Doctor Mirabilis (37 page)

Though he had not spoken of it as yet in the convent, Roger had already conceived the scheme of sending his
persuasio
across the Alps in the hands of Joannes. There was probably no wise man in Paris who would be as able as the boy to explain
to Clement the difficult passages in the work, should the Pope require it; and for Joannes, the opportunity to exhibit his
understanding before the Supreme Pontiff was such a one as no apprentice would dare aspire to in his usual life, nay not even
in his dreams. Roger had allotted the boy some mention in the large work, but a more elaborate introduction might not be amiss
– especially in view of the possibility that Clement might not read the large work at all.

Then the large work came back from the copyists. Roger was appalled. It was an even poorer performance than he had realized;
it would have to be extensively revised, especially the first three parts. As for the seventh part, it was
hopeless; no amount of revision would rescue it in the time he had available.

While he wrote, the small work also came back; and with it, the bills. They took the remainder of the sixty pounds cleanly
away, leaving behind only the small sum Roger had set aside for Joannes for the journey to Rome. Yet the large work was now
so heavily marked that much of it would have to be copied over again.

From this dilemma there was only one way out, regardless of the Pope’s command: he would have to show the large work – but
certainly not the small, for that contained a passage on the spectacular stupidities of Alexander of Hales which might well
be judged to be in violation of the provisions of Narbonne, as tending toward the division of the Order – to his superiors,
and appeal to have it copied in the convent. It was risky; and Clement could not be told of it; but all the money was gone,
and so naught else would serve.

In the meantime, he still needed to write an introductory letter to both works, for he had cannibalized the second such for
the revision of the large work so heavily that hardly anything was left of it. Best to abandon that for the time being, and
make still a third introduction – this time strictly confined to its purpose; if the second introduction were on the verge
of becoming another volume of Roger Bacon his universal encyclopedia of all that was known or knowable in the world, it would
not suffer for being held back a while; nor would Clement suffer the lack of it, or know that he so suffered until he saw
it; after which, if God allowed him wisdom, he could not but forgive, and learn; or else, what was knowledge for?

The response of the Father Superior to the large work was unexpected, and more than welcome: he not only found it unobjectionable
– though there were some harsh words in the first section, they were not applied to anyone by name –but admirable. Though
he did not say so outright, the notion seemed to have occurred to him that perhaps there was after all some fame to come to
his convent through the activities of this obscure but obviously learned friar – exactly as the
exasperating man had claimed all along.

Regardless of what he thought, what he did was gratifying. Not only did he authorize the copying of the large work inside
the convent, but also relieved Roger of his corrective discipline until the labour for the Pope should be completed. In casting
his ruling in this form, he inadvertently put himself into Roger’s hands; for both the third work – as Roger was now coming
to think of it – and the
Communia naturalium
were for the Pope, as he could abundantly prove, and not even he could say how long it would take to complete them both.
It would be a matter of years, without doubt.

The brothers, by dividing the task among themselves, speedily finished the copying of the revised large work; and the almost
intolerably excited Joannes, with many protestations of his undying love and gratitude, and attended by many prayers for his
safety, was sent forth into the city to seek out and join a party ready to journey over the Alps.

With a sigh, and an additional prayer for the safety of his fifteen months of unremitting labour, Roger returned to his writing.
To be able to study and compose once more without distraction or impediment was a blessing; he felt, indeed, like Cicero recalled
from exile. And there was still much to be done: in addition to writing a discussion of the nature of a vacuum, and many other
matters not covered in either of the two departed works, he had now to consider what his course was to be were the response
of the Pope to be favourable.

For this he had already developed a plan, which he had outlined briefly in the final introductory letter; namely, that the
Pope – and other princes too, if necessary – sponsor a true compendium of all knowledge of the natural sciences, for the edification
of laymen, each section on a special science to be written by a man learned in it. It was now time to develop the proposition
and think it through.

Obviously the book must be true throughout, and its truth proven as far as possible by trustworthy experience. The contents
would have to be chosen carefully and in a systematic way, so as to avoid the manifold confusions
between metaphysics and the natural sciences which were the bane of the universities. Brevity too would be a virtue in a work
for laymen, and this might well be difficult to achieve, not only on account of the well-known tendency of even the best scholars
to be as pompous as possible, butt in addition because there would surely be areas of study where brevity would prove to be
incompatible with clarity. The work would need as its director something more than a mere commentator and guide: he would
have to be someone skilled in a special science, as yet uninvented, which would examine the findings of each of the other
sciences as given, and draw them together into a meaningful whole.

Roger set himself now to the creation of that new science, so that if word should reach him that the Pope looked upon the
initial effort with approval, he should not be found unready, as he had been found before. And then, too, would be the time
to present to the Pope his tally of the expenses he had incurred on behalf of the Curia.

He worked with great care now, since the need for haste had disappeared, making every argument as closely reasoned and perfect
as was in his power. That some of these were consequently extremely difficult and dense of texture he was well aware, but
after all, Joannes would still be in Rome to explain the hard parts if Clement required it.

He had begun in mid-April; by August he had a work of some sixty thousand words, with which he was thus far reasonably well
pleased; and he paused to consider what should be done with it. Though it was unfinished, it might be as well to offer what
he had to the brothers, for copying while he worked on the remainder; this would save much time when the next papal mandate
arrived. But after long thought, Roger reluctantly decided against it. The difficulty lay in the fact that the new work opened
with a long account of the difficulties he had undergone in writing the first two; and though it was all only too true, assuredly
the brothers would take it ill. He was equally determined not to remove the passage, for it was the very heart of his case
to Clement that his expenses should be repaid. He would have to copy
it himself; and that being the case, it were sensible to finish it first.

But he had gone little farther ere he was called before the Father Superior.

‘Friar Bacon, it is ordered that thou art released from all discipline, and permission is granted thee to return to thy parent
house of our Order at Oxford.’

Roger’s heart nearly stopped. Surely, surely this was a sign of favour from on high!

‘For what reason, Father, I beg thee? And who hath so ordered?’

‘No reason is given. The order cometh from the provincial minister; and could not have been issued, of course, without the
knowledge and consent of the Minister-General. Beyond that, we know nothing.’

‘But my works for Pope Clement! Is there no word from His Holiness at all?’

‘No word,’ the Father Superior said, signing himself. ‘His Holiness is dead.’

Too numb to feel despair, Roger returned to his old eyrie in the gatehouse. He had not even Bungay to share it with him now,
for Thomas was still the vicar of the provincial minister of the Franciscan order in England. He was quite alone; and the
great work of his life was gone as well, dropped into a vacuum;
nihil ex nihil fit.

He never found out why it was that he had been sent home, nor whether Clement had read any part of his letters, or ever had
received them. He wrote to the papal secretary and got no answer, which did not surprise him; that beleaguered man had matters
of more moment to think about. The death of Clement had thrown all of Christendom into confusion. The disorders between the
regulars and the seculars had broken out anew, and with more virulence; and so had the rivalries between the two Orders, thereby
further worsening the situation. Polemics accusing the Orders of dreadful sins and excesses, very reminiscent of William of
St. Amour –who had himself indeed returned to the offensive – again abounded, and both Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas found
themselves occupied almost full time in composing answers to them.

The centre of the storm was in Paris, where the polemics flew like snowflakes; but no centre of learning and piety was immune.
Roger arrived back in Oxford, in 1269, just in time to be a witness to a scarifying dispute between the Dominicans and the
Franciscans, on the virtues of poverty versus the Franciscans’ practice of it, held in public before the entire Faculty of
the University. The throne of the emperor, too, was vacant and in dispute, and in the Italian peninsula, now almost wholly
in the hands of Charles of Anjou, there was civil war. Even after five years, the bale and woe distilled by the great comet
through the ambient air was implacably at work.

Roger was not greatly surprised. He had told the Lord Pope himself that the Joachite prophecies, and those that warned of
the imminence of Antichrist, were worthy of being credited, though with due caution as to the date they gave; these disorders
were but further evidence to the same effect; but Clement had been taken, and there was now no Pope to hear such counsel,
let alone heed it. Nor was Roger disposed to give it; caution was not in him, but his taste for Church politics of this kind
had never been great, and the long grinding of the years of corrective discipline in the convent had worn even that little
down to nothing, as, he realized dully, it had from the outset been intended to do.

He had before him, too, another example, should he thus far have failed to draw the moral. There was now being circulated
among the Faculty of Arts – and throughout Europe, apparently – a letter on the theory and the uses of magnetism, from the
hand of Peter the Peregrine. The circumstances of its writing were curious: somehow, as a Picard, or perhaps even by choice,
Peter had been caught up in the army of Charles of Anjou, and on the eighth of August, while sitting out the siege of Lucera,
he had decided to summarize his twenty years of study of the problem, and put it into the hands of a countryman, lest the
knowledge die with him. He began:

You must realize, dearest friend, that the investigator in this subject must know the nature of things, and not be ignorant
of the celestial motions; and he must also make ready use of his own hands, so that through the operation of this stone he
may show remarkable effects. For by his carefulness he will then in a short time be able to correct an error which by means
of natural philosophy and mathematics alone he would never do in eternity, if he did not carefully use his hands. For in hidden
operations we greatly need manual industry, without which we can usually accomplish nothing perfectly. Yet there are many
things subject to the rule of reason which cannot be completely investigated by the hands.

It was all reasoned with the most admirable rigour, and buttressed everywhere with experiments with lodestones of all kinds,
including spherical ones, and with both pivoted and floating needles, the latter collimated against a reference scale divided
in the Babylonian manner into 360 degrees.

It was a monument to what could be accomplished by a carefully planned programme of study, from which, until this mysterious
adventure with the army of Anjou, Peter had not deviated in all those twenty years; and thus the virtue of silence and study,
as opposed to the search for fame and position. For those same twenty years what had Roger to show, but two inordinately swollen
manuscripts which now were lost, and an incomplete third impotently addressed to a prelate already dead? Nay, his rule would
be silence and study from this day hence; naught but silence and study.

Nor did it fail to occur to Roger that between Peter’s presence outside the walls of a town in southern Italy, and the mortgaging
of his house to raise money for Roger, there might be some causal connection. Toward the usurers which Roger had visited,
he felt neither obligation nor compassion; usury was a sin, for which they would yet pay more dearly than by the loss of the
paltry sums they had lent him; and besides, they were of course only Jews, since no Christian could engage in such commerce.
But Peter, should he survive, must have back every penny.

The most obvious route to this goal was to write and publish books, from the dale of which the Order would profit, and would
allow him a tithe. Though the censorship of Narbonne was still fully in effect, he was now more sophisticated in the various
ways of coping with it, and he had several new advantages. Chief among these was the presence of Thomas Bungay in the office
of the provincial minister, from whence permission to publish a work by Roger Bacon might be much more easily won than had
ever been possible in Paris. Furthermore, there was no real impediment to the publication of works which obviously could add
no faggots to the fires of controversy now raging within the bosom of the Church.