[2046] Brewer, 1; Bridges I, 1-2, note: Wadding, Annal. Minor, IV, 265; Martene, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, II 358; E. Jordan, Les registres de Clément IV (1265-1268) ... d’après les manuscripts originaux des archives du vatican, Quatrième Fascicule, Paris, 1904, Appendice II, p. 384, No. 1081.
[2047] Brewer, 1: “Opus illud quod te dilecto filio Raymundo de Landuno communicare rogavimus in minori officio constituti.” Opus Tertium, Brewer, 14; Bacon says that Albert and William of Shyrwood could not send the pope what he has written, “infra tantum tempus ... a vestro mandato; et sicut nec ab ultimo, sic nec a primo.” Gasquet, 500: “Sed licet pleno desiderio quod iniunctum est complere pro posse meo sim teste Deo paratissimus, cum quoniam in minori officio constituti postulatis non fuerunt composita que iussistis” and “utrumque mandatum” and “antequam primum vestre dominationis recepi mandatum.” The following sentence (Opus Tertium, Brewer, 13) also seems to refer to the former mandate, despite the “ultimo,” “Non enim quando ultimo scripsistis fuerunt composita quae iussistis, licet hoc credebatis.”
[2048] Little, Essays (1914), 11: “His first project was an elaborate one, including a systematic and scientific treatment of the various branches of knowledge; he worked at this, writing parts of the Communia Naturalium and Communia Mathematicae, for some months (‘till after Epiphany,’ i.e., January 6, 1267), but found it impossible. He then started again on a more modest scale, and wrote in the next twelve months the preliminary treatise known as the Opus Maius, which was supplemented by the Opus Minus, and subsequently, by the Opus Tertium.”
[2049] Brewer, xlv.
[2050] Opus Tertium, Brewer, 14; “Non igitur mirandum si ego dilationem tantam fecerim in hac parte.” Ibid., 16-17: “Multotiens dimisi opus, et multotiens desperavi et neglexi procedere.” Ibid., 17: “Tanta dilatio in hoc negotio ... vestrae clementiae taedium pro spe dilata,” and other passages.
[2051] These excuses are listed in Gasquet, 500, to “antequam primum vestre dominationis recepi mandatum”; and are repeated in part in Opus Tertium, Brewer, 13.
[2052] To this period the difficulties listed in Opus Tertium, Brewer, 15-17 (middle), would seem to apply. In Brewer, 16, and Gasquet, 502, Bacon states that to get money to meet the expenses incident to the composition of his work he had sent to his rich brother in England, but received no response because “exiles and enemies of the king occupied the land of my birth,” while his own family had been exiled as supporters of the crown and ruined financially. All this must have occurred before the arrival of the second papal letter in 1266, for Simon de Montfort had been slain and the barons defeated in 1265.
[2053] Opus Tertium, Brewer, 5: “Et impedimentorum remedia priorum nactus.”
[2054] As Bacon himself states in the Opus Tertium, Brewer, 7: “Primo igitur in opere Secundo.”
[2055] I cannot agree with Gasquet, 497, that it “is obvious from numberless expressions in the work itself” that the Opus Maius was “addressed to the pope directly.” The last chapter of the first book in Bridges’s text is evidently addressed to the pope, but it is identical with a portion of the Opus Minus and evidently does not belong in the Opus Maius and is not found in the two oldest manuscripts. Similarly a passage of some 16 pages in Bridges on calendar reform, which gives the present year as 1267, is practically identical with a chapter of the Opus Tertium and was evidently transferred from that work to the Opus Maius at some later date. When we have excluded these passages the work is surprisingly free, compared to the other two works, from passages suggesting that it is addressed to the pope. The one mention of the “Apostolic See” (Bridges, I, 77; III, 94) is impersonal and does not imply that Foulques was pope, and does not occur in one of the manuscripts. Epithets such as “Your Wisdom” (Bridges, I, 17, 23, 305), “Your Highness” (I, 210; II, 377), “Your Glory” (I, 305; III, 96), “Your Reverence” (I, 376; II, 219), “Your Holiness” (I, 81; III, 101), “Your Beatitude” (I, 2, 72; III, 88) do not occur frequently and are equally applicable to a cardinal, or not found in all the manuscripts, suggesting the possibility of their having been inserted later.