by Will Durant
He was not impressed by his contemporaries in philosophy; not one of them, he wrote to Clement IV, could in ten years write such a book as the Opus maius; their tomes seemed to Bacon a mass of voluminous superfluity and “ineffable falsity”;129 and the whole structure of their thought rested upon a Bible and an Aristotle mistranslated and misunderstood.130 He ridiculed Thomas’ long discussion of the habits, powers, intelligence, and movements of the angels.131
Such an exaggerated indictment of European life, morals, and thought in a brilliant century must have left Bacon alone against the world. Nevertheless there is no evidence that his Order or the Church persecuted him, or interfered with his freedom of thought or utterance, before 1277—i.e., six years after the issuance of the above Jeremiad. But in that year John of Vercelli, head of the Dominicans, and Jerome of Ascoli, head of the Franciscans, conferred to allay certain quarrels that had arisen between the two orders. They agreed that the friars of each order should abstain from criticizing the other, and that “any friar who was found by word or deed to have offended a friar of the other order should receive from his provincial such punishment as ought to satisfy the offended brother.”132 Shortly thereafter Jerome, according to the fourteenth-century Franciscan Chronicle of the XXIV Generals of the Order, “acting on the advice of many friars, condemned and reprobated the teaching of Friar Roger Bacon, master of sacred theology, as containing some suspected novelties, on account of which the same Roger was condemned to prison.”133 We have no further knowledge of the matter. Whether the “novelties” were heresies, or reflected a suspicion that he dabbled in magic, or covered up a decision to silence a critic offensive to Dominicans and Franciscans alike, we cannot say. Nor do we know how severe were the conditions of Bacon’s imprisonment, nor how long it lasted. We are told that in 1292 certain prisoners condemned in 1277 were freed. Presumably Bacon was released then or before, for in 1292 he published a Compendium studii theologiae. Thereafter we have only an entry in an old chronicle: “The noble doctor Roger Bacon was buried at the Grey Friars” (the Franciscan church) “in Oxford in the year 1292.”134
He had little influence on his time. He was remembered chiefly as a man of many marvels, a magician and conjurer; it was as such that he was presented in a play by Robert Greene 300 years after his death. It is hard to say how much Francis Bacon (1561–1626) owed to him; we can only note that the second Bacon, like the first, rejected Aristotelian logic and Scholastic method, questioned authority, custom, and other “idols” of traditional thought, praised science, listed its expected inventions, charted its program, stressed its practical utility, and sought financial aid for scientific research. Slowly, from that sixteenth century, Roger Bacon’s fame grew, until he became a legend—the supposed inventor of gunpowder, the heroic freethinker, the lifelong victim of religious persecution, the great initiator of modern thought. Today the pendulum returns. Historians point out that he had only a confused idea of experiment; that he did little experimenting himself; that in theology he was more orthodox than the pope; that his pages were peppered with superstitions, magic, misquotations, false charges, and legends taken for history.
It is true. It is also true that though he made few experiments he helped to state their principle and to prepare their coming; and that his protestations of orthodoxy may have been the diplomacy of a man seeking papal support for suspected sciences. His errors were the infection of his time or the haste of a spirit too eager to take all knowledge for its province; his self-praise was the balm of genius ignored; his denunciations the wrath of a frustrated Titan helplessly witnessing the submergence of his noblest dreams in an ocean of ignorance. His attack on authority in philosophy and science opened the way to wider and freer thought; his emphasis on the mathematical basis and goal of science was half a millennium ahead of his age; his warning against subordinating morality to science is a lesson for tomorrow. With all its faults and sins, his Opus maius deserves its name as a work greater than any other in all the literature of its amazing century.
VIII. THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS
Intermediate between science and philosophy were the reckless polymaths who sought to give order and unity to the expanding knowledge of their period, to bring science and art, industry and government, philosophy and religion, literature and history into an orderly whole that might provide a base for wisdom. The thirteenth century excelled in encyclopedias, and in summae that were all-encompassing syntheses. The more modest encyclopedists limited themselves to summarizing natural science. Alexander Neckam, Abbot of Cirencester (c. 1200), and Thomas of Cantimpré, a French Dominican (c. 1244), wrote popular surveys of science under the title of The Nature of Things; and Bartholomew of England, a Franciscan, sent forth a chatty volume On the Properties of Things (c. 1240). About 1266 Brunetto Latini, a Florentine notary exiled for his Guelf politics, and living for some years in France, wrote in the langue d’oïl Li livres dou tresor (The Treasure Books), a brief encyclopedia of science, morals, history, and government. It proved so permanently popular that Napoleon thought of having a revised edition published by the state, half a century after the world-shaking Grande Encyclopédie of Diderot. All these works of the thirteenth century mingled theology with science, and superstition with observation; they breathed the air of their time; and we should be chagrined if we could foresee how our own omniscience will be viewed seven centuries hence.
The most famous encyclopedia of the Christian Middle Ages was the Speculum maius of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1200-c. 1264). He joined the Dominican Order, became tutor to Louis IX and his sons, was given charge of the King’s library, and undertook, with several aides, the task of reducing to digestible form the knowledge that encompassed him. He called his encyclopedia Imago mundi, Image of the World, presenting the universe as a mirror that reflected the divine intelligence and plan. It was a gigantic compilation, equal to forty sizable modern tomes. Vincent, with copyists and shears, completed three parts—Speculum naturale, Speculum doctrinale, Speculum historiale; the heirs of the task added, about 1310, a Speculum morale, largely “cribbed” from Thomas’ Summa. Vincent himself was a modest and gentle soul. “I do not know even a single science,” he said; he disclaimed all originality, and merely proposed to gather excerpts from 450 authors, Greek, Latin, or Arabic. He transmitted Pliny’s errors faithfully, accepted all the marvels of astrology, and filled his pages with the occult qualities of plants and stones. Nevertheless the wonder and beauty of nature shine out now and then through his paste, and he himself feels them as no mere bookworm could:
I confess, sinner as I am, with mind befouled in flesh, that I am moved with spiritual sweetness toward the Creator and Ruler of this world, and honor Him with greater veneration, when I behold the magnitude and beauty… of His creation. For the mind, lifting itself from the dunghill of its affections, and rising, as it is able, into the light of speculation, sees as from a height the greatness of the universe containing in itself infinite places filled with the diverse orders of creatures.135
The outburst of scientific activity in the thirteenth century rivals the magnitude of its philosophies, and the variety and splendor of a literature ranging from the troubadours to Dante. Like the great summae and The Divine Comedy, the science of this age suffered from too great certainty, from a failure to examine its assumptions, and from an indiscriminate mingling of knowledge with faith. But the little bark of science, riding an occult sea, made substantial progress even in an age of faith. In Adelard, Grosseteste, Albert, Arnold of Villanova, William of Saliceto, Henri de Mondeville, Lanfranchi, Bacon, Peter the Pilgrim, and Peter of Spain, fresh observation and timid experiment began to break down the authority of Aristotle, Pliny, and Galen; a zest for exploration and enterprise filled the sails of the adventurers; and already at the beginning of the wonderful century Alexander Neckam expressed the new devotion well: “Science is acquired,” he wrote, “at great expense, by frequent vigils, by great expenditure of time, by sedulous diligence of labor, by vehement application
of mind.”136
But at the end of Alexander’s book the medieval mood spoke again, at its best, with timeless tenderness:
Perchance, O book, you will survive this Alexander, and worms will eat me before the bookworm gnaws you…. You are the mirror of my soul, the interpreter of my meditations… the true witness of my conscience, the sweet comforter of my grief…. To you as faithful depositary I have confided my heart’s secrets;… in you I read myself. You will come into the hands of some pious reader who will deign to pray for me. Then indeed, little book, you will profit your master; then you will recompense your Alexander by a most grateful interchange. I do not begrudge my labor. There will come the devotion of a pious reader who will now let you repose in his lap, now move you to his breast, sometimes place you as a sweet pillow beneath his head; sometimes, gently closing you, he will fervently pray for me to Lord Jesus Christ, Who with Father and Holy Spirit lives and reigns God through infinite cycles of ages. Amen.137
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The Age of Romance
1100–1300
I. THE LATIN REVIVAL
EVERY age is an age of romance, for men cannot live by bread alone, and imagination is the staff of life. Perhaps the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Europe were slightly more romantic than most periods. Besides inheriting all the mystic creatures of Europe’s faery lore, they accepted the Christian epic in all the beauty and terror of its vision, they made an art and religion of love and war, they saw the Crusades, they imported a thousand tales and wonders from the East. In any case they wrote the longest romances known to history.
The growth of wealth and leisure and laic literacy, the rise of towns and the middle class, the development of universities, the exaltation of woman in religion and chivalry—all furthered the literary flowering. As schools multiplied, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, Sallust, Lucan, Seneca, Statius, Juvenal, Quintilian, Suetonius, Apuleius, Sidonius, even the ribald Martial and Petronius, brightened with their art and exotic world many a pedagogic or monastic retreat, perhaps, here and there, some palace bower. From Jerome to Alcuin to Héloïse and Hildebert Christian souls stole minutes from their Hours to chant the Aeneid’s music silently. The University of Orléans particularly cherished the classics of pagan Rome, and a horrified puritan complained that it was the old gods, not Christ or Mary, that were worshiped there. The twelfth century was almost “the Age of Ovid”; he dethroned then the Virgil whom Alcuin had made the poet laureate of Charlemagne’s court, and monks and ladies and “wandering scholars” alike read with delight the Metamorphoses, the Heroides, and the Art of Love. We can forgive many a benedictine carouse to the monks who preserved these damned souls so lovingly, and taught them so devotedly to the reluctant, then grateful, young.
From such classic studies a medieval Latin arose whose diversity and interest are among the most pleasant surprises of literary exploration. St. Bernard, who thought so poorly of intellectual accomplishments, wrote letters of loving tenderness, vituperative eloquence, and masterly Latin. The sermons of Peter Damian, Bernard, Abélard, and Berthold of Regensburg kept Latin a language of living power.
The monastic chroniclers wrote terrible Latin, but they made no claim to offer esthetic thrills. They recorded first of all the growth and history of their own abbeys—the elections, buildings, and deaths of abbots, the miracles and quarrels of the monks; they added notes on the eclipses, comets, droughts, floods, famines, plagues, and portents of their time; and some of them expanded to include national, even international, events. Few scrutinized their sources critically, or inquired into causes; most of them were carelessly inaccurate, and added a cipher or two to bring dead statistics to life; all dealt in miracles, and showed an amiable credulity. So the French chroniclers assumed that France had been settled by noble Trojans, and that Charlemagne had conquered Spain and captured Jerusalem. The Gesta Francorum (c. 1100) attempted a relatively honest account of the First Crusade, but the Gesta Romanorum (c. 1280) provided frankly fictional history for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and a thousand romancers. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100–54) made his Historia Britonum a kind of national mythology, in which poets found the legends of King Lear and Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Tristram, Perceval, and the Holy Grail. Still living literature, however, are the gossipy and guileless chronicles of Jocelyn of Bury St. Edmunds (c. 1200) and Fra Salimbene of Parma (c. 1280).
About 1208 Saxo Lange, posthumously named Saxo Grammaticus, dedicated to Archbishop Absalon of Lund his Gesta Danorum or Deeds of the Danes, a bit bombastic, incredibly credulous,1 but a vivid narrative nevertheless, with more continuity than in most contemporary chronicles of the West. In Book III we learn of Amleth, Prince of Jutland, whose uncle killed the king and married the queen. Amleth, says Saxo, “chose to feign dullness and an utter lack of wits. This cunning course ensured his safety.” The courtiers of the fratricide king tested Amleth by putting a pretty woman in his way; he accepted her embraces, but won her love and fidelity. They tried him with cunning questions, but “he mingled craft and candor in such wise that there was nothing to betoken the truth.” From such bones Shakespeare made a man.
Five Latin historians in these centuries rose from chronicles to history, even when keeping the chronicle form. William of Malmesbury (c. 1090–1143) arranged the matter of his Gesta pontificum and Gesta regum Anglorum to give a connected and lively story, trustworthy and fair, of British prelates and kings. Ordericus Vitalis (c. 1075–1143), born in Shrewsbury, was sent as an oblate at the age of ten to the monastery of St. Evroul in Normandy; there he lived the remainder of his sixty-eight years, never seeing his parents again. Eighteen of these years he spent on the five volumes of his Historia ecclesiastica, only stopping, we are told, on the coldest winter days, when his fingers were too numb to write. It is remarkable that a mind so limited in space should have spoken so well of varied affairs, secular as well as ecclesiastical, with asides on the history of letters and manners and every-day life. Bishop Otto of Freising (c. 1114–58), in De duabus civitatibus (On the Two Cities), narrated the history of religion and the secular world from Adam to 1146, and began a proud biography of his nephew Frederick Barbarossa, but died while his hero was in mid-career. William of Tyre (c. 1130–90), a Frenchman born in Palestine, became chancellor to Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, and then Archbishop of Tyre; learned French, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and some Hebrew; and wrote in good Latin our most reliable source for the history of the earlier Crusades—Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum (History of Events Overseas). He sought natural explanations for all events; and his fairness in depicting the characters of Nur-ud-din and Saladin had much to do with the favorable opinion that Christian Europe formed of those infidel gentlemen. Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259) was a monk of St. Albans. As historiographer to his abbey, and later to King Henry III, he composed his lively Chronica maiora, covering the major events of European history between 1235 and 1259. He wrote with clarity, accuracy, and unexpected partialities; he condemned the “avarice that has alienated the people from the pope,” and favored Frederick II against the papacy. He crowded his pages with miracles, and told the story of the Wandering Jew (anno 1228), but he frankly recorded the skepticism with which Londoners viewed the transference of some drops of Christ’s blood to Westminster Abbey (1247). He drew for his book several maps of England, the best of the period, and may himself have made the drawings that illustrate his work. We admire his industry and learning; but his sketch of Mohammed (anno 1236) is an astonishing revelation of how ignorant an educated Christian could be of Islamic history.
The greatest historians of this age were two Frenchmen writing in their own language, and sharing with the troubadours and trouvères the honor of making French a literary tongue. Geoffroy de Villehardouin (c. 1150- c. 1218) was a noble and a warrior, of little formal education; but precisely because he knew not the tricks of rhetoric taught in the schools, he dictated his Conquête de Constantinople (1207) in a French whose simple directness and matter-of-fact prec
ision made his book a classic of historiography. Not that he was impartial; he played too intimate a role in the Fourth Crusade to see that picturesque treachery with an objective eye; but he was there, and saw and felt events with an immediacy that gave his book a living quality half immune to time. Almost a century later Jean Sire de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, after serving Louis IX on crusade and in France, wrote, when he was eighty-five, his Histoire de St. Louis (1309). We are grateful to him for describing, with artless sincerity, the human beings of history, and for lingering on illuminating customs and anecdotes; through him we feel the tang of the time as not even in Villehardouin. We are with him when he leaves his castle after pawning nearly all his possessions to go on crusade; he did not dare look back, he says, lest his heart should melt at sight of the wife and children whom he might never see again. He had not the subtle and crafty mind of Villehardouin, but he had common sense, and saw the clay in his saint. When Louis wished him to go a second time on crusade he refused, foreseeing the hopelessness of the enterprise. And when the pious King asked him, “Which would you choose—to be a leper or to have committed a mortal sin?”