Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/142

 ROGER

112

ROGER

Some years before, while still at Oxford, he had made the acquaintance of Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulques, whom Urban IV had sent to England to settle the disputes between Henr>' III and the barons; others believe that the cardinal met Roger at Paris, in 1257 or 125S (see ''Archiv. Francisc. Histor.", IV, 442). After a conference about some current abuses, espe- cially about ecclesiastical studies, the cardinal asked Roger to present his ideas in writing. Roger delayed in doing this; when the cardinal became Clement IV and reiterated his desire. Bacon excused himself because the prohibition of his superiors stood in the way. Then the pope in a letter from Viterbo (22 June, 1266) commanded him to send his work immedi- ately, notwithstanding the prohibition of superiors or any' general constitution whatsoever, but to keep the commission a secret (see letter published by Martene- Durand, "Thesaurus novus anecdotorum", II, Paris, 1717, 35S, Clement IV, epp. n. 317 a; Wadding, "An- nales", ad an. 1266, n. 14, II, 294; IV, 265; Sbaralea, "BullariumFranciscanum", III, 89 n. 8f, 22 June, 1266). We may suppose that the pope, as Bacon says, from the first had wished the matter kept secret; otherwise we can hardly understand why Bacon did not get ]ier- mission of his superiors; for the prohibition of Nar- bonne was not absolute; it only forbade him to pub- lish works outside the order "unless they were examined thoroughly by the minister general or by the provincial together with his definitors in the provincial chapter". The removal of the prohibi- tive constitution did not at once remove all ob- stacles; the secrecy of the matter rather produced new embarrassments, as Bacon frankly declares. The first impediment was the contrary will of his superiors: "as Your Hohness", he writes to the pope, "did not write to them to excuse me, and I could not make known to them Your secret, because You had commanded me to keep the matter a secret, they did not let me alone but charged me with other labours; but it was impossible for me to obey because of Your commandment". Another difficulty was the lack of money necessary to obtain parchment and to pay copyists. As the superiors knew nothing of his commission, Bacon had to devise means to obtain money. Accordingly he ingenuously reminded the pope of this oversight, "As a monk", he says, "I for myself have no money and cannot have; therefore I cannot borrow, not having wherewith to return; my parents who before were rich, now in the troubles of war have run into poverty; others, who were able refused to spend money ; so deeply embarrassed, I urged my friends and poor people to expend all they had, to sell and to pawn their goods, and I could not help promising them to write to You and induce Your Holiness to fully reimburse the sum spent by them (60 pounds)" ("OpusTertium", III, p. 16).

Finally, Bacon was able to execute the pope's desire; in thr- beginning of 1267 he sent by his pupil John of Paris (Jy^ndon?) the "Opus Majus", where he puts tf»gether in general linfts all his leading idea.s and propfwals; the same friend was instructed to pr(!.sent to the pope a burning-mirror and several drawings of Baw-in appertaining to physics, and to give all ex- planatiorLS renuired by His Holiness. The same year (12^37) he finished his " Opus Minus ", a recapitula- tion of the main thoughts of the "Opus Majus", to faeilitaU; the pope's reading or to submit to him an epitome of the first work if it should be lost. With the sajnc object, and because in the first two works some idea.s wf-rf V»ut hastily treated, he was induced to cx)mpose a third work, the "Opus Tertium"; in this, eentU) the jK»p<! bffore his death (1268), he treats in a still more fxteriKiv*- manner the wholr- material he had spoken of in his preceding works. Unfortunately his fnend Clement IV died too mon, without having been able to put into pra^;tice the counsels given by Bacon. About the rest of Roger's life we are not well

informed. The " Chronica XXIV Generahum Ordinis Minorum" says that "the Minister General Jerome of .Vscoli [afterwards Pope Nicholas IV] on the advice of many brethren condemned and rejected the doc- trine of the English brother Roger Bacon, Doctor of Divinity, which contains many suspect innovations, by reason of which Roger was imprisoned" (see the "Chronica" printed in "Analecta Franciscana", III, 360). The assertion of modern -^Titers, that Bacon was imprisoned fourteen or fifteen years, although he had proved his orthodoxy by the work "De nullitate magiae", has no foundation in ancient sources.

Some authors connect the fact of imprisonment re- lated in the "Chronica" with the proscription of 219 theses by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, which took place 7 March, 1277 (Denifle, "Char- tularium Universitatis Parisiensis", I, 543, 560). Indeed it was not verj^ difficult to find some "sus- pect innovation" in Bacon's writings, especially with regard to the physical sciences. As F. Mandonnet, O.P., proves, one of his incriminated books or pam- phlets was his "Speculum Astronomiaj", written in 1277, hitherto falsely ascribed to Blessed Albert the Great [Ojiera Omnia, ed. Vives, Paris, X, 629 sq.; cf. Mandonnet, "Roger Bacon et le Speculum Astronomiiae (1277)" in "Revue Neo-Scholastique", XVII, Louvain, 1910, 313-35]. Such and other questions are not yet ripe for judgment; but it is to be hoped that the newly awakened interest in Baconian studies and investigations will clear up more and more what is still obscure in Roger's life.

The writings attributed to Bacon by some authors amount to about eighty; many (e. g. "Epistola de magnete", composed by Petrus Peregrinus de Mari- court) are spurious, while many are only treatises republished separately under new titles. Other writings or parts of writings certainly composed by him were put in circulation under the name of other scholars, and his claim to their authorship can be established only from internal reasons of style and doctrine. Other treatises still lie in the dust of the great European libraries, especially of England, France, and Italy. Much remains to be done before we can expect an edition of the "Opera Omnia" of Roger Bacon. For the present the following state- ments may suffice. Before Bacon entered the order he had written many essays and treatises on the sub- jects he taught in the school, for his pupils only, or for friends who had requested him to do so, as he con- fes.ses in his letter of dedication of the "Opus Majus" sent to the pope: "Multa in alio statu conscripseram propter juvenum rudimenta" (the letter was dis- covered in the Vatican Library by Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B., and first published by him in the "English Historical Review", 1897, under the title "An un- published fragment of a work by Roger Bacon", 494 sq.; for the words above cited, see p. 500). To this period seem to belong some commentaries on the writings of Aristotle and jxThaps th(^ little treatise "De mirabili potestate art is el nalune et de nullitate magia;" (Pans, 1.542; O.xford, lt)4; London, 1S,59). The same work was printed under the litlc "Epistola de secretis operihus art is et iiaturu'" (llaniburg, 1608, 1618). After joining tlic order, or more exact Ij' from about the years 1256-57, hi; did not compose works of any great importance and extent, but only occa- sional essays reouested by friends, as he says in the above-mentioned letter, "now about this science, now about another one", and only more Iransitorio (see "Eng. Hist. Rev.", 1897, .500). In the earlier part of his life he probably composed also "De termino pascali" (see letter of Clement IV in "Bull. Franc", III, 89); for it is cited in another work, "Computus naturalium", jissigned to 1263 by Charles ("Roger Bacx)n.Savie,etc.", Paris, 1861, p. 78; cf. pp.334Bqq.).

TTie most important of all his writmgs are the "Opus Majus", the "Opus Minus", and the "Ter-