Appendix II. Roger Bacon and Gunpowder.
Our method of considering him.
Contemporary with the three learned Dominicans of whom preceding chapters have treated—Albert, Thomas, and Vincent—was the Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, who in modern times has received so much attention and admiration at the expense of his contemporaries and his age.[2030] Happily in the present volume we are in a better position to estimate him fairly. The best, if not the only way to appreciate him aright is by a detailed study of the writings and doctrines of his predecessors and contemporaries. Roger Bacon has hitherto been studied too much in isolation. He has been regarded as an exceptional individual; his environment has been estimated at his own valuation of it or according to some preconceived idea of his age; and his writings have not been studied in relation to those of his predecessors and contemporaries. Thought of as a precursor of modern science, he has been read to find germs of modern ideas rather than scrutinized with a view to discovering his sources. Yet his constant citing of authorities and the helpful footnotes which Bridges, in his edition of the Opus Maius, gives to explain these allusions to other scientists, point insistently in the latter direction. When one has gone a step further and has read for their own sake the works of men like Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, and Daniel of Morley in the twelfth century, or William of Auvergne, Robert Grosseteste and Albert Magnus in the early and middle thirteenth century, the true position of Roger Bacon in the history of thought grows clearer. One then re-reads his works with a new insight, finds that a different interpretation may be put upon many a passage, and realizes that even in his most boastful moments Roger himself never made such claims to astounding originality as some modern writers have made for him. Conversely, one is impelled to the conclusion that Bacon’s writings, instead of being unpalatable to, neglected by, and far in advance of, his times, give a most valuable picture of medieval thought, summarizing, it is true, its most advanced stages, but also including much that is most characteristic, and even revealing some of its back currents. It is from this standpoint that we shall consider Roger Bacon and endeavor to refute misconceptions that have grown up concerning his life and learning. We shall also, in conformity with our main theme, take particular note of his experimental science, long regarded as the brightest gem in his crown, and of other aspects of his learning which have hitherto not received special or proper treatment, namely, the astrology and magic to which he gives so much space and emphasis and which so seriously affect all his thought, but which probably did not affect his life and the attitude of his age towards him in the way that many have assumed.
I. Life
Birth, family, and early life.
Past estimates of Bacon’s learning have been greatly affected by their holders’ views of his life; but his biography is gradually being shorn of fictions and losing that sensational and exceptional character which gave countenance to the representation of his thought as far in advance of his age. We cannot tell to which of several families of Bacons mentioned in feudal registers and other documents of the times he belonged, and the exact date and place of his birth are uncertain.[2031] But he speaks of England as his native land, and in 1267 looks back upon a past of some forty years of study and twenty years of specialization in his favorite branches of learning.[2032] In another passage he mentions having spent all his spare time for ten years upon the science of perspective.[2033] Also he speaks of one brother as rich, of another as a student, and of his family’s suffering exile for their support of Henry III against the barons.[2034] He implies that up to 1267 he had not been outside France and England,[2035] but he had sent across the seas for material to assist his special investigations and had spent large sums of money.[2036]
The years before 1267.
Before he became a friar he had written text-books for students, and had worked so hard that men wondered that he still lived. When or why he joined the Franciscans we are not informed,[2037] but his doing so is no cause for wonder, for both Orders were rich in learned men, including students of natural science. Bacon tells us that after becoming a friar he was able to study as much as before, but “did not work so much,” probably because he now had less teaching to do. For about ten years before 1267, instead of being imprisoned and ill-treated by his order, as was once believed without foundation, he was, as we now know from his own words discovered in 1897, in poor health and “took no part in the outward affairs of the university.” This abstention caused the report to spread that he was devoting all his time to writing, especially since many were aware that he had long intended to sum up his knowledge in a magnum opus, but he actually “composed nothing except a few chapters, now about one science and now about another, compiled in odd moments at the instance of friends.” At least this is what he told the pope in 1267 when trying to excuse himself for having had no completed work ready to submit to the supreme pontiff.[2038] During these years he seems to have fallen into some obscurity, since in the Opus Tertium he compares his tone in the Opus Minus to that of Cicero, when recalled from exile, in the letter in which he humbled himself and congratulated the Roman senate. So Bacon, describing himself probably with some rhetorical exaggeration as an exile for the past ten years from his former scholastic fame,[2039] recognizes his own littleness and admires the wisdom of the pope, who has deigned to seek works of scholarship “from me, now unheard by anyone and as it were buried in oblivion.”[2040]
Bacon and the mariner’s compass.
R. H. Major’s Prince Henry the Navigator is responsible for the spread of the story that in 1258 Brunetto Latini saw Friar Bacon at the Parliament at Oxford and was shown by him the secret of the magnetic needle, which Roger dared not divulge for fear of being accused of magic. The supposed letter of Brunetto Latini to the poet Guido Cavalcanti, from which these data are drawn, seems to have been a hoax or fanciful production appearing first in 1802 in the Monthly Magazine[2041] among “Extracts from the Portfolio of a Man of Letters,” who is said to have translated them from “the French patois of the Romansch language.” Certainly the mariner’s compass was pretty well known in Bacon’s time, nor are we informed of any case where it involved its possessor in a trial for magic. Bacon says in one passage that if the experiment of the magnet with respect to iron “were not known to the world, it would seem a great miracle.”[2042] In another place he grants that even the common herd of philosophers know of the magnetic needle; he merely criticizes their belief that the needle always turns towards the north star; Roger thinks that it can be made to turn to any other point of the compass if only it has been properly magnetized.[2043] Perhaps the Latini story was suggested by a third passage, where Bacon says, in order to illustrate his statement that philosophers have sometimes resorted to charms and incantations to hide their secrets from the unworthy, “As if, for instance, it were quite unknown that the magnetic needle attracts iron and someone wishing to perform this operation before the people should make characters and utter incantations, so that they might not see that the operation of attraction was entirely natural.”[2044]