In addition, this disposed of the purse, the mere existence of which troubled Raymond sorely, and which Roger could no more
explain than he: the money could be used to cherish the frail scholar on the long journey, surely a small enough gesture from
the Order at whose hands he had undergone so much that was evil.
And thus did Roger Bacon return at last to that gatehouse above Folly Bridge, in which he and Thomas Bungay had once studied
the stars.
Here, all alone, he began once more to write, slowly, painfully, but with an iron determination, that great work with which
he had wrestled so vainly in his first years in the pit in Ancona: the final statement of the case for salvation through science,
to be awakened gently from slumber under a title that suggested nothing so explosive:
Compendium studii theologiae.
While he could hold a pen, the living might yet outrun the dead; Simon de Montfort might rule a nation - though hardly more
than one, for only the English were so phlegmatic of humour as to make practicable the admission of so many plebeian voices
into the high art of government -but what if Roger Bacon established domain in the minds of men?
The dream kept him alive, and kept him company. None asked him to lecture now, nor required aught of him at the house of the
Franciscans. He was forgotten: a ghost, scribbling away in a tower, sometimes wondered at by late-walking students when they
looked up and saw his flickering window.
So, after a year, did Bungay find him, when after this kind old man heard in his hermitage that among those released from
the March of Ancona had been one man called Bacon. He brought back with him that manuscript of the
Compendium studii philosophiae
for which he had imposed his own exile, and they kissed each other. Roger forbore to ask what
pain Thomas had suffered in his behalf, and Thomas forbore to say, for they understood one another, and that were pain enough.
Now it was almost as it had been of old. They talked far into the nights, though their voices were very reedy; Thomas did
what little housework there was to do; and Roger wrote. Late in autumn, there came to the gatehouse an absurdly young olive-skinned
yellowbeak, already slightly a-shiver with the first intimations of the English weather, who gave his name as Adrian something
and desired to study with Magister Bacon, but Thomas turned him gently away. The time for that had passed; now all possible
protections must be raised about the book.
Word by word, leaf by leaf, the great work evolved, and Bungay read it as it came from Roger’s squeaking pen, as it could
have from no other. It began quietly enough, with a note that until now, Roger had been prevented from writing certain useful
things, but had made all haste to remedy the matter. There followed the outline of the four causes of error; the indictment,
though a most gentle one it was in the eyes of the man who had lived in hiding for fourteen years with the
Compendium studii philosophiae
for a pillow, of the errors of men considered wise by the world; the statement of how the argument to follow would be conducted….
All the purest Roger Bacon; and yet Bungay, as page followed page, refrained from weeping only by a pure and agonizing act
of will.
Roger’s memory had failed. Not his memory of his reading or of his past, nay, that was there written down in vivid detail,
but his memory of what he was doing from minute to minute. There were four causes of error, he wrote; but on the next page
were given only three; he had forgotten not only the nature of the fourth, but that he had promised four at all.
And yet neither elegance nor eloquence had failed him. The reasoning was superbly close; the writing sometimes crisply brilliant,
sometimes wryly humorous, sometimes filled with visionary beauty. But no mercy could blind Bungay to the central chasm: Roger
was arguing now only with the
shadows of his old subjects. The great work had all the apparatus of mastery, but it was not about anything. It had nothing
at all to say.
Spring came; the leaves emerged, one after another, covered with delicate writing, dedicate with traceries to the sweet glory
and love of God, words and works at once. On the last day of May, Roger cried out, and made a great blot; and had Bungay not
been by chance at his elbow, would have toppled to the rushes.
Thereafter he did not speak or move, though his eyes were open. Bungay composed him tenderly, and then could naught but wait,
and pray. He prayed for eleven days; and on the Feast of St. Barnabas, he heard below a cry on the bridge, most dim and distant,
but approaching.
‘An alms for John! An alms, an alms for John! Only a sterling to touch the bowl of Belisarius! Only a penny for John!’
Rising stiffly, Bungay went to the broad window, in his mind some vague memory of a street-cry that only Roger had then heard; vague, but as disquieting as a badly remembered oracle. The limping beggar crossing Folly Bridge was old, as old as Bungay
himself, and as weathered as a seaman; but he looked up into Thomas’s face with eyes of brilliant blue, and in that moment
did not seem to be old at all. Taken aback, Thomas quit the window, but an almost inaudible bubble of breath behind him made
him ashamed, and he returned. He called down:
‘Boy, is that - is that indeed that ancient relic?’
‘Indeed, lofty friar. Only a penny.’
‘Wilt swear to it, on peril of thy soul?’
‘I durst not, Franciscan father. Well know you how many frauds be sold to such as I. Yet long hath it kept me on live, in
all the countries of the world; and thus hath performed at least one miracle.’
‘Much need have I here of another. I pray thee, bring it up.’
The beggar bent his head, and disappeared; but was heard almost at once upon the stairs. When he entered the tower
room, he offered the bowl, but Bungay shook his head, and pointed silently.
Roger had not moved; he lay with his ankles crossed, like the effigy of one who had been to Palestine. His nose was transparent
and fleshless, and his temples drawn into his skull, as were his ears, so that the ear-lobes stood out. Above black sockets
his taut forehead was rough and parched; and his face was the colour of lead.
‘Dear Christ P the beggar said; and his craggy cheerful face coursed suddenly with a torrent of tears. ‘Friar or fiend, is
this my last trap in the world? Oh, shame, oh shame, I never did any man harm-Lord God, why this to me?’
‘What?’ Bungay said, alarmed. ‘Peace, man, or thou’lt do him injury. Art so compassionate toward every stranger? If so, God
bless thee; but it were better to be quiet; else take thy relic to some lesser pallet Heed me, beggar; and mine every word;
and hush!’
‘No stranger to me,’ the beggar said, choking. This is my
doctor mirabilis
that was; my master in Paris. Oh Christ, his ankles, his eyes - they have tortured him!’
‘Nay; he was but imprisoned. Didst truly know him?’
The beggar stood to the pallet, and gently set the bowl against the sunken cheek. ‘Certes. Tis Roger Bacon.’
Bungay signed himself; for this were a palpable miracle in its very flesh. ‘Now surely thou wert sent. What is thy name?’
‘I was Johann Budrys, of Livonia; which means, John the Free. But long and long have I been only, John the Beggar.’
‘Beg thou with me.’
They knelt together. Neither could think of anything to say. Heaven heard them, belike; but there was silence after.
‘This was a holy man,’ Bungay whispered at last ‘None credited him his piety and kindness, for that he was so perverse…
forever at hares and hounds after matters men are forbidden to know.’
John the Free looked up.
‘Pious?’ he said slowly; ‘yes, he was often pious. And kind, too, when it occurred to him; but that was not often. But there
can be nothing that is forbidden man to know since we
ate of that Apple; for it states in the Proverbs that knowledge is good and beautiful for its own sake. Nay - they that did
this know he was a wiser man than any of his persecutors.’
‘The Order and the Church’, Bungay said indignantly, ‘would never persecute—’
‘Hist! Listen, holy friar!’
Roger’s breathing had changed. His eyes moved,
‘Roger… rest thee easy. Friends are nigh.’
Roger sighed. They bent closer.
‘Thomas?’ The word barely stirred his lips,
‘Yes. Rest, Roger.’
‘I… shall rest… after a while. It is time.’
He stirred again; and then, was almost up on both elbows.
He said clearly:
‘Bitterly it mathinketh me, that I spent mine wholle lyf in the lists against the ignorant. Enough! Lord Christ, enough!’
‘Roger! Roger—’
But now at long last he saw, for a moment; and cried out again for love of vision, its usefulness and beauty; and for the
loss of it; and reached for his pen; and went whirling down into silence and study; silence, silence and study.
Explicit Liber Frairis Rogeri Baconis.
DOMINUS ILLUMINATO MEA
Almost everyone mentioned in this book was a real person. The invented characters, such as Tibb, are usually obviously that,
but there are some borderline cases. One of these is Raimundo del Rey, who appears both as one of the Spanish students who
laughed at Roger’s ignorance of Arabic (we know none of their names, but the incident is frequently mentioned in Roger’s writings)
and for that unknown alchemist to whose works the name of Ramon Lull was later signed (we do not know his name either, but
we can be quite sure that the author in question was not the historical Ramon Lull, who was an unusually wild breed of mystic
innocent of any interest in the sciences). About Roger’s apprentice in Paris we know only what Roger tells the Pope, which
is obviously exaggerated, and what the legend says, which is pure fantasy. The members of Roger’s family, similarly, are either
real or unreal according to your preference; in my account they conform to what little he tells us of them, but he gives no
names and in other respects as well I was free to exercise considerable invention. (On this part of the subject invention
is rife even among historians; for instance, the fiat untruth that the Dominican Robert Bacon was the scholar-brother of whom
Roger speaks has been demolished again and again, yet it crops up once more in Sir Winston Churchill.) The Marquis of Modena
and his daughter sprang into being out of the opening line of the autobiography of Pope Pius II, a Piccolomini, in which he
states that his family came from Rome - a statement most scholars consider doubtful; but the Marquis’s runaway son was certainly
real, and I presume I do not need to vouch for Luca di Cosmati. William Busshe is, of course, a pure invention, as are Wulf,
Otto and Johann Budrys of Livonia; but Raymond of Laon and Sir William Bonecor were real, spear-carriers though they are in
this
text. As for Friar Bungay, his association with Roger is wholly legendary, but since virtually nothing is known about him
except that he existed, I felt free to accept it.
One example will suffice to show what use I made of the Bacon legend. The incident in which Roger dispenses learning through
a hole in his prison wall is as completely mythical as the brazen head; we know nothing at all about those silent thirteen
years. It is a charming story, however, and I adopted it because it seemed to me that if Roger were imprisoned incommunicado,
as the other Joachites were, it offers an explanation of how this compulsive teacher and propagandist was able to retain his
sanity as well as he did. The reader ought to be told, however, that some Bacon scholars think he was never imprisoned at
all. This notion I judged to be nonsense - or at the best, Church apologetics, in which this subject abounds. All the pertinent
documents say that he was; the best the apologists have been able to do is to point out that the documents, all dated after
his death, are not entirely reliable; but of what medieval document might this
not
be said?
One of the most curious quirks in the history of science is the relative weighting of two Englishmen whose names, entirely
by accident, are easily confused: Roger Bacon, and Sir Francis Bacon. Both wrote enormous studies of the sciences of their
times; both advocated experiment about theory; and both were masters of language» which guaranteed that they would be widely
read. It is Sir Francis who is generally credited with being the philosopher who acted as midwife to the birth of modern science,
particularly because he wrote and published in the seventeenth century when modern science was visibly a-stir; Roger’s efforts,
on the other hand, were ignored in his own time and for centuries thereafter, and lately historians of science (a relatively
new discipline) have tended to dismiss him as a mere encyclopedist who contributed nothing new.
It is a pity that no major theoretical physicist or mathematician of our time has read either man. My own firm
opinion is that Sir Francis Bacon’s scheme for the elaboration of the sciences is purely the work of a literary genius, marvellously
gratifying to read, but without the slightest demonstrable influence upon the history of science; in fact, had the scheme
ever been realized, it would almost surely have set the sciences back a century or more, for Sir Francis, though surrounded
by scientists of the first order, never had the slightest insight into how a scientist must necessarily think if his work
is to come to any fruit whatsoever. The test of this judgment is that it is impossible to show
arty
line of scientific thought after Sir Francis that is indebted to the
Novum Organum.
Roger Bacon, though in his maturity an elegant stylist, was never even at his best an artist; but he was a scientist in the
primary sense of that word - he thought like one, and indeed defined this kind of thinking as we now understand it. It is
of no importance that the long list of “inventions’ attributed to him by the legend - spectacles, the telescope, the diving
bell, and half a hundred others -cannot be supported; this part of the legend, which is quite recent, evolves out of the notion
that Roger could be made to seem more wonderful if he could be shown to be a thirteenth-century Edison or Luther Burbank,
holding a flask up to the light and crying, “Eureka!’ This is precisely what he was not Though he performed thousands of
experiments, most of which he describes in detail, hardly any of them were original, and so far as we know he never invented
a single gadget; his experiments were tests of principles, and as such were almost maddeningly repetitious, as significant
experiments remain to this day - a fact always glossed over by popularizations of scientific method, in which the experiments,
miraculously, always work the first time, and the importance of negative results is never even mentioned. There is, alas,
nothing dramatic about patience, but it was Roger, not Sir Francis, who erected it into a principle: ‘Neither the voice of
authority, nor the weight of reason and argument are as significant as experiment, for thence comes quiet to the mind.’
(De erroribus medicorum.)