The Life & Work of Roger Bacon

two thousand pounds on those materials and the purchase of books and instruments.” We may assume these were French pounds, which at that time would correspond to between 600 and 700 pounds sterling. That was a large sum. Whether large or small, such spending would be quite incompatible with the profession of an Order specially devoted to poverty. It may be inferred, therefore, that since he had studied independently for some twenty years, it was not until sometime between 1245 and 1250 that Bacon became a Franciscan.

Among the learned men whose friendship he cultivated during this part of his career, we may include, in all probability, Adam Marsh; Edmund Rich, later Archbishop of Canterbury and eventually canonized as a saint; Thomas Bungay, whose name would one day be associated with his own as a worker of magic; Thomas, Bishop of St. Davids; John of Basingstoke, a scholar and traveler; John Peckham, later Archbishop of Canterbury; Hermann, one of the principal translators of Aristotle; Shirwood, the treasurer of Lincoln; and, last and greatest, the illustrious Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste. In Bacon's earlier years of study, Grosseteste had not yet plunged into the arduous and absorbing work of his bishopric. “He knew the sciences,” Bacon says of him.