Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, Vol. I (Bridges ed.)

PREFACE.

Sloane MS. 2156, and the Harleian MS. 80, 60 b, have also been consulted.

The sixth section of the Opus Majus (Scientia Experimentalis Experimental Science) appears to have been seldom copied. In the third volume of Baconian MSS. presented to University College, Oxford, by John Elmhurst, there is a MS. of this section which is described as copied from Allen’s MSS. (see Brewer, p. xliii). It may, therefore, be merely copied from the Oxford MS. of the Opus Majus. But it offers some variants, and in one or two passages it has proved serviceable. It is spoken of in this edition as U.

Of the seventh section, here printed for the first time, there is a MS. in the Royal Library (8, F. ii) containing the first two parts and a portion of the third. This has been carefully collated with the corresponding parts of the Dublin and Oxford MSS. The variations will be seen to be of no great importance. The MS. appears to be of the middle of the fifteenth century.

Besides these MSS., others have been consulted which throw light on Bacon’s life and work. Chief amongst these is the important MS. of the Mazarin library (formerly numbered 1271, but at present 3576), from which Professor Émile Charles gives copious extracts in his monograph entitled Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages, ses doctrines, d’après des textes inédits Roger Bacon, his life, his works, his doctrines, according to unpublished texts (Bordeaux, 1861). More will be said afterwards of its contents. They offer a considerable instalment of the Scriptum Principale Principal Writing, of which the Opus Majus, inclusive of its adjuncts, the Opus Minus Lesser Work and the Opus Tertium Third Work, was but the prelude.

Another valuable fragment of this final work is preserved in the British Museum among the Sloane