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

NOTE.

In the July issue of the English Historical Review, 1897, Dr. Gasquet publishes a MS. of Bacon which he has found in the Vatican, and which he inclines to think is a preface to the Opus Majus.

There is much to justify this view. The work in question describes Bacon’s overflowing gratitude for Pope Clement’s message to him; apologizes for the delay in the transmission of his works by pointing out that none of these works were in a complete state; explains the obstacles interposed by the distress of his family, ruined in the civil wars, and by the restrictions of his Order; introduces his disciple John, who had been for seven years under his tuition; and finally concludes with a brief summary of the contents of the Opus Majus. This he describes, not as his principal work, but as a Persuasio Persuasion/Exhortation. It has seven parts. After briefly noting the contents of the first two, Bacon passes to the seventh (published for the first time in this edition) and then comments successively on the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third.

It will be observed by readers of this short treatise that it contains little that is not set forth with much greater fullness in the Opus Tertium, which is to be regarded as the real Introduction to the collection of writings sent by Bacon in 1267 to Pope Clement IV. The first chapter of Dr. Gasquet’s MS. is almost exactly identical with pp. 7–12 in Brewer’s edition of Opus Tertium, the latter, however, having certain sentences not contained in the former. The fifth chapter is a repetition of Opus Majus, pt. i. cap. 16. One or two sentences, however, of this newly published work deserve attention. We learn from it that Bacon’s life in Paris between 1257 and 1267 was a time of comparative inaction: a decem annis propter languores