondi’: Alexander Nequam, Alexandri Neckam: De naturis rerum libri duo, ed. T. Wright
(London, 1963), ii.189, p. 337.
201
of irrefutable proofs would nullify the crucial role of faith. The only area in
which it seemed legitimate to use reason to prove Christianity was in the
conversion of infideles, who had their own scriptures and sources of
revelation, and who therefore could only be approached through intel-
lectual debate. Even in these cases, it would be essential for those con-
verted by the arguments of reason ultimately to believe by faith. Bacon
was aware of the dangers of seeking proofs, but he felt that the risks posed
by Antichrist to the faith of believers were so acute that it was legitimate to
seek greater philosophical certainty. If faith could be supported by reason,
by philosophy and by other kinds of proofs then Christians would be
stronger in the face of evil persuasions. ‘Through this method of mathe-
matics’, he suggested, ‘we are not only assured of our profession, but we
are fortified in advance against the sect of Antichrist’ – ‘not because we
require reason before faith, but after faith, so that rendered certain by a
double confirmation we may praise God for our salvation which we
possess without doubt.’175
It was well known that Antichrist would use various dark and secret arts
against the faithful, ‘fascinating them like ensnared birds’.176 Christians
had long anticipated that the powers given to Antichrist by the Devil
would enable him, as Bede wrote, to ‘perform magic greater than that of
anyone else’.177 According to the tenth-century monk Adso of Montier-
en-Der he would achieve such extraordinary wonders that ‘even those,
who are perfect and the elect of God, will doubt whether or not he is
himself Christ, who will come at the end of the world, according to the
Scriptures’.178 This was power indeed: to deceive the best and wisest
people about the most essential truths of the universe. Therefore, Bacon
argued, the faithful would be better equipped to recognise and resist
Antichrist if they, too, were aware of the workings of occult powers.
Historically, knowledge of these arts had been kept secret, and they had
been distrusted by the Church ‘due to the fraud and evil of many who
have abused them’. Now it was time to lay them bare – more or less – to
Clement: ‘since this [branch of learning] is one of the greatest and is
powerful at least to some extent in all matters, it is not proper that it
175
‘per hanc viam mathematicae non solum certificamur de professione nostra, sed praemunimur
contra sectam Antichristi’; ‘non quia quaeramus rationem ante fidem, sed post fidem, ut duplici
confirmatione certificati laudemus Deum de nostra salute quam indubitanter tenemus’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:254.
176
‘capiet omnes sicut aves inviscatas’: OT(Little), p. 54.
177
‘per quam magice caeteris omnibus majora patraret’: Bede, ‘De temporum ratione’ in Bedae
Venerabilis, vol. ii, ch. 69, p. 574C.
178
‘etiam illi, qui perfecti et electi Dei sunt, dubitabunt, utrum sit ipse Christus, qui in fine mundi
secundum Scripturas uenturus est’: Adso Dervensis, ‘Epistola’, p. 24.
202
should be concealed from Your Glory’, especially because it was ‘abso-
lutely necessary against the fury of the Antichrist’.179 Furthermore, Bacon
wanted Clement to authorise study by ‘good and holy men’ of ‘magical
scientiae of this kind’. ‘With the grace of God,’ he argued, ‘it would be easy
to meet [the times of Antichrist], if prelates and princes promoted study
and investigated the secrets of nature and of art.’180 In short, Bacon seems
to have been proposing that the mendicants should receive financial
support from the Church to study the scientific basis of the occult arts
that Antichrist would harness when he appeared. This is a particularly
interesting development in the longer history of esoterica, in which, as
Long suggests, there had been ‘a move away from Roman civic concerns
to more intimate and private groups and to spiritual preoccupations’.181
However, Bacon had more in mind than mental and psychological
preparation of the Latin West for the coming menace. He shared the fears
of his generation, but where he differed from others was in his conviction
that Christians could seize control of the vast powers of art and nature for
themselves, pre-empting their enemies. Indeed, he suspected that
Mongols and Muslims were already working against Christendom with
such weapons: exercising fascination; stirring up mysterious irrationalities
and dangerous impulses in the hearts of good Christians; sowing discord
among the princes and causing wars among them. The ‘children’s crusade’
and the uprising of the Pastoureaux were recent examples of the exercise
of fascination.182 How could the Mongols have subdued nearly the whole
world when they were ‘weak men . . . unarmed . . . except for having
179
‘propter fraudes multorum et malitias qui abusi sunt his’; ‘Unde cum hoc sit unum de maximis, et
quasi potens quodammodo in omnia, non decet ut Vestrae Gloriae occultetur’; ‘omnino neces-
sarium contra furiam Antichristi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:392. See N. Weill-Parot, ‘Encadrement ou
dévoilement: L’occulte et le secret dans la nature chez Albert le Grand et Roger Bacon’,
Micrologus, 14 (2006), 151–70; C. Crisciani, ‘Tra Dio, intelletto ed esperienza: aspetti del Segreto
nell’ Alchimia latina (secoli XIII–XIV)’, Micrologus, 14 (2006), 193–214, pp. 209–12; J. Hackett,
‘Mirrors of Princes, Errors of Philosophers: Roger Bacon and Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus)
on the Education of the Government (the Prince)’ in H. B. Clarke and S. Phillips (eds.), Ireland,
England, and the Continent in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Essays in Memory of a Turbulent Friar
(Dublin, 2006), 105–27.
180
OT(Little), p. 18; ‘Et haec deberet ecclesia considerare contra infideles et rebelles, ut parceretur
sanguini Christiano, et maxime propter futura pericula in temporibus Antichristi, quibus cum Dei
gratia facile esset obviare, si praelati et principes studium promoverent et secreta naturae et artis
indagarent’: OM, vi.12, 2:222.
181
P. O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity
to the Renaissance (Baltimore, 2001), p. 70.
182
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:401. On interpretations of the former see G. Dickson, The Children’s Crusade:
Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (London, 2008), pp. 140–57. Latin writers were increasingly
emphasising that Muhammad had been skilled in magic and dark arts. See S. Luchitskaja, ‘The
Image of Muhammad in Latin Chronography of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, JMH,
26.2 (2000), 115–26.
203
arrows to frighten those fleeing people whom they hunt down’? Clearly,
he concluded, ‘it must be through the magnificent working of wisdom
that they go forth to trample the world underfoot’.183
He argued: ‘unless the Church attacks with exactly the same methods to
impede and destroy works of this kind, the scourges of Christians will be
intolerably increased’.184 Later, he put his proposal more aggressively: ‘For
that work, which the Antichrist will do through astronomy and geometry
and other sciences against the Church, we could now carry out against the
Tartars, Saracens, idolaters and other infidels; for it is certain that they will
never otherwise be restrained while the advantage of the world is secured;
because wars are doubtful, and turn out badly for Christians just as often as
for infidels.’185 He had no faith in armies; rather, enemies should be
defeated by ‘the exertion of wisdom’, specifically scientia experimentalis.
Through these means great men of the past, such as Alexander the Great,
assisted by Aristotle’s sapientia, had ‘subjugated the world to themselves’
with only minimal forces at their disposal.186
Encouraged by the Secretum secretorum, Bacon had already given
thought to how these powers could be harnessed and deployed by
Christians.187 Uncovering the secrets of alchemy would enable the pro-
duction of infinite amounts of gold and also provide crucial ingredients for
potions to enhance physical health and prolong human life, strengthening
the position of the Latins in relation to other peoples.188 The wise could
183
‘debiles homines . . . inermes . . . nisi quod habent sagittas ad terrorem quibus persequantur
fugientes’; ‘oportet quod per opera sapientiae procedant magnifica quibus mundum conculcant’:
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:400. John of Plano Carpini, whose work Bacon knew, had reported that the
Mongols were not tall and that they used arrows as Bacon described (John of Plano Carpini,
‘Historia Mongolarum’, ed. E. Menestò, in Giovanni di Pian di Carpini, Storia dei Mongoli, ed. and
trans. P. Daffinà et al. (Spoleto, 1989), ii.2, p. 232, viii.7, pp. 296–7). He had also likened Mongol
tactics and intentions to those of demons (viii.11, p. 299).
184
‘nisi ecclesia occurrat per facta consimilia ad impediendum et destruendum opera hujusmodi,
aggravabitur intolerabiliter flagellis Christianorum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:398–402, quotation at p. 402.
185
‘Nam ista opera, que Antichristus faciet per astronomiam et geometriam et alias contra ecclesiam,
possunt nunc fieri contra Tartaros, Sar[a]cenos, idolatras et alios infideles; et certum est quod
nunquam aliter reprimentur ut exigit utilitas mundi; quia bella sunt dubia, et ita male accidit
Christianis saepe sicut infidelibus’: OT(Little), p. 19.
186
‘per opera sapientiae’; ‘orbem sibi subjugabant’: OM, vi.12, 2:221, iv.iv.16, 1:392–3. See also CSP,
pp. 395–6. On this as a trope among scholars writing for princes see Gaullier-Bougassas,
‘Alexander’.
187
See esp. SS, pp. 114–17; 162–3.
188
‘[alchemy] vere est secretum maximum, nam non solum procuraret bonum reipublicae et
omnibus desideratum propter auri sufficientiam, sed quod plus est in infinitum, daret prolonga-
tionem vitae’: OM, vi.12 (exemplum iii), 2:215. He elaborated at OT, pp. 39–43; OT(Little),
pp. 80–9. See A. Sanino, ‘Ermete mago e alchimista nelle biblioteche di Guglielmo d’Alvernia e
Ruggero Bacone’, Studi medievali, 41 (2000), 151–209, esp. pp. 189–99; A. Paravicini Bagliani,
‘Ruggero Bacone e l’alchimia di lunga vita: Riflessioni sui testi’ in Crisciani and Paravicini Bagliani
(eds.), Alchimia, 33–54.
204
develop weapons that worked through infection or physical contact and
could be used ‘so that without a sword, and without so much as touching
anyone, all those resisting can be destroyed’.189 He described unnerving
explosions of sal petra; fires that could not be extinguished with water;
maddening and bewildering tricks with mirrors.190 He also wanted
Clement to agree to the investigation of even more shadowy pursuits:
insidious ways of compelling enemies that came dangerously close to
destroying their free will.191 Another possibility was that as Antichrist
would use the power of fascination, so should the friars. Bacon explained
that there were special characters and incantations (carminum) which,
when spoken aloud, invoked the power of the heavens. Correct use of
these ‘against evil men and enemies of Christendom can be marvellously
forceful’.192 It is worth noting, once again, that such concepts had been
explored by reputable intellectuals in the preceding decades and contin-
ued to interest both secular and religious authorities. William of Auvergne
and, later, Aquinas were interested in how fascination worked, while
William thought that natural magic was acceptable if not used for evil
ends. Albertus Magnus condemned all forms of magic except the use of
power drawn from the heavens.193
Such methods, Bacon said, were most effective when the rational soul
worked with the ‘strength and species of the heavens’ in such a way ‘that
there is powerful reflection and ardent desire, determined effort and
absolute confidence and, above all, sanctity of life’.194 Nothing had such
command over nature as the grace of God working through a soul of
particular sanctity, ‘because sanctity is nobler than thought or desire, and
189
‘ut sine ferro, et absque eo quod tangerent aliquem, destruerent omnes resistentes’: OM, vi.12
(exemplum iii), 2:217.
190
OM, vi.12 (exemplum iii), 2:218; Perspectiva, iii.iii.3–4, pp. 330/1–334/5; OM, iv.iv.16, 1:344. See
H. Bellosta, ‘Burning Instruments: From Diocles to Ibn Sahl’, Arabic Science and Philosophy, 12
(2002), 285–303.
191
See below, pp. 248–59.
192
‘contra malevolos homines et inimicos reipublicae possunt mirabiliter valere’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:395.
See Grévin, ‘Entre Magie’.
193
Paravicini Bagliani, Medicina, esp. pp. 53–84; B. Delaurenti, ‘La fascination et l’action à distance:
questions médiévales (1230–1370)’, Médiévales, 50 (2006), 137–54; D. Pingree, ‘Learned Magic in
the Time of Frederick II’, Micrologus, 2 (1994), 39–56, p. 42; Williams, ‘Early Circulation’;
Marrone, ‘Metaphysics’; S. Marrone, ‘William of Auvergne on Magic in Natural Philosophy
and Theology’ in Aertsen and Speer (eds.), Was ist Philosophie, 741–8; Sanino, ‘Ermete’;
R. Kieckhefer, ‘The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic’, AHR, 99 (1994), 813–36;
P. Zambelli, The Speculum Astronomiae and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology and Science in Albertus
Magnus and his Contemporaries (Dordrecht, 1992).
194
‘ita ut adsit fortis cogitatio, et ardens desiderium, certa intentio et plena confidentia, et maxime
sanctitas vitae’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:402, iii.14, 3:123–5; OT, pp. 96–8. See C. Fanger, ‘Things Done
Wisely by a Wise Enchanter: Negotiating the Power of Words in the Thirteenth Century’,
Esoterica, 1 (1999), 97–132.
205
therefore the matter of the world is more obedient to the sanctified soul
than to any of the other four qualities’. He went on:
We see this made evident in saints who have performed miracles, to whom the
elements of the world were obedient. And Avicenna . . . teaches that the soul
sanctified and purified of sins is able to change the universe and the elements, so
that rains, tempests and all changes in the bodies of the world are made through its
goodness. It is true that the grace of God does much, but the sanctified soul
cooperates with grace, creating a state of grace, so that a man is not saved by grace
alone, but the soul must cooperate with such grace. Thus it will be able to
cooperate much more strongly with the freely given grace, that is, the grace of
[performing] miracles.195
But who were these ‘sanctified souls’, capable of channelling such

immense power? Readers of Bacon are familiar with his enthusiasms for
particular scholars and his constant recourse to the opinions of ‘the wise’,
but he did not write even of Grosseteste in these terms. Instead, he looked
to the next generation; to his own students, for the preservation and
defence of Christendom. ‘Virtue clarifies the mind,’ he wrote to
Clement. ‘I have proved this carefully in the case of many pure young
men, who because of their innocence of soul have made progress beyond
anything I can describe.’ His student John, he claimed, ‘has a soul so clear
and bright that with very little instruction he has learned more than can be
estimated’. He went on: ‘I have worked to this end: that these two young
men should be useful vessels in the Church of God, that they may reform
the whole academic curriculum of the Latins through the grace of
God.’196 This was very similar to the way he had written about the young
Franciscans who were in error, but protected from heresy by the essential
purity of their souls. Although they were currently being chastised by the
195
‘quia nobilior est sanctitas quam cogitatio vel desiderium, et ideo animae sanctae plus obediet
materia mundi quam aliis quatuor conditionibus. Et hoc videmus adimpleri in sanctis qui fecerunt
miracula, quibus elementa mundi obediebant. Et Avicenna . . . docet, quod anima sancta et munda
a peccatis potest universale et elementa alterare, ut ejus virtute fiant pluviae, tempestates, et omnes
alterationes corporum mundi. Verum est autem quod gratia Dei multum facit, sed anima sancta
cooperatur gratiae gratum facienti, ut non salvetur homo per solam gratiam, sed oportet animam
cooperari gratiae tali; multo ergo fortius poterit cooperari gratiae gratis datae quae est gratia
miraculorum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:403. See also the parallel passage in OT, pp. 95–9.
196
‘Virtus ergo clarificat mentem . . . Et hoc probavi diligenter in multis juvenibus mundis, qui
propter animae innocentiam profecerunt ultra id quod dici potest’; ‘habet animam ita claram et
perspicuam quod modica instructione cepit plus quam potest aestimari. Et feci ut juvarem ad hoc,
ut hi duo juvenes forent vasa utilia in Ecclesia Dei, quatenus totum studium per gratiam Dei
rectificent Latinorum’: OM, vi.i, 2:171. He gave additional information in OT, pp. 60–3.
Although Bacon’s ‘John’ has not been otherwise identified, it has been suggested that he may
later have compiled a selection of arguments for use in interfaith debate. See T. A. Orlando,
‘Roger Bacon and the “Testimonia Gentilium de Secta Christiana”’, Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et
Médiévale, 43 (1976), 202–18.
206
seculars, they would eventually be purged of error. It is not a great leap,
therefore, to presume that he desired the improvement and expansion of
studies among the religious orders so that suitable, holy, wise young friars
would be trained and ready to protect the Church and the faithful in the
coming times of trial. Dark times and dangerous enemies called for dark and
dangerous methods, but these men would stand strong in sapientia and
remain unharmed. Only they could protect the faithful.
Bacon’s response to the problem presented by Antichrist owed much to
his years of reading and research after he ceased to be a university master. It
must be remembered that the corpus of Arabic philosophy and science
that stimulated his thought during this period was generated primarily to
serve the needs of the ‘Abbaˉ sid dynasty. Astrology, alchemy and mathe-
matics were in demand for the purposes of state, and treatises on those
subjects were cast in such terms – and came in such terms to Bacon.197 He
echoed their emphases: there is nothing in his work to suggest a desire to
benefit privately from his researches in these areas; it was all for the public
good. He derived particular inspiration from the Secretum secretorum and
other imported works containing similar ideas, but was quick to follow
hints of secrets and curious arts wherever he encountered them in his own
society. He lived among men whose minds were much occupied with the
widespread perception that eschatological events were already unfolding.
They searched the motives and actions of their fellow men tirelessly for
signs of deviousness, manipulation and dissimulation that might reveal
precursors of Antichrist. Bacon saw the state of society in the same terms,
but he was also fascinated by the shadowy, half-illicit world entered by the
wise through scientia experimentalis – and by Antichrist through demonic
power. It provided him with more concrete explanations and, conse-
quently, more definite ways of acting.
His interest in such matters has often been put forward to explain his
putative condemnation a few years later. Undoubtedly, the persistent
atmosphere of unease about the investigation of nature and the proper
limits of study intensified in the scholarly world in the years before 1277. It
was reflected in academic writings, ecclesiastical proscriptions, and also in
the many stories of ambiguous dealings between philosophers or magi and
demons. Yet there was no possibility in the minds of many of these
individuals of separating the intellectual projects of the age from the
world in which they lived: a world saturated by the supernatural and
197
D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad
and Early ‘Abbaˉ sid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries) (London, 1998), esp. pp. 107–20; A. K.
Bennison, The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire (London, 2009), esp.
pp. 158–202.
207
constantly affected by it. Demons, unquiet spirits, the holy dead, angels
and other stranger forces were a part of human life and would intervene in
human affairs, whether invoked or left alone. More research must be
done, but until then Bacon’s programme for defending Christendom
through the increase and diversification of sapientia, even into occult
realms, should be considered as evidence of how the fusion of
Franciscan, apocalyptic, occult and learned thought could function in
this decade.198
Bacon’s ideas were a serious response to the situation of the Latin West
in the 1260s, and included a certain crystallisation of problems not neces-
sarily anticipated by his predecessors. It was becoming possible to survey
and evaluate the progress of learning within a general acceptance that most
friars were or should be educated. The link between sapientia and sanctity
was clear in Bacon’s mind. His whole programme was premised on the
availability of men who could combine both qualities. Yet he felt that it
was increasingly obvious that the new religious orders were not succeed-
ing as they ought to have done. It was quite natural that Bacon would
assume that they had been affected by the iniquities of the last days; such
trials of the faithful had been foretold. Nevertheless, he was as idealistic as
anyone in his order about the role that they might yet play in times to
come. His conviction that extraordinary things could be achieved through
the discovery of scientia and the exercise of sapientia seems to convey as
exalted a notion of the mendicant purpose as that expressed by any of his
Joachite predecessors and contemporaries. It also had the virtue of being,
in intention at least, extremely practical. When Adso had written about
the role of ‘two great prophets [who] will be sent into the world, just like
Enoch and Elias’, he had said: ‘they will defend the faithful of God against
the attack of the Antichrist with divine weapons and will instruct, comfort
and prepare the elect for war, by teaching and preaching’.199 The Opus
maius took and developed the important eschatologial strands in
Franciscan thought and identity. It suggested ways to forge the best
‘weapons’ and to enhance ‘teaching and preaching’. In the last days of
the world, Bacon wrote to persuade the Pope that all these needs of the
Church and of the Christian faithful could be met ‘by the light of
wisdom’.200
198
Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and the Secret’, esp. pp. 373–8, 390–1; Watkins, History, pp. 129–69,
208–10.
199
‘duo magni prophete mittentur in mundum, Enoch scilicet et Helias, qui contra impetum
Antichristi fideles Dei diuinis armis premunient et instruent eos et confortabunt et preparabunt
electos ad bellum, docentes et predicantes’: Adso Dervensis, ‘Epistola’, pp. 27–8.
200
OM, i.i, 3:1.
208
Chapter 5
BEYOND CHRISTENDOM
It was, of course, not enough to deploy the fruits of sapientia solely for the
benefit of the Latin West. Between resurrection and ascension, Christ had
ordered his apostles to evangelise the whole world. ‘Go and make disciples
of all nations,’ he told them, ‘baptising them . . . and teaching them to
obey everything that I have commanded you.’1 This imperative resonated
through time, compelling Christians to accept responsibility for the salva-
tion of infideles until the last of them had entered into the faith – something
that would not occur until the final days. For better and for worse, it
forced Christians to recognise the rest of humanity as potential converts;
capable of responding to preaching and accessible to reason. At the same
time, when combined with Christ’s commission to Peter, it placed the
whole globe under the authority of the Church.2 The popes had the right
and the responsibility to demand that every living person accept the faith
of the Latins. Infideles could convert and find salvation, or refuse and
endure eternal torments.
The thirteenth-century Church, with its many versions of the vita
apostolica and its developing ideology of papal plenitudo potestatis, was
acutely conscious of Christ’s command. Evangelical responsibility was
an important strand within the way that the papacy imagined and justified
its claim to universal authority, and it informed the strategic thinking of
prominent secular and ecclesiastical leaders.3 It was equally palpable in
humbler currents of spirituality: in the aspirations of the religious and
certain of the laity. It was also, conversely, a powerful element in criticism
of the institutional Church and justification of more radical approaches to
spirituality.4 Its very simplicity allowed it to run as a linking thread
1
Matt. 28.19. 2 Matt. 16.18–19; John 21.15–17.
3
Muldoon, Popes, pp. 3, 18, 29–30, 34–71.
4
E.g. Jacques de Vitry (Lettres, i, pp. 75–6); Hugh of Digne (Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, pp. 341–51);
Robert Grosseteste (‘Grosseteste at the Papal Curia’, pp. 350–68; see also J. R. Ginther, ‘A Scholastic
Idea of the Church: Robert Grosseteste’s Exposition of Psalm 86’, AHDLMA, 66 (1999), 49–72).
209
through the dizzying range of challenges that the Latin West faced as it
sought to maintain its tenuous hold in the eastern Mediterranean, obtain
the submission of the schismatic churches, curb the wilfulness of Jews and
heretics, subdue the pagans in the north and the Muslims in the south, and
secure the conversion of the Mongols, rulers of much of the known world.
All these different struggles could thus be envisaged as parts of the same
enterprise. Finally, evangelical ambition was given distinctive shape and
colour by eschatological expectation, since it was widely anticipated that
mass conversions would herald the end of things. This lent a useful
urgency to demands for support in the many labours of the Church.
There is an extensive and rapidly growing literature on the many ways
that the Latin West acted in, conceptualised, understood and failed to
understand the wider world that pressed so hard on its consciousness in
this period. Bacon has received a modest amount of attention in these
contexts, especially for his criticism of crusading and his promotion of
serious training for missionaries, in both languages and rational debate.5
His ideas on these matters have regularly been discussed among those of
prominent mendicants, many of whom were writing on the basis of direct
experience of engagement with heretics, Muslims or Jews.6 It is, indeed, in
this area that Bacon has seemed to be most in accord with the ambitions of
the mendicants and some elements in the wider Church. He has been
noted, also, as a writer on geography and as the maker of an innovative
mappamundi, now lost. He has been appreciated for his insistence that, in
order to act in the world beyond Christendom, the Church had first to
find out as much as possible about its regions, people and ideas and to
understand their place within the cosmos.
However, these are only parts of Bacon’s thinking about the world
beyond Christendom and, to modern readers, the easiest and most pala-
table parts. Behind his desire to engage with non-Christians through
reason was the uncompromising sense of the relative worth of religions
so characteristic of his society and its faith. Christianity was the only road
that led to God. The rest was diabolical delusion that lured the soul
5
Bigalli, Tartari, pp. 168–90; D. Bigalli, ‘Giudizio escatologico e tecnica di missione nei pensatori
francescani: Ruggero Bacone’ in Espansione del Francescanesimo tra Occidente e Oriente nel secolo XIII
(Assisi, 1979), 151–86; J. Miethke, ‘Die Kritik des franziskaners Roger Bacon an der Schwertmission
des deutschen Ordens’ in A. Radzimínski and J. Tandecki (eds.), Prusy–Polska–Europa: studia z
dziejów średniowiecza i czasów wczesnonowożytnych (Toruń, 1999), 45–55; W. Urban, ‘Roger Bacon
and the Teutonic Knights’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 19.4 (1988), 363–70; E. Siberry, Criticism of
Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 19, 207–8; Kedar, Crusade, pp. 177–80; Tolan, Saracens,
pp. 225–9; Tolan, ‘“Saracen Philosophers”’, esp. 197–200; Vose, Dominicans, pp. 29–33; Akbari,
Idols, pp. 269–79; Whalen, Dominion, pp. 190–3.
6
See R. I. Burns, ‘Christian–Islamic Confrontation in the West: The Thirteenth-Century Dream of
Conversion’, AHR, 76.5 (1971), 1386–434; CUP, vol. i, pp. 212–13, 638–9.
210
Beyond Christendom
irrevocably towards the fires of hell. Bacon was urged by the imperatives
of this severe paradigm to explore unconventional – and, to our eyes,
somewhat sinister – methods for dealing with unbelief. Some of his ideas
about the conversion of infideles, as those for the defence of Christendom,
were rather insinuated than stated boldly because they touched on matters
of the greatest gravity and secrecy. He was convinced that there was a
connection between celestial influences and religious affiliations. He felt
that religious commitment was to some extent environmentally deter-
mined and could thus be redirected by the modification of environments.
Inevitably, this notion raised some serious and difficult questions about
free will, human rationality and the limits of licit persuasion, all of which
recurred in his writing on conversion.
These are not threads previously detected in Franciscan writing on
mission, but they cannot be dismissed as evidence merely of Bacon’s
idiosyncrasy or unorthodoxy. His was, as we have seen, a society that
believed in transformations of souls and the mutability of matter in accor-
dance with the impenetrable workings of God. From folklore to hagiogra-
phy, legends of metamorphosis fascinated medieval people. Bread that had
become the Saviour’s flesh was the most powerful and wonderful substance
on earth. Reform and renewal, the central aims of the Church, were
predicated on the ability of the clergy to induce in others a stronger
commitment to the faith. People were interested in questions about how
far one could take compulsion in religion, particularly when considering
what sorts of pressures might be placed on Jews and Muslims living under
Christian rule or on suspected heretics during the process of inquisitio. Some
in the Church – not least the popes themselves – were also greatly troubled
about the ultimate fate of those who failed in their duty of pastoral care.
Where, then, should the line be drawn between abandoning souls to damna-
tion and forcing them towards salvation? Bacon believed that, ‘by the light
of wisdom’, all these matters could be addressed. First, however, it was
essential to know something of the nature of the world and its inhabitants.
imagining the world

Before looking at Bacon’s geographical writings, it is important to be clear
about the difficulties for modern scholars when trying to grasp the nature
of medieval notions of the world.7 Added to the usual challenges of
studying the past is the problem that, on the one hand, we are able to
access more information than our ancestors did about the geography,
7
Particularly helpful on medieval geography is D. Woodward, ‘Medieval Mappaemundi’ in J. B. Harley
and D. Woodward (eds.), The History of Cartography (3 vols. Chicago, 1987–1994), vol. i, 286–370. On
211
ethnography, zoology and botany of the planet, but on the other, our
individual experiences of the natural world and of distant lands are limited,
shaped and distorted in ways that few reflect upon. Our society has lost
any sense of the slow approaches and the unfolding transitions of journeys
on horseback, foot or by ship. We forget the difficulties of uncovering
entirely foreign realities: understanding without context what is being
perceived; groping for meaning in a morass of languages mediated by
inadequate translators; sifting without guidance through the echo-
chamber of human imagination across continents and entwined cultures.
We may not think enough about the uncertainties and conventions at
work when geographical information could only be circulated by com-
mitting memories of distant lands by pen to parchment. We acknowledge,
but perhaps do not fully grasp, the implications of how it was for those
who did not have first-hand experience of travel, but who made sense of
the world through their own life in it, assisted by the Bible, and the
handful of reports, geographies and natural histories that had been pre-
served and disseminated through a society that, in practical terms, had little
need for the information.
Above all, from the vantage point of our peculiar and unprecedented
level of knowledge, we assume that medieval people had a misshapen
version of our own understanding of the world; almost, that they had a
premonition of the ways that we would know and were struggling
towards them. Historians seize upon evidence of it: the appearance of
‘new’ powers of observation and discrimination; admissions of ignorance
in place of old complacencies; technological improvements; more recog-
nisable mapping. Some elements in medieval thought come to represent
‘backward’ aspects; others, the progressive parts. This is part of the sea of
difficulties into which narratives of progress and periodisation have
thrown historians in general, and perhaps medievalists in particular.
Throughout the centuries there was indifference, dispute, turmoil, curi-
osity, ambition and greed – impulses of a kind that, as it turned out, took
the West by strange paths into the modern global sensibility. Nevertheless,
we must assume that people living in an environment that seemed to them
so profoundly influenced by supernatural agents; people with such a rich
sense of the fabric of daily life and the significances of things, believed that
they knew what was important about the world and acted accordingly.
They were undeterred by their ignorance of the finer details of remote
corners of the world. Indeed, we must consider that their faith in the value
broader questions of historical geography, perception and imagination see D. Cosgrove’s Geography
and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (London, 2008); D. Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A
Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore, 2003).
212
Beyond Christendom
of their knowledge may indeed have been greater, rather than more
provisional, than our own.
Bacon had many ways of thinking about the world. Sometimes, with
the astronomer’s imagination, he envisaged the earth as Scipio had done:
diminished and distant.8 He discussed it as a spherical object within a
finite, spherical universe that could be investigated using the principles of
geometry. The intricate relationships that defined the nature of everything
in the cosmos could be calculated mathematically. Several textbooks laid
out the principles with great clarity.9 The skies were also by far the most
accessible part of the world beyond Christendom: Bacon had only to look
upwards on clear nights to see the heavens turning in all their ordered
splendour. Through observation of their motions and associated phenom-
ena he could chart the past, understand the present and anticipate the
future. They were at least as essential to understanding the nature of the
world – including its geography – as the more obvious sources.10
At other times, as a map-maker, he examined the world in two
dimensions, in ink, on parchment, its details set out for contemplation
‘with our own eyes’. His own map, he said, showed the ‘habitable
portion’ of the world ‘in lines and figures by means of astronomy’, the
continents with their cities ‘marked by red circles’. Given that he preferred
to use skilled assistants to produce his visual aids, it would be interesting to
know whether this map was his own work, or the product of an earlier
collaboration.11 Either way, maps had their limits. They could only
indicate the bare outlines of what the world contained, despite being
crucial for true comprehension.12 He had therefore added a verbal
description written on the spare parts of the parchment. This would
give ‘the names and places and distances of every region and famous city
8
On the earth considered as a globe within a spherical universe see Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye, esp.
pp. 29–78; C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
(Cambridge, 1964); Chenu, Nature, esp. pp. 18–48.
9
Bacon’s geometrical description of the heavens and earth drew heavily on Sacrobosco’s textbook
De sphaera (in Thorndike, Sphere, pp. 118–42), and to some extent on Grosseteste’s De natura locorum
(in Robert Grosseteste, Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, ed.
L. Baur (Münster, 1912), pp. 65–72).
10
‘Honorius Augustodunensis. Imago mundi’, ed. V. I. J. Flint, AHDLMA, 49 (1983), 7–153, pp. 76–
92; C. Connochie-Bourgne, ‘L’Orient, réalité et discours, dans l’Image du Monde’ in Images et Signes
de l’Orient dans l’Occident médiéval (Marseilles, 1982), 129–42; C. Connochie-Bourgne, ‘Images de
terre dans les Livres de clergie du XIIIe siècle: Image du monde, Livre du Tresor, Livre de Sydrach, Placides
et Timeo’, Perspectives médiévales, supplément 24 (1998), 67–79.
11
‘oculis nostris’; ‘astronomice in scripto et figura’: OT(Little), pp. 9, 13; ‘notantur per circulos
rubros’, OM, iv.iv.16, 1:300. On Bacon’s map see Woodward and Howe, ‘Roger Bacon on
Geography’; Woodward, ‘Roger Bacon’s Terrestrial Co-ordinate System’.
12
Here he echoed Hugh of St Victor: La ‘Descriptio mappae mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor, ed.
P. Gautier Dalché (Paris, 1988), p. 125.
213
in turn, so that we may know the diversity of every people in languages,
morals, religions, rituals, laws – and those who are without law – so that
we can know where pagans are, where Tartars, schismatics, Saracens,
Christians, Jews, and various others’.13 Such a carefully organised
combination of visual and written material, especially if perfected by
further researches, and supported by the hard evidence of astronomy,
would give a conceptual mastery of the habitable world. It was Bacon’s
preferred way of knowing, but, as he confessed regretfully, he could not
proceed ‘by astronomical certification, that is, using the true longitudes
and latitudes of places in relation to the heavens, because the Latins do not
yet have this knowledge’.14 Instead, he had to resort to more conventional
methods.
In order to compose a written description of the world Bacon conflated
contemporary eyewitness material, geographical snippets from Arabic
scholarship and the traditional authorities – geographers, historians,
theologians, pilgrims and long-dead travellers. Images of places emerged
from these overlapping texts: the rich store of geographical descriptions
that had evolved in the Mediterranean imagination since Homer.
This genre was, or became, almost a form of poetics in which places
were evoked through specific, recurring stories of events, peoples,
individuals, customs, marvels and decontextualised fragments of history.
It was so powerful that the actual journeys of individuals took place, at
least to some extent, within this essentially literary framework. It took
effort on the part of a traveller to avoid perceiving experience through the
lens of expectation. Certainly, the accounts that circulated in the Latin
West were partly constructed as an exegesis on older geographical
narratives.15
Bacon’s most immediate and independent source of knowledge was a
fellow Franciscan, William of Rubruck, who had travelled extensively in
Central Asia. ‘I have studied his book in detail and discussed it with its
author’, he told Clement, ‘as well as with many others who have explored
13
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:300; ‘nomina et situs et distantias omnium regionum et civitatum famosarum ad
invicem, ut sciamus omnium gentium diversitates in linguis, in moribus, in sectis, ritibus et legibus,
et qui sine lege, ut sciamus ubi sunt pagani, ubi idolatre, ubi Tartari, ubi scismatici, ubi Sarraceni,
ubi Christiani et Judei et alie diversitates’: OT(Little), p. 9.
14
‘per certificationem astronomiae, scilicet per veras longitudines et latitudines locorum respectu
coeli; quia nondum habent eam Latini’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:304.
15
For example, John of Plano Carpini, ‘Historia Mongolarum’, v.30–33, pp. 272–4; Itinerarium,
29.46, p. 269. This sensibility is explored in G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. M. Jolas
(Boston, 1994), p. xviii. See also M. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European
Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, 1988); V. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus
(Princeton, 1992); J. K. Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades: A Study in the
History of Medieval Science and Tradition in Western Europe (2nd edn. New York, 1965).
214
Beyond Christendom
the lands to the east and south’.16 These evidently included men who had
gone on crusade with Louis IX, and possibly also Innocent IV’s envoy ‘to
the Mongols and the other nations of the east’, the Franciscan John of
Plano Carpini, from whose popular account Bacon occasionally quoted.17
Elsewhere he claimed that he had himself sent people ‘over the sea [i.e. to
the Latin East] and to a great variety of other places’ so that they could
report what they saw to him.18 His own travels, although difficult to
establish, seem to have been relatively limited by the standards of some
friars. He told Clement that he had been in England and France, but not in
Ethiopia, India, Africa, Syria, Greece or the Holy Land.19 Thus, in the
absence of a specific discipline equivalent to modern ‘geography’, his
imago mundi was built from several separate branches of learning and
second-hand experience.20
Bacon believed that it was important for Christians to be able to conjure
up the landscapes of the world in every physical particular, experiencing
them almost voluptuously, savouring ‘their variations in heat and dryness,
cold and humidity, colour, taste, smell, beauty, unsightliness, attractions,
fertility, barrenness and their other conditions’. This immersion would
enable the reader to take great pleasure in the literal sense of the scriptures,
and then ‘pass quietly and gloriously into the spiritual sense’ – ‘since
physical journeys signify journeys of the spirit’. Amid Bacon’s other
preoccupations, descriptions of the environment of the scriptures – its
‘regions, cities, deserts, mountains, seas’ – filled him with delight.21 Even
16
‘quem librum diligenter vidi, et cum ejus auctores contuli, et similiter cum multis aliis, qui loca
orientis et meridiana rimati sunt’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:305. On Bacon’s use of William’s account see
Charpentier, ‘William’; M. Gueret-Laferté, ‘Le voyageur et le géographe: L’insertion de la relation
de voyage de Guillaume de Rubrouk dans l’Opus Majus de Roger Bacon’, Perspectives médiévales,
supplément 24 (1998), 81–96; G. A. Bezzola, Die Mongolen in Abendländischer Sicht [1220–1270]: Ein
Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen (Berne, 1974), pp. 201–9; Bigalli, Tartari, pp. 168–90.
17
‘ad Tartaros et ad nationes alias orientis’: John of Plano Carpini, ‘Historia Mongolarum’, prologus,
p. 227. Bacon’s use of John’s report has received little attention (Gueret-Laferté, ‘Le voyageur’,
p. 95), but John visited Paris in 1248, and his report was well known at Louis’ court. See
G. Guzman, ‘The Encyclopaedist Vincent of Beauvais and his Mongol Extracts from John of
Plano Carpini and Simon of Saint-Quentin’, Speculum, 49 (1974), 287–307.
18
‘multotiens ego misi ultra mare et ad diversas alias regiones’: EFRB, p. 92 [Gasq, p. 502]. Although
he did not refer explicitly to the findings of these men, and they are difficult to trace in his work, he
did use contemporary material on the Egyptian coast, Nile Delta and Holy Land (e.g. OM, iv.iv.16,
1:314, 321, 335).
19
OMin, pp. 318–19.
20
P. Gautier Dalché notes this as ‘une grave limitation’ on geographical knowledge in the thirteenth
century: ‘Les savoirs géographiques en Méditerranée chrétienne (XIIIe s.)’, Micrologus, 2 (1994),
75–99, p. 98.
21
‘diversitatem eorum in caliditate et siccitate, frigiditate et humiditate, colore, sapore, odore, et
pulchritudine, turpitudine, amoenitate, fertilitate, sterilitate, et aliis conditionibus’; ‘viae corporales
significent vias spirituales’; ‘regiones, civitates, deserta, montes, maria’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:183; ‘ad
sensus spirituales gloriose et placide transire’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:185.
215
when he wrote about less obviously sacred terrain, he was interested in the
courses of the four rivers that flowed from Paradise, the great mountain
ranges, the expanses of steppe and forest of the north, and other environ-
ments. He was moved still more by the heavens, as we have seen,
observing them through the hours of darkness when they passed overhead
through the months and seasons. As he read in Cassiodorus: ‘If we inquire
carefully into astronomy, with a pure and restrained mind, it fills our
senses, as the ancients say, with a great brightness.’22 The emotional
response engendered in him by both cosmological and geographical
imaginings of God’s creation was an integral part of his thought about
the wider world.
Scholarly investigation of how Bacon wrote about the heavens and
the earth has tended to focus on questions of his originality and influence.
This is all very well, but there is a great deal that such approaches cannot tell
us. Bacon’s description of the world was culled from other people’s
accounts. His main sources were the Bible, Pliny, Jerome and Orosius,
but, depending on the region he was discussing, he also cited Aristotle,
Anaxagorus, Hegesippus, Thales, Ptolemy, Seneca, Sallust, Lucan, Josephus,
Solinus, Origen, Ambrose, Boethius, Bede, Isidore, Macrobius, Ethicus,
Alfraganus (al-Farghaˉ nıˉ), Abuˉ Ma’shar, Huguccio of Pisa, William of
Rubruck and John of Plano Carpini. The resulting section of the Opus
maius has received little attention from historians, probably because, as
Woodward has put it, it appears ‘wholly derivative’.23 Yet we need to
think more clearly about what ‘derivative’ really means in the context of
cosmography, in any age. As Bacon put it: ‘anyone can describe their
homeland, but they must be taught about foreign parts by others’. Indeed,
‘more than half the quarter [of the world] in which we live is unknown to
us’.24 Even for the best travelled there were inevitably regions where
experience and memory faded out into hearsay and then silence. What is
perhaps of greater interest is how Bacon chose to present ‘the world’ in his
account of it for Clement.
He had plenty of material available to him and he was quite clear about
his methodology in approaching it, saying that he would not write about
places that were well known to Latins, or about ‘every single place in other
regions’. Rather, he would focus on ‘the more notable and famous places,
22
‘“Astrononiam si casta et moderata mente perquirimus, sensus nostros, ut veteres dicunt, magna
claritate perfundit”’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:179.
23
Woodward and Howe, ‘Roger Bacon on Geography’, p. 200.
24
‘quilibet potest loca natalis soli describere, et per alios de locis extraneis edoceri’; ‘plus medietatis
quartae in qua sumus est nobis ignotum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:304, 293. See the cautionary remarks in
Gueret-Laferté, ‘La voyageur’, p. 90; L. Lomperis, ‘Medieval Travel Writing and the Question of
Race’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31.1 (2001), 147–64.
216
Beyond Christendom
in scripture or philosophical works: the places from which tyrannical
peoples will emerge in the future or have come in the past: those who
are said to have devastated the world in the past or are likely to devastate it
sometime in the future. And I will mention the religious customs and sects
of different peoples – those who are pagans, or idolaters, or Tartars, or
other things – so that a more accurate perception of these places is available
for consideration.’25 Later on he stated the reasons for these principles of
selection: ‘it is useful for Christians to know these things so that they can
work for the conversion of unbelievers and arrange various matters with
different peoples. It is also important for the Church to be prepared against
the fury of the Antichrist and his precursors.’26 He explained that his
survey would lack the precision of ‘astronomical confirmation’, but that it
was hastily written as ‘an example’ designed to encourage Clement: ‘to
have it finished by learned men during your pontificate’.27 These state-
ments of his modus operandi make the purpose of his description of the
world clear. They indicate that, far from being at the mercy of his sources,
he was determined to use the material available to address specific needs
and to promote the more extensive studies that he thought so essential to
the future of humanity.28 They also suggest that he was in considerable
conformity with contemporary map-makers, whose mappaemundi priori-
tised similar concerns over a more impartial geography.29
He began by establishing that a greater part of the world was populated
than people generally thought. He did so using the old stories of people
whose shadows fell to the north; the ‘two races of Ethiopians’ and the
long-lived Hyperboreans in their ice-bound paradise.30 He then went on
25
‘nec loca singula in aliis regionibus, sed magis notabilia et famosiora in scriptura et philosophia; de
quibus gentes tyrannicae venient et venerunt, quae mundum referuntur de praeterito vastasse aut
aliquando vastaturae. Et assignabo ritus et sectas gentium ut qui sunt Pagani, qui idololatrae, qui
Tartari, et sic de aliis, ut certior apprehensio locorum pateat perlegenti’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:304.
26
‘utile est sciri a Christianis propter infidelium conversionem, et propter negotia diversa cum
diversitate gentium tractanda, ac propter utilitates ecclesiae contra furorem Antichristum’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:309.
27
‘certificationem astronomiae’; ‘ut compleatur suo tempore per sapientes’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:304, 305.
28
Bezzola makes a similar point but with different intent, complaining that, rather than selecting
critically from the range of material, Bacon used only those sources that fitted into his idea of
‘die Ordnung der Welt’: Die Mongolen, p. 209. See also the interesting position on Bacon’s
methodology in J. Fried, ‘Auf der Suche nach der Wirklichkeit: Die Mongolen und die
abendländische Erfahrungswissenschaft im 13. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 243 (1986),
287–332, esp. pp. 328–30.
29
I am grateful to Daniel Birkholz for pointing this out. See Woodward, ‘Medieval Mappaemundi’;
D. Birkholz, The King’s Two Maps: Cartography and Culture in Thirteenth-Century England
(New York, 2003).
30
His mathematical defence of the possibility of a temperate region at the North Pole (OM, iv.iv.16,
i:134–35, 308) was taken without acknowledgement from Grosseteste’s De natura locorum
(in Grosseteste, Die Philosophischen Werke, pp. 68–9).
217
to describe the places of this inhabited expanse – ‘not merely delineate or
draw, but give a full narrative of them’ – beginning with those mentioned
in the scriptures.31 His main purpose in this was to locate biblical material
in physical space, and integrate it with what was known from other
sources, particularly Pliny. He started in the Indian Ocean, with a brief
account of the wealth and administrative structures of Taprobane, ‘where
the Great Bear and the Pleiades cannot be seen’.32 Moving along the south
coast of India, he crossed the Red Sea to Ethiopia and the southernmost
habitable cities – Meroë, Saba and Bernice, city of the cave-dwelling
Troglodytes. This area was traditionally the setting for half-remembered
races, where Roman ethnography melted into fantasy. Although Bacon
seems to have eschewed picturesque or macabre details that merely
encouraged curiositas, he included matter-of-fact references to some of
these races, primarily in order to elucidate references in the scriptures.33
Next came Egypt and its ancient, mighty cities, site of Israelite captivity
and the miracles of Moses. Of Africa – the area west of Egypt – he noted
that it required extra attention since ‘it is near to us, yet we know less of it
than Europe and Asia’. This was borne out by the fact that his main source
was Sallust’s Bellum Jugurthinum. It may also suggest that he was not well
acquainted with the missions of friars in the cities of Tunisia and Morocco,
or the network of commercial connections that threaded across the
western Mediterranean in those days.34 Moving back eastwards, he was
fascinated by the Nile, with its source in Paradise and its mouths opening
into the ‘Italian sea’ where Louis IX’s army had been defeated; its islands
and deafening cataracts; its strange slow flooding during the hottest part of
the summer, which no one could satisfactorily explain. He wrote about it
at length, again because of its importance in scripture, as well as in
philosophy and the histories – by which he seems to have meant world
affairs up to his own day.35
He then came to ‘Arabia’, which included East Africa and the Sinai. He
saw these desert regions chiefly through the eyes of the wandering
Israelites. It was thus a barren place of battles, encampments, graves,
31
‘non solum necessaria est depictio locorum et figuratio, sed narratio eorum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:309.
Compare with Hugh of St Victor’s prologue in ‘Descriptio’, p. 133.
32
‘in qua non videntur septentriones et vergiliae’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:310.
33
For example, the habits of Troglodytes and Garamantes were mentioned because those peoples
appeared in scripture, Pliny, Isidore, and seemed to be confirmed by references to Alfraganus: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:312–13.
34
‘sit prope nos, tamen minus nota est quam Europa et Asia’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:315. On contemporary
ties with North Africa see M. Lower, ‘Tunis in 1270: A Case Study of Interfaith Relations in the
Late Thirteenth Century’, International History Review, 28 (2006), 504–14; M. Lower, ‘Conversion
and St Louis’s Last Crusade’, JEH, 58 (2007), 211–31; Vose, Dominicans.
35
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:318–25; Joinville, Vie, 187–9, p. 92.
218
Beyond Christendom
miracles, sins, foreign gods, and a people ‘murmuring’ by the bitter
waters – although the same Red Sea that parted for Moses contained, in
his mind, an island described by Pliny to which dogs would not go. The
landscape here was wild and powerfully imagined – a visualisation Bacon
owed largely to the scriptures and to Jerome. The desert of Paran stretched
down the Red Sea, ‘desert roads’ crossed it; at the beginning of the
Promised Land there was a high escarpment with a valley at its foot; a
torrent rushed down it; cities were submerged in the murky waters of the
Dead Sea.36 Beyond these places steeped in the memory of exile were
‘other vast areas, which extend to the Euphrates in a crescent of land’,
once inhabited by the sons of Hagar, where there were few crops and
many wild animals.37 Arabia Eudaemon, Saba or Sheba, ran along the
eastern shores of the Red Sea; a land of incense, perfumes and spices: ‘in its
valleys myrrh and cinnamon grow and there the Phoenix is born’. There
was no mention of Muhammad: from here, in Bacon’s imagining, came
the Queen of Sheba to defer to the sapientia of Solomon; came the Magi,
to acknowledge and honour Christ; and here lived the bird whose rebirth
was at once symbol and proof of the resurrection of the Saviour.38
Next he came to the expanse of Syria, stretching from Arabia to the
Taurus Mountains; from the Mediterranean to the Tigris. In these parts
were the Tower of Babel and the ruins of the great city of Babylon, where,
according to Abuˉ Ma’shar, Noah and his sons had lived after the flood and
learned astronomy. Here was the half-destroyed city of Baghdad, where
the Caliph, lord of the Muslims, had the seat of his office. The Tigris and
Euphrates, originating like the Nile from Paradise, burst forth from
Armenia to water these plains: the Tigris flowing into a lake ‘that breathes
out mist’, through an underground cavern, and thence on its long course
to the Red Sea; the Euphrates annually rising and inundating
Mesopotamia.39 Then, circling back towards the Mediterranean, he
came to the north of Syria, where the holy places were. This earth, at
36
The wanderings of the Israelites were an important subject for reflection, notably in Bede’s De
mansionibus filiorum Israel. St Paul said of them: ‘These things happened to them to serve as an
example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come’
(1 Cor. 10.1–11) – remarks equally pertinent to the sensibilities of Bacon’s day. Their route was
even depicted on maps (e.g. the Hereford mappamundi shows a frustrating, looping, back-tracking
route that makes Paul’s point very effectively).
37
‘aliae regiones magnae, quae extenduntur ab Euphrate in circuitu terrarum’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:330.
38
‘in cujus saltibus et myrrha et cinnamonum provenit; ibi nascitur et phoenix’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:331.
The phoenix was a bestiary favourite; Bacon remarked later: ‘magna persuasio [of the resurrection]
nobis est de phenice’: MP, i.v.11, p. 25.
39
‘nebulis exhalantem’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:334. On the realities of these parts after the Mongol
devastations see R. E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century
(rev. edn. Berkeley, 2005), pp. 81–105.
219
the very heart of the world and saturated with sanctity, had been ‘first
trodden by the holy patriarchs and prophets, then the Lord himself, and
his Mother, and the sacred apostles. These are the lands where the earliest
Church came into being, which still echo the Gospel message – which
holds mysteries too great for mortal ears to hear or human minds to
understand, as Origen says.’40
The landscape evoked by Bacon was scattered with cities and defined
by the distances between them; still so luminous with the sacred past that
the present was almost forgotten: ‘Tyre lies nine leagues further on, in the
heart of the sea; four or five leagues beyond is Sarephta of the Sidonians,
where the widow fed the prophet Elijah.’41 In these parts Adam was
created, Cain killed Abel, David hid, and sulphur rained down on the
five cursed cities of Pentapolis. ‘The earth burst into flame, the waters
blazed, and traces of the fire from heaven remain to this day. You can see
there what seem to be ripening apples . . . but if you pick one, it falls apart
and collapses into ashes, and smoulders, and smokes, as if it were still on
fire.’42 The ancient wrath of God against sinners was so persistent in this
place that people could still feel the hot cinders of it in their hands. Bacon
described the course of the River Jordan; Mount Carmel ‘where the
prophet Elijah preached’, with its olive groves and vineyards; ‘glorious’
Mount Tabor ‘where the Lord revealed his splendour to the three dis-
ciples, Moses and Elijah’; the Sea of Galilee, with its pure, wave-ruffled
waters; the irrigating streams of Mount Lebanon; and much else.43
He then described the position and extent of the Roman provinces in
the region in order to clarify confusing geographical statements in the
New Testament. For example, he devoted many lines to the question of
how it could have been that, when Jesus and his disciples went by ship to ‘a
desert place’ prior to the feeding of the five thousand, the people who had
followed them on foot had arrived before they did. His findings then
explained various other uses of the imprecise phrase ‘over the sea’ or
‘across the sea’ in descriptions of Christ’s wanderings.44 His careful
40
‘calcaverunt primo sancti patriarchae et prophetae, deinde Dominus ipse et Mater ejus et apostoli
sacrati, et in quibus crevit ecclesia primitiva et quae resonant evangelia, in quibus majora mysteria
continentur quam auris mortalis possit audire aut mens humana intelligere, ut vult Origenes’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:335. See B. Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem (Rome, 1987).
41
‘postea usque Tyrum in corde maris sunt novem leucae; et postea quatuor vel quinque usque ad
Sareptam Sidoniorum, ubi vidua pavit Heliam prophetam’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:335.
42
‘Arsere terrae, ardent aquae, in quibus coelestis ignis reliquiae adhuc manent. Aspicias illic ad
speciem poma viridantia . . . si carpas, fatiscunt et resolvuntur in cinerem, fumumque excitant quasi
adhuc ardeant’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:339.
43
‘in quo oravit Helias propheta’; ‘mons Tabor gloriosus, in quo Dominus suam gloriam discipulis
tribus et Moysi et Heliae ostendit’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:339–44 (quotations at 1:341).
44
‘in locum desertum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:348. The episode is given in Mark 6.31–3.
220
Beyond Christendom
attention to details that might appear trivial is indicative of the importance
to him and to his society of accuracy in scriptural interpretation – the
perception that the elusive sapientia of the Bible could only be discerned
through the most rigorous study of meaning on every level from the literal
to the anagogical. Given his other interests, Bacon’s attraction to these
pursuits must have been intensified by patristic writings emphasising the
veiled power of the names of places in the scriptures, which, Origen had
said, contained ‘great secrets’.45 As with other parts of the geographical
description, there is nothing in his account referring explicitly to what
remained of the contemporary Latin presence there: settlements, crusades,
trade or other contacts. Taking his criteria at face value, it is presumably
the case that these details seemed like minutiae by comparison with the
eternal truths embodied in the terrain itself. They were also decidedly
uncertain at the point of writing, when the fragmented remnants of Latin
suzerainty were shattering further as armies fought, negotiated and
betrayed one another across the harsh and sacred landscapes of the
Levant.46
After outlining the extent of the Promised Land, Bacon’s account swept
away to distant parts and began to move more rapidly. He explained that
his general intention was to begin with India, since it was the easternmost
region of the world, and he wanted to work westwards through each
latitude from the most southerly inhabitable regions to the most north-
erly.47 He described the towering ranges of the Taurus and Caucasus
mountains which, he said, ran from the Indian Ocean to Cilicia, forming
the boundary between ‘innumerable regions’.48 When it came to India,
however, aside from the Indus and the Ganges, he was chiefly interested in
the Brahmins, who provided confirmation of some of the wider points in
his proposal for Clement. Based on information gleaned from Jerome and
Ambrose, he said that they were ‘saints and philosophers’. Men and
women only met for reproductive purposes, otherwise living separately
‘as an indication of their chastity’. They subsisted only on what they could
gather, and ‘they are healthy and without weakness, and they live extre-
mely long lives’.49 Thus, the benefits of combining wisdom, chastity and
45
‘majora mysteria’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:184.
46
See P. Jackson, ‘The Crisis in the Holy Land in 1260’, EHR, 376 (1980), 481–513. Baumgärtner
notes that new information from travellers in Asia took a long time to appear on mappaemundi
(I. Baumgärtner, ‘Weltbild und Empire: Der Erweiterung des kartographischen Weltbilds durch
die Asienreisen des späten Mittelalters’, JMH, 23.3 (1997), 227–53, pp. 231–7) and the same was
true in the case of the Muslim presence in the Holy Land.
47
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:352. 48 ‘regiones infinitas’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:350.
49
‘Sani sunt sine infirmitate, et vitam protendunt longissimam’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:353, 352. Stories of
the Brahmins frequently carried this connotation. See D. J. A. Ross, Alexander Historiatus: A Guide
to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature (London, 1963), pp. 30–2.
221
abstention from all forms of luxurious living were demonstrated by
infideles on the shores of the Ganges, a world away. Of similar merit
were the inhabitants of a town near Susa in Persia, who hated gold so
much that they buried it. Having noted the virtues of the Brahmins, he
moved westwards, correcting the traditional understanding that the
Caspian Sea was an arm of the surrounding ocean, with the recently
made observation that it was an enormous inland sea fed by rivers.50
With his arrival at the Caucasus, Anatolia and ‘the lands of the north’,
Bacon’s information was radically updated by the reports of the Franciscan
missionaries. He made extensive use of the remarkable account written by
William of Rubruck for Louis IX, which Bacon here represented as being
about ‘the position of lands and seas’. Bacon also gave considerable weight
to the Cosmographia of ‘Ethicus the astronomer’ because ‘he explored all
these regions and sailed around the seas and islands of the northern
ocean’.51 This text, now suspected to be a parody, presented itself as a
translation and commentary by St Jerome on the ‘cosmography’ of one
Aethicus Ister. Bacon took it seriously, appreciating the double authority
of the eyewitness account endorsed by Jerome, himself the main authority
for most of Bacon’s description of the Holy Land. In particular, the
emphasis in this text on extensive personal travels and gaining facts by
experience appealed to Bacon and evidently put Aethicus in the same
intellectual category as more recent travellers.52
There is a very different feel to Bacon’s discussion of these areas,
frequently because he was paraphrasing William’s recent experiences.
Bacon used the Itinerarium to paint a picture of a region that had endured
rapid alterations, suffering and devastation under first Turkish, then
Mongol, onslaughts. ‘The names of the provinces in this region have
been much changed because of wars,’ he reported. ‘Turkey has occupied
many lands’ and the Sultan’s castles guarded the shores of the Black Sea.
‘Between Kerson and Soldaia there are forty fortified towns, and almost all
50
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:355. Bacon did not specify his source, referring to the ‘libris de moribus
Tartarorum’ as a genre, but this was the observation of William of Rubruck and Andrew of
Longjumeau who had between them travelled around it. See Itinerarium, 18.5, p. 245.
51
‘situm regionum et marium’; ‘Ethicus astronomus’; ‘perambulavit omnes has regiones, et mare
oceanum septentrionale cum insulis suis navigavit’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:356. See the introduction in
Aethicus Ister, Die Kosmographie des Aethicus, ed. O. Prinz (Munich, 1993), esp. pp. 18–22, and the
introductory remarks in the text, pp. 87–8.
52
On Aethicus as parody, see N. Lozovsky, ‘The Earth is Our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin
West ca. 400–1000 (Ann Arbor, 2000), pp. 31–3, 150–2. Bezzola points to the use of a source as
unreliable as the Cosmographia as evidence of a lack of discrimination in Bacon (Die Mongolen,
p. 201), but it was also a matter of criteria. As a text it would also have appealed greatly to Bacon’s
particular interests in eschatological geography and Alexander the Great, e.g. Aethicus Ister, Die
Kosmographie, pp. 137–41.
222
Beyond Christendom
of them have their own dialect. There are many Goths thereabouts, all of
whom speak German.’53 Beyond this crowded area there was ‘a vast
wilderness’ from the Danube to the Don: ‘a journey of two months on
horseback, at the speed that Tartars ride – covering in a day the distance
from Orleans to Paris – but would take about four months at a more usual
pace’.54 Although this section was based on copious borrowing from
William, it is nonetheless interesting to see a certain domestication of
Mongol habits in European conceptual structures. The description of
these areas as ‘wilderness’, solitudo, was William’s, but must have had
strong connotations for both men from its recurrence in scripture and
then in the monastic imagination. The wilderness had always been the
realm of penitential exile, temptation and sometimes renewal.55 Bacon
went on to explain that the area had belonged to the Cumans, but that
they had all been killed by the Mongols, save for the few who had
managed to escape to the Kingdom of Hungary.
He gave a relatively bare description of the Baltic region and the north.
Of the inhabitants of these regions, he reserved his praise for the
Hyperboreans, whom he said were ‘a quiet and peaceful people, hurting
no one and untroubled by any other people’.56 The rest of the people
were identified by their religious practices. He explained that the
Prussians, Courlandi, Livonians, Estonians, Semigalls, Leucovians and
Cumans were all pagan, as the Alans had also been before they were
obliterated by the Mongols. The Russians were schismatic Christians who
followed the Greek rite, but used the Slavonic language. The rest of the
people of the region had been destroyed by the Mongols, save for a few
tribes who had survived in remote and mountainous regions. The
Mongols themselves ‘have innumerable sheep and live in tents’, moving
north in summer and south in winter. The people subject to them were
the Moxel, who ‘are still without law, simple pagans’, living in the forests,
but extremely hospitable. They had been forced by the Mongols to fight
against the Poles, Germans and Bohemians, and many of them had been
killed. Despite this, the survivors hoped that the Latins would free them
53
‘Nomina provinciarum in his regionibus sunt multum mutate propter guerras. Nam Turkia multas
terras occupant’; ‘a Kersona usque Soldaiam sunt quadringenta castra quorum quodlibet fere
habet proprium idioma. Et sunt ibi multi Gothi, qui omnes loquuntur Teutonicum’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:355, 357.
54
‘vastam solitudinem’; ‘itinere duorum mensium velociter equitando, sicut equitant Tartari; et hoc
est una die quantum est ab Aurelianis Parisius. Unde durat haec terra circiter quatuor menses
secundum quod alii homines communiter equitant’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:358.
55
William’s description of the wilderness was bleak, at times even eerie: ‘all we saw was the sky and
the ground and on occasions, to our right, a sea called the Sea of Tanais; and also Coman graves,
which were visible to us two leagues off’ (Itinerarium, 13.3, p. 195; Jackson, Mongols, p. 108).
56
‘gens quieta et pacifica, nulli nocens, nec ab alia gente molestatur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:359.
223
from their servitude.57 Next were the Merduim, ‘Saracens, following the
law of Muhammad’, then Iberians and Georgians, subjects of the Sultan of
Turkia, to their south, and then the lands that had belonged to the
Khwarismians before they were destroyed by the Mongols.58 The
Dominicans had a house, Bacon noted, in the Georgian capital of Tiflis.
The area had once belonged to the Amazons – about whose habits he
went into lurid detail. Next were the Armenians, whose cities had been
devastated by first Muslims, then Mongols – as their own prophets had
predicted. Last in this sequence were the Alans and the Aas, who were
Christians, but not schismatics, and the Lelgi, who were Muslims. They
were all holding out against the Mongols, helped by the extremely rugged
terrain in which they lived.
Beyond these regions were the Caspian Gates, built by Alexander the
Great to keep out the wild peoples of the north. Alexander had appealed
to God for help and – ‘even though he was unworthy to be heard’ – God
had obliged and, ‘out of his goodness and to save the human race, ordered
a great earthquake’, which brought the mountains close together so
that they could be barred with gates.59 Alexander built mighty bronze
columns and gates smeared with bitumen that could not be destroyed by
fire, water or iron weapons. But now, Bacon wrote earnestly, ‘they have
been broken’, for William passed through their shattered remains,
although he had not been able to tell how long ago the damage had
occurred. ‘This whole region must be studied most carefully,’ Bacon
urged. ‘For Gog and Magog, about whom Ezekiel and the Apocalypse
prophesied, were enclosed in these parts.’60 Ethicus had specified that the
tribes locked up by Alexander were in fact Gog and Magog, destined to
ravage the world in preparation for Antichrist’s coming. The broken gates
were clearly ominous in this context. More thought was also required
to facilitate conversion and provide support for Christian captives in
these areas.
Beyond the Caspian Gates, from the Don to the Volga, and from the
Volga eastwards for four months’ journey, were the lands of the Mongols.
Most of the former inhabitants had been slaughtered or enslaved. Still
living there were Bulgarians, who were ‘the worst sort of Saracens’, which
Bacon thought strange since they were remote from other Muslim
57
‘sunt adhuc sine lege pure pagani’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:361.
58
‘Saraceni habentes legem Mahometi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:361.
59
‘Sed licet non fuit dignas exaudiri, tamen Deus sua bonitate et propter salutem generis humani jussit
fieri terrae motum maximum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:364.
60
‘Nunc autem ruptae sunt’; ‘Et considerandum est diligenter de locis istis. Nam Gog et Magog, de
quibus Ezechiel prophetavit et Apocalypsis, in his locis sunt inclusi’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:365; Ross,
Alexander, pp. 34–5.
224
Beyond Christendom
communities.61 Next were the lands from which the Huns had come in
antiquity – ‘bursting through the gates of Alexander’ – laying waste to
regions as far as Egypt and France; more powerful, perhaps, than the
Mongols.62 This part of the world extended as far as ‘Black Cathay’, the
land of Prester John, ‘whose fame was so great and of whom so many
spurious stories were told and written’.63 ‘This is the place for me to
explain the origins of the Tartars,’ he went on, ‘not just to give a better
sense of the different regions, but because of this people, who are now so
infamous, and have crushed the world under their feet.’ He then gave an
extraordinarily garbled account, abbreviated from William’s report, but
even less coherent. Bacon’s interpolations, however, are revealing.
Following William, he began the story with the arrival of a plea from
the Turks to the ruler of the northern lands, ‘Coir Chan’, for help against
the Franks who were besieging Antioch. ‘Chan’, William had explained,
meant ‘soothsayer’ (divinator), ‘because their control over the people
depends on divination’. Bacon expanded: ‘they rule the people by divina-
tion and scientiae that enable them to reveal the future to men, whether it is
done through parts of philosophy, astronomy and scientia experimentalis, or
through magical arts, to which the whole of the east is devoted and in
which they are immersed. All the rulers of the Tartars are therefore called
“soothsayer”, just as, among us, they are called “emperor” and “king”.’64
This remark seems part of the ideological punctuation of Bacon’s imago
mundi. It linked to his analysis of the Mongols in his moralis philosophia, but
equally importantly, it must surely have been meant as both a promise and
a warning about the use of such arts and powers by rulers.65
Returning to the history of the Mongols, Bacon explained that Coir
Chan had been succeeded by Prester John, an ambitious Nestorian shep-
herd, leader of the Naiman, who were all Nestorians: ‘bad Christians, who
nevertheless claim to be subject to the Roman Church’.66 He was suc-
ceeded in turn by his brother, who was subsequently overthrown by
Genghis Khan, of the Mo’al tribe. The Mo’al, Bacon said, ‘were
61
‘pessimi Saraceni’: OM, iv.iv.16. William had given a reason for the ‘pessimi’: ‘fortius tenentes
legem Machometi quam aliqui alii’ (Itinerarium, 19.3, p. 212).
62
‘ruperunt . . . claustra Alexandri’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:367.
63
‘de quo tanta fama solebat esse, et multa falsa dicta sunt et scripta’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:367.
64
Itinerarium, 17.1, p. 205; trans. Jackson, p. 121. ‘regunt populum per divinationes et scientias quae
instruunt homines in futuris, sive sint partes philosophiae, ut astronomia et scientia experimentalis,
sive artes magicae, quibus totum oriens est deditum et imbutum. Omnes igitur imperatores
Tartarorum vocantur Chan, sicut apud nos vocantur imperatores et reges’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:368.
65
For a slightly different contextualisation of the idea that the Tartars were knowledgeable about
philosophy see F. Schmieder, ‘Tartarus valde sapiens et eruditus in philosophia: La langue des mis-
sionnaires en Asie’ in L’Étranger au moyen âge (Paris, 2000), 271–81.
66
‘mali Christiani, et tamen dicunt se esse subjectos Romanae ecclesiae’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:368.
225
impoverished, stupid and simple men, living without a law’ – by which he
probably meant ‘without a religion’ – but ‘gradually, by divine permis-
sion, they subjugated all the peoples around them and, in a short time,
have overthrown the whole expanse of the world. If they had been able to
agree with each other,’ he went on, ‘they might have laid waste Egypt
and Africa, so that they could then have surrounded the Latins from every
side. As it is . . . they control the lands right up to the territory of
Constantinople. The Sultan of Turkey, the King of Armenia, the Prince
of Antioch, and all the princes of the east as far as India are their subjects,
except for a very few who are either so far away or in such mountainous
terrain that they cannot be crushed.’67
Beyond the various Mongol tribes lived the Thebeth, who, Bacon
explained, following William, had once been notorious for eating their
own deceased parents as a gesture of respect, but now, having succumbed
to international pressure, merely made drinking-cups of their skulls.
Beyond them were other races whose characteristics Bacon abbreviated
from William’s descriptions, including the ‘Seres’ of classical lore. He
finished this section with an account of the religious affiliations and
practices of the inhabitants. They were, he reported, ‘principally idolaters,
but Saracens, Tartars and Nestorians live among them’.68 His material
again came from William, and he echoed William’s harsh prejudices
against the Nestorians in particular. He was more positive about the
‘Idolaters’ – in this context, Buddhists – whose great bells and monastic
tendencies seemed to echo the values of the Latin West. Some of them
were even monotheistic as a consequence of contact with Christians and
Muslims. He lingered over a description of their monastic practices,
noting their chastity, shaved heads, the way they sat facing each other in
‘choirs’ within their temples, holding books and observing silence except
during the recitation of ‘their office’.69 He finished by describing their
different scripts. Finally, he gave a brisk account of the localities of Europe,
brisk because ‘nearly everyone knows them all’.70 Southern and eastern
67
‘erant pauperes homines et stulti ac simplices sine lege’; ‘permissione divina paulatim omnes
nationes vicinas subjugavit, et totam mundi latitudinem in parvo tempore prostravit. Quae si
esset concors, primo egressu Aegyptum et Africam vastaret, ut sic ex omni parte Latinos circum-
daret. Nam nunc . . . usque ad terram Constantinopolitanam tenet eorum imperium. Et Soldanus
Turkiae, et rex Armeniae, et princeps Antiochiae, et omnes principes in oriente usque in Indiam
sunt eis subjecti, praeter paucos, qui aut nimis distant aut habent loca in montanis tutissima quae
expugnari non possunt’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:369, 370. See D. O. Morgan, ‘The Mongols and the
Eastern Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 4.1 (1989), 198–211.
68
‘principaliter idololatrae, sed mixta sunt inter eos Saraceni et Tartari, et Nestoriani’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:373.
69
‘chorus’; ‘officii sui’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:373.
70
‘fere omnes notae sunt omnibus’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:374.
226
Beyond Christendom
Europe received slightly more attention, particularly Greece, ‘nurse of
philosophers’ and of the world’s most ancient kingdoms.71 Nothing
needed to be said of Italy, Provence and Spain, because they were well
known. This brought to a conclusion his historia ‘concerning the places
and peoples of the whole habitable world’.72
the influence of the heavens

Bacon followed his historia with a linked treatise dealing with the heavens.
He could not connect the two subjects with the mathematical thorough-
ness that he desired, but he could sketch out the elements of their
relationship. In particular, he wanted to discuss the natures of the ‘fixed
stars’ and planets and the establishment, through this information, of the
characteristics of the sublunary world. This information would facilitate
judgements about the past, present and future and the actions necessary to
secure the future good of the state (rei publicae).73 He could not emphasise
enough that the terrestrial sphere was encompassed and conditioned by
the ceaseless turning of the heavens. Place, history and astronomy were
fundamentally linked.
Bacon stated that there were 1,022 fixed stars, all of which had different
potencies in heat, cold, moisture, dryness and other qualities. There were
twelve principal constellations, which constituted the astrological signs:
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Each of these had their own powers.
Similarly, each planet had distinctive influences. Saturn was cold, dry, ‘the
cause of all of indolence, death and destruction’, while Mars was hot, dry
and equally destructive – both were called ‘unjust, unfortunate and
malevolent’. Jupiter and Venus were hot and humid and were considered
‘fair, fortunate and benevolent’. Mercury stood in the middle, changeable
and responsive: ‘with the good, it is good and bad with the bad’. The
moon was cold and humid; the sun hot and generative.74 The interactions
between stars and planets mediated and complicated these influences, so
that the effects of an ‘evil’ planet could be mitigated by favourable
oppositions and conjunctions, or intensified by unfavourable ones into
71
‘nutrix philosophorum’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:375.
72
‘de locis et gentibus totius habitabilis’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:376.
73
‘quatenus videat Vestra Sapientia quid requirendum sit pro utilitate rei publicae procuranda’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:377.
74
‘omnis pigritae et mortificationis et destructionis rerum’; ‘inaequales, et infortunia, et malevoli’;
‘aequalis, fortunatae, et benevoli’; ‘cum bonis est bonus, et malus cum malis’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:377–8. This information was standard fare. For a similar account of the cosmos see William of
Conches, Dragmaticon, books i–iv.
227
the worst evils. Similarly, at different points of their orbit of the earth their
influence was strengthened or reduced. The ‘higher’ they were – the
further away from earth – the more vigorous their effects. The forces
generated by these bodies and their motions poured downwards from
every angle, so that every point on the earth’s surface was the apex of a
great pyramid of influences from above. The effects were virtually infinite,
giving rise to the diverse forms, inclinations and – unless deliberately
resisted by the exercise of free will – destinies of all things.75
The universal cause of all sublunary affairs was the sun, Bacon
explained. The particular cause was the position of the fixed stars over-
head, which produced variety in regions and individuals. The star signs
and planets were further causes because they were variously dominant in
different regions, probably according to their positions at the time of the
world’s creation. It was difficult to be sure to which regions specific
celestial bodies related, because there were so many other factors at
work. Although ‘the books of the Hebrews’ shed some light, the precise
connections remained ‘among the greatest problems in philosophy’, and
Latins did not agree amongst themselves.76 It was, nonetheless, undeniable
that the influence of the heavens shifted from hour to hour, and day to
day, and through the weeks and months as the moon waxed and waned.
So it was that ‘as the complexions vary, each soul is stirred up and led, so
that, for no other reason, it wishes to follow the motion of the complex-
ion, even in entirely voluntary actions’.77 These intimate influences
extended to the realm of medicine and the affairs of individuals. They
were the small, rapid movements within the revolving vastness of the
cosmos, the greater motions of which provoked epic disruptions of history
and mapped out the entirety of time from creation to apocalypse.
Since the motions of the celestial spheres were governed by unvarying
laws – under God – past, present and future could be discovered. If this
were done, Bacon argued, humans would no longer be so susceptible to
harmful influences; rather, understanding the forces at work on them,
they could exercise their free will within these constantly shifting situa-
tions. Medicine would become more effective; warfare could be avoided;
great works could be undertaken at the most propitious moments; appro-
priate food and clothing could be acquired in preparation for a time of
extreme cold – ‘although others who have not foreseen the cold are dying
from it’.78 It was not merely a matter of anticipation and precaution.
75
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:378–80. 76 OM, iv.iv.16, 1:380–1.
77
‘complexiones variantur, excitantur animi et ducuntur ut gratis velint sequi complexionis motum,
etiam in omnibus operibus voluntariis’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:383.
78
‘quamvis alii qui haec non praeviderint prae frigore moriantur’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:383–90.
228
Beyond Christendom
Bacon and his authorities were advocating a more harmonious relation-
ship with nature; a greater understanding of the shape of events and
influences, so that humans might live within their contours, rather than
being hindered or destroyed by them. He quoted Ptolemy: ‘a wise soul
will assist the work of the stars, just as one who sows seeds facilitates the
forces of nature’.79 Yet his contemporaries were variously oblivious or
dishonest, and so the knowledge was lost to the multitude and hidden by
the wise. Bacon was convinced that it was time for the Latins to learn to be
at ease in the universe and to use its power, especially given the current
threats posed to Christendom.
What particularly interested him was the relationship between celestial
influences and systems of human morality, especially as they were codified
into the various sectae, leges, or world religions.80 This was why he wanted
to know which heavenly bodies had conditioned the nature of each place
at the time of the world’s creation. He believed that the initial macro-
cosmic impression had determined the qualities of the regions ever since,
just as on the microcosmic level everything received the impressions of the
heavens most powerfully at the point of generation or birth.81 As we saw
in the previous chapter, this sort of information was important within an
eschatological context, when it was necessary for Christians to be attentive
to the rise and fall of religions and to be vigilant against Antichrist. It was
also useful to Latins when it came to understanding, engaging with and
converting the peoples concerned. Astronomy and astrology had the
potential to supply reliable material on which both Church policy and
missionary endeavours could be based. This was another area in which
more research was required, but Bacon gave some preliminary indications
of how it might function.
In the first place, astronomy could indicate the nature of each secta. He
explained that when Jupiter was in conjunction with other planets,
religions were signified. Since there were six other planets, this meant
that there were six main sectae in the world. He went through each of
them. When Jupiter was in conjunction with Saturn, Judaism was sig-
nified, because, like Judaism, Saturn was the ‘father of the planets, older
than the others, and before them’. The qualities of this religion, then, were
that ‘all acknowledge it, and it acknowledges no other faith’ – ‘all faiths
draw support from the sect of the Jews, because it was the first and the root
79
‘anima sapiens adjuvabit opus stellarum, quemadmodum seminator fortitudines naturales’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:391.
80
On the terms secta and lex and their relation to religio see P. Biller, ‘Words and the Medieval Notion
“Religion”’, JEH, 36 (1985), 351–69, pp. 360–9.
81
OT(Little), p. 5. On climate and nature see Akbari, Idols.
229
of the others. All the others have found in it some kind of witness and
legitimisation of their own religion’.82 It was ‘less distant from the truth’
than other religions, but ‘the lawgiver was not the son of a virgin, as in the
Christian law; and it is not verified by so many authentic scriptures, nor
does it have such noble elements’.83
Jupiter in conjunction with Venus signified ‘the law of the Saracens’,
which was ‘wholly voluptuous and lascivious’. Bacon regarded this ‘law’ as
far more ancient than Islam. It was pure sensuality and hedonism,
‘regarded through the ages by its devotees as a way of life’. Ovid had
described it long before Muhammad, who had merely codified it ‘in a
book called the Qur’an’. In this religion, ‘a delight in sin abounds’.84
Bacon also discussed Christianity and the ‘sect of Antichrist’ in the same
context, together with several other unspecified ‘religions’. Jupiter in
conjunction with Mars signified the ‘Chaldean’ law, ‘which teaches the
worship of fire’; while with the sun, signified the ‘Egyptian’ law, ‘which
demands the worship of the heavens, of which the ruler is the Sun’. Both
of these ‘are nothing . . . because they teach worship of the creature [rather
than the Creator], and this is forbidden by philosophy’.85 Later, he
explained that the law of Mars was in his own day followed by the
Mongols: ‘for they venerate fire, occupy themselves with war and have
no great works of philosophy’. The practices of contemporary pagans and
idolaters were in conformity with those of Mars and the Egyptians.86
When he dealt with the subject in his treatise on moral philosophy, he
modified these broad remarks. The two sections were designed to be read
together, and the latter clarified the former. In the first place, he argued,
people were inclined towards particular ‘laws’ by the stars: influenced to
‘accept them either in their entirety, or to a considerable extent, or at least
to receive some of their tenets more easily’.87 Although the rational soul
82
‘pater planetarum et remotior et prior’; ‘omnes confitentur, et ipsa nullam aliam’; ‘Omnes quidem
sectae appodiant se ad sectam Judaeorum, quia haec fuit prima et est radix aliarum, a qua omnes
aliquod genus testimonii et constitutionis sectae habuerunt’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:256; E. Zafran, ‘Saturn
and the Jews’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42 (1979), 16–27.
83
‘minus elongatur a veritate. Sed lator non fuit filius virginis, sicut in lege Christiana; atque non
habet confirmationem per tot scripturas authenticas, nec habet tam nobiles articulos’: OM, iv.iv.16,
1:262–3.
84
‘tota voluptuosa et venerea’; ‘per longa tempora in usu vitae habebatur a suis cultoribus’; ‘in libro
qui dicitur Alcoran’; ‘delectatio peccati abundat’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:256, 262. See: J. J. Cohen, ‘On
Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England’, Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31.1 (2001), 113–46; Akbari, Idols.
85
‘docet adorare ignem’; ‘ponit coli militiam coeli, cujus princeps est Sol’; ‘nulla est . . . quia docent
colere creaturam, et hoc negat philosophia’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:256, 262.
86
‘ignem venerantur et bello student et philosophie vacant magnalibus’: MP, iv.i.3, pp. 194–5.
87
‘ad legum su[s]cepcionem, aut omnino, aut ut multum, aut saltem ut facilius recipiantur’: MP,
iv.i.3, p. 193.
230
Beyond Christendom
was not forced, the temperament was ‘much altered’, and actions affected,
both in public and private matters. As the celestial bodies were in endless
motion and interaction, their strength was inconsistent and fluctuating.
The consequence was that ‘sometimes men of one religion are drawn
towards another, by the force of the constellation. Sometimes their
own religion changes either completely, largely, or is mingled with the
qualities of another . . . And so it happens that religions become an
amalgam of elements from many other religions.’88 Bacon supplied exam-
ples: the Jewish and Christian ideas embedded in Islam and the apparent
receptivity of the Mongols to Christian teaching. As a consequence of
these processes, the natures of the original sectae had shifted and mingled
over the centuries.
All this was an explanation for something that Aristotle had discussed in
the Politics. Bacon reported that Aristotle had investigated the types of
sectae in an attempt to discover ‘which laws corrupt states and kingdoms,
and which do not’.89 Each secta or lex was shaped by the nature of the end
it had in view. Alfarabi and Boethius, elaborating these categories, sup-
plied him with the following possible ends: pleasure, wealth, honour,
power, fame, glory – and the happiness of the life to come after death. All
religions combined elements of these ambitions in different proportions
and with different interpretations of their meanings. Misunderstandings
and imbalances in desire were fatal for the soul, so a religion that placed
more emphasis on the pleasures of this life – as Islam did – than on those of
the next could offer nothing but damnation to its followers. Yet all these
concepts of religion could be traced back to the subtle, ambiguous powers
of the heavens, weaving their influences into human history, day after day,
since the world’s beginning.
In Bacon’s view, within this model Christianity was exempt from all
such considerations. It was not, as a faith, alterable by superlunary influ-
ences as it was guided by the Holy Spirit, and it was neither corrupt nor
corrupting. However, he admitted elsewhere that individual Christians
and individual churches might be swayed towards error, schism and
heresy.90 There is also no doubt that these parts of his writings revealed
a very considerable unease about the state of the majority of Latins, the
Church and even the religious orders in his own day. He attributed the
88
‘aliquando homines unius secte inclinant se ad sectam alterius propter fortitudinem constellacionis,
et aliquando mutant sectam propriam vel omnino vel principaliter, vel miscent condiciones alterius
secte . . . Et sic accidit quod fiunt secte composite ex partibus plurium sectarum’: MP, iv.i.3,
pp. 193–4.
89
‘que leges corrumpunt civitates et regna, et que non’: MP, iv.i.1, p. 188. See Rosier-Catach,
‘Roger Bacon, al-Farabi et Augustin’.
90
OT(Little), p. 62.
231
state of affairs to a mixture of human weakness and ignorance, vulner-
ability to the tug and sway of the forces that shaped the cosmos and to the
impending climax of history. Yet this only made it more important than
ever that Christians were made solid and stable in their faith so that they
might be better equipped to fulfil their responsibilities to the souls of
infideles. At that moment in time it was absolutely imperative that the
Church gave thought to the world as it lay beyond Christendom and
beneath the heavens, so that it might operate far more effectively in it.
the current state of the world

As with his other proposals for Clement, Bacon’s ideas about how to deal
with the wider world were located within a critical appraisal of the current
situation as he understood it. His writing on the subject engaged closely
with the concerns of his age. As the century progressed there was a
growing anxiety about the sheer size of the world and the massed and
quick-breeding population of infideles that surrounded Christendom on all
sides.91 Infidelitas seemed to be pressing in, eroding the evangelical
achievements of the apostles, laying siege to the temporal heartlands of
the faith. As Grosseteste had told the curia: ‘the voice of [the apostles,
church fathers and martyrs] went out into the whole world and their
words were heard at the very edges of the earth’, but the faith ‘has now
been compressed, as if confined within an acute angle. For unbelief has
taken possession of the greater part of the world and it is separated from
Christ.’92 The idea that the apostles had taken the gospel to the edges of
the earth was reinforced and promulgated in mappaemundi, church dec-
oration, hagiographical legends and rumours of the distant Christian
kingdom of Prester John. Hugh of St Victor, for example, located the
tomb of St Thomas in a region so remote that it marked the end of
Alexander’s travels and was populated with pygmies, unicorns,
Cenocephali, Blemys and other paraphernalia of distance.93 At the same
time, this view of what had once been achieved was designed to prompt
further efforts. The retreat of Christianity under the pressure of Islamic
91
Biller, Measure, pp. 238–45.
92
‘In omnem namque terram exivit sonus eorum et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum’; ‘Sed vae, vae,
vae! Haec tanta dilatatio, tanto opere elaborata, coarctata est velut in anguli brevis angustiam.
Plurimam namque mundi partem occupavit infidelitas et a Christo separavit’: ‘Memorandum’, 4, 6
in Robert Grosseteste, ‘Grosseteste at the Papal Curia’, pp. 351, 353.
93
Hugh of Saint-Victor,‘Descriptio’, ix, pp. 141, 166–7, n. 24. See also N. R. Kline, Maps of Medieval
Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 195–218. The fourteenth-century
Franciscan missionary John of Marignolli emphasised his evangelical success by asserting that he
had gone ‘further than Alexander’.
232
Beyond Christendom
expansion and the need to reclaim these lost lands was, in various forms, a
distinct theme in crusading propaganda. Robert the Monk proclaimed
early in his Historia Iherosolimitana: ‘The West prepares to illuminate the
East, rousing new stars to dispel the blindness which oppressed it.’94
Chroniclers of the original expedition even emphasised that Jerusalem
had been conquered and cleansed of pollution on the same day of the year
as the apostles had earlier set out to evangelise the world.95 Above all,
there was a strong association of contemporary mission with the deeds of
the apostles, made in particular by Francis of Assisi, who sent his first
followers out in pairs ‘through the different parts of the world’. ‘Following
the example of Christ who sent his disciples out like sheep among wolves’,
reported Hugh of Digne, ‘blessed Francis wanted the brothers to go
among the Saracens and other unbelievers’.96
As we have seen, successive popes identified the greatest concerns of
Christendom variously as the state of the Holy Land, the schism with the
Greek Church, the difficulties of the Latin empire of Constantinople and
the Mongol threat, together with the internal concerns of moral reform,
heresy and unruly emperors. Some of these problems, they thought, could
be dealt with through crusades and related military enterprises.97 When
considering how best to act, they periodically requested the advice of
individual learned and experienced men and of ecumenical councils.98
They looked to the friars and scholars of the universities to bring Christian
sapientia and faith to heretics, schismatics and infideles.99 These were the
men whom they employed in numerous bold diplomatic engagements
with the surrounding peoples. The popes also issued lavish evangelical
94
Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. C. Sweetenham
(Aldershot, 2005), ii.2, p. 90.
95
Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, in The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants,
trans. A. C. Krey (Princeton, 1921), p. 262; R. Chazan, ‘“Let Not a Remnant or a Residue
Escape”: Millenarian Enthusiasm in the First Crusade’, Speculum, 84 (2009), 289–313. For other
connections between crusading and imitation of the apostles see W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality
in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008). For further links between the
apostles and the second coming see J. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought
(Cambridge, MA, 1981), pp. 59–86.
96
1Cel i.12, FF, p. 303; trans. FoAED, vol. i, p. 207; ‘Beatus Franciscus exemplo Christi mittentis
discipulos sicut agnos inter lupos vult fratres ire ad saracenos et alios infideles’: Hugh of Digne’s Rule
Commentary, xii, p. 191.
97
J. Richard, La papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen âge (XII–XVe siècles) (Rome, 1977),
pp. 65–120; Jackson, Mongols, pp. 165–213.
98
Wolter and Holstein, Lyon I.
99
J. Gill, ‘Innocent III and the Greeks: Aggressor or Apostle?’ reprinted in J. Gill, Church Union: Rome
and Byzantium (1204–1453) (London, 1979), ii; Lewry, ‘Papal ideals’. Their purposes were func-
tional as well as evangelical. See F. Schmieder, ‘Enemy, Obstacle, Ally? The Greek in Western
Crusade Proposals (1274–1311)’ in B. Nagy and M. Seb} ok (eds.), The Man of Many Devices, who
Wandered Full Many Ways . . . (Budapest, 1999), 357–71.
233
directives to the mendicant orders. Between 1239 and 1245 the existing
papal mandate to the friars for preaching in the lands of Muslims and
pagans was extended to include Greeks, Bulgarians, Cumans, Georgians,
Jacobites, Nestorians, Armenians, Maronites, Ethiopians, Syrians,
Russians, Iberians, Alans, Ziqui, Khazars, Indians and Nubians. This
enterprise was cast in apocalyptic terms by Honorius III and Gregory
IX, who both declared that ‘since the eleventh hour has come in the day
given to humanity . . . it is necessary that spiritual men [possessing] purity
of life and the gift of intelligence should go forth with John [the Baptist]
again to all men’.100 Given the realities of the situation throughout all the
chaotic regions where Latin influence faded into that of a multitude of
other faiths, loyalties and anarchies, this energy and abstract vision is a
remarkable indication of the extent to which the leaders of the Church
inhabited the historical imagination engendered by the scriptures.101
Bacon was among those commissioned by a pope to suggest remedies
for the dangers that threatened Christendom. He clearly participated in
the wider ecclesiastical framework of thought about the nature of the
dangers to the Church and its responsibilities. The Opus maius was struc-
tured around specific issues repeatedly identified by the papacy. We have
seen that he was influenced by the expectation of imminent, widespread
and eschatologically driven conversions. Like his contemporaries, also
working on an official, loosely Joachite model, he looked for the Greek
submission to Rome, the conversion of the Mongols and the destruction
of the Muslims, so that the ‘full number of the Gentiles’ could come in and
the ‘remainder of Israel’ could be gathered into a single flock under the
care of the Pope.102
The first apostles were in his mind as he thought about what needed to
be done. ‘We have often heard, and we are certain of it,’ he wrote, ‘that
many [in the early Church] made great progress through preaching,
although they had an imperfect knowledge of languages and ineffectual
interpreters, and converted countless numbers to the Christian faith.’103
100
Acta Honorii III, p. 286, trans. in Muldoon, Popes, pp. 36–7; Richard, La papauté, p. 65.
101
There is a vast literature on these topics, but see particularly J. Richard, Au-delà de la Perse et de
l’Arménie: L’Orient latin et la découverte de l’Asie intérieure (Turnhout, 2005); Richard, La papauté;
F. Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15.
Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen, 1994); Jackson, Mongols; Muldoon, Popes; M. Guéret-Laferté, Sur les
routes de l’Empire mongol: Ordre et rhétorique des relations de voyage aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Paris,
1994); Whalen, Dominion.
102
OT, pp. 86–7; ‘intret plenitudo gentium, et reliquiae Israel’: CSP, p. 402. On Joachite influence at the
papal curia see Egger, ‘Joachim’; Whalen, ‘Joachim of Fiore’; Whalen, Dominion, esp. pp. 100–24.
103
‘pluries audivimus et certi sumus quod multi quamvis imperfecte sciverunt linguas et habuerunt
debiles interpretes, fecerunt tamen magnam utilitatem praedicando, et innumerabiles converter-
unt ad fidem Christianam’: OM, iii.13, 3:122.
234
Beyond Christendom
Nevertheless, he reflected, ‘undoubtedly, although it is written “their
voice has gone out to the whole earth,” and so on . . . it has not yet
been fulfilled’. He went on: ‘As we know ourselves, there are regions, not
only far away, but also near to us, which remain in pure paganism to this
very day – regions in which preaching was never undertaken; and the law
of God was never received.’104 He had an uneasy sense of the magnitude
of the world, forcefully conveyed through mathematical demonstrations
of how little, even of the habitable portion of the earth, was known to the
Latins.105 When he thought of this in the context of responsibility for the
souls of non-Christians, he wrote with an impotent distress: ‘Christians are
few, the whole wide world is filled with unbelievers and there is no one
who can reveal the truth to them.’ The daunting nature of the task was no
excuse. ‘How we should fear that God may blame the Latins,’ he lamen-
ted, ‘because . . . they are neglecting the preaching of the faith.’106
Bacon made a series of succinct observations about the way matters
were being handled by the contemporary Church and its representatives.
He felt that the alienation of the churches of the East was caused by Latin
ignorance of their languages; the hostility of Muslims and pagans was a
consequence of the crusades; and the failure to convert more distant
peoples was due to ignorance of the languages, geography and customs
of their lands. Although Bacon did not name his sources of information,
these were common concerns among those charged with the task of
asserting Latin authority in these regions. A constitution of Lateran IV
had directed bishops to ensure that there were men who could provide the
divine office, the sacraments and preaching in the appropriate language
for Christians of different rites.107 Bacon may have been aware of letters
sent to Innocent IV, Frederick II and Louis IX by leaders of Eastern
communities – and indeed, by the Mongols on their behalf – requesting
better treatment.108 Bacon could have drawn on the reports of mendicants
who had undertaken formal missions on behalf of the papacy, particularly
104
‘certe licet scriptum sit, “In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum,” [Rom. 10.18] &c . . .. nondum
tamen adimpletum est’; ‘Sicut nos scimus, non solum a longe, sed prope nos, regiones maris esse
quae in puro paganismo adhuc remanent, quibus nunquam fuit praedicatum, nec legem Dei
receperunt’: CSP, p. 402.
105
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:290–5.
106
‘O quam considerandum esset hoc negotium, et timendum est ne Deus requirat a Latinis quod ipsi
negligunt linguas ut sic negligant praedicationem fidei! Nam pauci sunt Christiani, et tota mundi
latitudo est infidelibus occupata; et non est qui eis ostendat veritatem’: OM, iii.xiii, 3:122.
According to Biller, Bacon’s statement ‘became a commonplace’ (Measure, p. 247), but it was
not new with Bacon.
107
Decrees, vol. i, p. 239.
108
Jackson, Mongols, p. 94; The Seventh Crusade, 1244–1254: Sources and Documents, ed. P. Jackson
(London, 2007), p. 77; CM, vol. vi, pp. 163–5.
235
those who had gone to the Greeks. His countryman Haymo of
Faversham, for example, had emphasised these problems after his discus-
sions in Nicaea in 1234.109 Humbert of Romans would lament shortly
afterwards that the Latins were ‘like the priest and the Levite, who
meeting their wounded brother on the road, passed by, caring nothing
for him’.110
In putting his own case, Bacon explained: ‘countless Greeks,
Chaldeans, Armenians, Syrians, Arabs and nations with other languages
are subject to the Latin Church. The Church has to arrange things with
them, and give them directions. Yet these affairs cannot be managed with
due solemnity and as effectively as they should be unless Latins know the
principles of these kinds of languages.’ He went on: ‘This is clearly
indicated by the fact that all of these nations waver in faith and morals,
and neglect the instructions of the Church on the subject of salvation. This
is because they have not been addressed sincerely in their own language.
Consequently there are evil Christians everywhere among these nations
and the affairs of the Church are not conducted as they ought to be.’111
Indeed: ‘Greeks, Russians and many other schismatics remain in error
because the truth is not preached to them in their own language’.112
When dealing with Christians who lived further afield, or in attempting
to convert the inhabitants of distant lands, Latin ignorance of geography
was a particular handicap. ‘Men are sent to different places in the world on
account of the various purposes of the state and on account of the preach-
ing of the faith, activities for which it is absolutely necessary that those
setting out should know the characteristics of foreign places so that they
know how to choose temperate places through which to travel,’ he wrote.
109
Gill, Byzantium, esp. pp. 65–72 (and see pp. 88–90, 109–15, 120–41 for accounts of other
missions). See A. Franchi, La svolta politico-ecclesiastica tra Roma e Bisanzio (1249–1254): la legazione
di Giovanni da Parma, Il ruolo di Federico II (Rome, 1981).
110
‘isti sunt sicut sacerdos & Levita, qui videns fratrem suum vulneratum in via, pertransierunt, nihil
de eo currantes’: Opusculum tripartitum in Ortuinus Gratius, Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et
fugiendarum sive tomus secundus (London, 1690), vol. ii, 185–229, ii.15, p. 219.
111
‘Nam multi Graeci et Chaldaei et Armeni et Syri et Arabes, et aliarum linguarum nationes
subjiciuntur Ecclesiae Latinorum, cum quibus habet multa ordinare, et illis varia mandare. Sed
non possunt haec rite pertractari, et ut oportet utiliter, nisi Latini scirent linguarum hujusmodi
rationem. Cujus signum est, quod omnes dictae nationes vacillant fide et moribus, et negligunt
ordines Ecclesiae salutares, quia persuasionem sinceram non recipiunt in lingua materna. Unde
ubique apud tales nationes sunt mali Christiani, et Ecclesia non regitur ut oportet’: OM, iii.11,
3:118.
112
‘Graeci et Rutheni et multi alii schismatici similiter in errore perdurant quia non praedicatur eis
veritas in eorum lingua’: OM, iii.13, 3:121. See T. Haye, ‘West-Östliche Kommunikation: Latein
und Griechisch als mittelalterliche Medien der Verständigung zwischen dem Abendland und
Byzanz’ in P. von Moos (ed.), Zwischen Babel und Pfingsten (Zurich, 2008), 485–98; B. Hamilton,
‘Reunion with Separated Eastern Christians’ reprinted in B. Hamilton, The Latin Church in the
Crusader States: The Secular Church (London, 1980), 332–60.
236
Beyond Christendom
‘As it is, men in the best of health sometimes destroy themselves and the
affairs of Christians as a result of their ignorance of the nature of the places
of the world, because they travelled through places that were too hot in
the summer or too cold in winter.’ In addition, he continued:
They have encountered infinite dangers because they did not know when they
were entering the lands of the faithful, those of schismatics, Saracens, Tartars,
tyrants, men of peace, barbarians or rational men. The person who is ignorant of
the places of the world not only lacks knowledge of where he is going, but how
to get there. Regardless of whether he has set out to convert unbelievers or to
carry out other business of the Church, it is vital that he should know the religious
customs and conditions of all nations so that he can make for a particular place
with a definite purpose. Otherwise, if he wants to visit pagans, he might find
himself among idolaters, or if he were looking for idolaters, he might go among
schismatics, or take for schismatics those faithful to the Roman Church, or those
indifferent to either adherence, such as the people called the Aas. He might even
want to visit Nestorians but find that he has deviated and is among Nicholaitans –
and so, blundering among the many peoples of various religious affiliations, he
may fail to distinguish one from the others. Many have been greatly frustrated in
the affairs of Christians because they did not know the distinctions of the
regions.113
His criticisms of crusading are well known, although enthusiasm for his
‘pacifism’ has recently been tempered by a more careful reading of his
remarks.114 These were almost entirely pragmatic. He argued that war was
ineffective against infideles for a number of reasons. Still smarting over the
113
‘Nam propter diversas utilitates reipublicae et propter praedicationem fidei mittuntur homines ad
loca mundi diversa, in quibus occupationibus valde necessarium est proficiscentibus ut scirent
complexiones locorum extraneorum, quatenus scirent eligere loca temperata per quae transirent.
Nam valentissimi homines aliquando ignorantes naturam locorum mundi seipsos
Christianorumque negotia peremerunt, eo quod loca nimis calida in temporibus calidis aut
nimis frigida in frigidis transierunt. Receperunt etiam pericula infinita, eo quod nesciverunt
quando intraverunt regiones fidelium, quando schismaticorum, quando Saracenorum, quando
Tartarorum, quando tyrannorum, quando hominum pacificorum, quando barbarorum, quando
hominum rationabilium. Deinde qui loca mundi ignorat, nescit non solum quo vadat, sed quo
tendat; et ideo sive pro conversione infidelium proficiscatur, aut pro aliis ecclesiae negotiis, necesse
est ut sciat ritus et conditiones omnium nationum, quatenus proposito certo locum proprium
petat; ne, si velit Paganos adire, cadat in idololatras, vel si illos intendat, scismaticos invadat, vel pro
scismaticis obedientes Romanae ecclesiae eligat, aut indifferentes utrique parti, cujusmodi sunt
populi qui vocantur Aas; quatenus etiam Nestorianos desiderans Nicholaitas declinet; et sic in
multis gentibus sectarum diversarum ne unam pro alia eligat oberrando. Quamplurimi enim a
negotiis Christianorum maximis sunt frustrati eo quod regionum distinctiones nesciverunt’: OM,
iv.iv.16, 1:301–2.
114
They have even been called ‘the only real criticism of the use of the crusade in north-eastern
Europe’: Siberry, Criticism, p. 157. More cautious assessments are T. Mastnak, Crusading Peace:
Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order (Berkeley, 2002), pp. 197–208;
A. Klemeshov, ‘The Conversion and Destruction of the Infidels in the Works of Roger Bacon’
in J. Carvalho (ed.), Religion and Power in Europe: Conflict and Convergence (Pisa, 2007), 15–27.
237
fiasco at Damietta some years earlier, he pointed out that favourable
outcomes could not be relied upon, ‘since the Church is sometimes
gravely embarrassed as a consequence of the wars of Christians, as happens
frequently in Outremer and especially during the most recent business,
that of the Lord King of France, as the whole world knows’. Possibly these
memories had been stirred up by Louis’ announcement of a new crusade
in March of 1267.115 He went on: ‘and in any case, even if Christians are
victorious, there is no one to defend the occupied lands’.116 ‘For the
unbelievers always return to their own lands, as is clear beyond the sea
and on this side of it, in Prussia and the pagan lands near Germany and
everywhere else, because Christian crusaders, even if sometimes victor-
ious, make their expedition and then return to their own parts, while the
indigenous population remains and multiplies.’117 Above all, infideles ‘are
not converted by these activities, but killed and sent to hell. Those who
survive the wars, and their sons, are more and more incited against the
Christian faith as a result of these wars. They become infinitely estranged
from the faith of Christ and stirred up to do all the harm that they can to
Christians. So it is that Saracens in many parts of the world, on this
account, have become impossible to convert.’118 It seems that Bacon did
not share the common opinion that Muslims were inherently difficult to
convert, but thought that they were specifically and legitimately resentful
about the attacks of Christians on their lands.
This situation was made much worse by the material desires of those
engaged in crusades and other military enterprises in these regions.
‘Particularly in Outremer, Prussia and the lands near Germany,’ he
wrote, ‘Templars, Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights disrupt the
conversion of unbelievers as a consequence of the wars that they are
115
Bacon was not alone in disapproving. Joinville, for example, reported disquiet among the king’s
intimates and himself refused to go, claiming that it was contrary to God’s will that he abandon his
people for another venture: Vie, 731–7, pp. 363–5.
116
‘quoniam aliquando confunditur Ecclesia in bellis Christianorum, ut ultra mare saepe accidit et
maxime in ultimo exercitu, scilicet domini Regis Franciae ut totus mundus [scit]; et alias si vincunt
Christiani, non est qui terras occupatas defendat’: OM, iii.13, 3:121; reiterated OT(Little), p. 19.
117
‘Nam semper redeunt infideles ad suarum [propria] provinciarum, sicut patet ultra mare et citra in
Prussia et terris paganorum vicinis Alemanniae et ubique; quia Christiani cruce signati etsi
aliquando vincant, tamen facta peregrinatione ad propria revertuntur, et indigenae remanent et
multiplicantur’: OM, iii.14, 3:122; OT(Little), p. 19. On the problems of settlement of conquered
lands see M. Balard, Les Latins en Orient: XIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 2006); S. Menache, ‘When Jesus
met Mohammed in the Holy Land: Attitudes toward the “Other” in the Crusader Kingdom’,
Medieval Encounters, 15 (2009), 66–85.
118
‘Nec si convertuntur sed occiduntur et mittuntur in infernum. Residui vero qui supersunt post
bella filii eorum irritantur magis ac magis contra fidem Christianam propter istas guerras, et in
infinitum a fide Christi elongantur, et inflammantur ut omnia mala quae possunt faciant
Christianis. Unde Saraceni propter hoc in multis mundi partibus fiunt impossibiles conversioni’:
OM, iii.13, 3:121.
238
Beyond Christendom
always stirring up, and because they want complete mastery of the region . . .
they want to subjugate the inhabitants and reduce them to slavery.’119
Without naming his sources, he offered opinions that had been expressed
in very similar words by missionaries such as Henry of Livonia, Helmold of
Bosau and Adam of Bremen. He stated: ‘All the nations of unbelievers
beyond Germany would have converted long ago, if it were not for the
violence of the Teutonic brothers, because the pagan peoples were often
prepared to receive the faith, in peace, after preaching.’ Later he added:
‘They would most willingly become Christians, if the Church would leave
them their liberty and permit them to enjoy their property in peace.’
Unfortunately, the Teutonic order ‘does not wish to support this approach’.
Consequently, ‘they are resisting violence, not the doctrine of a better
religion’.120 Bacon, careful not to offend, stressed that the papacy had
been deceived by the military orders, avoiding the implication that popes
had licensed their behaviour. Nevertheless, he emphasised the issue of
evangelical responsibility. He explained: ‘The people of these regions are
the Ponteni and Lecewini, and many others who live along the borders of
Germany. The frontier of those lands is no further from Paris than Rome
and they are kingdoms larger than Germany, France and Spain. We should
most certainly seize them for the faith through the efforts of worthy men.’121
119
‘maxime ultra mare et in Prussia et terris vicinis Alemanniae, quia Templarii et Hospitalarii et
fratres de Domo Teutonica multum perturbant conversionem infidelium propter guerras quas
semper movent, et propter hoc quod [vo]lunt omnino dominari . . . volunt eos subjugare et
redigere in servitutem’: OM, iii.13, 3:121–2. See Maier, Preaching, pp. 44–52, 87–93; K. Militzer,
‘From the Holy Land to Prussia: The Teutonic Knights between Emperors and Popes and their
Policies until 1309’ in J. Sarnowsky (ed.), Mendicants, Military Orders and Regionalism in Medieval
Europe (Aldershot, 1999), 71–81; M. R. Munzinger, ‘The Profits of the Cross: Merchant
Involvement in the Baltic Crusade (c. 1180–1230)’, JMH, 32.2 (2006), 163–85; A. Forey, ‘The
Military Orders and the Conversion of Muslims in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, JMH,
28 (2002), 1–22.
120
‘omnes nationes infidelium ultra Alemanniam fuissent diu conversae, nisi esset violentia fratrum de
Domo Teutonica, quia gens paganorum fuit multoties parata recipere fidem in pace secundum
praedicationem. Sed illi de Domo Teutonica nolunt sustinere’: OM, iii.13, 3:121–2; ‘libetissime
volunt fieri christiani, si Ecclesia vellet dimittere eos in sua libertate et gaudere bonis suis in pace’;
‘unde contra violenciam resistunt, non ratione secte melioris’: MP, iv.ii.1, p. 200. See Henry of
Livonia, Henricus: Chronicon Livoniae, ed. L. Arbusow and A. Bauer (Darmstadt, 1959), xxix.3–5,
pp. 316–22; Adam of Bremen, Adam Bremensis: Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. B. Schmeidler
(Hanover, 1917), ii.42, 71, iii.23; Helmold of Bosau, Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis, Chronica
Slavorum, ed. H. Stoob (Berlin, 1963), i.16, 18–19, 84, pp. 84–6, 94–6, 290–2. See Miethke, ‘Die
Kritik’; Urban, ‘Roger Bacon’.
121
‘certe licet scriptum sit, “In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum,” [Rom. 10.18] &c . . .. nondum
tamen adimpletum est’; ‘Sicut nos scimus, non solum a longe, sed prope nos, regiones maris esse
quae in puro paganismo adhuc remanent, quibus nunquam fuit praedicatum, nec legem Dei
receperunt; ut sunt Ponteni et Lecewini, et alii multi, qui sequuntur fines Alemanniae. Et non
distat principium terrarum illarum a Parisius, nisi quantum Roma; et sunt majora regna quam
Alemanniae et Franciae et Hispaniae; sicut certitudinaliter comprehendimus per homines fide
dignos’: CSP, pp. 402–3.
239
It has usually been assumed that Bacon’s critique of crusading ideology
and practice was his own. Yet it was little more than a variant on doubts that
had been raised through the previous century, by Joachim of Fiore among
others. Bacon’s solutions also echoed those of his precursors.122 Moreover,
if his critique is compared with the criticisms outlined by Humbert of
Romans in his 1273 treatise of advice for Gregory X, it must be asked
whether Bacon had simply summarised opinions to which Humbert also
had access. There is, however, an occasional correspondence in the word-
ing, which might suggest that Humbert had Bacon’s work to hand,
although he appeared to be addressing a wider range of criticisms than
Bacon’s, and in more detail. He did not respond to Bacon’s concerns about
the treatment of northern ‘idolators’, but merely hoped they would soon
convert.123 The first part of Humbert’s treatise discussed the arguments that
had been made against crusading, including the serious charges, also made
by Bacon, that offensive warfare alienated potential converts and those
Muslims killed in battle would go to hell. Humbert claimed that Islam
was the most dangerous threat faced by Christianity, Muslims were more
obdurate than even the Mongols and Jews – and that if they were not
fought overseas they would soon invade Christian lands. He maintained
that if they could be defeated, contra Bacon’s arguments, they would cease to
believe in Muhammad’s teachings. Furthermore, Muslims would go to hell
as a consequence of their own sins, not the Christian blade that sent them
there. Unlike Bacon, he did think that the sacrifice of Christian blood was
meritorious and pleasing to God.124 Aside from these specific points, there
was much in common in the appraisals of the state of the Church and the
suggestions for future action offered by each man. Moreover, Bacon’s
influence on other treatises for the recovery of the Holy Land – for
example, those of William of Tripoli and Pierre Dubois – is discernible,
so it is likely that he was being read in such contexts.125
122
Kedar, Crusade, pp. 97–135; Whalen, Dominion, pp. 116–18.
123
For correspondences compare OM, iii.13, 3:121 with ‘Per hoc enim non provocantur ad conver-
sionem, sed potius provocantur contra fidem Christianam. Item quando vincimus & eos occidimus,
mittimus eos ad infernum’: Humbert of Romans, Opusculum tripartitum, i.16, p. 196. For the greater
detail see the citations against warfare (i.11, p. 191) compared with OM, iii.13, 3:122. On idolators
see i.15, p. 195. Schmieder notes that Humbert recognised the problems of inadequate linguistic
knowledge for missionaries at much the same time as Bacon (Europa, p. 139) – a coincidence?
124
Summary based on Brett, Humbert, pp. 176–84. See Humbert of Romans, Humberti de Romanis:
Legendae Sancti Dominici, ed. S. Tugwell (Rome, 2008), pp. 407–22; Burkhard, Das Zweite Konzil,
pp. 106–26; Vose, Dominicans, pp. 43–50; J. A. Brundage, ‘Humbert of Romans and the
Legitimacy of Crusader Conquests’ in B. Z. Kedar (ed.), The Horns of Hattıˉn (London, 1992),
302–13; P. J. Cole, ‘Humbert of Romans and the Crusade’ in M. Bull and N. Housley (eds.), The
Experience of Crusading, vol. i: Western Approaches (Cambridge, 2003), 157–74.
125
Whalen, Dominion, pp. 195–6; Pierre Dubois, De Recuperatione terre sancte, ed. C.-V. Langlois
(Paris, 1891), direct references to Bacon at pp. 65, 68, but influence palpable in other parts. See also
240
Beyond Christendom
Bacon’s recommendations to Clement IV about how to remedy these
various situations were practical. Although born into the lesser nobility
and the brother of a knight, he was apparently oblivious to the intricate
ideological structures developed to support and encourage the negotium
crucis. He was uninterested in warfare as a penitential exercise for
the benefit of Christian souls. Salvation was accessible to everyone
through the Eucharist alone: ‘it is not necessary for us to ascend to heaven,
or cross the seas, or to plough or reap for this bread,’ he wrote, ‘or to
plant vineyards or tread the grapes for this wine, but we must willingly
speak five words [“Do this in remembrance of me”] so that our God
and Lord might be with us’.126 This left him free to measure Christian
approaches to infideles against a single criterion: effectiveness in promoting
salvation. Perhaps as a consequence, he viewed peace and moral calm as
a precursor to conversion. Before humanity could be united in a
single flock, it was imperative to rectify the current state of affairs,
in which ‘all study of wisdom is destroyed, and with it the entire
government of the Church; peace is driven from the earth, justice is
denied, and every imaginable evil comes to pass’. This attitude is certainly
in keeping with some interpretations of Francis of Assisi’s attitude to
conversion.127
He suggested that, before a crusade, ‘the faith should be preached
by men wise in all branches of learning, who have excellent
knowledge of languages or have good and trustworthy interpreters’. If it
became clear that any people would not accept the faith, then: ‘not
only should an army be prepared, but wise men must be gathered,
who must [subjugate] the unbelievers – and not temporarily, nor
only some of them, but all the people who are in the vicinity of
Christians’.128 He certainly thought so in the case of ‘the holy land with
Jerusalem’, which he thought that Christians ought to retain ‘without fear
P. Evangelisti, ‘Un progetto di riconquista e governo della Terrasanta: strategia economica e militare
e proposta di un codice etico-politico attraverso il lessico regolativo-sociale minoritico’ in Alle frontiere
della cristianità: i frati mendicanti e l’evangelizzazione tra ’200 e ’300 (Spoleto, 2001), 135–99.
126
‘“Hoc facite in meam commemoracionem”’; ‘Non enim oportet nos in celum ascendere nec maria
transire, nec arare nec metere pro hoc pane, nec vineas pro hoc potu plantare nec calcare, set cum
omni facilitate verba quinque proferre, ut sit nobiscum Deus et Dominus noster’: MP, iv.iii.2,
pp. 230–1.
127
‘perit totum studium sapientiae, et totum regimen ecclesiae, et pax de terra tollitur, et justitia
denegatur, et omnia mala contingunt’: OT, p. 86. See the competing hypotheses in J. M. Powell,
‘St Francis of Assisi’s Way of Peace’, Medieval Encounters, 13 (2007), 271–80; M. F. Cusato, ‘Francis
of Assisi, the Crusades and Malek al-Kamil’ reprinted in Cusato, Early Franciscan Movement, 103–
28; A. L. Hoose, ‘Francis of Assisi’s Way of Peace? His Conversion and Mission to Egypt’, Catholic
Historical Review, 96.3 (2010), 449–69.
128
‘praedicaretur fides per homines sapientes in omni scientia, sed qui bene scirent linguas vel optimos
haberent interpretes et fideles’; ‘non oporteret militiam solam praeparari, sed sapientes congregari
qui non ad tempus nec partem infidelium deberent [subjugare] sed totum genus eorum quod est
241
of its loss, in perpetuity’.129 Even in this situation, he preferred that
enemies ‘might be driven away from the borders of the Church in a better
way than by the shedding of Christian blood’.130 He was a great deal more
interested in the ‘better way’ – namely, the use of scientia experimentalis –
than he was in crusading.131 As we have seen, he advocated actual violence
only as a last, defensive, resort against ‘those who are obstinate in their
malice’.
Much of this was a direct borrowing of canonical thinking on the
subject. Innocent IV hoped that the work could be done by preachers,
arguing that it was only legitimate for Christians to invade the lands of an
infidel ruler if they had refused preachers access to their people. Innocent
and his student Hostiensis had furthermore insisted that only a pope could
authorise such wars because if secular leaders took matters into their own
hands the resulting wars would be very likely merely to alienate unbelie-
vers and make evangelisation impossible. Finally, Hostiensis had insisted
that a crusade ought to be preceded by peaceful preaching.132
‘Subjugare’ is an editorial addition for the sense of the passage. It can
probably be assumed, given his previous remarks, that Bacon did not mean
the kind of profitable dominion achieved by the Teutonic knights, but the
bringing about of a complete intellectual and religious submission to and
acceptance of Christianity. These ideas were premised on a coherent view
of the nature of the universe, the causes of religious differences and the
way that the human mind functioned. As with his views on the reform of
Christendom and resistance to Antichrist, he was thinking within papal
and mendicant ideologies, methodologies and spiritual priorities, but in a
manner that brought Graeco-Arabic scientia to bear on contemporary
problems. The final part of this chapter considers the strategies by which
Bacon thought the Church might successfully bring infideles to acknowl-
edge and surrender to the only truths that could save them from eternal
damnation.
prope Christianos’: OM, iii.14, 3:122. On languages see J. Tolan, ‘Porter la bonne parole auprès de
Babel: Les problèmes linguistiques chez les missionnaires mendicants, XIIIe–XIVe siècle’ in von
Moos (ed.), Zwischen Babel, 533–47.
129
‘[sancta] terra cum Jerusalem in possessione Christianorum semper remaneret sine timore amit-
tendi in perpetuum’: OM, iii.xiv, 3:122.
130
‘ut melius a finibus ecclesiae longius pellantur, quam per effusionem sanguinis Christiani. Omnia
vero quae indigent regimine sapientiae ad haec quatuor reducuntur’: OM, i.i, 3:1.
131
The parallel passage in the Opus tertium discusses crusade with the utmost brevity before giving
several pages on the arcane arts that would assure Christian supremacy. Compare OM, iii.13–14,
3:120–25 and OT, pp. 95–102.
132
‘illi qui in malitia obstinati sunt’: OM, i.1, 3:1. Kedar, Crusade, pp. 159–61, 217; Muldoon, Popes,
esp. pp. 6–18 – although it should be noted that Innocent had called the Crusade against the
Prussians and Lithuanians (pp. 34–5).
242
Beyond Christendom
franciscan concepts of ‘mission’
Before looking at Bacon’s suggestions on conversion, it is worth pausing to
reflect on some of the ongoing uncertainties about ‘the Franciscan concept of
mission’, as Daniel called it. His influential study identifies various approaches
to mission discernible among the friars and considers them separately. He
associates preaching primarily ‘by example’ and a strong desire for martyrdom
with the ideology of Francis and the early friars through to Bonaventure. He
contrasts with this Bacon’s ideas about conversion, which he considers to be
‘intellectual’ and in opposition to those of both Francis and Bonaventure. He
finds a third, distinct approach: ‘apocalyptic’ conversion, which was ‘Joachite’
in its anticipation of the imminent conversion of all peoples. Finally, he
claims that neither the ‘intellectual’ nor the ‘apocalyptic’ approaches were
able to ‘modify missionaries’ adherence to their Order’s ideal’. Bacon ‘did not
exert enough influence on the Friars minor to deflect the purpose and
approach given them by their founder’. Although the discussion has
moved on, Daniel’s judgements have tended to colour perspectives on the
subject.133 Bacon’s allegedly atypical desire to approach infideles through
reason has won him admiration even as it has seemed to make his thought
less ‘Franciscan’. But are these distinctions really correct? How far are
they rather the side-effect of historians’ sense that intellectual activity was a
vexed issue in the order? To what extent are they based on politicised
texts that were hardly realistic representations of Franciscan mission?
Francis of Assisi presented the mission to convert non-Christians – as he
did so many other things – in terms that appeared simple and novel,
but which had their roots in centuries of experimentation and reflection.134
In his 1221 Rule he evoked Christ’s injunctions – ‘behold I am sending you
like sheep in the midst of wolves’ – ‘therefore be prudent as serpents and
simple as doves’ – ‘do not fear those who kill the body and afterwards have
nothing more to do’. He suggested two ways for the friars to proceed:
‘One way is for them not to engage in arguments or disputes but to be
subject to every human creature for God’s sake and to acknowledge that
133
Daniel, Franciscan Concept, quotations at pp. 101, 66; E. R. Daniel, ‘The Desire for Martyrdom: A
Leitmotiv of St. Bonaventure’, FS, 32 (1972), 74–87. For continuing influence see Whalen,
Dominion, p. 164; A. Müller, Bettelmönche in islamischer Fremde: institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen
franziskanischer und dominikanischer Mission in muslimischen Räumen des 13. Jahrhunderts (Münster,
2002), p. 204. For a slightly different interpretation that retains a sense of Bacon’s singularity and
lack of influence see Berg, Armut, p. 44.
134
For Francis’ ideas within the development of Latin thought on conversion see Kedar, Crusade;
R. Manselli, St Francis of Assisi, trans. P. Duggan (Chicago, 1988), pp. 212–30. For the complexity
of the inherited apostolic models, consider the approaches of the first Christian martyr,
Stephen (Acts 6–7), discussed in A. Watson, The Trial of Stephen: The First Christian Martyr
(Athens, GA, 1996).
243
they are Christians. The other way is to announce the Word of God . . . in
order that [unbelievers] may believe in Almighty God, the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit . . . and be baptised and become Christians’.135 Frugoni
sees this as a summing-up of his own experiences two years earlier in
Damietta.136 However, the final Rule merely instructed would-be mis-
sionaries to seek permission first, although the original material remained a
source of guidance, reinstated in Hugh of Digne’s commentary on the Rule
and in other discussion of mission.137 Francis’ own experience of preaching
to Muslims – of the realities of which we know very little – was constructed
by his hagiographers to fit relatively well within the framework that he had
outlined. He was said to have relied heavily on the protection and inspira-
tion of the Holy Spirit; most accounts agreed that he courted martyrdom
and preached for several days, both engaging in argument and using ‘reason’
to persuade his hearers. Thomas of Celano wrote that ‘with eloquence and
confidence he answered those who insulted the Christian law’, which
certainly sounds like disputation. It was only from the 1260s that he was
depicted as preferring a showy and old-fashioned trial by ordeal to reasoned
debate.138
The same pattern can be found in discussions of the first Franciscan
martyrs. Writing from their prison in Ceuta, they characterised themselves
as emulating the Passion of Christ. Yet they did not achieve martyrdom
because they were witnesses to Christianity, or even because they
preached Christian doctrine, but because they doggedly attacked Islam
in public. Moreover, at least one of them allegedly did so in Arabic.139
135
RegNB, 16, pp. 268–9; trans. FoAED, vol. i, pp. 74–5. Daniel’s assertion that Francis really meant
the friars to concentrate on the first of these (Franciscan Concept, p. 39) seems unfounded. See
J. Hoeberichts, Francis and Islam (Quincy, IL, 1997), pp. 61–134 for an interesting, if debatable,
analysis of the chapter.
136
Frugoni, Francis, pp. 99.
137
RegB, 12, p. 237; Hugh of Digne’s Rule Commentary, xii, pp. 191–4; Adam Marsh, Letter 246 in
Epistolae, pp. 435–6. The ‘Four Masters’ did not comment on RegB, 12 (Expositio quatuor magistrorum,
p. 168). On the modification of the rule in line with the probable papal agenda for the mendicants see
D. V. Monti, ‘The Friars Minor: An Order in the Church?’ FS, 61 (2003), 235–52.
138
1Cel, i.20, FF, pp. 331–2; trans. FoAED, vol. i, p. 231; LM, ix.8, FF, pp. 860–1; J. V. Tolan, Saint
Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian–Muslim Encounter (Oxford, 2009), pp. 19–
20, 42–4, 54, 109–13; Powell, ‘St Francis’; Hoose, ‘Francis of Assisi’; R. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and
Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1986), pp. 20–4, 70–102.
139
So, at least, claimed the ‘Passio sanctorum Martyrum fratrum Beraldi, Petri, Adiuti, Accursii,
Othonis in Marochio martyrizatorum’, AF, 3 (1897), 579–96, pp. 584–90. See J. D. Ryan,
‘Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages: Martyrdom, Popular Veneration, and
Canonisation’, Catholic Historical Review, 90.1 (2004), 1–28; J. D. Ryan, ‘Conversion or the
Crown of Martyrdom: Conflicting Goals for Fourteenth-Century Missionaries in Central Asia?’
in R. F. Gyug (ed.), Medieval Cultures in Contact (New York, 2003), 19–38; Daniel, ‘Desire’;
Daniel, Franciscan Concept, pp. 44–5.
244
Beyond Christendom
Even this episode, so often presented as the primitive Franciscan mission in
its most pure form, featured aggressive, if unsophisticated, disputation
undertaken at least partly in an appropriate language. The literary empha-
sis on desire for martyrdom should not be taken as a reliable indication of
the priorities of those who seriously wished to convert non-Christians.140
Indeed, Adam Marsh complained that fear of being martyred was acting as
a deterrent to the friars who might otherwise go.141
It must not be forgotten that the friars were not formulating their
notions of the apostolic mission on their own. As early as 1225,
Honorius III had issued the bull Vineae Domini to a group of friars
intending to preach in Almohad lands. In it, he granted the friars ‘the
authority of the Apostolic See’, licensing them to preach, baptise Muslim
converts, ‘reconcile apostates’, ‘impose penances, absolve excommuni-
cates’ and to pronounce excommunications ‘on all those who pass into
heresy’. Other Christians were forbidden to expel them by force from
those lands.142 Over the next decades the papal will and imagination
played some role in shaping the nature of Franciscan mission, even if it
went unacknowledged in the programmatic writings of the order, and
even if historians cannot agree on its precise nature. In addition to the
array of papal bulls, which must be treated with caution as indicators of
actual practice, there are numerous passing references to the activities of
friars acting as agents of a wide-ranging and expansive papal agenda.143
This may or may not have affected how friars thought about mission, but
it affected how they carried it out.
A more realistic sense of the qualities valued by the friars in a missionary
may be gleaned from a letter written to the friars by Grosseteste. It con-
cerned one of their number, a former Oxford master, Adam Rufus, who
had gone to preach to Muslims. Adam, he said, was ideal for the task
because ‘the light of his learning’ was so great that ‘it might dissipate the
densest shadows of unbelief’; his ardour was so great that it would melt the
hardest hearts, he was full of faith, humility and possessed ‘a quick and acute
140
In ‘Francis of Assisi, the Crusades’, Cusato argues that ‘desire for martyrdom’ is too facile an
explanation, but also that Francis’ behaviour in Damietta was meant as a ‘counter-strategy’ to the
‘missionary zealotry’ of the Moroccan martyrs. Merlo (Nel rome, pp. 34–5) notes Francis’ dislike of
the glorification of martyrs.
141
Adam Marsh, Letter 246 in Epistolae, pp. 435–6.
142
BF, vol. i, p. 24, no. 23; trans. FoAED, vol. i, pp. 563–4. For context see Tolan, Saint Francis,
pp. 9–11.
143
E.g. BF, vol. i, pp. 100–3, nos. 95, 97, 100, 101. Richard, La papauté; Humbert of Romans,
Humberti, pp. 369–72. There is no consensus on the extent to which the development of the order
was directed by papal policy. See J. M. Powell, ‘The Papacy and the Early Franciscans’, FS, 36
(1976), 248–62, comment on the bull at p. 261.
245
mind’.144 Bonaventure himself said that Francis’ achievements should serve
as an inspiration rather than a literal guide, and that the friars should not be
ashamed to proceed by means of education and careful preparation rather
than relying on the Holy Spirit. It is also evident that Francis adopted a
variety of techniques to enhance his preaching, even if his followers chose
not to acknowledge it.145 The fact was that those who did go were a small
minority among the friars.146 The material on Francis’ encounter with
al-Kamil and the order’s martyrs was intended for more general consump-
tion. It aimed to provide spiritual models for the vita apostolica and probably
had little to do with serious discussions about conversion.
In practice, the friars drew heavily on existing ideas about how to engage
with infideles.147 Their earliest constitutions spoke specifically of sending
lectors and preachers ‘among the Saracens and other infidels’.148 There was,
within Latin culture, an expectation that rational debate with heretics,
schismatics and followers of other religions might plausibly lead to their
acceptance of Latin orthodoxy. The idea was enshrined in canon law:
Gratian’s Decretum encouraged discussions between Christians and infideles
so that the latter might be converted by the power of reason.149 There was a
tradition of composing imaginary dialogues between courteous represen-
tatives of various belief systems. Some of these were based on relatively
detailed knowledge of these beliefs, such as Anselm of Havelberg’s
Anticimenon or Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudaeos.150 There were also,
inevitably, more overtly fierce polemics and texts designed to ridicule other
beliefs. Linked to this was the allegation that people who did not accept
Christianity – the logical conclusion of all reasoned argument – were
144
‘Lumen namque scientiae ejus . . . densissimas infidelitatis tenebras dissipet’; ‘Habet velox et
perspicax ingenium’: Adam Marsh, Letter 2 in Epistolae, pp. 20–1. The letter has been dated to
c. 1229–32 (Robert Grosseteste, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, ed. and trans.
F. A. C. Mantello and J. Goering (Toronto, 2010), pp. 356–7, 49). Thomas of Eccleston also
stressed his fame in learning (DAFM, p. 21).
145
Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 273–4; C. Delcorno, ‘Origini della predicazione francescana’ in
Francesco d’Assisi e francescanesimo dal 1216 al 1226 (Assisi, 1977), 125–60; F. Morenzoni, ‘Parole du
prédicateur et inspiration divine d’après les artes praedicandi’ in R. M. Dessì and M. Lauwers (eds.),
La Parole du Prédicateur (Ve–XVe) (Nice, 1997), 271–90.
146
Vose, Dominicans; in relation to Franciscans see esp. pp. 29–33.
147
Bird, ‘Crusade’ supplies a useful description of the background.
148
‘Fragmenta Priscarum Constitutionum’, 20, p. 7.
149
Muldoon, Popes, p. 4. On infideles in canon law see D. M. Freidenreich, ‘Sharing Meals with Non-
Christians in Canon Law Commentaries, Circa 1160–1260: A Case Study in Legal Development’,
Medieval Encounters, 14 (2008), 41–77. Vose (Dominicans, p. 22) thinks that, in practice, very few
friars were interested in ‘rational methods of conversion’.
150
J. T. Lees, ‘Confronting the Otherness of the Greeks: Anselm of Havelberg and the Division
between Greeks and Latins’, Analecta Praemonstratensia 68 (1992), 224–40; Whalen, Dominion,
pp. 83–90; J. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, 1993), pp. 12–41.
246
Beyond Christendom
irrational.151 Both sorts of texts seem to have been written more for the
information and spiritual benefit of Christians than to secure the salvation of
others. This did not prevent their use in actual encounters. It has, for
example, been suggested that William of Rubruck may have known the
genre from a collection made by Peter the Venerable.152
Over time these texts were reworked to reflect the emerging techni-
ques of scholastic disputation. In a closely related development the friars
were drawing on the methods of the universities as they sought to perfect
the tools for preaching.153 In particular, some friars studied the books of
other faiths so that their arguments might be more pertinent. All this
material was intended for practical use, and featured in public debates,
most often with Greeks or Jews.154 The successes of mendicant inquisitors
showed the effectiveness of adversarial techniques in drawing heretics
back into orthodoxy.155 All this suggests that hagiographic and exemplary
literature – unsurprisingly – is not a reliable guide to Franciscan thought or
practice on the mission to non-Christians. It is important to stress the wide
range of texts and approaches that a Franciscan theorist might draw upon
and develop in the 1260s, without being particularly unusual.
Finally, in addition to developing an armoury of intellectual tactics, the
thirteenth century was marked by an increasing willingness – at least in
theory – to compel heretics and non-Christians to listen to sermons and to
engage in theological debates. They could not be forcibly converted, but
those who lived under Christian rule could be forced into a position from
which they might then choose baptism.156 Innocent IV’s declaration that
151
A. S. Abulafia (ed.), Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Literature and the Rise of Anti-Judaism
in the West (c. 1000–1150) (Aldershot, 1988); G. Dahan, The Christian Polemic Against the Jews in the
Middle Ages, trans. J. Gladding (Notre Dame, 1998); M.-T. d’Alverny, ‘Alain de Lille et l’Islam: Le
“Contra Paganos”’ in E. Privat (ed.), Islam et chrétiens du Midi (XIIe–XIVe siècle) (Toulouse, 1983),
301–24; J. Tolan, ‘Peter the Venerable on the “Diabolical heresy of the Saracens”’ in A. Ferreiro
(ed.), The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1998), 345–67.
152
Schmieder, ‘Tartarus valde sapiens’, pp. 274–5.
153
Vose, Dominicans, pp. 104–30; J. H. Pearson, ‘The Anti-Jewish Polemic of Alan of Lille’ in J.-L.
Solère et al. (eds.), Alain de Lille, Le Docteur universel: Philosophie, théologie et littérature au XIIe siècle
(Turnhout, 2005), 83–106, esp. pp. 95–8; D. L. D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons
Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford, 1985), esp. pp. 163–203.
154
R. Chazan, ‘From Friar Paul to Friar Raymond: The Development of Innovative Missionising
Argumentation’, Harvard Theological Review, 76.3 (1983), 289–306.
155
See M. M. Mulchahey, ‘Summae Inquisitorum and the Art of Disputation: How the Early Dominican
Order Trained its Inquisitors’ in W. Hoyer (ed.), Praedicatores, Inquisitores. I. The Dominicans and the
Medieval Inquisition (Rome, 2004), 145–56; C. Caldwell Ames, ‘Does Inquisition Belong to
Religious History?’ AHR, 110:1 (2005), 11–37; C. Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution:
Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2009).
156
M. D. Johnston, ‘Ramon Llull and the Compulsory Evangelisation of Jews and Muslims’ in L. J.
Simon (ed.), Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages: Studies in Honour of Robert I. Burns,
vol. I: Proceedings from Kalamazoo (Leiden, 1995), 3–37, esp. pp. 5–13; Kedar, Crusade, esp.
pp. 42–85, 145ff. Vose (Dominicans) demonstrates the paucity of evidence for actual occurrences.
247
it was legitimate to invade the lands of infideles who had refused to permit
Christians to preach to their subjects was in some ways an extension of the
same principle. He considered himself responsible for their souls as for
Christian souls, and obliged to set aside their rights because, simply: ‘they
are in error and we are on the path of truth’.157 One way and another, the
legal status of the non-Christian was thoroughly eroded in thirteenth-
century canon law. Hostiensis went so far as to assert that ‘in law, infidels
ought to be subject to Christian rulers’.158 It was not acceptable to violate
free will, but in practice it was relatively acceptable to compromise it. The
Latins were aware by this time that Jews and Muslims rarely converted to
Christianity unless their circumstances prompted them to do so. This
recognition fed into arguments for attacking and conquering non-
Christian peoples. Bacon, with his desire to accomplish the goals of the
Church ‘in a better way than by the shedding of Christian blood’,
explored ways of creating situations in which people might be made
more receptive to the true faith. He was convinced that this could be
done ‘by the power of wisdom’. Sapientia could be used to free infideles
from their adherence to false doctrines and predispose them towards
Christianity.
preparing the ground for conversion: scientia

experimentalis
A particular exchange haunted and inflamed Bacon’s imagination. It was
between Aristotle, ‘the greatest of the philosophers’, and Alexander, the
conqueror of the whole world, and it concerned the most powerful secrets
of nature known to the wise. According to the Secretum secretorum
Alexander wrote to Aristotle saying that he had encountered in Persia ‘a
people abundant in reason and intellect, working hard to achieve domin-
ion over others and obtain power’. He wanted the philosopher’s advice
about whether the solution was to kill them all. Aristotle wrote back
saying: ‘If you cannot change their earth, air and water, and even the
disposition of the cities, you must carry out what you propose.’ He went
on to recommend that Alexander should rather win their fidelity through
kindness, which Alexander then did. The consequence was that the
Persians became ‘more loyal to his authority than any of the other
nations’.
157
‘cum ipsi sint in errore et nos in via veritatis’: ‘Apparatus’, transcribed in Kedar, Crusade, p. 217. See
Bird, ‘Crusade’ for earlier advocates of these ideas.
158
‘de iure infideles debent subiici fidelibus’: Lectura quinque Decretalium, quoted in Muldoon, Popes,
p. 167; J. A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London, 1995), pp. 162–4.
248
Beyond Christendom
When Bacon retold the story in the Opus maius he substituted ‘a people
who had very evil customs’ for the Persians and abbreviated Aristotle’s
advice, omitting the idea of ruling through kindness and focusing on
changing their environment. He seems to have missed the irony of the
original, exclaiming instead: ‘Oh how obscure is the response, yet how full
of the power of wisdom!’159 When he edited the Secretum he added
explanations that altered the point of the story. ‘If you cannot change
their earth, air and water, and even the disposition [that is, the bad morals]
of the cities, you must carry out your proposition [that is, to kill everyone
just as he had proposed]. If you are able to exercise mastery [that is, if you
can change the air and water] over them with kindness, you can treat them
with generosity.’ He explained:
This touches on the greatest secret. [Aristotle] wished that Alexander should
change the evil qualities of the earth and atmosphere of that region into good, so
that men of evil disposition might be changed to the good, and so that bad morals
might be changed into good ones. For the qualities of any region are found in its
complexion, and through the complexion, a man is incited towards particular
morals, although he is not actually compelled to them.160
His additions may seem disingenuous, a manipulation of the meaning

of the text, but they were rather the reverse. Readers of the Secretum
believed that deliberately concealed below the integumentum of the text
were secrets that could only be discerned by the wise. Bacon’s notes were
designed in part to draw out and explicate the sapientia hidden within.161
Thus, it seems, a more occult understanding of the story of Alexander’s
establishment of benign rule over formerly ‘wicked’ people indicated that
they had become virtuous and loyal precisely because their environment
had been mysteriously altered.
Bacon was fascinated by the possibilities suggested by this episode. His
business as a Franciscan was the transformation of his fellow humans: the
159
‘gentes habentes mores pessimos’; ‘O quam occultissima responsio est, sed plena sapientiae potes-
tate!’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:393. On Bacon’s misunderstanding see M. Grignaschi, ‘Remarques sur la
formation et l’interprétation du Sirr al-’asraˉ r’ in Ryan and Schmitt (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle, 3–33,
pp. 10–11.
160
‘gentes habundantes racione et intellectu penetrabili, studentes super alios dominari et regnum
acquirere’; ‘Si non potes illius terre mutare aerem et aquam, insuper et disposicionem [id est, malos
mores] civitatum, imple tuum propositum [hoc est, interfice omnes sicud proposuisti]. Si potes
dominari [hoc est, si potes mutare aerem et aquam] super eos cum bonitate, exaudies eos cum
benignitate’; ‘magis obedientes suo imperio quam omnes alie naciones. [Hic tangit maximum
secretum. Vult enim quod Alexander deberet mutare malas qualitates terre et aeris illarum
regionum in bonas, ut hominum complexio mala mutaretur in bonam, et ut sic mali mores
mutarentur in bonos. Per qualitates enim regionis cujuslibet invenitur complexio, et per complex-
ionem excitatur homo ad mores, licet non cogatur]’: SS, pp. 38–9.
161
Williams, ‘Esotericism, Marvels’, esp. pp. 178–80.
249
reform and renewal of the morals of Christians; the conversion of non-
Christians. As we have seen, he attributed the existence and nature of the
different religions to the effects of celestial influences on the regions
within which they were found. Following ‘Aristotle’s’ suggestion to
Alexander, Bacon proposed to alter environments so that those living
within them would no longer be predisposed towards false religions, and
would turn instead to the saving truth of Christianity. He was careful to
point out that this did not interfere with their free will, since individuals
were still at liberty to exercise it even within their transformed environ-
ment.162 They would not be compelled to accept Christianity, but would
be inclined towards it, and prepared to receive instruction in faith and
doctrine. For, Bacon explained: ‘the body can be altered through the
virtues of things, and then souls are inflamed and moved so that they wish
wholly for the grace that they are inclined towards’.163 The methods by
which these wonders would be accomplished were the same as those that
he had recommended for use against enemies: the channelling of the
forces of nature by a wise and saintly man, filled with divine grace, acting
‘by the authority of the greatest pontiff’ and ‘wholly subordinate to the
Roman Church’.164 He imagined such deeds as being akin to the miracles
performed by the apostles to compel belief. Similar things could be
achieved by potions and medicines – ‘many can be changed, not only in
the body, but also in the passions of the soul and the inclination of the
will’.165 To this end, he suggested that ‘something could be prepared –
whether it were medicine, food, drink or something else – which might
receive and retain the celestial influence after the moment of the con-
stellation has passed’.166
Various learned texts hinted at the possibility of a medicine that would
prolong human life. It worked by purifying the human body so that the
body obtained a perfect balance of elements, as it would otherwise not do
until it was resurrected. The secret of its manufacture was one of the
greatest of all, connected with alchemy and known to very few. Bacon’s
suggestion that this sort of approach could be adapted to assist in the
162
OM, iii.xiv, 3:125, iv.iv.16, 1:397, vi.xii, 2:216.
163
‘bonos mores ex arbitrii libertate’; ‘Potest autem corpus alterari per virtutem rerum, et animi
deinde excitantur et moventur ut omnino gratis velint illud ad quod inclinantur’: OM, vi.12
(exemplum iii), 2:216–17. Bacon also wrote of it at OM, iv.iv.16, 1:392–3. The source of this idea
was, of course, the Secretum secretorum.
164
‘auctoritate summi pontificis, qui subjecti et subditi pedibus Romane ecclesie debent’: OT(Little),
p. 17.
165
‘multos non solum in corpore posse alterari sed in passionibus animae et inclinatione voluntatis’:
OM, vi.xii, 2:217.
166
‘maxime si res alique preparentur, que recipiant et retineant celestem virtutem post horam
constellationis, sive fuerit medicamen sive cibus sive potus sive aliud’: OT(Little), p. 16.
250
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conversion of infideles is particularly interesting. It should not be dismissed
as mere eccentricity. There is plenty of evidence of contemporary interest
in such potions and powers. Medieval literature was full of food, drink,
stones, amulets and other objects that could work transformations of
various kinds. Some, at least, of the popes were interested in such mat-
ters.167 So too were many respected scholars, whose condemnations of
astrology were often little more than conventional prefaces to detailed
discussions of what was undoubtedly a valued art. Albertus Magnus, for
example, had argued, following Ptolemy, that the influence of the stars
could be interrupted or negated by the sapientia of skilled astronomers.168
As we have seen, Bacon was not alone in believing that Muslims and
Mongols used the power of the stars to manipulate the wills of others. His
desire to seize such power and use it – through God’s grace – to assist in the
daunting task of bringing salvation to humanity was an imaginative but
not an extraordinary development of contemporary thought.
There were other ways in which such wonderful arts could be used to
influence infideles. In his discussion of scientia experimentalis Bacon noted:
‘persuasion towards the faith can be made quite strikingly through this
branch of knowledge; not by arguments but by works, which is the more
powerful way’. This kind of scientia was useful in dealing with two specific
problems that might arise in the course of trying to convert someone. If
the person denied the truth of Christianity ‘because he was not able to
understand it’, Bacon would be able to tell him about the inexplicable
wonders that could be observed in nature. These included wine that did
not move when its jar was broken, a sheathed sword that could be
‘consumed’ without damaging its scabbard, and the capacity of the king-
fisher to calm the stormy winter ocean so that it might nest in peace.
‘These and similar facts ought to work upon a man,’ he wrote optimisti-
cally, ‘and rouse him towards the acceptance of divine truths, since, in the
most unimportant creatures, truths can be discovered of a kind that ought
to subdue the pride of the human intellect – subduing it because they
compel belief while forbidding understanding.’169
167
A. Paravicini Bagliani, ‘Storia della scienza e storia della mentalità: Ruggero Bacone, Bonifacio VIII
e la teoria della “prolongatio vitae”’, in C. Leonardi and G. Orlandi (eds.), Aspetti della Letteratura
Latina nel secolo XIII (Florence, 1985), 243–80; Walker Bynum, Resurrection; D. C. Skemer, Binding
Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2006), esp. pp. 58–64.
168
Albertus Magnus, Alberti Magni, De natura loci, De causis proprietatum elementorum, De generatione et
corruptione, ed. P. Hossfeld (Aschendorff, 1980), i.5, p. 9, ii, pp. 23–8; B. B. Price, ‘The Physical
Astronomy and Astrology of Albertus Magnus’ in Weisheipl (ed.), Albertus Magnus, 155–85,
pp. 174–85. For other ‘occult’ interests see the essays of J. M. Riddle and J. A. Mulholland, and
P. Kibre in Weisheipl (ed.), Albertus Magnus, 187–202 and 203–34 respectively.
169
‘persuasio fidei notabiliter fieri potest per scientiam hanc; non argumentis sed operibus, quod
fortius est’; ‘quia intelligere eam non valeat’; ‘Haec enim et his similia debent hominem movere, et
251
The second advantage offered by scientia experimentalis was its capacity
to lay bare the distinctions between magic and miracles. ‘For unbelievers
are occupied by these insanities [incantations, conjurations, etc.],’ he
wrote, ‘and have complete trust in them, and have believed that
Christians used to such arts to perform miracles.’ Careful demonstrations
of how magic worked would serve to sweep away long-standing delusions
so that infideles would be able to accept the miracles for what they really
were.170 In short, scientia experimentalis could at once prepare the mind for
the essence of faith: belief without proof; and also reveal the power of God
as it was demonstrated through miracles.
Bacon often declared that ‘through the ways of wisdom, Aristotle was
able to hand over the world’ to Alexander.171 He made little secret of his
desire both to teach and to serve the Pope as Aristotle had done his pupil,
Alexander. In the last days, it was the duty of the Church to prepare the
world for the Saviour’s return. The word of God was to go forth once
again, so that all peoples might come in: one flock gathered into one
sheepfold. Those who refused to come in had to be repressed so that they
would not interfere with the wider mission of the faithful. These messages
had been audible in Church policy and propaganda throughout Bacon’s
life. The papacy asked for the world and Bacon showed them how to take
it. However, he stressed that these methods could not bring about valid
conversions on their own. Conversion could only be achieved through
the greatest part of scientia: moral philosophy. This, he wrote, ‘consists in
persuasion towards, belief in, and proof of, the religion of the faithful,
which the human race must accept’.172 Thus, the final sections of the Opus
maius were devoted to a discussion of how missionaries could use philo-
sophical arguments to demonstrate that Christianity was the only true
faith; and how those doctrines that could not be demonstrated rationally –
such as transubstantiation – could be explained in compelling ways by
enhanced preaching techniques.
ad receptionem divinarum veritatum excitare. Quoniam si in vilissimis creaturis reperiuntur

veritates, quibus oportet subdi superbiam intellectus humani ut credit eas licet non intelligat’:
OM, vi.12, 2:220. Gerald of Wales made a similar argument, suggesting that the spontaneous
generation of barnacle geese ought to persuade Jews to accept the virgin birth of Christ. See
Gerald of Wales, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernie: Text of the First Recension’, ed.
J. J. O’Meara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, C.52 (1949), 113–78, p. 125. In this approach
there may be echoes of the old proof-method of trial by ordeal. See Bartlett, Trial.
170
‘Sed infideles occupantur his insaniis et confidunt in eis, et crediderunt Christianos uti talibus in
operibus miraculorum’: OM, vi.12, 2:221.
171
‘per vias sapientiae potuit Aristoteles mundum tradere Alexandro’: OM, vi.xii, 2:222; OT(Little),
p. 53.
172
‘que consistit in persuasione secte fideles credende et approbande, quam debet genus humanum
recipere’: MP, iv.i, p. 187.
252
Beyond Christendom
converting INFIDELES: reason and rhetoric
Bacon was experienced in both disputation and preaching but he had, as
far as we know, no personal experience of ‘going among the unbelievers’,
nor is it clear whether he employed his knowledge of Hebrew in attempts
to convert Jews of his acquaintance. He did say that fluency in Hebrew,
sufficient for teaching and preaching, might take thirty years or more of
study to obtain ‘as we who have attempted such a thing would main-
tain’.173 However, his thought on the subject was facilitated by the
extensive use that he made of the reports of friars returning from travels
in the Mongol empire. It is particularly striking that he, apparently alone
in the order, explicitly incorporated the experiences of William of
Rubruck into an appraisal of techniques for conversion. This is certainly
in keeping with his conviction that scientia experimentalis – knowledge
gained by experience – was superior to most other kinds. Only this can
account for his otherwise puzzling tendency to give preference to
William’s information even on Islam. He seems to have used the Qur’an
chiefly to confirm the usual allegations about Muhammad.
William had spent some years in the eastern Mediterranean and seems
to have been with Louis’ army at Damietta, but his report was not an
obvious source on Muslim belief, especially when translations of the
Qur’an itself were available in Paris.174 What it did do, in a way that
many other texts did only in theory, was to describe real interactions
between people of different faiths. It brought to life the strange world of
the Mongol empire – strange not only because of its obvious foreignness,
but strange because previous religious hegemonies had been destabilised.
As William crossed the vast, often desolate, landscape of Central Asia and
visited the courts of various qaghans, he met individuals whose beliefs and
identities were dislocated from their environment, by war or by travel. He
was at liberty to converse about matters of faith with anyone who had the
patience to listen, but rarely encountered people whom he recognised as
possessing an evangelical zeal and specificity of doctrine to match his own.
In this atmosphere the Buddhist monks seemed to him to echo
Christianity and even the Muslims professed themselves as allies in spiritual
matters. Representatives from across the known world were gathered
around Möngke in a kind of uneven, fractious equality, and the qaghan
himself preserved an air of mingled superiority and apparent receptivity
173
‘ut nos qui talibus insistimus experimur’: CSP, p. 434.
174
T. E. Burman, Reading the Qur’aˉ n in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Philadelphia, 2007), esp.
pp. 88–103 on mendicant use. Bacon did not use the Talmud either, although he referred to it
(OM, iii.13, 3:120–1).
253
towards the different religions on offer.175 It was, if anything, the sheer
diversity of those obliged to coexist beneath Mongol authority that made
it impossible for William to make any kind of impression. He recognised
that he was hindered by the shortcomings of his interpreters and by his
inability to find the words or the moral force to compel people to accept
Latin Christian beliefs. He lamented that he did not possess ‘the power to
work miracles, as Moses did’, for that in itself could have brought about
the submission of the Mongols.176 He came to see that the very humility
and lack of status that his order had set at the heart of its interpretation of
the vita apostolica militated against success in the Mongol empire, where
those who could produce the most lavish display were the most
welcome.177
William’s account reflected the dominant ideas of his day in its emphasis
on the efficacy of reason and rationality in the defence of Christianity and
in dealings with non-Christians. He was very critical of the eastern
Christians who lived among the Mongols, in part because they did not
have the concepts or the training to be able to use arguments effectively.
He and his companion were obliged to spend much of their time at
Qaraqorum with an Armenian monk who had no recourse when taunted
by Muslims other than to try to hit them with a whip, ‘since he did not
know how to defend himself with rational arguments’. The incident
displeased Möngke and did the Christians no good.178 Better known is
the substance of William’s discussion with the Nestorians as they prepared
to engage in debate with Muslims and Buddhists before Möngke. He said
the Muslims should not be challenged first, since they were also mono-
theists and would support the Christians against the Buddhists, who were
not. The Christians should, instead, begin by proving the existence of
God. He suggested a rehearsal of the arguments, since the Nestorians ‘did
not know how to prove anything’ and could only quote scripture.179
William said that this was no use, since their opponents did not believe in
175
William did not think that Möngke believed in any of the religions but played them off against
one another. See Itinerarium, 29 (trans. pp. 187, 236–7); R. Foltz, ‘Ecumenical Mischief under the
Mongols’, Central Asiatic Journal, 43.1 (1999), 42–69.
176
‘potestatem faciendi signa sicut Moyses’: Itinerarium, p. 300; trans. Jackson, Mission, p. 239. On
languages see M. Brauer, ‘Obstacles to Oral Communication in the Mission of Friar William of
Rubruck among the Mongols’ in G. Jaritz and M. Richter (eds.), Oral History of the Middle Ages:
The Spoken Word in Context (Krems, 2001), 196–202.
177
A. Power, ‘Going Among the Infidels: The Mendicant Orders and Louis IX’s First Mediterranean
Campaign’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 25.2 (2010), 187–202, pp. 194–5; M. Shreve Simpson,
‘Manuscripts and Mongols: Some Documented and Speculative Moments in East–West/
Muslim–Christian Relations’, French Historical Studies 30.3 (2007), 351–94, pp. 356–61.
178
‘cum se nesciret defendere rationibus’: Itinerarium, 32.11, p. 289.
179
‘non sciverunt probare aliquid’: Itinerarium, 33.11, p. 294.
254
Beyond Christendom
the Christian scriptures, and offered to take over the defence of
Christianity. In the event, by his own account, he kept a clear head and
a firm grip on the course of the debate, exposing the inherent absurdity of
the Buddhists’ position. As he had predicted, the Muslims did not want to
argue with the Christians, saying that they believed everything in the
Gospel to be true.180 Bacon took all that William had said extremely
seriously, and drew on it when considering how to construct and carry out
a philosophical defence of Christianity.
For William the difficulties of attempting to convert the inhabitants of
the Mongol empire were very plain. Yet to Bacon the diversity of belief-
systems, which had denied William’s efforts a focal point, appeared to
present precisely the great apostolic opportunity that the times demanded.
All the difficulties identified by William seemed susceptible of remedy.
Throughout the Opus maius Bacon suggested directions for Latin study
that would greatly improve the chances of future expeditions. As we have
seen, he argued that missionaries needed to know the languages of those
whom they wished to convert, the geography of the region and some-
thing of their targets’ societies and existing beliefs. These recommenda-
tions only partly addressed the reasons William gave for failure. The others
were his inability to argue the Christian faith with sufficient force to bring
about many conversions and his inability to work miracles. In Bacon’s
view the first could be dealt with by the development of a series of
compelling philosophical proofs; while ‘miracles’, or at least marvels,
could be performed with the aid of scientia experimentalis. He said that
William had also written to Louis that he would have had a better
reception from the Mongols if he had ‘known a little about the stars’. As
Bacon believed that the Mongol success had been achieved by astrology
and other ‘magnificent works of wisdom’, the implication was, once
again, that Latins needed to be equipped to respond in kind.181
It is important to emphasise that all Bacon’s thinking about conversion
itself – rather than being out of keeping with that of his order – was thus a
direct response to, or an extrapolation from, issues raised in the most
comprehensive, recent and reflective account of a Franciscan’s attempt to
bring Christianity to the unbelievers. He drew on the authority of the
180
Itinerarium, 33.21, p. 297. On the debate see B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Multilateral Disputation at the
Court of the Grand Qan Möngke, 1254’ in H. Lazarus-Yafeh et al. (eds.), The Majlis: Interreligious
Encounters in Medieval Islam (Wiesbaden, 1999), 162–83; S. N. C. Lieu, ‘Some Themes in Later
Roman Anti-Manichaean Polemics: II’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester,
69.1 (1986), 235–75, esp. pp. 248–9. Brauer points out that the content of the disputation was a
later construction by William, something not always taken into account (‘Obstacles’, p. 201).
181
‘parum scivisset de astris’; ‘per opera sapientiae procedant magnifica’: OM, iv.iv.16, 1:400. This
remark is not in the extant manuscripts of William’s report.
255
account, and its association with Louis IX, to explain and defend his
suggestions.182 Aside from Bacon, there is no evidence of the report’s
reception, but he implied that Louis, at least, had seen it and, judging
by their avid reaction to the return of John of Plano Carpini, the other
friars must have been keen to talk to William when he was in Paris.183
Nevertheless, although William had a great deal to impart about previously
unknown regions and people, his candid acknowledgement of how very
few souls he had succeeded in saving may not have made encouraging
reading. His report did not conform to the moralised, even hagiographic,
tone of the more popular didactic material on mission. His approach to
mission was not innovative; it was, instead, an attempt to put existing ideas
and methods into practice in the Mongol empire. His report was in part an
analysis of the success and failure of the experiment. Looked at from this
perspective, it is easy to see why it might have appealed to Bacon more than
to the order’s better-known publicists.
We have already seen that Bacon developed a systematic view of the
religions of the world using a set of criteria suggested to him by Aristotle’s
method in the Politics.184 This enabled him to show how and why each
secta, except Christianity, fell short – a rhetorical strategy almost identical
to William’s, but more structured in its approach. The first criterion was
the ‘end’ to which each worked: whether it prioritised earthly or heavenly
pleasures. He maintained that Muslims and Mongols were interested in
sensual delights and temporal dominion respectively, while pagans and
idolaters assumed that the afterlife would hold the same physical enjoy-
ment as the present life. Jews were closer to the truth in that they were also
concerned about their souls, but they were too literal in the understanding
of God’s law and their temporal rights.185
The second criterion was the extent of the knowledge each group had
of God. Pagans knew the least, as they had no priests and worshipped
objects indiscriminately. The idolaters were next, given that they had
priests and synagogues with great bells to call people to the offices – but
nonetheless believed in many gods, none of whom were omnipotent. The
Mongols were third, since they worshipped the one, omnipotent God,
182
Particularly at MP, iv.ii.1, p. 200, iv.ii.5, pp. 213–14.
183
OM, iv.iv.16, 1:305; Salimbene, Cronica, vol. i, p. 321. When it was copied, it was placed after
John of Plano Carpini’s account, and then, later, after Jacques de Vitry’s Historia orientalis in,
respectively, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 181, pp. 321–98; Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, MS 66A, fos. 67r–110r. Perhaps Bonaventure had William’s debate in mind when, in
1267, he preached a sermon in which he represented St Francis as saying to the Sultan: ‘I cannot
argue from Holy Scripture because your wise men do not believe the Scriptures’ – even if Francis
then went on to suggest a trial by fire. See Bonaventure, ‘Sermo II’ in Opera omnia, vol. ix, 575–80,
p. 579; trans. FoAED, vol. ii, p. 757.
184
See above, p. 231. 185 MP, iv.i.1, pp. 189–92.
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Beyond Christendom
but retained barbarous superstitions and practices. Fourth were the Jews,
who ought, he said, to have known God better and have wanted the
Messiah ‘(who is Christ)’ more. Christians came next, who had both the
law of the Jews and its completion in Christ. Sixth were the followers of
Antichrist, who would, for a short time, subvert all the faiths but
Christianity. Islam was mysteriously absent from this section, which
was presumably an oversight.186 Bacon then discussed the astrological
influences at work on the religions.
In order to convert people to Christianity, one could, he wrote, either
hope for miracles or use philosophical reasoning. The first method was
presumptuous and could hardly be relied upon by ordinary mortals, but
the second was entirely appropriate. Indeed, it was, he wrote, ‘the parti-
cular preserve of infideles, since we have all our philosophy from them’.187
Through the ages God had impregnated the philosophy and theology of
non-Christians with his sapientia – ‘so that the human race might be
prepared to receive particular divine truths’. Christian doctrine could
thus be proved to pagans and infideles through their own authorities and
intellectual methodologies. Bacon clarified: ‘I could demonstrate these
truths using simple and rough methods, suitable for the ignorant multi-
tude of unbelievers, but doing so would not be particularly advantageous
[for my present purpose], since the multitude is too imperfect and any
urging towards the faith that they could understand would be too ele-
mentary, disordered and unworthy of the wise.’ His claim, incidentally,
suggests that he was accustomed to preaching on different levels, tailoring
his approach to his audience. He went on: ‘in every nation there are some
dedicated individuals, well equipped to receive wisdom, who can be
persuaded by reason so that, once instructed, it becomes easier to persuade
the rest through them’.188 Although this was not the approach taken by
Franciscans when dealing with the Christian population, it is noticeable
that the majority of recorded missions were aimed at rulers, in keeping
186
MP, iv.i.2, pp. 192–3. Bacon’s brief recap in the Opus tertium did include Islam, but without
details. See OT(Little), p. 66.
187
‘per viam communem eis et nobis, que est in potestate nostra et quam non possunt negare, quia
vadit per vias humane raciocinacionis et per vias philosophiae, que eciam propria est infidelibus:
quoniam ab eis habemus totam philosophiam’: MP, iv.ii, p. 195. Contrast with William of
Auvergne’s position: that miracles constituted a general proof of the truth of Christianity,
since they did not occur among Jews after Christ, Muslims, pagans, idolators or heretics: De fide
et legibus in William of Auvergne, Guilielmus Alvernus, Opera omnia, ed. F. Hotot (2 vols. Paris,
1674), vol. i, p. 16.
188
‘quatenus genus humanum preparatur ad divinas veritates speciales’; ‘Possem vero proponere vias
simplices et rudes vulgo infidelium proporcionales, set non expedit; nam vulgus nimis imperfec-
tum est, et ideo persuasio fidei, que vulgo debetur, est rudis et indigesta et indigna sapientibus . . .
In omni nacione sunt aliqui industrii et apti ad sapienciam, quibus rationabiliter persuaderi potest
ut, ipsis informatis, fiat vulgo per eos persuasio facilior’: MP, iv.ii.1, pp. 196–7.
257
with the traditional expectation that if they were converted their people
would follow suit.189 It is interesting here to see Bacon proposing to target
scholars on the assumption that they would persuade their co-religionists
to convert; their sapientia would flow downwards to illuminate the
‘multitude’.
His methods depended on sophisticated ideas. He began by discussing
the capacity of the rational soul to know the truth by nature, and thus to
know God by nature. All nations had some intimations of God, though
they varied in quality. This basic understanding could then be built upon
to draw people towards correct doctrine. ‘And thus, in the first place, the
advocate of a faith should know how to deal convincingly with the
questions that are commonly asked about God,’ he wrote, echoing
William’s tactic with the Buddhists. ‘However, he should not try to deal
with all particular truths at once, but develop the topic gradually, begin-
ning with the easier parts.’190 In practice, this seemed to mean first
pointing out that the intellectually superior nations of the world were
monotheistic, and then presenting the listener with Aristotle’s arguments
about the prime mover, whom he would then show by logical argument
to be eternal and of infinite power, goodness and wisdom, and to have
created the world. Following from this, it was evident that humanity
should obey and revere this entity, to whom it owed its existence; not least
because God would give infinite happiness to those who did and eternal
torment to those who did not. There was, moreover, general agreement
among the sectae that the soul was immortal. Given this, he felt that,
logically, there must be a reward after death for the godly, ‘for this life is
full of all miseries and not in keeping with the goodness of human nature’
and ‘the good endure more evils on earth than the bad’.191
Since it was evident that humans should obey God, and yet they had
no way of knowing by themselves what it was that God wanted them to
do – witness the ‘errors and heresies and diversity of belief’ – revelation
was required.192 Obviously there could only be one true revelation. The
next stage was to consider which of the religions on offer embodied this
revelation. In order to address each fairly, Bacon attempted to draw on
criticisms made by their own adherents. On the occasion of the debate at
Qaraqorum ‘Christians and Muslims immediately proved the idolaters and
189
C. M. Cusack, The Rise of Christianity in Northern Europe, 300–1000 (London, 1999).
190
‘Et ideo oportet quod persuasor secte in principio sciat persuadere que requiruntur de Deo in
communi. Nam tamen oportet quod descendat ad omnes particulares veritates in primis, sed
paulatim procedat et a facilioribus incipiat’: MP, iv.ii.1, p. 199; Itinerarium, 33.13, p. 294.
191
‘hec est plena omnibus miseriis nec est de bonitate humane nature’; ‘boni habent plura mala hic
quam mali’: MP, iv.ii.3, p. 207.
192
‘errores et hereses et diversitates’: MP, iv.ii.3, p. 208.
258
Beyond Christendom
their sect wrong, and they abdicated their position’ – an abdication that
Bacon assumed to be the likely response of all Buddhists.193 In addition
to their disqualifying superstitions, the Mongols themselves openly
acknowledged the superiority of Christianity – at least in Bacon’s reading
of William. It was more difficult to eliminate Judaism and Islam because
they were ‘more rational’, but with the aid of philosophy it could be done.
Seneca, for example, had written against the Jews. Muslim philosophers
criticised their own faith: Avicenna wrote about the ‘errors’ of
Muhammad, while Abuˉ Ma’shar predicted the demise of Islam – a
prophecy fulfilled by the Mongol attacks on Baghdad.194 The Jews
acknowledged the inferiority of their own law by looking for the
Messiah to complete the imperfect law of Moses. Their own authorities,
texts and their punitive diaspora demonstrated that this Messiah was
Christ. Muhammad, too, acknowledged the virgin birth in the Qur’an,
admitting that Christ ‘is the greatest prophet of God among them all’ –
and therefore superior to Muhammad himself. Muhammad was also ‘a
most sinful adulterer, as it says in the Qur’an’, so could not have possessed
the true revelation.195
Bacon then turned to history and prophecy. In order to see which
religion was best, ‘it is necessary to accept, as a basis for this discussion, that
the histories of all nations have equal standing, where they arise in the
context of disputation,’ he suggested, as William had done, ‘because, if
Christians should reject the histories of the Saracens and of the Jews, they
will, by the same right, deny the histories of the Christians’.196 Following
Alfarabi, Bacon pointed to testimony of the prophets, who had only
prophesied Christ, not Moses or Muhammad, and had done so indepen-
dently of each other. Alfarabi’s second method of ‘proving religions’ was
through miracles. Muhammad’s apparent miracles had been achieved by
deception, and although Moses had performed wonders his miracles were
not equal to those of Christ: for Christ could ‘forgive sins and cure souls’ –
‘a boundless miracle, and greater than any number of miracles pertaining
to the body alone’. As only God could forgive sins, Christ then must be
God. Finally, ‘sanctity and perfection of life’ were only to be found in
193
‘Christiani et Sarraceni statim convicerunt Ydolatras et suam sectam et evacuaverunt’: MP, iv.ii.5,
p. 213.
194
On this strategy for discrediting Islam, also employed by Ramon Martí, Ramon Lull and Riccoldo
of Montecroce, see Tolan, ‘“Saracen Philosophers”’.
195
‘esse maiorem prophetam Dei inter omnes’; ‘pessimus adulter fuit, sicut in libro Alchoran
scribitur’: MP, iv.ii.7, pp. 218–19.
196
‘Et pro radice istius consideracionis oportet ponere quod hystorie omnium nacionum concedende
sunt equaliter, ubi ocurrit forma disputandi. Nam si Christiani negent hystorias Sarracenorum et
Iudeorum, illi negabunt eodem iure hystorias christianorum’: MP, iv.ii.8, p. 219. On the possible
influence of Bacon’s approach see Orlando, ‘Roger Bacon’.
259
Christianity, as neither Islam nor Judaism valued virginity, voluntary
poverty or obedience. ‘Thus,’ Bacon concluded triumphantly, ‘the law
of Christ must be preferred above all others, and is a law worthy of being
spread throughout the world.’197 The rest of the book was concerned
with the sacrament of the Eucharist, and was aimed at the faithful.
Bacon’s strategy, it will be observed, depended a great deal on establish-
ing points of consensus between members of different religions. The
positions of pagans, idolaters and Mongols were to be destroyed by
the unity of monotheists: ‘for the lesser part must conform itself to the
greater’.198 Other monotheists were to be shown that their own revela-
tions actually confirmed that of Christianity. Finally, learned men across
the world, speaking the common language of philosophy, were to come
to an agreement that could then be passed on to the unlettered multitude.
This drew on wider tendencies in Christian apologetics, but it was also an
ambitious extrapolation specifically from the debate at Qaraqorum.
The last pages of the Opus maius were concerned with the most difficult
task of all. This was ‘to persuade people to love [the true faith] and to show
their love by carrying out the works due to it: in the observance of its laws
and of good morals; together with the desire for future happiness, so that
they might abhor, hate and vehemently loathe everything that is contrary
to laws and morals and blessings, turning away from such things’.199 Bacon’s
material was intended to strengthen all Christians, including recent con-
verts; for, as a consequence of sin and the weaknesses of the human intellect,
no one found it easy to live life according to the tenets of the faith. It was
not difficult to get people to agree to the ideas of Christianity in principle,
but when it came to practice one needed ‘more powerful remedies and
inducements’ to change behaviour. This assertion, if made in earlier parts of
the Opus maius, would have been the signal for further discussion of occult
arts. However, Bacon seems to have felt that such methods were either
inadequate or inappropriate when it came to the task of renewing the faith
of believers. Instead, he looked to the ancient art of rhetoric, hoping that it
would intensify the impact of preaching.
197
‘dimittere peccatum et curare animam est infinitum miraculum, et maius quam infinita miracula
facera corporalia’; ‘sanctitas et vite perfectio’; ‘ergo lex Christi, preferri debet. Set talis est
divulganda per mundum’: MP, iv.ii.8, pp. 222–3.
198
‘set maiori parti minor se debet conformare’: MP, iv.ii.1, p. 200.
199
‘que nititur persuadere ut ametur et operibus debitis conprobetur in observa[n]cia legum et
morum honestate, cum desiderio future felicitatis, ut omnia contraria legibus et virtutibus et
beatitudini abhorreamus, odio habeamus et fortiter detestemur et opera declinemus’: MP, v
(proemium), p. 247. On this section see J. M. G. Hackett, ‘Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric in
Roger Bacon’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 20.1 (1987), 18–40.
260
Beyond Christendom
Earlier, he had written about ‘the composition of arguments that
influence the active intellect to the faith’ and stressed that ‘these arguments
must possess the greatest possible beauty, so that the human soul can be
seized by the truths of salvation suddenly and without any anticipation of
it’. This sense of a soul overpowered and snatched away into pure
certainty echoes the mystical ecstasy envisaged by Bacon as the highest
stage of knowledge.200 The words that might engender such a state were
thus imagined as opening the way to a deeper understanding. The power
of language to persuade people had been pointed out by Aristotle in his
Poetics and by Alfarabi and Averroës in their commentaries on it.201 As
Alfarabi had taught, the preacher needed to be able to ‘hurry the soul to
consent before it could come up with opposing arguments’.202 Bacon
was now looking for a method, not of persuading intellectually, as
dialectics could do, but one that ‘teaches us to become good’ in a practical
sense. The distinction, he said, echoed that between the person who
understood the theory of medicine and the one who could practise it in
order to heal the body.203 What was needed, he said, was rhetorical
argument, because only through it could people be ‘swayed to the
good’.204 He was convinced of the power of rhetoric, maintaining that
‘one rhetorical argument has more force, in this matter, than a thousand
demonstrations . . . rhetoric moves through itself and is absolute, and is
able to influence the soul’.205
Unfortunately, he wrote, rhetorical argument was not known to
the multitude of students in the arts among the Latins, because Cicero
had not taught it fully, and Aristotle’s books and those of his commenta-
tors – which contained ‘the complete teaching’ – had not been translated
fully and the available parts had not yet been disseminated. However, in
the meantime both Cicero and Augustine did discuss the necessity of
moving one’s hearers to action.206 Quoting Augustine, Bacon explained:
200
See above, pp. 154,156–9.
201
‘Nam finis logicae est compositio argumentorum quae movent intellectum practicum ad fidem et
amorem virtutis et felicitatis futurae . . . Sed haec argumenta debent esse in fine pulchritudinis, ut
rapiatur animus hominis ad salutiferas veritatis subito et sine praevisione’: OM, iv.i.2, 1:100.
202
‘rapiatur animus ad consenciendum et antequam possit previdere contrarium’: MP, v.3, p. 254.
See Rosier-Catach, ‘Roger Bacon, al-Farabi et Augustin’, pp. 103–9.
203
MP, v.i, p. 248. 204 ‘flectamur ad bonum’: MP, v.2, p. 251.
205
‘unum argumentum rethoricum, in hac parte, quam mille demonstraciones . . . rethoricum movet
per se et absolute, et potest flectere animum’: MP, v.3, p. 254.
206
‘completa doctrina’: MP, v.2, p. 251; also discussed at OT, pp. 304–5. Aristotle’s Rhetoric had been
translated but not his Poetics. See Rosier-Catach, ‘Roger Bacon, al-Farabi et Augustin’, pp. 95–9;
M. T. D’Alverny, ‘Remarques sur la tradition manuscrite de la Summa Alexandrinorum’, AHDLMA,
49 (1982), 265–72, pp. 67–70; W. F. Boggess, ‘Hermannus Alemannus’ Rhetorical Translations’,
Viator, 2 (1971), 227–50. See also C. J. Nederman, ‘The Union of Wisdom and Eloquence before
the Renaissance: The Ciceronian Orator in Medieval Thought’, JMH, 18 (1992), 75–95.
261
‘[your hearer] is swayed if he believes what you say, loves what you
promise him, fears what you threaten him with, hates what you censure,
embraces what you praise’.207 He then divided the elements of rhetorical
argument into three types (species). The first related to the ‘proofs’ of the
faith, which resided in the Church, Holy Scripture, the testimony of the
saints, numerous miracles, the power of reason and the agreement of all
the doctors of the Church. These and others could be drawn upon to
convert infideles, as he had already shown. The second type of rhetorical
argument was essentially Ciceronian: designed to persuade people to act
justly, especially in courtroom situations. The third type was to do with
stimulating moral action, and, to do so, drew heavily on poetics – the
missing part of the Aristotelian corpus.208
Bacon went on to outline some of the fundamental elements in the art
of rhetoric. He talked about variation in style in order to avoid wearying
the audience, even though the ‘grand style always dominates, because it
is the most important in this kind of persuasion, and because great matters
are at issue’.209 Powerful images and analogies should be employed. ‘The
happiness of the other life is compared to everything that is beautiful and
prosperous; while the misery, which is its opposite, is compared to the
sum of all adversity and wretchedness.’ Sinners, he noted on the author-
ity of Avicenna, could legitimately be called sows wallowing in the mire,
or dogs returning to vomit, even though it was not literally true. This
mode of persuasion was to be accompanied by gestures and movements,
used, as Valerius Maximus had suggested, ‘to assail men in three ways:
penetrating their ears, caressing their eyes and seizing their minds’.210 He
noted that, in the absence of Aristotle’s Poetics, much could be gleaned
from Augustine – a former teacher of rhetoric – especially his De doctrina
christiana. He pointed out that the letters of Paul contained useful exam-
ples of rhetoric on every level from the simple to the grand. A further
example was provided by the prophetic books of the Bible: ‘where the
sense of God is confined within extraordinary enigmas’; within a careful,
muted language, so that ‘the most rarefied truths of God, incomprehen-
sible to our minds, become accessible to us’.211 Words could thus
207
‘ita flectitur, si credit quod hortaris, am[e]t quod polliceris, timeat quod minaris, oderit quod
arguis, quod commendas amplectatur’: MP, v.2, p. 252.
208
MP, v.3, pp. 255–6.
209
‘semper dominabitur a grandiloquio, quia hoc est principale in huiusmodi persuasione et quia
grandia sunt persuasa’: MP, v.3, p. 256.
210
‘Felicitas alterius vite comparatur omnibus decoris et prosperis; et infelicitas, eius contraria, omni
adversitati et miserie comparatur’; ‘tribus modis homines agreditur: aures eorum penetrando,
oculos demulcendo, animos invadendo’: MP, v.3, pp. 257–8.
211
‘ubi sensus Dei miris enigmatibus concluditur’; ‘altissime veritates divine, nostris mentibus inpro-
porcionales, fiunt . . . nobis conformes’: MP, v.4, p. 261.
262
Beyond Christendom
mediate and veil the vast ideas of God so that they could be understood
in human terms.
In the end, however, Bacon’s description of how the classical and
patristic theory would be put into practice was in complete conformity
with the way of the friars; of the admirable Berthold of Regensburg and of
Francis of Assisi himself.212 When it came to eloquence, ‘in announcing the
sacred truths,’ wrote Bacon, ‘we ought to express ourselves more through
manner and gesture than by words, not sparing tears; and above all, by
example’. He went on to specify that the preacher ought to pray before he
spoke, ‘and, he should – right up to the hour of speaking – reflect on the
Gospel, where it says: “Do not think about how or what you will say! For it
is not you, who speaks, but the spirit of your father, who speaks in you”’.213
Finally, the ‘orator’ needed to take into account the nature of the audience.
In order to influence a variety of hearers he should ‘take an idea and colour
it in different ways, so that it appeals to people who differ in status and
profession, fortune, age, constitution, morals, knowledge, and everything
else that relates to the distinctiveness of the individual’. Bacon was drawing
on Augustine, rather than Franciscan sources, but noted that these things
were known in two ways: through authorities and through ‘those who
have put it into practice’.214 Given that the friars were modelling their
tactics on scriptural accounts of successful preaching, and very probably also
on Augustine’s reflections on them, this harmony is not surprising.
The idea of deliberately employing formal rhetorical skills in preaching
was far from being Bacon’s alone: Guibert of Nogent and Alain of Lille
had suggested it in the previous century, and among Bacon’s contempor-
aries Humbert of Romans, John of Wales, Jean de la Rochelle, William of
Auvergne and others had written about the possibilities. Many people
were influenced to some degree by the corpus of texts on rhetoric and
oratory. Bacon’s discussion was embedded within a familiar and develop-
ing discourse.215 Despite this, in expressly linking pagan rhetorical
212
This is also the conclusion in T. Johnson, ‘Roger Bacon’s Critique of Franciscan Preaching’ in
F. J. Felten, A. Kehnel and S. Weinfurter (eds.), Institution und Charisma (Vienna, 2009), 541–8.
Like Daniel, Johnson places Bacon’s ideas about preaching in opposition to those of Bonaventure,
but unlike Daniel considers them truer to those of the early order.
213
‘in sacris veritatibus anunciandis, magis debemus afectibus et gestibus debitis exprimere quam
sermone, nec non lacrimis . . . et maxime exemplis’; ‘et cogitet ad horam diccionis illius Evangelii:
“Nolite cogitare quomodo aut quid loquamini! Non enim vos estis, qui loquimini, set Spiritus
Patris vestri, qui loquitur in vobis”’: MP, v.4, p. 262.
214
‘oportet oratorem eandem sentenciam aliter et aliter colorare, et hoc secundum diversitatem eorum
in dignitatibus et officiis, in fortuna, in etate, in complexione, in moribus, in scienciis et in omnibus,
que ad diversitates pertinet personales’; ‘qui operati sunt eam in effectu’: MP, v.4, pp. 262–3.
215
C. F. Briggs, ‘Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the Later Medieval Universities: A Reassessment’, Rhetorica,
25.3 (2007), 243–68; J. O. Ward, ‘Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts at the Universities of Paris and
Oxford in the Middle Ages: A Summary of the Evidence’, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi, 54
263
methodology to preaching, Bacon felt he had to address the old concern
with the capacity of rhetoric to make plausible, persuasive, but untrue
arguments.216 The savage papal–imperial conflict two decades earlier, in
which fury and self-justification spewed forth in a series of public letters,
had given a taste of how the ars dictaminis might be exploited.217 Yet
classical rhetoric, like all the other potentially dangerous applications of
scientia that Bacon defended, could do no harm if it were used by good
men to bring about human salvation. Bacon quoted Augustine’s defence
of the use of rhetoric to render preaching effective; a defence quite similar
to many of Bacon’s own arguments in justification of occult arts. It would
be undesirable to allow those who wanted to lead others into error to be
skilful, compelling speakers, while Christians remained incomprehensible
or unpersuasive.218 Furthermore, it was God’s will that the Latin West had
renewed access to the wisdom of the pagans and infideles at precisely the
moment it was most needed to draw their descendants into the Church.
It was this understanding that animated Bacon’s programme for reform,
connecting the priorities of the vita apostolica with the intellectual agendas
of the universities. His hope that it might not be long before ‘the full
number of gentiles may come in’ was based on his conviction that
eschatological events were already in motion.219 If the task was hard, at
least it was in accord with the direction of history. The efforts of the
Church would be sustained and carried by the strong currents that were
drawing humanity irrevocably towards the completion of all things. It
seemed to him – as to many others – to be no coincidence that the sapientia
of ancient Greece, Judaism and Islam had become available to the Church
at exactly the time when it was needed to persuade the world of the truths
of Christianity. ‘The power to convert’, he wrote, ‘rests in the hands of the
Latins.’220 It was now a matter of refining and applying numerous
branches of learning within an enhanced understanding of the complex-
ities of cosmos, world and humanity.
(1996), 159–231; P. O. Lewry, ‘Rhetoric at Paris and Oxford in the Mid-Thirteenth Century’,
Rhetorica, 1.1 (1983), 45–63; M. Jennings, ‘Rhetor Redivivus? Cicero in the Artes praedicandi’,
AHDLMA, 56 (1989), 91–122; Morenzoni, ‘Parole’; Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 138, 276–89.
216
R. Copeland, ‘Ancient Sophistic and Medieval Rhetoric’ in C. D. Lanham (ed.), Latin Grammar
and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice (London, 2002), 258–83, pp. 268–77; N. F.
Partner, ‘The New Cornificius: Medieval History and the Artifice of Words’ in E. Breisach (ed.),
Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography (Kalamazoo, 1985), 5–59.
217
L. Shepard, Courting Power: Persuasion and Politics in the Early Thirteenth Century (New York, 1999),
esp. pp. 3–15, 211–14.
218
MP, v.4, p. 259. 219 CSP, p. 402.
220
‘Nam in manibus Latinorum residet potestas convertendi’: OM, iii.13, 3:120.
264
IN MEMORIAM
Roger Bacon has occupied a troubled and troubling place in the history of
thought and in the history of the medieval period. For centuries he has
represented some of the great difficulties faced by humans in deciding how
to approach both knowledge and power. He has been variously portrayed
as a man who transgressed the proper limits of enquiry and a man who was
punished by conservative authorities for daring to challenge the intellec-
tual restrictions of his age. He has symbolised the triumph of reason over
superstition and the modern separation of science and religion. He has also
served his turn in the queasy space reserved for the fallen idols of earlier
generations. None of these images of Bacon were based on attentive
readings of his work and all required a distorted understanding of the
context in which he lived and wrote. In recent decades careful study has
restored much of his thought to a more realistic place in history and shown
how it related to the intellectual heritage upon which it drew. Yet Bacon
himself has remained curiously absent from our understanding of the
wider environment within which he lived, and particularly of his own
order. It is hoped that the present study has suggested how we might
recover a fuller sense of both Bacon and his milieux.
It is difficult, in the final reckoning, either to avoid or to answer the
question of the impact of Bacon’s writings upon the friars, the Church
and the wider society of his day. There is no doubt that he greatly desired
to improve the world around him. At the same time, the programmatic
elements of his writing frequently took up and amplified the ideas of
others, including those of the popes themselves. One of the arguments of
this study has been that Bacon’s criticisms of his society and ideas about
its reform were more generic than they were original, both in tone and
content. Where he was more influential, I think, was in his provocative
analysis of the potential utility and possible dangers of a range of unusual
or illicit branches of learning. In one form or another, it is this quality in
his thought that has held the interest of scholars. Even before his death
265
In memoriam
his influence was becoming visible in numerous individual works and in
a broad range of disciplines. By 1300 copies were being made of many of
his treatises, including those written for Clement IV. His treatise on
perspectiva was widely disseminated, partly through the work of others.1
In 1296 his ideas on calendar reform appeared in Guillaume de St
Cloud’s Kalendarium and the contemporary Franciscan astronomer
Bernard de Verdun drew on Bacon’s Communia naturalium and, at
times, directly lifted passages.2 Pope Boniface VIII seems to have been
fascinated by his ideas on the prolonging of life.3 Pierre Dubois expressed
admiration for his writings, citing him by name in several works, includ-
ing the De Recuperatione Terrae Sanctae (c. 1306), and borrowed arguments
from the Opus maius.4 Substantial elements of the Opus maius appeared
without acknowledgement in the work of the physician Arnold of
Villanova (d. 1311).5 The French Franciscan John of Rupescissa was
influenced by his alchemical writings in the construction of a Joachite
‘apocalyptic alchemy’.6 Others would develop his ideas on astrology.7
The Dominican theologian John of Paris, and possibly even Dante, used
his moral philosophy.8 In the new century, manuscripts of Bacon’s
writings were kept in the Franciscan library at Oxford and were in
use.9 A part of his Greek grammar was held in the library of St
Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury.10 He had become, like Grosseteste,
the man he had most admired, an authority on mathematics, optics,
astrology, astronomy, calendar reform and medicine.11 Bartholomew of
1
K. H. Tachau, ‘Et maxime visus, cuius species venit ad stellas et ad quem species stellarum veniunt:
Perspectiva and Astrologia in Late Medieval Thought’, Micrologus, 5 (1997) 201–24.
2
OT(Duhem), pp. 64–9.
3
Boniface’s bull Detestande feritatis appears to have been influenced by Bacon’s ideas in its ban on the
embalming or division of corpses. See E. Brown, ‘Authority, the Family and the Dead in Late
Medieval France’, French Historical Studies, 16.4 (1990), 803–22; Paravicini Bagliani, ‘Storia’; F.
Santi, ‘Il cadaver e Bonifacio VIII, tra Stefano Tempier e Avicenna, interno ad un saggio di
Elizabeth Brown’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 28.2 (1987), 861–73; Walker Bynum, Resurrection,
pp. 323–5.
4
Pierre Dubois, De Recuperatione, pp. 65, 68.
5
A. G. Little, Roger Bacon: Annual Lecture on a Master Mind (London, 1929), p. 1.
6
DeVun, Prophecy, esp. pp. 80–9, 134–6; Nimmo, Reform, pp. 276–9.
7
L. Smoller, ‘The Alfonsine Tables and the End of the World: Astrology and Apocalyptic
Calculation in the Later Middle Ages’ in Ferreiro (ed.), Devil, 211–39.
8
Hackett, ‘Practical Wisdom’, pp. 105–9.
9
A. G. Little, Franciscan Papers: Lists and Documents (Manchester, 1943), p. 70; M. B. Parkes, ‘The
Provision of Books’ in J. I. Catto and R. Evans (eds.), Late Medieval Oxford (Oxford, 1992), 407–83,
pp. 437–8.
10
M. R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), pp. lxxxv–lxxxvii.
11
D. Waley Singer, ‘Alchemical Writings Attributed to Roger Bacon’, Speculum, 7.1 (1932), 80–6;
J. D. North, ‘Natural Philosophy in Late Medieval Oxford’ and ‘Astronomy and Mathematics’,
both in Catto and Evans (eds.), Late Medieval Oxford, 65–102 and 103–74 respectively, pp. 96–7,
115, 132–4; F. M. Getz, ‘The Faculty of Medicine before 1500’ in Catto and Evans (eds.), Late
266
In memoriam
Pisa, with the official approval of the friars, described him as the ‘the
greatest scholar in every field’.12 In due course, his ideas, embedded in
Pierre d’Ailly’s Imago mundi and De legibus et sectis, would shape the
geographical and eschatological understanding of Christopher
Columbus, inadvertently taking Europeans to the the Americas.13
Medieval Oxford, 373–405, pp. 395, 398, 403–4; J. R. Clark, ‘Roger Bacon and the Composition of
Marsilio Ficino’s De vita longa (De vita, book II)’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49
(1986), 230–3.
12
Bartholomew of Pisa, De Conformitate, i, 338.
13
P. M. Watts, ‘Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus’s
Voyage of Discovery’, AHR, 90.1 (1985), 73–102.
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Zambelli, P., The Speculum Astronomiae and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology and Science in
Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries (Dordrecht, 1992)
Zinn, G. A., ‘Hugh of St Victor and the Ark of Noah: A New Look’, Church History,
40 (1971), 261–72
Zips, M., ‘Franziskanische Didaxe und Geschichtsschreibung im späteren Mittelalter:
Einige Überlegungen zum Geschichtsdenken der Minoriten im 13. und 14.
Jahrhundert’ in C. Tuczay et al. (eds.), Ir sult sprechen willekomen: Grenzenlose
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839–57
Zottl, C. M., ‘“Quae voces audio?” Some Questions Regarding the Exploration of
Medieval English Childhoods’, Concilium medii aevi, 9 (2006), 1–21
299
INDEX
Abuˉ Ma’shar, 110, 173, 175, 176, 216, 219, 259 Augustine, ix, 89, 98, 99, 100, 118, 124, 125, 143,
Adam of Bremen, 239 146, 151, 158, 175, 201, 261, 262, 263, 264
Adelard of Bath, 46, 98 Averroës, 98, 187, 261
Adso of Montier-en-Der, 202, 208 Avicenna, 32, 66, 98, 110, 122, 140, 187, 206,
Alain of Lille, 263 259, 262
Albertus Magnus, 161, 185–188,
205, 251 Bacon, Nicholas, 32
Albigensian Crusades, 64 Bacon, Robert, 33
alchemy, 2, 3, 48, 50, 72, 118–119, 204, 250 Bacon, Roger
Alessio, Franco, 9 afterlife, 82–83, 265–267
Alexander IV, pope, 58, 130 and his superiors, 62, 70–71, 72
Alexander the Great, 48, 69, 176, 200, 204, 224, and Parisian condemnations (1277), 80
232, 248–250, 252 and Pope Clement IV, 63–72
Alexander of Hales, 37, 184–185, 186 anger, 90
Alfarabi (al-Faˉ raˉ bıˉ), 124, 231, 259, 261 apocalypticism, 173–178, 196–198
Alfonsi, Petrus, 246 appearance, 85–86
Alfraganus (al-Farghaˉ nıˉ), 216 Arabic, knowledge of, 47
Alphonse of Poitiers, 64, 67, 77 as a friar, 15–16, 59–62, 126–163
Ambrose, saint, 216, 221 character and experience, 86–94
Anaxagorus, 216 collaborators, 50, 60, 69–70
Anglicus, Bartholomew, 61 Communia naturalium, 79
Anselm of Havelberg, 246 Compendium studii philosophiae, 75–78, 95,
Anthony, saint, 144, 146 179, 187
Anthony of Padua, 147 Compendium studii theologiae, 11, 18, 81–82,
Antichrist, 1, 27, 40, 41, 43, 51, 58, 74, 77, 78, 190
112, 113, 115, 120, 122, 150, 152, 167, 169, condemnation (putative), 3, 15–26, 80
170, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178, 181, 190, 195, criticism of the Church, 74, 75–77, 180–182,
196, 198, 199–205, 207–208, 217, 224, 229, 234–236
230, 242, 257 criticism of contemporaries, 45–47, 75–77,
Apuleius, 137 97–98, 104, 178
Aquinas, Thomas, 81, 133, 187, 205 criticism of laity, 77
Aristotle, 2, 22, 36, 37, 38, 45, 48, 98, 110, 115, De multiplicatione specierum, ix, 11, 72, 105
124, 139, 166, 178, 186, 187, 201, 204, 216, De speculis comburentibus, 72
231, 252, 256, 258, 261, 262 death, 82
Aristotle, Pseudo-, 69, 118, 248–250 decision to enter Franciscan order, 52–53,
Arnold of Villanova, 266 126–127
astrology, 2, 3, 48, 61, 108–113, 227–232, 251, education, 36
255, 257 experimentation, 87–88
astronomy, 61, 108–113, 204, 225, 227–232 family, 32–33, 63, 64, 71, 94
300
Index
friends, 71, 72, 82, 93–94 Clement IV, pope, 1, 3, 5, 18, 25, 32, 45, 47, 59,
Greek, knowledge of, 47 63–65, 74, 78, 85, 94, 160, 196, 202, 205,
Hebrew, knowledge of, 35, 47, 253 216, 217, 241, 266
in older historiography, 3–9 condemnations, Parisian 1277, 22, 79–80
in recent historiography, 9–15, 210 Crowley, Theodore, 8–9
last years, 81–82 Cyprian, 98
on Crusades, 103, 203, 204, 210, 237–242
on the Eucharist, 123–124, 136–137, 180, Daniel, E. R., 243
241, 260 De leone viridi, 19, 25
on Francis of Assisi, 171–172 Docking, Thomas, 61
on the mendicant orders, 178–198, 207 Dominic of Osma (de Guzman), 189
on mystical illumination, 153–159 Dominican order, 35, 40, 47, 58, 101, 167–168,
on preaching, 103, 190–193, 234–235, 241, 189, 224
260–264 Donnio di Pietro da Traù, 24–25
on prolonging life, 117–118, 250–251 Dubois, Pierre, 240, 266
on sectae, 229–232, 256–260
on secular–mendicant quarrel, 195 Easton, Stewart, 8
on sin and temptation, 131–141 Edmund of Abingdon, 33
on species, 105–106, 137–139 Edward I, king of England, 77, 81
Opus maius, 11, 32, 72, 74, 82, 84–85, 94–125, Elias of Cortona, 20, 55
179, 194, 255, 260 Euclid, 106, 108
Opus minus, 32, 72, 75, 84, 95, 184 Eudes of Châteauroux, 44, 74
Opus tertium, 32, 70, 72, 75, 84, 93, 95, 160
period of private study, 45–50 Foulques, Gui. See Clement IV, pope
Perspectiva, 81, 113–115, 266 Francis of Assisi, 14, 20, 24, 54–56, 73, 90, 125,
Secretum secretorum (own edition), 79, 249 127, 133, 134, 141, 150, 157, 170, 180, 183,
Summulae dialectices, 11, 82 233, 241, 243–244, 263
teaching career, 36–38, 60–61 on learning, 145–148
Bacon, Thomas, 32 Franciscan order, 35, 40, 47, 81, 101, 263
Bartholomew of Pisa, 23–24, 267 and apocalypticism, 169–171, 172–173
Bede, 202, 216 and learning, 56–57, 116, 144–151
Bernard de Verdun, 266 and Parisian condemnations (1277), 80–81
Bernard of Clairvaux, 143, 144 attitudes to Bacon, 13, 18, 20–25, 72–73, 79,
Berthold of Regensburg, 192, 263 81, 266–267
Blanche of Castile, 43 Bacon’s critique of, 178–198
Boethius, 216, 231 conflict with secular masters, 57–59, 75,
Bonaventure, x, 9, 28, 56, 57, 58, 62, 72, 75, 89, 167–168
133, 149, 150, 151, 154, 158, 163, 170, 171, entrance to, 129–132
183, 184, 185, 190, 191, 193, 197, 198, historiography, 13–15, 28
243, 246 history, 53–56
Bonecor, William, 63, 68, 94 missionary work, 233–234, 243–247
Boniface VIII, pope, 20, 266 Frederick II, emperor, 30, 41, 43, 77, 167, 172,
201, 235
Campanus of Novara, 49, 88
Cassiodorus, 135, 216 Gaufredi, Raymond, 19–20
Charles of Anjou, 77 Gellius, Aulus, 98
Chronica XXIV generalium ordinis minorum, 16, 17, Genghis Khan, 225
20–23, 24, 25 geography, 111–112, 213–227, 236–237
Chrysostom, John, 98 Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, 23,
Church, councils of 58, 170
Lateran IV, 30, 42, 53, 191, 235 Giotto di Bondone, 73, 159
Lyons I, 41 Glaber, Rodulfus, 198
Lyons II, 78 Gratian, 246
Vatican II, 14 Gregory IX, pope, 20, 170, 198, 234
Cicero, 69, 94, 98, 124, 139, 261 Gregory X, pope, 75, 78, 240
301
Index
Grosseteste, Robert, 9, 25, 32, 33, 35, 41, 44, 48, Lombard, Peter, 192
49, 51, 61, 75, 76, 99, 101, 105, 115, 116, Louis IX, king of France, 38, 41, 42–43, 58, 61,
125, 126, 135, 148, 169, 172, 184, 206, 62, 64, 78, 94, 103, 198, 215, 218, 222, 235,
232, 245 238, 255, 256
Guibert of Nogent, 263 Lucan, 216
Guibert of Tournai, 61
Guillaume de St Cloud, 266 Macrobius, 216
magic, 2, 3, 49, 51, 109, 112, 205, 225
Hali, 110 magicians, 49
Haymo of Faversham, 184, 236 Maimonides, 176
Hegesippus, 216 Marsh, Adam, 9, 33, 35, 41, 50, 61, 89, 94, 99,
Helmold of Bosau, 239 101, 104, 105, 126, 135, 148, 151, 162, 170,
Henry III, king of England, 31–32, 62, 94 172, 181, 189, 190, 198, 199, 245
Henry of Ghent, 81 Mary, Virgin, 135–136, 177
Henry of Livonia, 239 mathematics, 3, 104–113, 137–138, 200
Hermann Alemannus, 93 Matthew of Aquasparta, 72
Honorius III, pope, 39, 234, 245 medicine, 48, 112, 228
Hospitallers, 238 Messehalac, 110
Hostiensis, 248 Milleius, 108
Hugh of Digne, 149, 169, 181, 199, 233, 244 Möngke, qaghan, 62, 253, 254
Hugh of St Victor, 98, 125, 129, 232 Mongols, 41, 43, 62, 78, 103, 112, 115, 123, 173,
Huguccio of Pisa, 216 198, 200, 203, 210, 222–226, 230, 253–256
Humbert of Romans, 175, 189, 191, 236, 240, 263 moral philosophy, 121–125, 252, 256–260
music, 107
Innocent III, pope, 30–31, 39, 42, 54, 74, 89, Muslims, 198, 203
125, 173
Innocent IV, pope, 41, 42, 43, 58, 169, 170, 181, natural philosophy, 4
215, 235, 247 Nequam, Alexander, 201
Isabelle of France, 42 Nicholas III, pope, 21
Isidore of Seville, 98, 216 Nicholas IV, pope, 5
Ister, Aethicus, 216, 222, 224
Olivi, Peter John, 81
Jacques de Vitry, 139, 189 optics, 3, 61
Jean de la Rochelle, 148 Origen, 216, 220, 221
Jerome of Ascoli, 21, 22 Orosius, 216
Jerome, saint, 98, 151, 216, 219, 221, 222 Ovid, 33, 81, 230
Joachim of Fiore, 55, 167, 170, 197, 199, 208, Ovid, Pseudo-, De vetula, 175
234, 240, 243 Oxford, 34–36, 49, 61, 79, 94
John, student of Bacon, 52, 73, 93, 206
John I, king of England, 31 Palaeologus, Michael VIII, 65
John XXI, pope, 80 Paris, 2, 35–36, 38–40, 49, 57, 61, 75, 79, 98,
John of Garland, 37 184, 253
John of Paris, 266 Paris, Matthew, 42
John of Parma, 58, 60, 171, 175, 181, 199 Paris Bible, 193–194
John of Plano Carpini, 44, 215, 216, 256 Pastoureaux, 43–44, 94, 203
John of Rupescissa, 266 Paul, apostle, 142, 262
John of Salisbury, 125 Pecham, John, 61, 73, 75, 122, 141, 189, 283
John of Wales, 61, 123, 141, 263 perspectiva, 49, 73, 159
Jordan of Saxony, 189 Peter of Ardene, 94
Josephus, 216 Peter of Limoges, 81
Peter the Chanter, 190
Kilwardby, Robert, 80 Peter the Venerable, 247
Petrus Peregrinus (of Maricourt), 50–51, 93, 116
languages, 48, 100–104, 234–236 Philip III, king of France, 77
Liber exemplorum, 18, 79, 94 Pierre d’Ailly, 267
302
Index
Plato, 94, 98, 137 Tempier, Stephen, 22, 80
Pliny, 37, 216, 218, 219 Templars, 238
prophecy Tertullian, 145
‘angelic pope’, 66, 77 Teutonic knights, 238–239, 242
Aquila, 199 Thales, 216
Merlin, 199 Theodosius, 108
Seston, 199 Thomas of Celano, ix, 20, 56, 133, 134, 148, 154,
Sextus. See Seston 162, 244
Sibylline, 175, 199 Thomas of Eccleston, 54, 148,
Ptolemy of Alexandria, 110, 216, 229, 251 184, 189
Thomas of York, 61
Qur’an, 230, 253, 259 Thorndike, Lynn, 6–7
Raymond of Laon, 68, 69 Urban IV, pope, 44, 63

rhetoric, art of, 124, 260–264
Richard of St Victor, 98, 155 Wallensis, Thomas, 50
Robert the Monk, 233 Walter of Châtillon, 181
Rufus, Adam, 245 William de la Mare, 73, 81
Rufus, Richard, 18, 32 William of Auvergne, 37, 99, 205, 263
William of Conches, 46
Salimbene de Adam, 149, 160, 169, 172, 199, 201 William of Moerbeke, 73
Sallust, 98, 216, 218 William of Nottingham, 55
Satan, 4, 108, 132, 136, 174, 181, 194, 201, 202 William of Rubruck, 28, 50, 62, 93,
scientia experimentalis, 3, 50, 74, 115–120, 167, 214, 216, 222–226, 247, 253–256,
201, 204, 225, 251–252, 253, 255 258, 259
Scot, Michael, 26 William of Saint-Amour, 58, 150
Secretum secretorum, x, 48–49, 69, 79, 86, 112, 118, William of Sherwood, 161
119, 204, 207, 248–250 William of Tripoli, 240
Seneca, 33, 61, 81, 90, 98, 122, 124, 140, 216, 259 Witelo, 73
Solinus, 216
species, 111, 114, 132, 133 Xenophon, 140
303

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ROGER BACON AND THE DEFENCE

amanda power is a lecturer in medieval history at the University of

A list of titles in the series can be found at:

© Amanda Power 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 2013

Printed and Bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

isbn 978-0-521-88522-5 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

Acknowledgements page viii

Select bibliography 268

Adm Francis of Assisi, ‘Admonitiones’ in Opuscula, 57–82

roger bacon in history

the condemnation of roger bacon: a ‘black legend’?

the pursuit of wisdom

the franciscan order

from parchment to flesh

from flesh to parchment

the causes of error

A complete consideration of wisdom consists of two things: first, grasping what is

the necessity of languages

learning from experience

FROM THE WORLD TO GOD

renouncing the world

the franciscans on the plain of jericho

One of the testimonies sent by Francis’ early companions in response to

ascending the mount of olives

Attempts at geometrically precise drawings of the scene at the tabernacle

in the valley of jehoshaphat

THE CRISIS OF CHRISTENDOM

So far, Bacon’s spiritual and intellectual development among the

living in the last days

bacon’s historical understanding

the mendicant orders in history

Some of Bacon’s sharpest criticisms echoed papal letters of previous

It was generally accepted that this purging of the Church would be so

the defence of christendom

But who were these ‘sanctified souls’, capable of channelling such

imagining the world

the influence of the heavens

the current state of the world

preparing the ground for conversion: scientia

His additions may seem disingenuous, a manipulation of the meaning

ad receptionem divinarum veritatum excitare. Quoniam si in vilissimis creaturis reperiuntur

Raymond of Laon, 68, 69 Urban IV, pope, 44, 63

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