Roger Bacon

c. 1214–1292

Franciscan teacher
Natural philosopher

From Oxford to Paris.

Notwithstanding his subsequent notoriety, there are very few facts known with certainty about the life of Roger Bacon. Most of the dates listed by scholars are reconstructed from indirect remarks made by Bacon in his Opus tertium or "Third Work" (c. 1267). According to one reading of this work, he was born in 1214 of a well-known family of landed gentry, one member of which was the first Dominican master at Oxford and the teacher of Richard Fishacre. He was (according to this same reading) educated at Oxford from 1228 to 1236, then taught as master in the Arts faculty at Paris from 1237 to 1247. There Bacon became one of the earliest Christian thinkers to lecture and to write commentaries on the newly translated natural philosophy of Aristotle. Owing to the discovery in the nineteenth century of a manuscript at Amiens, scholars now have a copy of these commentaries.

Private Research.

Between the years 1248 and 1256, Bacon, now a Franciscan friar, retreated to what can only be described as private study (possibly at Oxford) and the instruction of others, using his family inheritance to support himself. These studies were to lay the foundation for the positions he passionately held for the rest of his life: the insistence on the practical orientation of theology, the importance of the study of languages (for which he praises the efforts of Robert Grosseteste), the significance of experimental science, and the centrality of the mathematical sciences. He argued for the development of new technologies for the betterment of human life, especially as regards health-care, military technologies, and warfare.

A Flurry of Productivity.

Toward the end of this period Bacon was posted by his superiors back to Paris, where he was resident in the Franciscan house of studies from 1256 until 1280. Bacon soon came to regret his "conversion" to the Franciscan Rule, owing to the unwillingness of his superiors to assign him to the classroom. In desperation, he appealed to Cardinal Guy Le Gros Foulques, petitioning him for funds to begin a major research project. As fate would have it, his would-be patron was elected pope in 1265, taking the name Clement IV. In a letter of June 1266, the new pope ordered Bacon to send him a copy of his grand work. Since the book had not yet been written, Bacon set to work feverishly and in three years produced the Opus maius ("The Greater Work"), the Opus minus ("The Lesser Work"), the Opus tertium ("The Third Work"), the De multiplicatione specierum ("On the Multiplication of Species"), De speculis comburentibus ("On Burning Mirrors"), the Communia naturalium ("Common Account of Natural Things"), and the Secretum secretorum ("The Secret of Secrets").

Back to Oxford.

Tragically, not only did the pope not respond to this deluge of writings (it is unclear whether he even read them), but now Bacon was in trouble with his superior. Bonaventure, the Minister General of the Franciscans, held strong views on such subjects as astrology and alchemy and regarded Bacon as flirting with dangerous ideas. Furthermore, Bacon seems to have had leanings toward more radical elements in the Franciscan Order, those namely that saw the Order as the fulfillment of the prophecies of the apocalyptic visionary, Joachim of Fiore. As a result he was put under a kind of house arrest. In 1280, Bacon was transferred to Oxford again, where he remained until his death in 1292. His old age did not seem to have mellowed him. He persisted in his outspoken manner to criticize theological education and single out those who were—falsely in his view—reputed as wise. Although he attacked by name Thomas Aquinas and Albert his teacher, noting that he was dubbed "The Great" even during his own lifetime, his primary target was a fellow Franciscan.

I knew well the worst and most foolish [author] of these errors, who was called Richard of Cornwall, a very famous one among the foolish multitude. But to those who knew, he was insane and [had been] reproved at Paris for the errors which he had invented [and] promulgated when lecturing solemnly on the Sentences there …

Research continues on this figure who was seemingly out of step with his time, but whose attempt to integrate Muslim, Jewish, and Christian wisdom pointed the way to the future.

sources

Stewart Easton, Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science; A Reconsideration of the Life and Work of Roger Bacon in the Light of His Own Stated Purposes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952).

Jeremiah Hackett, "Roger Bacon," in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Eds. Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (London: Blackwell, 2003): 616–625.

—, "Roger Bacon," in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 115: Medieval Philosophers. Ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, Inc., 1992): 90–102.