Roger Bacon Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Anthony à Wood

Critical Essay by Anthony à Wood

SOURCE: "Life of Roger Bacon (from Wood's Antiquitates Univ. Oxon.)," in Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quœdam hactenus inedita, Vol. I, edited by J. S. Brewer, 1859. Reprint by Kraus Reprint Ltd, 1965, pp. lxxxv-c.

Wood was an historian whose works are primarily concerned with the City and University of Oxford. In the following excerpt from a chapter reprinted from his Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis (1674), he provides a brief overview of Bacon's significance in advancing human knowledge.

Omitting a great number of disputes which occurred this year [A.D. 1292,] between the University and the town, I shall proceed to speak of a philosopher the most celebrated that England had hitherto produced; I refer to Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, of the University of Oxford.…

He composed a great many books on different subjects, on theology, medicine, perspective, geometry, [natural] philosophy, of which he divulged many secrets. He published a...
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