[1342] This tradition receives some support from a note appended to the Verbum abbreviatum of Raymund Gaufredi, Sloane MS. 276 (sec. xiv), printed in Sanioris Medicinae ... de arte chymiae, &c., Frankfurt, 1603, p. 285: ‘Et ipse Rogerus propter istud opus ex praecepto dicti Reymundi a fratribus ejusdem ordinis erat captus et imprisonatus. Sed Reymundus exsolvit Rogerum a carcere quia docuit eum istud opus.’ Cf. ibid. p. 265, and Sloane MS. 692, f. 46.
[1343] Namely, Compendium studii thelogiae.
[1344] In Royal MS. 13 C i, fol. 152, is the following note in a hand of the 15th or 16th century: ‘Anno Christi 1292 in festo Sancti Barnabe (June 11) obiit Rogerus Bacon professor theologie et quasi eruditus ut magister in octo scienciis liberalibus ubi alii clerici non posuerunt preter vii sciencie’ (‘scie’ in MS.).
[1345] Hist. Reg. Angl. p. 29.
[1346] John Twyne says that the friars at Oxford fastened all his works with long nails to the shelves of their library and let them rot there. Jebb reasonably calls the accuracy of this statement in question, Op. Majus, p. xi (ed. 1750). Bacon’s influence however on his age was slight: ‘not a doctor of the 13th or 14th century,’ says Charles, p. 42, ‘quotes Bacon; not one combats or approves his opinions.’ In an anonymous treatise, De recuperatione sanctae Terrae, addressed to Edward III, c. 1370, the author recommends the study of mathematics, ‘propter plures earum utilitates, praecipue tactas in libello super utilitatibus hujusmodi confecto per fratrem Rogerum Bacon de ordine Minorum;’ printed in Bongars, Orientalis Hist. Tom. Secund. (1611), p. 339. W. Woodford refers to his ‘curious book,’ De retardatione senectutis, Brown, Fasc. Rerum, Vol. I, p. 197. Some of his contemporaries, such as Bungay, Peckham, William de Mara, seem to have been more generally influenced by him.
[1347] Cf. MS. Sloane 2629, f. 54 b; inc. ‘Moralis philosophia est finis omnium Scientiarum aliarum’; only a few lines.
[1348] Charles, Roger Bacon, p. 62, n. 7: I have not seen this edition and can get no information about it.
[1349] Op. Ined. 60. ‘Patet igitur quod scriptum principale non potui mittere.’
[1350] Charles is somewhat inconsistent; in spite of Bacon’s words, ‘tertia parte hujus operis,’ he refers the two treatises to separate works—the Communia Naturalium to the Opus Tertium, the De multiplicatione (rightly) to the fourth part of the Compendium Philosophiae (pp. 61, 89).
[1351] Sanioris medicinae, p. 7, where a passage on alchemy is quoted.