Doctor Mirabilis

by James Blish

  ‘Thou should’st take steps against that man, Roger.’

  ‘O, I may at some time, meseemeth. But truly he’s so stupid that I’d have scant use for his good opinion anyhow. In the meantime he is doing no particular harm.’

  ‘There thou’rt mistaken, I avow,’ Bungay said earnestly. ‘Thou hast not been in orders as long as I. He may well be damaging seriously thine hopes for advancement. He stands higher than thou dost, and ne matter how stupid he appeareth to thee, he hath a reputation for wisdom among the vulgar. Let me assure thee, politics among the Franciscans is quite as complex as it is at Westminster – though eke a measure quieter.’

  ‘Hmm.’ This put a somewhat new light on the matter. Roger could hardly afford not to think about his hopes for advancement in the Order, to which were tied his hopes of continuing his work; there was now no question but that the money would not last many more years. ‘What wouldst thou recommend me? The civil law? He doubtless knoweth far more about that than I – most of his ilk seem to think about very little else.’

  ‘I couldn’t advise thee there myself; like thee, I would tend to avoid it. Nay, I was hoping thou might’st think of some way of pulling his teeth – perhaps by depriving his accusations of some of their force.…?’

  ‘Nay, I’ll not do that,’ Roger said firmly. ‘These little shows of experiments are valuable to the students, and on the other side I’ll not alter my teachings to what that ass thinketh the truth, for accommodation’s sake or any other. But thou hast given me another notion.’

  ‘Good. What is it? Or canst thou say?’

  ‘I think so. I am going to show him that in one respect, at the least, what he is saying about me is true and correct.’

  Bungay looked alarmed; but having started the juggernaut rolling, he knew better than to stand in its way.

  Roger much begrudged the time he had to devote to thinking the idea through, but after a while he began to see a certain beauty in it. It emerged, first of all, from Richard’s widely known and constantly reiterated views on the question of the plurality of forms: the same subject over which Roger had disputed with Albertus Magnus; and secondly from Richard’s own peculiar method of disputation. He appeared to think that his position on the matter was substantially that of Albert, but in fact he had grossly oversimplified Albert’s stand, if indeed he had ever understood it at all; the plurality of forms, Richard maintained, was contrary to the teachings of the saints. This was his way with the philosophers he expounded: mostly he simply denounced them, and when he did bother to explain their views, he did so in a form not likely to be recognized by the authors. All this had been true of him in Paris, and he had not changed.

  On the doctrinal question, Richard’s trimming of it to fit into the Procrustean bed of his understanding had led him straight into the theological position that Christ had become a man during the three days between His death and the resurrection. This view was no novelty – nothing new interested Cornwall – and hence failed to cause any real stir at the University, but it was ideal for Roger’s purposes because it was logically absurd. In fact, it was incipiently heretical; a sound logician would need only a motive to transform it from a blunder into a scandal. Albert would never have fallen into such a trap – and Roger, having debated the plurality of forms with Albert to a standstill, did not anticipate that so weak a logician as Cornwall would be a serious adversary.

  He was, in short, readying himself to demonstrate to Cornwall, on Cornwall’s person, that this Roger Bacon was indeed and in fact a dangerous casuist.

  Then Grosseteste died between the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels and the Translatio Edwardi’ Confessoris; and for three days the bells boomed forth their grief from every tower in Oxford, aye, and in England. He was interred in an altar tomb of blue marble, with a border of foliage around the table, which was supported at the corners by four pillars, in the south aisle of the church of Lincoln; and with him his ring and staff. There were reports of miracles and nocturnal wonders, doubly marvellous in a man once but a word away from imprisonment by papal order; and yet one manifested to no less a person than the King, to whom in a vision a voice whispered, Dilexit Dominus Edmundum in odorem benignitatis, et dilexit Dominus Robertum in odorem fidelitatis.

  In the solemnity of this event, which drew together Church and Court, Order and University in a common pageant of mourning, and in the intensity – as always unrealized until now – of his own loss, Roger almost forgot that mannequin figure Richard Rufus of Cornwall; and when he saw the man in the procession at Lincoln, again through an air shivering with the mortuary words of the bells, it was only with shame for the meanness of his own scheming. This was the second death high in University councils within a year, for the regent master, John of Garland, had preceded the Bishop of Lincoln into the shadow. There was time to think, too, of what consequences the removal of Grosseteste’s counsels might have on the King; a matter necessarily of the most significance to Adam Marsh, but Roger had seen quite enough of Henry to bring him to speculating uneasily. The Bishop had been almost the only strong palisade between the English Church and the Crown – as well as between the English Church and the Apostolic Camera; and, moreover, one of the principal buttresses of Simon de Montfort’s party.

  But much though the death of Grosseteste signified to Roger, it was apparently not enough to distract Cornwall for long. The return of the faculty from Lincoln had not been a week old when the campaign was resumed. Bungay did not have to warn Roger a second time, for now he was indeed M a white fury, less in his own behalf than for what he took to be, for reasons obscure even to himself, a disrespect to the dead.

  He promptly set his arrow and let fly. It was ridiculously easy, like shooting a popinjay from three feet away. It was also wondrous noisy: Roger’s very appearance at Cornwall’s lecture set the students to chattering so that the lecturer could scarce be heard. The argument with the master himself went so exactly as Roger had imagined it would that the older man might well have been reading lines from a written-out miracle-play. Some of the students, of course, took his part, and the result was something as much like a small riot as may be.

  Bungay was appalled. ‘The University will send thee down,’ he said shakily. ‘If they do so, I will go too; I provoked thee.’

  ‘There’s naught to fear, Thomas. A few cuffs given and taken in a lecture hall are commonplace. The University never pays the slightest attention.’

  ‘Oh, so r Bungay said doubtfully. ‘Well, thou know’st them far better than I. But whatever they may do, I question that thou hast accomplished anything of value. At the very least, Cornwall will surely retaliate.’

  ‘Certes,’ Roger said. ‘Nothing is surer. Therefore the problem is, how to tempt him to retaliate in some way further disadvantageous to him. There too, meseemeth I have the answer.’

  ‘Roger, it seemeth me that thou shouldst give over. It mathinketh me that I ever tempted thee in the matter. This time it is certain to be still worse – thy methods are so drastic, Roger.’

  Roger smiled, a little grimly. ‘This will simply be the same allegory, played backwards, as it were. Dear friend, I will tell thee, I am going to announce a lecture on magic.’

  ‘O, suicide! Roger, Richard fancieth himself a student of that art, as am I a little, and I credit him. Thou wilt gain nothing of it – and Holy Church forbids it. Well it feared me thou wert setting thyself something foolish.’

  ‘All this is to the good,’ Roger said. ‘Each of these aspects will appear unto Richard – and he will appear unto me. The day will be Wednesday next. Bruit it about, Thomas; bruit it about.’

  The hall was of course more than packed, and there were many there who looked with curiosity at the apparatus on Roger’s table – devices without which, by now, he would have looked near naked to his usual students. These last looked with indifference even at the caprice of a candle burning in the middle of the afternoon, knowing well that something would be done with it in due course.

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sp; Cornwall was there, with his faction of loyal students. Thus far, however, he had said almost nothing, for Roger had carefully left him few opportunities to object. Though Roger had published abroad the title, On the nullity of magic and the usefulness of nature, a paradox designed to start many an amateur metaphysician from his chair, in the main body of his exposition he had steered a middle course: explaining the major assumptions of magic briefly, and without details that a real student of the subject could find in fault; and showing that these were contrary to the teachings of the Church, a proposition to which no one would dare to dissent regardless of what he believed. The Cornwallians were having rather a dull time of it, and so, for that matter, were the students.

  Never mind, affairs would become livelier in a moment; for Roger was about to expound the substance of his dream.

  He said:

  ‘Thus we dismiss speculative alchemy, since we see that metals cannot be transmuted per speciem. Aristotle in the Meteors means that only nature can transmute species. Art cannot secundum speciem, et non negat quod non possit per naturam. In essentia et diferentia specifica non potest transmutare, as Aristotle says in the De metallic.

  ‘But there is another alchemy, operative and practical, which teaches how to make the noble metals and colours and many other things better and more abundantly by art than they are made in nature. And science of this kind is greater than all those preceding because it produces greater utilities – not only wealth and many other things for the public welfare, but the discovery of methods for prolonging human life.’

  Cornwall coughed and subsided. Roger challenged him with a look, and the man bristled. He said:

  ‘Certes a preachment of magic.’

  ‘Not so!’ This was the beginning. ‘Narrabo igitur nunc primo opera artis et naturae miranda, ut postea causas et modum assignem – in which there is nothing magical, ut videatur quod omnis magica potestas sit inferior his operibus et indigna.’

  There was a stir as he paused again, and his students grinned at each other: Roger was about to be outrageous again. Cornwall was smiling too, now crouched smugly beside his mousehole.

  ‘Item,’ Roger said, ‘nam instrumenta navigandi possunt fieri ut naves maximae ferantur uno solo homine regente, majori velocitate quam si plenae essent hominibus.’

  He paused yet again, but expected no objection, and got none; there were seafarers in the room who had talked of such things themselves, or dreamed of them; and surely there was nobody present who did not already know something of the lodestone.

  ‘Item: Currus possunt fieri ut sine animale moveantur cum impetu inestimabili.’

  ‘A wise man,’ Cornwall broke in with a snort, ‘would can such auto-mobile nothing but dreams.

  ‘Except, perhaps, for the scythe-bearing chariots with which the men of old fought? But perhaps you are right, magister Cornwall. I proceed: Item, possunt fieri instrumenta volandi ut homo sedeat in medio – revolving some engine, necessarily, magister Cornwall – aloe artificialiter factae aera verberent modo avis volantis.’

  Cornwall seemed stunned. It was one of Roger’s own students who said incredulously, ‘Flying machines, magister Bacon?’

  ‘Flying machines,’ Roger said. ‘Item, possunt fieri instrumentum, parva magnitudine, ad elevanda et deprimenda pondera paene infinita—’

  ‘O, certes,’ Cornwall said. ‘You could move the world with such a lever.’

  ‘No, it would not be long enough, magister Cornwall, as is plainly written in Archimedes. But nothing could be more useful in emergencies. By a machine three fingers high and wide, and of less size, a man could free himself of all dangers of prison, for instance. And his friends, if he had any.’

  There was some laughter, but it was uneasy. Even Roger’s own students, it seemed, did not entirely welcome the admixture of flyting with true disputation; perhaps they thought he did not need it. He went on: Potest etiam facile fieri instrumentum quo unus traheret ad se mille homines contra eorum voluntatem—’

  ‘I find it’, Cornwall said, ‘rather crowded in this hall already.’

  Another ripple of laughter. Flushing helplessly, Roger ploughed ahead: – and attract other things in like matter; for instance, thunderbolts.’

  Now the laughter was at full roar, and plainly at Roger’s expense. Even his own partisans could see that he had lost his temper.

  ‘I will go on. Possunt etiam instrumenta fieri ambulandi in mari vel fluminibus sine periculo – even to the bottom without danger, even as Alexander the Great explored the secrets of the sea.’

  ‘According to what authority?’

  ‘Ethicus the astronomer, as is well known,’ Roger said with concentrated scorn. Haec autem facto sun! antiquitus et nostris temporibus facta sunt, ut certum est; the same is true of the flying machine, though I have not seen one and know of no man who has—’

  ‘Nor has anyone else.’

  ‘—but I know an expert who has thought out the way to make one.’

  ‘Ah, excellent,’ Cornwall said. ‘Let him then bring home the bacon.’

  The hall skirled with a glee of catcalls. Roger said, through his teeth: ‘Et infinita quasi talia fieri possunt … ut pontes super lumina sine column … et machinations et ingenia inaudita—’

  ‘Belike,’ Cornwall said. ‘I hear nothing myself.’

  ‘Then I need a louder voice, magister Cornwall,’ Roger said harshly. ‘Let me introduce you to a childhood friend of mine, Sir Salis Petre. He has a small voice by usual; but per igneam coruscationem et combustionem ac per sonorem horrorem possunt mira fieri, et in distantia qua volumus ut homo mortalis sibi cavere non posset nec se sustinere.’

  Cornwall laughed, Quomodo?’ he demanded.

  Roger picked up the tight roll of parchment and touched it to the flame of the candle. As soon as it was smouldering well, he threw it to the floor before the table. The nearest students drew back uneasily, but Cornwall only shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Quomodo? Ecce

  The scroll exploded like two dozen thunderclaps, blowing out the candle and filling the hall with pungent grey smoke. With howls of panic, the students broke blindly for the door, striking out first with fists, and then with knives, to be first out. Cornwall, however, was closest and was first out by several rods – most fortunately for him, or they would have trampled him. Down the corridors they poured, cloaks flying, their cries echoing:

  ‘Beware of the magician! Beware! Beware! Beware of the magician! Beware! … Beware …

  Then Roger was alone, except for a few groaning wounded. Blind with triumph in the black powder-reeking air, he clung to the lectern with both hands, and shouted after them all at the top of his voice,

  ‘TRIPSARECOPSEM!’

  No plot in history, it seemed, had ever succeeded so well. From that day forward Oxford was unbearable for Cornwall; in his humiliation, he appealed to Adam Marsh to reverse himself on the matter of the Parisian post. With a sigh – for though he would still have preferred Cornwall to remain at Oxford, he was in truth becoming a little weary of the man – Adam again wrote the provincial minister, and shortly thereafter, Richard Rufus of Cornwall was no more to be seen. Roger and Bungay drank a toast to his departure, and went back to their more serious matters.

  That would be, however, the last favour Adam would be able to do for anyone at Oxford, master or student, for his influence had evaporated. Earlier on, he had appointed Thomas of York as regent master, to fill the vacancy left by the death of John of Garland; and Thomas, wholly against the customs, was a man without a degree from the Faculty of Arts. It was recalled that Adam had done something like this before, in the case of Thomas Docking, but this instance was far more serious. The outcome was a disastrous quarrel with the University.

  Effectively, however, he had left Oxford three years before; to Roger the whole dispute, though it was common gossip, seemed remote and unreal. He was now embarked upon the composition of a Metaphysica, a heavy task to which he had cheerfully allotted himself five ye
ars, allowing for other work to go on at the same time. There was God’s plenty of that, for about the University he was now famous – or, he thought, perhaps infamous would be a better word. Though cries of ‘Beware of the magician!’ still sounded in the halls, they became more and more feeble with the exile of Cornwall, and even while they were at their loudest he had more students than he could comfortably handle. He was required by the Order, however, to try.

  Some of this weight was lifted within a year, fortunately, by a sudden increase in the popularity of theology as a subject; for toward the end of 1254 there arrived at Oxford the first copy of the Introduction to the Eternal Gospel of the Franciscan Gerard of San Borgo. Its reputation had preceded it by months, for in fact the book was creating a furor throughout Christendom – a fact Roger could well understand after reading it himself.

  The Eternal Gospel of the title was the work of one Joachim of Flora, a Calabrian visionary who bad predicted that an Age of the Holy Spirit would begin in 1260, ushered in by a new Order of monks headed by Merlin, and heralded by the dissolution of all disciplinary institutions. It was Gerard’s contention that the Franciscans might become this new Order, provided that they return to the rule of absolute poverty laid down by their founder.

  Roger and Bungay discussed the work through many a night, as did half of Oxford. To Roger, at least, there seemed to be reason and justice in much of Gerard’s contentions.

  ‘Including the prophecies, Roger?’

  ‘They will have to wait upon events, of course. Yet the imminent coming of the Antichrist hath also often been prophesied; it seemeth me only reasonable that some great spiritual leader might arise at the same time to combat him. But thou kenst well that it is not the prophecies that are creating all this dissension, but the doctrine of renunciation of worldly possessions.’

  ‘It hath put weapons into the hands of our enemies, that much is evident,’ Bungay said thoughtfully. ‘William of St. Amour in particular, an implacable man. He holds it as evidence against us from our own mouths.’