Bacon, Roger
BACON, ROGER (c. 1214–c. 1292), philosopher and Franciscan friar. Born in the west of England of a wealthy family, for most of his life Bacon alternated between England and France. His first, if not his only, university education was at Oxford, and soon thereafter he pioneered in lecturing on Aristotle's metaphysics and on natural philosophy at Paris. Several Artistotelian commentaries survive from this period, but Bacon was soon to undergo a profound intellectual reorientation, inspired at least partly by another work that he believed to be by Aristotle, the Secretum secretorum, a long letter of advice on kingship supposedly written to Alexander the Great.
Bacon's intellectual universe was peopled with heroes and villains. Aristotle was a particularly great ancient hero, while among the few contemporaries admitted to the pantheon were Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh. Grosseteste (whom Bacon may not have known personally) had been a lecturer to the Franciscans at Oxford, and Marsh was a Franciscan himself. These men must have been very important in influencing Bacon's somewhat surprising decision to join the Franciscan order, for he was no model of simple humility. Indeed Bacon could be almost as rude about fellow Franciscan intellectuals as about rival Dominicans, such as Albertus Magnus. His relations with his superiors were probably never easy, and it seems certain that he was at least once put under some form of confinement, although the reasons remain obscure. It has been suggested, notably by Stewart C. Easton, that one of the principal reasons for strained relations was his sympathy for the spirituals, the more austere wing of the order, but this view has not been universally accepted.
Both before and after becoming a Franciscan Bacon developed his new approach to philosophy, and in the 1260s his big chance came. His schemes were brought to the attention of Cardinal Guy de Foulques, who in 1265 became Pope Clement IV. Bacon was ordered to produce his writings, but unfortunately there were as yet none fit for dispatch. Bacon, therefore, began to write in a flurry; the results were not only the famous Opus majus but also the Opus minus and Opus tertium, both of which supplemented and summarized the Opus majus. Some if not all of these works reached Rome, but there is no evidence of their having provoked any reaction there, and Clement died in 1268. For the rest of his intellectual life Bacon may not unfairly be described as rewriting the same major work, often with great vehemence at what he saw as the increasing ignorance and corruption of his times. Although he never completed a new grand synthesis, he was still at work in 1292. Tradition places his death in the same year.
A cornerstone of Bacon's mature thought is the postulate that all wisdom is included in the scriptures but is in need of explication by means of canon law and philosophy. Thus, while subordinating philosophy to theology Bacon also accorded it immense importance. Moreover, he did not conceive philosophy narrowly but included in its domain—besides its crowning glory, moral philosophy—the study of languages, mathematics, geography, astrology, optics, and alchemy. His emphasis was often empirical, and this, together with the fact that one part of the Opus majus is devoted to "experimental science," has led many to portray Bacon as a harbinger of modern experimental science. There is some truth in this, but it is a view that can all too easily lead to anachronism. For instance, it must be remembered that Bacon emphasized that experience was accessible through both external senses and interior illumination, and that revelation was necessary even for philosophical knowledge. Indeed, in his view the plenitude of philosophy had first been revealed to the ancient patriarchs and prophets. It was then transmitted to posterity, with an inevitable decline in quality accompanying the process, the decline only occasionally being arrested by special illuminations to such men as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Among other means of reversing the decline, according to Bacon, was the study of languages, which would allow ancient texts to be read in the orignal.
Bacon believed that there were six (although at times he appears to allow seven) principal religions, which were astrologically linked to six of the seven planets. The rise and decline of the religions were also correlated with the heavenly motions, so that, for instance, astrology could indicate that the time of the last religion, that of the antichrist, was near at hand. Christianity was one of the principal religions, but was unique in that philosophy could provide conviction of its truth.
Bacon saw preaching to the unconverted as a bounden, but in fact neglected, duty of Christians, and he strongly disapproved of the Crusades, which, he held, shed Christian blood unnecessarily while actually hindering the conversion of Muslims. But even with effective preaching there would still be those who obstinately resisted conversion and would need to be physically repulsed. Here again philosophy came into play, for Bacon was a firm advocate of what in modern terms would be called the application of technology in warfare. Among his proposals was the use of huge burning mirrors to destroy enemy encampments and the use of "fascination" (psychic influence), a phenomenon Bacon believed could be explained naturalistically. The antichrist would be well armed with such weapons, and so it was imperative that Christendom defend itself in similar fashion.
Bacon could often seem suspiciously close to advocating the use of magic. He was very conscious of this, and made strenuous efforts to distinguish philosophy sharply from magic and its appeals to demons. Nevertheless, although some of his "pure scientific" writings had considerable influence (notably those on optics), it is not surprising that he went down to posterity as part of the magical tradition. By the learned he was cited as a defender of what in the Renaissance was called natural magic, but to the public at large he was himself a full-blooded magician who had no compunction about trafficking with spirits. Later this image was transformed into that of a hero of experimental science born centuries before his time; more recent critical scholarship, in its urge to demythologize, has often unjustly muted the individuality and originality of this intellectually turbulent figure.
Bibliography
The best general introduction to Bacon is Stewart C. Easton's Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (New York, 1952), although Easton perhaps exaggerates Bacon's sympathies for the teachings of Joachim of Fiore. A very useful trilogy for probing the basic structure of Bacon's thought is by Raoul Carton: L'expérience physique chez Roger Bacon, L'expérience mystique de l'illumination intérieure chez Roger Bacon, and La synthèse doctrinale de Roger Bacon (all, Paris, 1924). Roger Bacon: Essays, edited by Andrew G. Little (1914; reprint, New York, 1972), remains of considerable value. A good, up-to-date account of Bacon and his attitude to non-Christians is provided in E. R. Daniel's The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (Lexington, Ky., 1975).
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