MS. Oxford:—Bodl. Ashmole, 440 (sec. xvi); cf. Digby 71.

Printed at Frankfurt 1614, in Combach’s Specula Mathematica, p. 168.

Speculi Abnukefi compositio secundum Rogerium Bacon. Inc. ‘Quia universorum quos de speculis ad datam distanciam.’

MS. Bodl.: Canonic. Misc. 408, fol. 48.

Cf. Brit. Mus. Cott. Vesp. A ii. f. 140.

Compendium Philosophiae, an encyclopaedic work, which if completed would have formed a kind of revised and enlarged edition of the Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium. In the Communia Naturalium, cap. i. (MS. Bodl. Digby 70) Bacon gives a sketch of his plan. The work was to consist of four volumes, and to treat of six branches of knowledge, viz., vol. i. Grammar and Logic; vol. ii. Mathematics; vol. iii. Physics; vol. iv. Metaphysics and Morals. This Compendium seems to have been known also as Liber sex scientiarum. The latter title is found in the collection printed at Frankfurt in 1603[1351] in MSS. Bodl. Canonic. Misc. No. 334, fol. 49 b; ibid., No. 480, fol. 33; and E Musaeo 155, p. 689. In each of these MSS. the same passage is quoted, as follows:

Dicta fratris Rogerii Bacon in libro sex scienciarum in 3o gradu sapiencie, ubi loquitur de bono corporis et de bono fortune et de bono et honestate morum. (Inc.) In debito regimine corporis et prolongatione vite ad ultimos terminos naturales ... miranda potestas astronomie alkimie et perspective et scienciarum experimentalium. Sciendum igitur est pro bono corporis quod homo fuit immortalis naturaliter ... (Expl.) ut fiant sublimes operaciones et utilissime in hoc mundo, etc.

Charles identifies the Liber sex scientiarum with the Opus Minus; but this passage does not occur in the extant portion of the Opus Minus which deals with the same subject and expresses the same ideas (Opera Ined., p. 370 seq.). It seems probable therefore that this passage is an extract from the section on Alchemy in vol. iii. of the Compendium Philosophiae.

Vol. I. Grammar and Logic. A portion of this has been edited by Brewer, Opera Ined., pp. 393-519, under the title Compendium Studii Philosophiae. It was written in 1271, and contains an introduction on the value of knowledge and the impediments to it, and the beginning of a treatise on grammar.

MS. Cott. Tiberius C. V. (sec. xiv).