FRIAR ROGER BACON. 257 



but he has no good words for either of them or for their works and 

 ^\ays. The men of no century have listened willingly to criticism de- 

 livered in this temper. That his strictures were substantially just did 

 not make them more acceptable in Bacon's case, nor four centuries 

 later, in the case of Galileo. It was of no avail that his life was pure, 

 that he had not sinned against the faith, that he had not rebelled 

 against authority. His real offence was the censorious temper which 

 made him enemies on every hand. 



A new opportunity came to Bacon with the election of Guy 

 Foulques (Clement IV.) to the papacy. The new pope had been a 

 soldier, a learned jurisconsult, and Secretary of Saint Louis, before 

 taking religious orders. While he was legate of the reigning pope in 

 England he heard that Bacon was writing a treatise on the reforma- 

 tion of learning, and on many occasions he endeavored to communicate 

 with him by letters which were intercepted by the Franciscans. In 

 the second year of his own pontificate (1266) the new pope. Head of 

 the Church, succeeded in sending a letter to Bacon by private hand. 

 The letter orders Bacon "in the name of our apostolic authority and 

 notwithstanding any injunctions to the contrary from any prelate 

 whatsoever, and notwithstanding the constitution of your Order, to 

 send, without delay, a copy of the work for which we asked at the time 

 of our legation into England"; and the pope especially charges his 

 correspondent that all this should be done "with all the secrecy pos- 

 sible." What a commentary upon the strictness of Bacon's imprison- 

 ment is this letter from the Head of the Church, the successor of St. 

 Peter, with power to bind and loose ! If it exhibits the persecution 

 of Bacon, the power of the Orders, the penances of fasts and macera- 

 tions, the misery of the prisoner, it also exhibits in the best and 

 strongest light the existence in the Church of enlightened and gen- 

 erous spirits. Everything in the picture is not dark. 



Bacon was released in 1267 by order of the pope who had then re- 

 ceived his Opns Majus, and he returned to Oxford to find his group 

 of noble friends dispersed or dead. Here he resumed his studies, his 

 writings, his criticisms, his bitter and censorious polemics. 



His protector, Clement IV., died in 1268 and the new pope soon 

 had good reason to distrust the English friar. Bacon vehemently 

 attacked the orders, the pope, the court at Eome, the prelates, the 

 laics, the clerks, the doctors of the Church, the theologians. He 

 swept the world clean of friends and followers. "Consider," he says, 

 '•'every rank of society and you shall find an infinite corruption every- 

 where, beginning at the summit. The court at Rome is dominated by 

 the Civil Law * * * ^.j^jg sa(.j.g(j geat is the prey of crime and 

 deceit, justice is perishing, peace is violated, pride reigns, avarice 

 bums there, gluttony corrupts manners, envy eats their hearts, luxury 



VOL. LX. — 17. 



