258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dishonors the entire Court of the Papacy. * * * And the pre- 

 lates! consider how eager they are for riches, how indifferent to the 

 care of souls, * * * rpj^^ religious (of the orders) are no better, 

 and I except no Order whatsoever. * * * This people of clerks 

 are a prey to pride, luxury and avarice. Everywhere, as at Paris and 

 Oxford, they scandalize the laics * * * j^y their vices." 



What remedy for this horrible state of things? What examples 

 of holy living and dying does Bacon put forth for imitation? Why, 

 the ancients like Zeno and Seneca, pagans all, and infidels like Avi- 

 cenna, Alfarabius and the rest ! We seem to hear the murmurs of 

 the Renaissance in the words of this monk of the thirteenth century. If 

 the church will not purge herself of evil he predicts the coming of 

 the Tartars or the Saracens. In reality he was foretelling the Ref- 

 ormation. Terrible words like these led to his own imprisonment, 

 again at Paris, in the year 1278. This time his punishment was strict. 

 He was not released until a liberal general of his Order sent him home 

 in 1293, an old man of some eighty years, to die in peace at Oxford. 



The story of his life is told. Henceforward we are concerned only 

 with the debt which modern science owes to him. But there are two 

 errors into which we must not fall. In the first place those dark ages 

 were not without illumination. Consider the group of great and 

 liberal men who were Bacon's companions at Oxford in his early years, 

 and that other group of free spirits at Paris. Consider the patience 

 with which a pope tries for years to lighten his lot and the generosity 

 with which he sets him free at last. Consider that the same history 

 is almost exactly repeated by the enlightened general of his order 

 who releases him in 1292. 



And, again, let us see what were, in all likelihood, the suspect 

 novelties for which he was punished. Like all the great and small of 

 his time Bacon believed in astrology — in the influence of the stars 

 upon the destinies of men. Was not Christianity itself ushered in 

 by the portent of the Star of Bethlehem? An idea adopted from the 

 Arab Albumazar, that the advent and continuance of religions de- 

 pend upon the conjunctions of the planets, was his ruin. Christianity 

 came in, he said, with a conjunction of Jupiter and Mercury, and all 

 religions were to disappear at a future conjunction of Jupiter and 

 the moon. This is the suspect novelty for which he was condemned 

 by a chapter of his order; and who shall say that he was not justly 

 condemned? If it were allowable in a superstitious age to cast horo- 

 scopes and to reckon up the influence of stars upon the fate of in- 

 dividuals, it would have been monstrous and suicidal for the church 

 to agree that religions were subject to purely natural laws and con- 

 junctions. N^o church could fail to strike home when threatened with 



