Other medical and alchemistic tracts by Bacon were issued together in 1603,[2262] and some portions of his chief work, the Opus Maius, and other similar fragments dealing with mathematics and optics were published in 1614.[2263] But the Opus Maius itself remained unprinted until 1733, when Jebb issued his edition of the work upon which Bacon’s fame has since largely rested. This edition,[2264] although to-day become quite rare, was perhaps just late enough not to share the neglect which with the advance of modern science befell the numerous earlier editions of medieval physicians, alchemists, astrologers, and natural scientists. On the other hand it was perhaps just early enough to introduce Roger and his criticisms of the learning of his contemporaries to an age whose historical interests were largely dominated by classicism. And when interest in and study of the middle ages developed in the course of the nineteenth century, for a time it had the effect of only increasing the exaggerated emphasis laid upon Roger Bacon.
General misestimate of Bacon and of medieval science.
As a result it came to be the fashion in works tracing the history of this or that department of learning from the times of the ancient Greeks or Egyptians to our own, in gliding rapidly and at a lofty height over the generally unexplored medieval region, and airily dropping a few bombs concerning the blighting effect of the church upon freedom of thought and scientific investigation or anent the inanities of scholasticism, to exclaim at the marvelous apparition of a mind like Roger Bacon’s in such an age and to hail him as a herald of a later and better civilization. There was the more excuse for doing this, since Jebb’s version of the Opus Maius had terminated the text with the sixth part on “Experimental Science.”[2265] This theme thus appeared to be the climax of the work, and the impression was given that Roger Bacon was primarily a natural scientist and that he regarded experimental method as the supreme thing in the study of nature. Consequently he came to be regarded by many as the first rebel against scholasticism and the first prophet of modern science.
Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon.
The fact that his name was Bacon also contributed to Roger’s celebrity, as Francis Bacon was already a favorite with historians of science and thought, and it now appeared that he had borrowed some of his ideas from, or had at least been anteceded in them by, the thirteenth century friar. Both had criticized scholastic method and urged the great practical utility possible from applied science. Akin to the idols of Francis were Roger’s four causes of human error. The program of endowed scientific research—based upon an essentially medieval classification of science and list of anticipated inventions—in which Francis tried to interest the society of his time in his New Atlantis[2266] has a general resemblance to the attempt of Roger to enlist the support of the pope in the cause of science in his Opus Maius; while the “Workes of Nature, Works of Art” of the New Atlantis, which made that isle almost seem “a Land of Magicians,”[2267] are rather suggestive of the treatise, “Of the Secret Works of Art and Nature and the Nullity of Magic,” by Roger Bacon to whom indeed Francis seems to allude in the New Atlantis as “Your Monke that was the Inuentour of Ordnance, and of Gunpowder.”[2268] Roger was by some indeed not only regarded as superior to Francis Bacon in priority, but in having emphasized the importance in scientific investigation of mathematical method whose value Francis had failed to appreciate.
Legend of his martyrdom for science.
The next step in the development of the Baconian legend was to supply Roger with a biography suited to his supposed position as a modern experimental and mathematical scientist in the midst of an age of religious bigotry and superstition, of gloomy monks and arid theologians. Surely, especially in view of his later literary and popular renown as a magician, he must have been persecuted and a martyr to science. Abbé Feret has shown how through the nineteenth century successive historians kept adding to the legend of Friar Bacon’s persecution by the Franciscan Order without giving any references to the sources for the details which they elaborated from their own imaginations. [2269]
Works of Brewer and Charles.
The sources, however, became more accessible with the editing in 1859 in the Rolls Series by Brewer of a number of Bacon’s minor treatises hitherto unpublished. Brewer, however, was able from the manuscripts at his disposal, to present only an incomplete text of the Opus Minus, Opus Tertium, and Compendium Studii Philosophiae. These served nevertheless to give a new stimulus to the interest in and the study of Bacon, especially since two years later appeared Charles’ book on Roger Bacon where were included further extracts from his unpublished writings. Unfortunately Charles wrote without knowledge of Brewer’s labors,[2270] and it must be added that several writers on Bacon since have failed to keep abreast with the latest research in the field.[2271] Charles also was guilty, as Abbé Feret has shown, of swelling the story of Bacon’s imprisonments, and in other matters he jumped to conclusions unwarranted by the sources or indulged in undiluted imagination.
Minor studies of the later nineteenth century.