Volume 2 / Book 5 — II. His Criticism of and Part in Medieval Learning (continued 2)

Recent editions of Bacon’s works.

Next came solid progress in additions to the catalogue of Roger’s works and fragments by recent discoveries in the manuscripts, and in new or first editions of a number of his previously known writings. In 1897 J. H. Bridges’ fuller, handier, and more correctly arranged two volume edition of the Opus Maius replaced Jebb’s now extremely rare edition. Unfortunately, while supplied with a helpful introduction, analytical table of contents, and footnotes, this new version was so full of misreadings of the manuscripts and other mistakes in the text due to an imperfect knowledge of Latin, that in 1900 a third and supplementary volume of corrections was added to it. In 1897 Cardinal (then Father) Gasquet discovered and published a new fragment, which he regarded as an introduction to the Opus Maius, but which seems to me evidently the first part of the Opus Minus, as Mr. Little has already suggested.[2274] Passages in this fragment serve to render even more untenable the story of Roger’s persecution before 1267. In 1902 Nolan and Hirsch edited Bacon’s Greek Grammar. Then in 1909 Professor Duhem gave to the world a newly discovered fragment of the Opus Tertium; while in 1911 the British Society of Franciscan Studies printed the Compendium Studii Theologiae, edited by Canon (now Dean) Hastings Rashdall, and in 1912 more of the Opus Tertium, edited by Mr. A. G. Little. Meanwhile Robert Steele, who in 1905 had edited a fragment of Bacon’s Metaphysics, began in 1912 to produce the Communia Naturalium in sections. Other scholars had announced new or first editions of other treatises, mathematical, medical or alchemistic, as in preparation, and the discovery of a complete copy of the Metaphysics in the Vatican Library had just been announced when the world war broke out and temporarily stayed their publication.[2275] Recently, however, Mr. Steele has published another volume containing Bacon’s introduction to and version of The Secret of Secrets, in the preface of which he says: “Medieval students will be glad to learn that the publication of the whole of Bacon’s work now seems assured.”

Continued over-estimate of Bacon.

As Bacon’s works thus became more generally known and as standards of historical criticism grew more strict, not only the facts of his life, but his doctrines, point of view, and personal equation were more carefully examined and analyzed, and previous exaggerated estimates of him were questioned or toned down, although still repeated in some quarters. Indeed, the very writer who rejects some one legend may hold fast to the old view of Bacon in other respects. Especially hard to down has been the notion that Roger Bacon stood almost alone in the middle ages in his advocacy of natural science. Such was still the impression given by otherwise excellent recent estimates of Bacon, such as those in the Catholic Encyclopedia and in Henry Osborn Taylor’s The Medieval Mind,[2276] and such was still the frame of mind in which preparations were made at more than one great university to celebrate in 1914 the seventh centennial of his birth—preparations which resulted at Oxford in the publication of an important volume of commemoration essays by fourteen scholars from various lands and fields of learning, five of whom were editors of Bacon’s writings, while others had previously published books or articles concerning him, and still others were authors of general histories of the department of learning to which they were now to estimate Bacon’s contributions or relation.

Beginnings of adverse criticism.

Already, however, before the appearance of this volume Roger Bacon’s pre-eminence and superiority to his times had been questioned from more than one quarter. Father Mandonnet in his work on Siger de Brabant and Latin Averroism affirmed that Bacon’s importance had been over-estimated in many ways. While Charles had held that, if Bacon’s scientific worth had been exaggerated, his value as a school-man had been lost sight of, Mandonnet declared that as a philosopher and theologian he was behind rather than in the forefront of his age.[2277] Rashdall had asserted in 1911 that “Bacon was more the child of his age than he imagined himself to be.”[2278] W. H. V. Reade in the English Historical Review for October, 1912,[2279] hoped “that it is not an article of faith with the Society of Franciscan Studies to accept all of Roger Bacon’s statements. As regards the state of knowledge among his contemporaries, his assertions are often of no greater value than the similar assertions of his distinguished namesake in a later age.” The next year Mr. Reade spoke in the same periodical of “the usual Baconian atmosphere, in which science and superstition are happily or unhappily compounded.”[2280] In May, 1914, in my paper on “Roger Bacon and Experimental Method in the Middle Ages,”[2281] I discussed what his “experimental science” really amounted to, and showed that it was representative of the science of his time rather than in revolt against it.

The Commemoration Essays.

When the Oxford Roger Bacon Essays appeared, many of them were marked by a sane and critical attitude, were restrained and scientific in tone, and did not indulge in glowing but unsubstantiated eulogies of the noted friar. Professor David Eugene Smith gave warning that “one is liable to be led away by enthusiasm, when writing upon the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of any great leader, to read into his works what is not there, and to ascribe to him abilities which he never possessed.”[2282] But this tendency both he and most of his fellow essayists successfully resisted, and the main achievement of the volume was to point out Roger’s indebtedness to others for some of the ideas upon which his fame has rested and to note his mistakes and superstitions, rather than to bring to light anything new to his credit.[2283] It became evident that a careful examination of those treatises by Bacon which had been recently edited or were in preparation for publication, and of those which have recently been brought to light in manuscript form or are still difficult of access in old editions, was unlikely to add much to his stock of ideas as found in the now well-known Opus Maius, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium.

APPENDIX II

ROGER BACON AND GUNPOWDER

In his paper “Roger Bacon and Gunpowder” contributed to the Roger Bacon Commemoration Essays, Colonel Hime tries to prove Roger Bacon the inventor of gunpowder by the method employed to prove Francis Bacon the author of Shakespeare’s plays—a cipher. Since other contributors to the same volume refer favorably to this effort (Mr. A. G. Little, p. 395, calls it an “ingenious explanation” and Mr. Patterson Muir, p. 301, says that “Colonel Hime establishes a large probability” in its favor) it may be well to note some points against it quite apart from the merits of the cipher itself.

In the first place, the cipher is based upon chapters of the Epistola de secretis operibus naturae et de nullitate magiae not found in the early manuscript of that work and considered doubtful by Charles in his work on Roger Bacon. Indeed, the opening phrases of two chapters “Transactis annis Arabum sexcentis et duobus,” and “Annis Arabum 630 transactis” suggest their source.

Secondly, Roger Bacon openly alludes to gunpowder in 1267 in his Opus Tertium as already in common use in children’s toy explosives. Therefore Colonel Hime has to date the De secretis in 1248, and to hold that Bacon was at that time “driven to employ cryptic methods by fear of the Inquisition” (p. 334), but that by 1267 “Circumstances had totally changed in the lapse of years; the composition of gunpowder ... had been divulged, and the first use made of the deadly mixture was for the amusement of children” (p. 321). This transition from fear of the inquisition to child’s play might seem in itself a sufficient reductio ad absurdum.

But is there any good reason for dating the De secretis in 1248? Much of it sounds like a brief popular compilation from Bacon’s three works of 1266-7 concocted by some one else later; compare, for instance, the first paragraph of the sixth chapter of the De secretis with Duhem, Un fragment inédit de l’Opus Tertium, 153-4, and Little, Part of the Opus Tertium, 50-51. Charles considered the last five chapters to be of dubious authenticity, and they are not found in the oldest manuscript of the thirteenth century. The dedication of the De secretis to William, bishop of Paris, who died in 1249, occurs first in the late edition of 1618 and has not been found by Little in any manuscript.

Then the inquisition bug-a-boo is negligible. Has any one ever shown that the inquisition punished a practical invention? It was not for having invented the telescope that Galileo was persecuted. Moreover, Galileo’s was an exceptional case, and it can not be shown that in the thirteenth century the church persecuted men of science. Rather, popes and prelates were their patrons. Finally the inquisition seems to have been set up in England on only one occasion during the middle ages.

But even if we admit that Bacon wrote the De secretis as we have it in 1248 and was at that time afraid of the Inquisition, the question remains: why in 1267-8, when mentioning the explosive in those works in which he made such desperate efforts to secure the pope as his patron, and boasted repeatedly of his own superiority to his contemporaries, did he not claim the credit of the invention which he had set forth in cipher twenty years before? The simple answer is: it was not his invention.

One instance must be added to show how Colonel Hime misinterprets the text of the De secretis in his eagerness to smell powder everywhere. He writes (p. 324): “Now, towards the end of Chap. X., Bacon speaks without disguise of charcoal under the name of the wood from which it is made, and mentions the two trees, hazel and willow, which give the best. He significantly adds that when charcoal is added to proper proportions of certain other substances, something noteworthy happens. Since, then, charcoal is one of the subjects of these two chapters, it becomes all the more probable that saltpeter forms another.” In a note Hime adds the Latin of the passage in question: Si vero partes virgulti coryli aut salicis multarum justa rerum serie apte ordinaveris, unionem naturalem servabunt: et hoc non tradas oblivioni, quia valet ad multa.

Let us note first that these last words do not mean, “something noteworthy happens,” but “don’t forget this, because it’s valuable.” Thus the true wording does not in the least suggest an explosion, as Colonel Hime’s translation does. Rather it suggests if anything the phraseology of mystical and magical works generally, like the closing words of Thebit ben Corat’s treatise on Images, Intellige quod exposui tibi, et si queris ordinem invenies effectum ne dubites. (Bodleian MS 463, fol. 77v, Explicit.) Secondly, the words partes virgulti coryli aut salicis probably do not denote charcoal but twigs or rods of hazel or willow, as they do in Bacon’s account of the experiment performed by magicians with a split hazel rod. It occurs both in the Opus Maius (Bridges, II, 219) and Opus Tertium (Little, 49-50; Duhem, 153); I quote the latter. Unde magici accipiunt virgas coruli et salicum, et dividunt eas secundum longitudinem, et faciunt eas distare secundum quantitatem palmae, et addunt carmina sua, et coniungunt partes divise; sed non propter carmina, sed ex naturali proprietate. (Wherefore magicians take rods of hazel and willow, and divide them lengthwise, and hold them the breadth of a palm apart, and add their charms, and the divided parts come together; but not on account of the charms, but from their very natures.) Moreover, we have already heard this matter of the split hazel rod discussed by William of Auvergne, and noted that it was repeated by Albertus Magnus and John of St. Amand, a medieval writer about 1261, as well as by Bacon.

Thirdly, it is probably precisely this hazel-rod experiment to which the writer of the passage quoted by Hime refers. Multarum justa rerum serie ordinaveris seems a hurried equivalent for the more specific directions in the passages in the Opus Maius and Opus Tertium, and this bears out what I have already suggested, that the De secretis may be in part at least a brief popular compilation from Bacon’s other works. Finally, the phrase unionem naturalem servabunt applies better to the bending together in the middle of two halves of a split hazel rod held apart at the ends than it does to a mixture of saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur.

And now what becomes of Colonel Hime’s assertion, “Since therefore charcoal is one of the subjects of these two chapters, it becomes all the more probable that saltpeter forms another?” We may alter it to read thus: since charcoal is not a subject of either of these chapters, it becomes all the more improbable that a method of refining saltpeter is disclosed in them in cipher.