The Friar and the Cipher

by Lawrence Goldstone

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Knowledge Suppressed:

  The Conservatives Respond

  • • •

  WHETHER CLEMENT LIVED TO SEE THE OPUS MAJUS, the Opus Minus, and De Multiplicatione Specierum is not known. Still, it seems that the messenger John, who afterward disappeared into history without a trace, completed the task to which he had been assigned, for Bacon's manuscripts certainly reached Viterbo.

  In 1270, a Polish mathematician and member of the curia named Witelo produced a large, detailed work on optics. This Perspectiva, dedicated to Aquinas's friend and translator William of Moerbeke, became the most popular reference work on the subject for the next four centuries. In it, Witelo borrowed heavily from Alhazen and Grosseteste, but, most strikingly, applied geometry to light and the rainbow in a way markedly consistent with that of the Opus Majus and De Multiplicatione Specierum. “Some of the parallel passages could have come from no other source,” A. C. Crombie stated flatly in his authoritative work on Grosseteste. Once again, as with the Imago Mundi, Bacon's work was used to push forward an important scientific discipline, although he himself received no credit.

  But perhaps Bacon's writings had a greater impact on his contemporaries than most medievalists believe. Certainly Bonaventura came to know of Bacon's writings, at least when Witelo published. In fact, the reason we know that Bacon's work reached the pope is Witelo's dated notation on the copy of the Opus Majus that is now in the Vatican Library. Both William of Moerbeke and Aquinas were also in Viterbo and would surely have known of Bacon's writings.

  Perhaps because he was no longer seen as a threat, Bacon was allowed to work openly in the aftermath of Clement's death. Now in his late fifties, still in Paris, he continued to put in eighteen-hour days, subsisting mostly on scholarship and prayer. Over the course of the next four years, he produced Latin and Greek grammars and resurrected his plan to produce an encyclopedia of philosophy. Working openly did not mean acceptance, however. The battle for the soul of Christianity was reaching its climax, and, with his patron dead, Bacon was no longer a part of it.

  AFTER CLEMENT, the papacy remained vacant for three turbulent years. Into this vacuum rushed all the old conflicts. Politically, Charles of Anjou justified Clement's distrust by attacking and overrunning Italy. With no Hohenstaufen to restrain his ambitions, the power of the Church was again menaced from the outside, this time by Charles's secular monarchy.

  Nonetheless, it was internal struggle, spiritual anarchy, that was the real threat. The same two distinct but overlapping lines of battle re-formed at the University of Paris. The first was a continuation of the attacks on the mendicants by the secular theology masters. The seculars pressed the same charges as they had twenty years before, but it soon became clear that the orders had grown too strong. Reduced to engaging the best of the friars in a series of disputations—including Bonaventura and Aquinas, who had been sent back to Paris specifically to blunt the threat—the secular masters were eventually forced to retract many of their charges, and their challenge collapsed.

  The second battle, centered in the arts faculty, was far more significant, and once again Aristotle was at the center of the storm. In about 1265, an arts student named Siger of Brabant had obtained his degree and begun to teach. Siger and his followers began to teach Aristotelian philosophy filtered strictly through the commentaries of Averroës. These “Averroists,” as they were called, openly accepted two of the three Aristotelian premises that most threatened orthodox Christian theory—that the universe was eternal, and that there is one overall soul into which all individual souls merge upon a person's death.

  As for the third premise, the one that postulated one truth for reason and another for faith, the Averroists slickly sidestepped the issue by trying not to talk about it. They claimed that when faith and intellect collided, they accepted Christian doctrine, but no one on the theology side took them very seriously. It was difficult for those who had elevated Averroës to a pinnacle just below that of the Philosopher himself to convince people that they did not ascribe to the single most fundamental tenet of his interpretation. Siger himself was sometimes a bit more direct than he should have been. At one point he stated that his goal was “to discover simply what the philosophers and especially Aristotle have thought, even if by chance the thought of philosophy did not conform to revelation.”

  Siger recruited a large following as more and more students poured in from all over Europe. These were rough-and-tumble days in Paris. The student body was divided into “nations”—French, Picards (including Belgians like Siger), Normans, and English (which included Italians, Germans, and just about everyone else)—and it was not uncommon for students from one nation to brawl with, set upon, or even kidnap students from a rival nation. Siger was intelligent and charismatic, a leader in his group, but once he began to teach, he became extremely popular across factional lines. At one point, although still only in his twenties, he was nominated for rector. Without someone to countervail the Averroists' burgeoning popularity, they might have overrun the university, sweeping the theology faculty along in their wake.

  Thomas alone understood that where the battle between the seculars and the mendicants in the theology faculty was for short-term political power, the outcome of this dispute would determine the future course of Christianity. If the Averroists succeeded, literal acceptance of scripture was over. Empirical observation, experiment, and imagination would have been set free, and ultimately Christian dogma would have been forced to accommodate science.

  In one of the Dominican chairs as regent master, Thomas took it upon himself to turn back the assault. He was at the very height of his powers and influence. He threw himself into his work so feverishly that it seemed as if he wanted to fight the war on all fronts at once. He worked on as many as four different books or papers at a time, dictating to the army of secretaries that were now at his disposal. In three remarkable years, he completed commentaries on Aristotle, a number of opuscula, and the second and third parts of Summa Theologica. Unlike Summa Contra Gentiles, this new epic was not directed at non-Christians but was instead an attempt to provide a guidebook for young theological students so that they could better understand the rules and origins of their faith.

  To counter Siger, he dashed off De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas (On There Being Only One Intellect, Against the Averroists). Here, Thomas demonstrated that the seeming inconsistencies between Aristotelian philosophy and Christian faith were as a result of Aristotle's being interpreted incorrectly by Averroës. In his ignorance, Thomas implied, Siger had perpetuated these errors. But Siger was an adept logician as well. He even wrote a defense of Averroës's interpretation of Aristotle, entitled Against Those Famous Men of Philosophy, Thomas and Albert.

  Aquinas did not get a chance to finish the debate, for at the end of 1271 he was transferred back to Naples. Thomas, for all his talents, had become a figure of some controversy himself. There were many in the Church who did not understand that it was inevitable that Aristotle and science must be somehow incorporated into dogma. They saw Thomas, with his advocacy of the Philosopher, as a danger to the Church every bit as great as Siger.

  Although Thomas had failed to halt the Averroists' growing popularity completely, he did succeed in creating sufficient countermomentum to establish a stalemate. As it turned out, that was all that the Church needed, although Thomas would not live to see his methods vindicated.

  In Italy, he continued to work on his various projects with the usual fervor. Then, on the morning of December 6, 1273, during Mass, Thomas had what has been described as either a mystical vision or a mild stroke. In either case, from that day forward he put down his work and refused to write or dictate another word. When pressed, he said that after what he had seen, “all that I have written seems like straw to me.” Over the next months, he slipped into what his acolyte Reginald described as “stupefaction.” He had trouble maintaining his balance while walking, and his speech was impaired as wel
l.

  In early 1274, a new pope, Gregory X, called for an ecumenical council to be held in Lyons to try to blunt the growing territorial ambitions of Charles of Anjou, now King Charles I of Naples. Gregory had already chosen a new Holy Roman Emperor, someone who everyone agreed would make no trouble, a nondescript German knight named Rudolf of Hapsburg. (Rudolf himself proved malleable enough, but his descendants were a different story. The Hapsburgs went on to become one of the longest-lived and perhaps most acquisitive dynasty in European history, dominating at various times Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Hungary, and the Balkan States, and surviving as a ruling family until World War I.)

  The pope asked Aquinas to be present at the council. On the journey, while riding on a mule, Thomas was struck in the head by an overhanging branch. He was taken to a Cistercian monastery, where he lay ill, and then, on March 7, 1274, Thomas Aquinas died.

  The council in Lyons was to claim another prominent victim. On July 15, while attending the same event, Bonaventura died as well, rumored to have been poisoned, although no suspects were ever brought forward.

  With Bonaventura and Aquinas dead, and Albert now almost totally senile, Roger Bacon had lost his three greatest adversaries. He made one last attempt to have his ideas heard. He completed the Compendia Studii Philosophii, the first installment of his encyclopedia, and addressed it to Gregory.

  The Compendia was similar in theme to the works that he had sent to Clement, but was written in a far less accommodating style. In addition to detailed sections on optics, language, and scriptural inaccuracy, the Compendia Studii Philosophii included long diatribes in which Bacon vented his fury at the mendicants, the secular masters, the arts faculty, and what he saw as a theology run amok.

  With a lack of political awareness, surprising even for him, he attacked without restraint, saving his most vitriolic passages for friars and lawyers. Bacon was particularly upset that the orders continued to recruit boys in their teens, indoctrinated them with questionable dogma, then, before they had studied theology—or much of anything else—sent them out to preach. They knew nothing of scripture, nothing of language, and therefore could not help but corrupt the Church. Yet, filled with brothers with no genuine training, through political chicanery alone the orders had come to dominate the universities. It was said that Bacon maligned both orders as if he were a member of neither. It is a distinct possibility that by this time that is precisely how he felt. The Franciscans of Bonaventura certainly bore little resemblance to those of Grosseteste or Adam Marsh.

  As to the lawyers, the encroachment of “civil law” into Church affairs had corrupted the religion. By “civil law,” of course, Bacon did not mean jurisprudence but rather the theological legalism of Aquinas.

  At a time when the Church saw itself as under assault and was seeking stability and a strategy that would both preserve tradition and accommodate radical new thinking, Bacon's blanket denunciations could only have hardened those in power against him. However, it is not difficult to sense Bacon's passion, desperation, and despair underneath the bitterness. This was an extremely pious man, forceful in his opinions, surely, but also humble in his personal ambitions. There is not a single line or passage in any of his works in which he asks for favors, preferential treatment, personal advancement, or political power.

  The Compendia today exists only in fragment, and it is unknown whether or not it reached the pope or even was dispatched. But certainly Bacon's superiors in the order knew of it, for it was soon after the Compendia was completed that they decided to silence him permanently.

  TO SUCCEED BONAVENTURA, the Franciscans chose a reactionary, Jerome of Ascoli. Almost immediately, some of the more prominent Spirituales were imprisoned, placed in solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water, and denied the sacraments. This was merely the first step in a conservative backlash against not just apocalyptic vision but also Aristotle, logic, science, and experiment. So sweeping would this movement become that not only was Roger Bacon swallowed up but even the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas would be threatened with condemnation.

  The conservatives began their assault in 1277 under yet another pope, the intransigent John XXI. John, who had begun his career as a former Paris arts master of all things, knew what went on in Paris as much as anyone. He instructed the city's bishop, Stephen Tempier, to look into “reports” that certain errors of doctrine were being taught at the university. Since the university was “the living source of the wisdom of faith which . . . [carried] the Catholic faith to the ends of the world,” as John put it, he asked Tempier to report to him at once if these rumors were true and, if so, who was perpetrating them.

  John had chosen the right man for the job. There was no one in Europe more anxious to sniff out heterodoxy than Stephen Tempier. Seven years before, as rector of the theological faculty, Tempier had taken it upon himself to issue a list of thirteen offensive propositions that were to be “condemned and excommunicated together with all who should knowingly teach or affirm them.” All the basic Aristotelian precepts and their Arab commentaries were denounced.

  At the time, to Tempier's fury, no one paid the least bit of attention. Neither Aquinas nor Siger cared to be interrupted in their quarrel, nor did either want Tempier's help. What seemed to be a silly list of thirteen propositions was brushed aside, their author was ignored, and Tempier spent the next seven years stewing over the response (or lack of it) to his efforts to clean up the university.

  Now, with the pope behind him, granting him the opportunity to save the Church from the godless pagans (to say nothing of almost every Christian scholar then at the school), Tempier, by all accounts a narrow and tyrannical man, set eagerly to work. He recruited a team of like-minded zealots and proceeded to gather every example of doctrinal deviance in Paris. Thirteen general precepts became a full 219 propositions. Such was his rush to produce his list and send it off to John that he did not bother to edit the contributions of his followers, and thus certain items appear again and again in different sections.

  There is little question that the members of Tempier's truth squad used the opportunity to settle doctrinal scores. Siger was not mentioned specifically, but he and his followers were prime targets. Some of the entries seemed to be directed at Bacon as well, or at least at anyone who believed that experimental science should be a part of theology. A surprising target, however, was Aquinas himself. At least sixteen Thomist propositions made the list, most concerning the Aristotelian relationship between form and matter.

  Then, not waiting for John to approve the list—in fact, even before he dispatched it—Tempier publicly condemned all 219 errors and excommunicated their authors. The pope, pleased to have someone else doing the dirty work, did not reprimand Tempier for his precipitous action but instead accepted the list and used the opportunity to rid the Church (and the orders) of its most visible and charismatic opponent. Siger was summoned before the pope, condemned by the Inquisition (still dominated by the Dominicans), and held as a prisoner by the curia. Less than a year later, he was dead, stabbed by the crazed “assistant” who had been assigned to him by his enemies.

  Tempier's actions were soon copied by other conservatives seeking to rid themselves of irritating opponents. Eleven days after Tempier published his list, Robert Kilwardby, the archbishop of Canterbury and a Dominican, issued a condemnation of thirty propositions of his own. At least three Thomist precepts made the English list as well. Criticism of Thomism was on the rise as conservative Churchmen—who had never really understood what Aquinas was talking about in the first place—now rushed to publish criticism of a man no longer able to respond. What they wrote was often little more than the parsing and tortured logic of which Bacon had always been so critical—the kind of arguments that Thomas, if he had still been around, could have destroyed in a breath.

  Then the Dominicans rallied behind their dead star.

  Toward the end of 1277, John of Vercelli, master general of the Friars Preachers, met with Jerome of Ascoli to
try to smooth over the differences between the orders to present a stronger face to the common enemy. Part of the agreement was a mutual nonaggression pact in which “any friar who was found by word or deed to have offended a friar of the other Order should receive from his Provincial such punishment as ought to satisfy the offended brother.” This order applied whether the offended brother was living or dead.

  In 1278, at a meeting of the general chapter of the Friars Preachers in Milan, two theology masters were ordered sent to England to investigate those “who in scandalum ordinis showed disrespect for the writings of the venerable Friar Thomas D'Aquino.” They traveled with power of excommunication or exile for anyone found guilty, meaning anyone who tried to enforce Kilwardby's edict, the archbishop himself being exempt. The next year, at a meeting of the general chapter in Paris, any criticism of either Thomas or his work was expressly forbidden. A few years later, the Paris chapter ordered every member of the order to promote Thomist teachings. Any friar failing to adhere to this edict—even those who had honest disagreements with Thomist philosophy—was to be immediately suspended. Members who demurred found themselves barred from promotion and ostracized.

  Finally, at a meeting of the general chapter in 1313, it was determined that “no one should dare teach, determine, or respond differently from what is commonly thought to be [Thomas's] teaching.” In addition, from that point forward, no Dominican could be sent to the University of Paris without at least three years of Thomist study.

  It all worked. The momentum generated by Aquinas's brother Dominicans spread throughout the Church, and the man whose work was condemned in 1277 was made a saint, virtually without opposition, less than fifty years later. (Albertus Magnus had to wait until 1931 for a similar honor.) “By the time Thomas was canonized in 1323,” according to Weisheipl, “almost all Dominicans had made the teaching of Thomas their own and considered it a privilege, as well as an obligation, to study and defend it.”