NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND - SIXTEEN
PRIESTS IN THE NEW WORLD IN THE 17TH CENTURY CONVERTING NATIVES TO CHRISTIANITY
The Rise of the Clerical Skeptics
Men are ready to believe everything when they believe nothing. They have diviners when they cease to have prophets; witchcraft when they cease to have religious ceremonies; and they open the craven of sorcery when they shut the temples of the Lord.
François-René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768 – 1848), Writer, politician, diplomat, historian, founder of Romanticism in French literature.
MEDIEVAL SKEPTICISM
Overarching surveys of the history of philosophy often leave the impression that philosophical skepticism—roughly, the position that nothing can be known—had many adherents in the Ancient and Hellenistic Periods disappeared completely as a topic of intellectual interest during the Middle Ages, and returned as a viable position in the Renaissance and Early Modern Periods.
As a survey, this is quite understandable, since no thinker from the Middle Ages professed an active allegiance to systematic philosophical skepticism. But a closer examination of Medieval Philosophy shows that despite skepticism's disappearance as an overt philosophical movement, it continued to swirl in the thoughts of many of the best philosophers of the period.
A very few, including most prominently Augustine and Al-Ghazali, claimed to have been systematic skeptics at some points in their pasts. Many others held skeptical views about localized issues such as one's ability to know an efficient cause. And even more discussed and attempted to refute commonplace skeptical arguments in defense of their own, anti-skeptical positions.
Chronologically speaking, skeptical issues were most prominently considered in works from both the leading and tail ends of the Middle Ages. Augustine's 4th and 5th-century attacks against the Academic Skeptics mark the beginning of such discussions and a smattering of treatments of skeptical issues appears periodically throughout the next 800 years.
From the late 13th century onwards, however, skeptical issues began to exert a dominant and wide influence on epistemological discussions, as seen in the works of such important figures as Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Peter Auriol, John Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt.
Though medieval discussions of skepticism are often found buried within larger, formulaic discussions of theological topics, these treatments influenced the academic circles within which they were created and considered. Among Early Modern philosophers, Descartes, in particular, owes a debt to these earlier accounts of skepticism: versions of both his cogito and Evil Demon arguments may be found in the works of medieval philosophers.
A. C. Grayling, 2017, The History of Philosophy (2017)
The visible universe is subject to quantification, and if so, by necessity, if you wish to hear more from me give and take reason because I am not the kind of man to satisfy his hunger on the picture of a steak.
Adelard of Bath (1080 – 1152), English natural philosopher
THE JOURNEY FORWARD
With new learning centers in the intellectual life of the 13th century, the task for Christian authorities was to organize that learning and assess its significance, but most important of all, from the Church’s perspective, to make it socially safe, which meant as to represent no danger to church authority.
Most of the translations of sacred text were considered harmless, albeit superior to anything known before, containing no unpleasant theological or philosophical surprises. Christianity as an institutional religion felt it had the authority to label ideas. Those that were assumed to be contrary to the Church’s interests, as well as theological teachings, were labeled heresy. Ideas supportive of the Church and its mission were considered orthodox.
Still, problems were to arise in subjects and areas of thought considered threatening to the church in terms of theology and cosmology, physics (which was considered natural philosophy), metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology.
ALBERTUS MAGNUS
One of the first to be influenced by the new knowledge was Albertus Magnus (1200 – 1280), a philosopher, bishop, and Doctor of the Church, known as the “Universal Doctor.”
Known as Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, he was a German Dominican friar and Catholic bishop, later canonized as a Catholic saint. He was also known as “Doctor Expertus” with the term Magnus appended to his name late in his life as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages.
In 1245, Albert became master of theology under Gueric of Saint-Quentin, the first German Dominican to achieve that distinction. Following this turn of events, Albert was able to teach theology at the University of Paris as a full-time professor, holding the seat of the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James. During this time Thomas Aquinas began to study under Albertus.
BUST OF MAGNUS ALBERT
Albert's writings were collected in 1899 went to thirty-eight volumes. These displayed his prolific habits and encyclopedic knowledge of topics such as logic, theology, botany, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, alchemy, zoology, phrenology, justice, law, friendship, and love.
He digested, interpreted, and systematized the whole of Aristotle's works, gleaned from the Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, following Church doctrine. Most modern knowledge of Aristotle was preserved and presented by Albert.
His principal theological works are a commentary in three volumes on the Books of Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Magister Sententiarum), and The Summa Theologiae in two volumes. The latter is in substance a more didactic repetition of the former. He was to have a strong influence on his favorite student, Thomas Aquinas.
Albert's activity, however, was more philosophical than theological, the philosophical works occupying the first six and the last of the 21 volumes, generally divided according to the Aristotelian scheme of the sciences, and consisting of interpretations and condensations of Aristotle's relative works.
Albert believed that Aristotle's approach to natural philosophy did not pose any obstacle to the development of a Christian philosophical view of the natural order which would be the precursor to what would be called the study of “science.”
De animalibus (1450-1500, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana)
Albert's knowledge of physical science was considerable and for the age remarkably accurate. His industry in every department was great, and though we find in his system many gaps which are characteristic of scholastic philosophy, his protracted study of Aristotle gave him great power of systematic thought and exposition.
An exception to this general tendency is his Latin treatise "De falconibus" (later inserted in the larger work, De animalibus), in which he displays an impressive knowledge of the differences between the birds of prey and the other kinds of birds, the different kinds of falcons, the way of preparing them for the hunt, and cures for sick and wounded falcons.
Albert was beatified in 1622. He was canonized a saint and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on December 16, 1931, by Pope Pius XI, and designated the Patron Saint of Natural Scientists in 1941. St. Albert's Feast Day is November 15.
WILLIAM OF TYRE
William of Tyre (1130 - 1186) was a medieval prelate, chronicler, and Archbishop of Tyre. He is known as William II to distinguish him from a predecessor, William of Malines.
William of Tyre grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established in 1099 after the First Crusade, and spent twenty years studying liberal arts and canon law of the Church in European universities.
Following William's return to Jerusalem in 1165, King Amalric made him an ambassador to the Byzantine Empire. William became tutor to the king's son, the future King Baldwin IV, whom William discovered to be a leper.
After Amalric's death, William became chancellor and archbishop of Tyre, two of the highest offices in the kingdom. In 1179 William, he led the eastern delegation to the Third Council of Lateran. Having been involved in the dynastic struggle that developed during Baldwin IV's reign, his importance waned when a rival faction gained control of royal affairs. He was passed over for the prestigious distinction of Patriarchate of Jerusalem and died in obscurity in 1186.
Significantly, William wrote an account of the Lateran Council and a history of the Islamic states from the time of Muhammad. Unfortunately, neither work survives. He remains famous today as the author of the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (see map).
William composed his chronicle in excellent Latin for his time, with numerous quotations from classical literature. The chronicle is sometimes given the title Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum ("History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea") or Historia Ierosolimitana ("History of Jerusalem"). It was translated into French soon after his death, and thereafter into numerous other languages.
Because it is the only source for the history of twelfth-century Jerusalem written by a native, historians have often assumed that William's statements could be taken at face value. However, more recent historians have shown that William's involvement in the kingdom's political disputes resulted in detectable biases in his account. Despite this, he is considered the greatest chronicler of the “Holy Crusades,” and one of the best authors of the Middle Ages.
The Crusader States in 1165 (From William of Tyre)
William of Tyre’s Prologue to the Historia:
In the present work, we seem to have fallen into manifold dangers and perplexities. For, as the series of events seemed to require, we have included in this study on which we are now engaged many details about the characters lives, and personal traits of kings, regardless of whether these facts were commendable or open to criticism. Possibly descendants of these monarchs, while perusing this work, may find this treatment difficult to brook and be angry with the chronicler beyond his just deserts. They will regard him as either mendacious or jealous—both of which charges, as God lives, we have endeavored to avoid as we would a pestilence.
WILLIAM OF OCCAM
William of Occam (1287 – 1347)
William of Occam was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian. He is considered one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the center of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century. We in the West know him best for “Occam’s Razor,” which is that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex explanations of unknown phenomena.
William of Occam was born in Ockham, Surrey in 1285 and joined the Franciscans at an early age. He studied theology at the University of Oxford (1309 – 1321) and earned the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in theology (the equivalent of a doctorate in 14th century England), but the degree was never registered.
Consequently, he acquired the title of “Venerable Beginner” or Venerabilis Inceptor (an inceptor was the equivalent of the “perennial student” who is eventually admitted to the ranks of a university teacher).
During the Middle Ages, theologian Peter Lombard’s Sentences (1150) had become a standard work of theology, and many ambitious theological scholars wrote commentaries on it, William of Occam among them. However, his commentary was not well received by his colleagues, or by the Church.
In 1324, his commentary was condemned as unorthodox by a Synod of Bishops, and he was ordered to Avignon, France to defend himself before a papal court.
A theological commission had been asked to review his Commentary on the Sentences and it was during this review that Occam's work has been found, suspect. Occam had been asked to review arguments surrounding Apostolic poverty. The Franciscans believed that Jesus and his apostles had owned no property either individually or in common, and the Rule of Saint Francis commanded members of the order to follow this practice. This brought them into conflict with Pope John XXII.
Because the pope attacked the Rule of Saint Francis, Occam and others fled Avignon (May 26, 1328) and eventually took refuge in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria who was also engaged in a dispute with the papacy. He became Occam’s patron. After studying the works of John XXII and previous papal statements, Occam wrote treatises that argued for Emperor Louis to have supreme control over the church and state in the Holy Roman Empire.
On June 6, 1328, Occam was officially excommunicated for leaving Avignon without permission but was never officially condemned as a heretic. Occam argued back that Pope John XXII was a heretic for attacking the doctrine of Apostolic poverty and the Rule of Saint Francis, which had been endorsed by previous popes.
He spent much of the remainder of his life writing about political issues, including the relative authority and rights of the spiritual and temporal powers. After the death of the Franciscan order’s leader, Michael of Cesena (1342), he became the leader of the small band of Franciscan dissidents
living in exile with Louis IV. He died before the outbreak of the plague (Black Death) on April 9, 1347. He was officially rehabilitated in the church by Pope Innocent VI in 1369.
William of Ockham believed "only faith gives us access to theological truths. The ways of God are not open to reason, for God has freely chosen to create a world and establish a way of salvation within it apart from any necessary laws that human logic or rationality can uncover."
His importance is as a theologian with a strongly developed interest in a logical method, and whose approach was critical rather than system building.
In scholasticism, he advocated for reform both in method and in content, the aim of which was simplification. Occam incorporated much of the work of John Duns Scotus for his view of divine omnipotence, grace, and ethical convictions. However, he also reacted to and against Scotus in the areas of predestination, penance, his understanding of universals, his formal distinction ex parte rei (that is, "as applied to created things"), and his view of parsimony which became known as Occam’s Razor. In the simplest terms, Occam's Razor means the simplest explanation is usually the best one.
With the rise of clerical skeptics as intellectual scholars and natural philosophers, they commenced having an impact on the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, there was a notable decline in the competence, comprehension, and inefficacy of the papacy, itself, as a series of weak to corrupt popes came to head the church.
DISCORD IN THE ERA OF SKEPTICISM - THE AVIGNON PAPACY
Clerical skeptics were making impressive inroads into theology as Roman Catholic solidarity lost its momentum which found the papacy of the Church breaking away from Rome to form The Avignon Papacy. It would dominate the church from 1309 to 1377, during which time seven successive popes resided in Avignon (then in the Kingdom of Arles and part of the Holy Roman Empire, and now in today’s France). This situation arose from the conflict between the Papacy and the French crown, in mocking evidence that the church was losing its authority over temporal monarchies.
Following the strife between Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, and the death of successor Benedict XI after only eight months in office, a deadlocked conclave finally elected Clement V, a Frenchman as pope in 1305.
Clement declined to move to Rome, remaining in France, and in 1309 moved his court to the Papal Palace on Enclave at Avignon, where the papacy remained for the next 67 years.
The Papal Palace in Avignon, France
This absence from Rome is sometimes referred to as the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.” A total of seven popes reigned at Avignon; all were French, and they increasingly fell under the influence of the French Crown. Finally, on September 13, 1376, Gregory XI abandoned Avignon and moved his court to Rome (arriving on January 17, 1377), officially ending the Avignon Papacy (I have visited this marvel, which is completely preserved with the main chamber covered in impressive paintings of former Avignon Popes.)
Despite this return, following Gregory's death on March 27, 1378, the breakdown in relations between the College of Cardinals and Gregory's successor, Urban VI, gave rise to the Western Schism, which meant the Byzantine Christian Church no longer looked for leadership from Rome.
This started a second line of Avignon popes, now regarded as illegitimate and known as antipopes. The second and final Avignon antipope, Benedict XIII, lost most of his support in 1398, including that of France; following five years of siege by the French. He fled to Perpignan, France on March 11, 1403. The schism ended in 1417 at the Council of Constance, after only two popes had reigned in opposition to the Papacy in Rome.
It was in this climate over more than three centuries that the restless and probing minds of clerical skeptics changed the Roman Catholic Church through the intellectual and natural history (precursor to science) in the 13th to 15th century, and the apostasy of Martin Luther in the 16th century. The role of the church was changing and its defenders were proving a new breed as well.
THOMAS AQUINAS
That otherwise, anything remotely associated with rationalism was forbidden, which was becoming increasingly untenable given increasing clerical skepticism. The church looked to a Dominican friar to appease the situation and neutralize the onslaught to regain control of the intellectual narrative. That person was Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) who had studied under Albertus Magnus.
THE ASCENDENCY OF THOMAS AQUINAS
The challenge of Aquinas was to paper over the cracks in this narrative between faith and reason, and he did so with his Summa Theologiae (1266 – 1273).
In this work, he argues that philosophy examines the supernatural order in the light of reason, and theology examines reason in the light of revelations. Although the reason was used in theology, revelations did not fall into that province of philosophy. Therefore, philosophy could not contradict theology because the truth could not contradict truth.
For Aquinas, faith, and knowledge supplied by reason were not mutually exclusive, arguing that belief takes over at the point where knowledge and reason have ended. “To believe is to think with ascent,” or beyond the limits of reason which is the domain of faith.
Thomas was born in the castle of Roccasecca, located in Aquino, or the old county of the Kingdom of Sicily (Lazio, Italy today) where his father was Landulf of Aquino, and a knight in the service of the king.
Though his father did not belong to the most powerful branch of the family, as a knight in the service of King Roger II, he was titled. Thomas' mother, Theodora, belonged to the Rossi branch of the Neapolitan Caracciolo family. Landulf's brother Sinibald was an abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino.
In the second half of the 13th century, the controversy over the new views expressed by clerical skeptics began to take seed in the recently established universities in Northern Europe, which at the time were dominated by the church, owing to a special allegiance to the papacy.
While the rest of the family's sons pursued military careers, the family intended for Thomas to follow his uncle into the abbacy. This would have been a normal career path for a younger son of southern Italian nobility.
At the age of five, Thomas began his early education at Monte Cassino but after the military conflict between Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX spilled into the abbey in early 1239, Landulf and Theodora had Thomas enrolled at the studium generale (university) recently established by Frederick in Naples.
It was at university that Thomas was introduced to Aristotle, Averroes, and Maimonides, all of whom would influence his theological philosophy. It was also during his study at Naples that Thomas came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher in Naples, who was part of the active effort by the Dominican order to recruit devout followers. There his teacher in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music was Petrus de Ibernia.
Valle Romita Polyptych by Gentile da Fabriano (circa 1400)
At the age of nineteen, Thomas resolved to join the recently founded Dominican Order. Thomas' change of heart did not please his family. In an attempt to prevent Theodora's interference in Thomas' choice, the Dominicans arranged to move Thomas to Rome, and from Rome to Paris. However, while on his journey to Rome, his brothers seized him as he was drinking from a spring and took him back to his parents at the Castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano.
The Castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano
By 1244, seeing that all of her attempts to dissuade Thomas had failed, Theodora sought to save the family's dignity, arranging for Thomas to escape at night through his window. In her mind, a secret escape from detention was less damaging than an open surrender to the Dominicans. Thomas was sent first to Naples and then to Rome to meet Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master General of the Dominican Order.
In 1245 Thomas was sent to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris where he most likely met Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, then Chair of Theology at the College of St. James in Paris. When Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne in 1248, Thomas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV’s offer to appoint him abbot of Monte Cassino as a Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Thomas magister studentium. Because Thomas was quiet and didn't speak much, some of his fellow students thought he was slow.
But Albertus prophetically exclaimed: "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching, he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world."
Thomas taught in Cologne as an apprentice professor (baccalaureus biblicus), instructing students on the books of the Old Testament and writing Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram (Literal Commentary on Isaiah), Postilla super Ieremiam (Commentary on Jeremiah), and Postilla super Threnos (Commentary on Lamentations).
Then in 1252, he returned to Paris to study for a master's degree in theology. He lectured on the Bible as an apprentice professor, and upon becoming a baccalaureus Sententiarum (bachelor of the Sentences) devoted his final three years of study to commenting on Peter Lombard’s Sentences.
In the first of his four theological syntheses, Thomas composed a massive commentary on the Sentences entitled Scriptum super libros Sententiarium (Commentary on the Sentences). Aside from his masters writings, he wrote De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence) for his fellow Dominicans in Paris.
In the spring of 1256 Thomas was appointed regent master in theology at Paris and one of his first works upon assuming this office was Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (Against Those Who Assail the Worship of God and Religion), defending the mendicant orders which had come under attack by William of SaintAmour.
During his tenure from 1256 to 1259, Thomas wrote numerous works, including: Questiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth), a collection of twenty-nine disputed questions on aspects of faith and the human condition prepared for the public university debates he presided over on Lent and Advent.
Quaestiones quodlibetales, a collection of his responses to questions posed to him by the academic audience; and both Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate (Commentary on Boethius' De trinitate) and Expositio super librum Boethii De hebdomadibus (Commentary on Boethius' De hebdomadibus), were commentaries on the works of 6th-century Roman philosopher Boethius. The grist for Thomas’s mill was often to use the works of established scholars to launch his own ideas. By the end of his regency, Thomas was working on one of his most famous works, Summa contra Gentiles.
Diego Velazque – Girded by Angels with a mystical belt of purity after his proof of chastity
The Summa contra Gentiles (also known as Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium) or the "Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers." It is one of the best-known books by St Thomas Aquinas, written during 1259–1265.
It was probably written to aid missionaries in explaining the Christian religion to dissenting points of doctrine in Islam and Judaism. To this end, Aquinas relied on a substantial body of shared doctrine, especially tenets of monotheism as represented by the Old Testament, and in the case of Islam (at the time) which shared its tradition with Aristotelian philosophy of which he was most fond. Whereas The Summa Theologiae was written to explain the Christian faith to theology students, the Summa contra Gentiles was written as an apology to explain and defend the Christian doctrine against unbelievers, with arguments adapted to fit the intended audience and circumstances of that larger climate, systematically refuting heretical beliefs and propositions. Instead of mere elucidation of Christian doctrine, Aquinas demonstrates here his pragmatic nature in explaining core articles of Christian belief in a language and syntax amenable to a skeptical or questioning audience.
In 1272 Thomas took leave from the University of Paris when the Dominicans from his home province called upon him to establish a studium generale wherever he liked and staff it as he pleased. He chose to establish the institution in Naples and moved there to take his post as regent master.
He took his time at Naples to work on the third part of the Summa while giving lectures on various religious topics. He also preached to the people of Naples every day in Lent, 1273. These sermons on the commandments, the creed, the Our Father, and Hail Mary were very popular.
On 6 December 1273 at the Dominican convent of Naples in the chapel of Saint Nicholas, after Matins, Thomas lingered and was seen by the sacristan Domenic of Caserta to be levitating in
prayer with tears before an icon of the crucified Christ. Christ said to Thomas, "You have written well of me, Thomas. What reward would you have for your labor?" Thomas responded, "Nothing but you, Lord."
After this exchange, something happened, but Thomas never spoke of it or wrote it down. Because of what he saw, he abandoned his routine and refused to dictate to his secretary. When Reginald begged him to get back to work, Thomas replied: "Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me" (mihi videtur ut palea).
What exactly triggered Thomas' change in behavior is believed by Catholics to have been some kind of supernatural experience. After taking to his bed, he did recover some strength.
In 1054, while The Great Schism had occurred between the Latin Church following the Pope (later known as the Catholic Church) in the West, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the East (known as the Eastern Orthodox Church), he was summoned to attend the Second Council of Lyon called by Pope Gregory X to find a way to reunite the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.
Pope Gregory X convened the Second Council of Lyon to be held on 1 May 1274 and summoned Thomas to attend. At the meeting, Thomas' work for Pope Urban IV concerning the Greeks (Contra errores graecorum) was to be presented. On his way to the Council, riding on a donkey along the Appian Way, he struck his head on the branch of a fallen tree and became seriously ill again. He was then quickly escorted to Monte Cassino to convalesce.
After resting for a while, he set out again but stopped at the Cistercian Fossanova Abbey after falling ill. The monks nursed him for several days, and as he received his last rites he prayed: "I receive Thee, ransom of my soul. For the love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught...." He died on 7 March 1274 while giving commentary on the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), one of the scrolls of the Hebrew Bible. He was 49-years-old.
TRANSITION AND TRANSFORMATION
There would be two kinds of knowledge in the future: that which would continue to relate to the province of theology, which included the works of Thomas Aquinas, and the other the province of reason and philosophy, which would deal with the natural world through reason and philosophy. The latter province would one day become known as science.
No science would be free of ecclesiastical control for centuries. Indeed, up to the modern world, most scientists would be churchmen. As late as the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809), author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), where the Darwinian truism would develop of “survival of the fittest,” science would work in support of the religious establishment.
ROGER BACON
One of the earliest more secular views of the natural world came out at the end of the thirteen century when the English cleric, Roger Bacon (1214 – 1292), not to be confused with Francis Bacon, who would come later, commenced looking systematically at the natural phenomenon.
Brother Roger was also known as “Doctor Mirabilis” for his discoveries in the study of nature through his empirical method. Some historians provide him with the sobriquet of “The First Scientist” (see Brian Clegg’s “A Life of Roger Bacon,” 2003). He is sometimes credited (mainly since the 19th century) as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by Aristotle, and later by the Arabic scholar Alhazen (965 – 1040), who was a scientist, mathematician, and philosopher.
Roger’s linguistic work has been heralded for its early exposition of universal grammar. Critics, however, claim Roger Bacon was essentially a medieval thinker with much of his experimental knowledge obtained from books in the scholastic tradition. He was, however, responsible for a revision of the medieval university curriculum, which saw the addition of optics to the traditional quadrivium, which consisted of four subjects, or arts, taught after teaching the trivium, or three subjects.
Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts (based on thinking skills), as opposed to the practical arts (such as medicine and architecture). The quadrvium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology. The word is Latin meaning “four ways” or four subjects and is attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century.
A survey of how Bacon's work was received over the centuries found that it often reflected the concerns and controversies that were central to his readers.
BACON PRESENTING ONE OF HIS WORKS TO THE CHANCELLOR AT PARIS UNIVERSITY
Roger Bacon was born in Somerset, England in 1214, but we know of his birth only from his 1267 Opus Tertium that "forty years have passed since I first learned the Alphabetum." It is assumed that this referred to the alphabet itself. Elsewhere in the Opus Tertium, it is clear that Bacon uses the term to refer to rudimentary studies of the trivium and quadrivium that formed the medieval curriculum. His family appears to have been well off.
Bacon studied at Oxford, arriving shortly after Robert Grosseteste (1175 – 1259), a scholastic philosopher and teacher, had left, but a source that would influence the young scholar in his writings. It is also possible that Bacon met with William of Sherwood (1190 -1240), a scholastic philosopher and scientist. Bacon became a master at Oxford lecturing on Aristotle. There is no evidence he was ever awarded a doctorate (The title Doctor Mirabilis was posthumous and figurative.).
19TH CENTURY ENGRAVING OF BACON OBSERVING THE STARS AT OXFORD
A caustic cleric named Roger Bacon is recorded speaking before the king at Oxford in 1233. In 1237, he accepted an invitation to teach at the University of Paris, where he lectured on Latin grammar, Aristotelian logic, arithmetic, geometry, and the mathematical aspects of astronomy and music. His faculty colleagues included Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Kilwardby (1215 – 1279), Albertus Magnus, and Peter of Spain, who was to become Pope John XXI in 1276. He was the author of the Tractatus, later known as the Summulae Logicales, an important medieval university textbook on Aristotelian logic.
Then there was the Cornishman Franciscan Richard Rufus, a critic of Bacon. He wrote knowingly on Aristotle and Peter Lombard’s Sentences but was dismissed by Bacon claiming his fame was writing for the ignorant multitude. In 1247, Bacon left his position in Paris.
As a private scholar, his whereabouts for the next decade were unknown. But he likely met Adam Marsh in Oxford around 1248. It was at this time he studied the known Greek and Arabic works in optics, which was then known as “perspective” (perspectiva). A passage in the Opus Tertium states that at some point he took a two-year break from his studies.
By the late 1250s, resentment against the king’s preferential treatment of his émigré relatives led to a coup with Pope Urban IV absolving the king of his oath in 1261, throwing the king and several members of his family into exile.
In 1256, Bacon became a friar of the Franciscan Order in Paris, following the example of scholarly English Franciscans such as Grosseteste and Marsh. After 1260, his activities were restricted by a statute prohibiting the friars of his order from publishing books or pamphlets without prior approval.
He was likely kept at constant menial tasks to limit his time for contemplation and came to view his treatment as an enforced absence from scholarly life. By the mid1260s, he was undertaking a search for patrons who could secure permission and funding for his return to Oxford.
For a time, Bacon was finally able to get around his superiors' interference through his acquaintance with Guy de Foulques (1190 – 1268), Bishop of Narbonne, Cardinal of Sabrina, who would become Pope Clement IV. Bacon always had a knack for finding favor with men of influence.
ERNEST BOARD’S PORTRAYAL OF BACON IN THE OBSERVATORY AT MERTON COLLEGE
However, in 1265, during this contretemps, Guy was summoned to a conclave at Perugiathat and elected Pope Clement IV. William Benecor, who had been courier between King Henry III and the pope, now assumed that role between Bacon and Pope Clement. The pope commissioned Bacon in 1266 to write a report but to violate no prohibitions of his order and to carry it out in secret. Such reports of the time were limited to disputes relating to known texts of Aristotle. Clement's patronage, however, permitted Bacon to engage in wide-ranging exploitation of the state of knowledge for his era.
In 1267, Bacon sent the Pope his Opus Majus, which presented his views on how to incorporate Aristotelian logic and science into a new theology, supporting Grosseteste's text-based approach against the "sentences method" then most fashionable. Bacon also sent his Opus Minus on the optical lens, and possibly other works on alchemy and astrology, which were precursors to chemistry and astronomy. The entire process has been called "one of the most remarkable single efforts of literary productivity," with Bacon composing referenced works of around a million words in about a year.
Pope Clement died in 1268 and Bacon lost his protector. Condemnations followed in 1277 with the banning of his works and the teaching of certain philosophical doctrines, including deterministic astrology.
Within two years of the banning, Bacon was either imprisoned or placed under house arrest. This was traditionally ascribed to the Franciscan Minister General Jerome of Ascoli, acting on behalf of the many clergies, monks, and educators attacked by Bacon's 1271 Compendium Studii Philosophiae. Modern scholarship, however, notes that the first reference to Bacon's "imprisonment" dates from eighty years after his death on the charge of unspecified "suspected novelties."
Contemporary scholars who do accept Bacon's imprisonment typically associate it with Bacon's "attraction to contemporary prophesies," his sympathies for "the radical 'poverty' wing of the Franciscans,” and his interest in certain astrological doctrines combined with his generally combative personality rather than for "any scientific novelties which he may have proposed."
Sometime after 1278, Bacon returned to the Franciscan House at Oxford, where he continued his studies and is presumed to have spent most of the remaining days of his life. His last dateable writing—the Compendium Studii Theologiae—was completed in 1292. He seems to have died shortly afterward and been buried at Oxford.
Bacon would be right at home with contemporary scholars and scientists of the inflated ego, and the cry for attention. American chemist Linus Pauling (1901 – 1994) comes to mind. Bacon writes in Opus Tertium, “What others strive to see dimly and blindly like bates in the twilight, I gaze at in the full light of day because I am master of the experiment.”
That said Bacon was arguing that the new philosophy was a divine soul capable of providing articles of faith, and persuading the unconverted, that scientific knowledge contributed vitally to the interpretation of scripture, that astronomy was essential for establishing the religious calendar, that astrology enabled men to predict the future, that experimental science taught how to prolong life, and those optics enabled the creation of devices that would terrorize unbelievers and lead to their conversion.
A manuscript in ciphers discovered in the 20th century and attributed to Roger Bacon would make him the first man to observe spiral nebulae through a telescope and to examine cells through a microscope, although doubt has been cast on the authenticity of this manuscript.
In any case, Bacon’s experimental technique gave a new procedure in the manufacturing of knowledge known as “resolution and composition.” It is a direct descendent of the mode of thought made possible with the alphabet. It applied the same “cut and control” analytical method to the solution of a problem. The resolution defined the complex phenomenon and its causal condition by breaking the problem down to its elements, and composition used that data to show how cause brought about the phenomenon, thus revealing the necessary and sufficient conditions to produce the observable fact.
The aim of the skeptical clerics throughout this breakthrough period was to penetrate cultural, theological, and societal biases to observe the mechanisms that hold the key to life, living, and our spiritual connection to God. Starting with the
13th century, experimentation in matters of natural philosophy and metaphysics became the machine that propelled man out of the “Dark Ages,” and counterdependence on the Holy Mother Church. Skeptical clerics were laying the groundwork for a new body of knowledge that would expand the power and influence of academic institutions and provide contemporary man with wider access to knowledge and freedom.
NEXT – NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND – PART SEVENTEEN – A WATERSHED MOMENT DEFINES AN AGE!
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