Commonplaces of medieval criticism.
Merely to have assumed a critical point of view in the middle ages may seem a distinction; but Abelard, Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, and Daniel Morley were all critical, back in the twelfth century. Moreover, our estimate of any critic must take into account how valid, how accurate, how original and how consistent his criticisms were and from what motives they proceeded. Some of Bacon’s complaints the reader of medieval literature has often listened to before. What student of philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had not sighed at the invasion of the Roman law into school and church and state? What devotee of astronomy had failed to contrast its human interest and divine relationships with the dry drubbing of the jurists? What learned man had not expressed his preference for the wise and the experts (sapientes) over the vulgus or common herd? The great secrets of learning and the danger of casting pearls before swine were also quite familiar concepts. If Bacon goes a step farther and speaks of a vulgus studentium and even of a vulgus medicorum, he is only refining a medical commonplace or quoting Galen.
Debt of Bacon to earlier writers.
In Bacon’s discussion of the four causes of human error his attack upon undue reliance on authority has often seemed to modern readers most unusual for his age. But all his arguments against authority are drawn from authorities;[2106] and while he seems to have got a whiff of the spirit of rationalism from such classical writers as Seneca and Cicero, he also quotes the Natural Questions of his fellow-countryman, Adelard of Bath, who in the early twelfth century had found the doctrine of the schools of Gaul as little to his liking as was that of Paris to Roger’s taste, and whom we have heard reprove his nephew for blind trust in authorities.[2107] Bacon’s fourth cause of human error, the concealment of ignorance by a false show of learning, might well have been suggested by Daniel Morley’s satire on the bestiales who occupied chairs in the schools of Paris “with grave authority,” and reverently marked their Ulpians with daggers and asterisks, and seemed wise as long as they concealed their ignorance by a statuesque silence, but whom he found “most childish” when they tried to say anything. Or by the same Daniel’s warning not to spurn Arabic clarity for Latin obscurity; and his charge that it was owing to their ignorance and inability to attain definite conclusions that Latin philosophers of his day spun so many elaborate figments and hid “uncertain error under the shadow of ambiguity.”[2108]
Limitations of his criticism.
Bacon’s criticisms have usually been taken to apply to medieval learning as a whole, but a closer examination shows their application to be much more limited. In the first place, he is thinking only of the past “forty years” in making his complaints; in the good old days of Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, William Wolf, and William of Shyrwood things were different, and scholarship flowed smoothly, if not copiously, in the channels marked out by the ancient sages;[2109] nor does Bacon deny that there was a renaissance of natural science and an independent scientific spirit still farther back in the twelfth century.
Secondly, except for his tirades against the Italians and their civil law, Bacon’s criticisms apply to but two countries, France and England, and two universities, Oxford and Paris. Also those few contemporaries whom he praises are either his old Oxford friends or scattered individuals in France. Of the state of learning in Italy, Spain, and Germany he says little and apparently knew little. Amid his sighing for some prince or prelate to play the patron to science, he never mentions Alfonso X of Castile, who was so interested in the “mathematics” and occult science which were so dear to Bacon’s heart;[2110] Roger even still employs the old Toletan astronomical tables of Arzachel instead of the Alfonsine tables issued in 1252, the first year of that monarch’s reign.[2111] His lamentation over the sad neglect of astrology among the “Latins” is not borne out by our investigations of their interest in that subject, and indicates that he was ignorant of the work at the University of Bologna of the astrologer, Guido Bonatti, whose voluminous Latin treatise on that art based on wide reading in both classical and Arabian scholars did not indeed appear until after 1277,[2112] but must have already been in preparation when Bacon wrote, since Guido was born at some time before 1223.[2113] Bacon grieves at the neglect of the science of optic by his age, and says that it has not yet been lectured on at Paris nor elsewhere among the Latins except twice at Oxford;[2114] he does not mention the Pole, Witelo, who traveled in Italy and whose important treatise on the subject was produced at about this time.[2115]
Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus.
While complaining of the ignorance of the natures and properties of animals, plants, and minerals which is shown by contemporary theologians in their explanation of Scriptural passages, Bacon not only slights the encyclopedias which several clergymen like Alexander Neckam, Bartholomew of England, Thomas of Cantimpré and Vincent of Beauvais had compiled; he also says nothing of the school at Cologne of Albertus Magnus, whose reputation was already established by the middle of the century, who personally investigated many animals, especially those of the north, and often rectified the erroneous assertions of classical zoologists, whom the historian of botany has lauded, whose students too were curious to know not only the theoretical botany that passed under the name of Aristotle, but also the particular characteristics of plants, and who in his five books on minerals discusses the alchemy and indulges in the same occult science and astrology which Bacon deemed so important. Yet Albert was a noted theologian and Biblical commentator as well as a student of nature.
In saying that Bacon does not mention Albert’s work in natural science, I of course do not mean to imply that he never mentions Albert. He excuses his delay in answering the pope by declaring that the most noted Christian scholars, such as Brother Albert of the Order of Preachers, and Master William of Shyrwood, could not in ten years produce such a work as he transmits; and he incidentally observes that William is a far abler scholar than Albert.[2116] I am suspicious, however, of the integrity of the passage[2117] where Bacon sneers at the theological teaching of “the boys of the two Orders, such as Albert and Thomas and the others who enter the Orders when twenty years or under.” It seems incongruous for Bacon to speak of his probable senior, Albert, as a boy. Other passages in Bacon’s works which have been taken to apply to Albert, though he is not expressly named, seem to me not to apply to him at all closely; and if meant for him, they show that Bacon was an incompetent and unfair critic. Not only was Albert only for a short time in Paris; he does not seem to have been in sympathy with the conditions there which Bacon attacks. Nor can I see that Bacon is meant in the passage at the close of Albert’s Politics,[2118] where he declares that its doctrines, as in his books on physics, are not his own theories but a faithful reflection of peripatetic opinion; and that he makes this statement for the benefit of lazy persons who occupy their idle hours in searching writings for things to criticize; “Such men killed Socrates, drove Plato from Athens to the Academy, and, plotting even against Aristotle, forced him into exile.” Such a passage seems a commonplace one. Both Adelard of Bath and William of Conches expressed the same fear of setting forth new ideas of their own, and medieval writers not infrequently in their prefaces apprehend with shrinking “the bite of envy” which both their Horace and personal experience had taught would follow fast on publication.