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English literature
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The early Middle English period
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Lawamon
Geoffrey of
Monmouth
Robert Mannyng
John of Salisbury
Walter Map
Richard Rolle
Walter Hilton
Julian of
Norwich
Roger Bacon
William of Ockham
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Poetry
The Norman Conquest worked no immediate
transformation on either the language or the literature of
the English. Older poetry continued to be copied during the
last half of the 11th century; two poems of the early 12th
century—Durham, which praises that city’s cathedral and its
relics, and Instructions for Christians, a didactic
piece—show that correct alliterative verse could be composed
well after 1066. But even before the conquest, rhyme had
begun to supplant rather than supplement alliteration in
some poems, which continued to use the older four-stress
line, although their rhythms varied from the set types used
in classical Old English verse. A postconquest example is
The Grave, which contains several rhyming lines; a poem from
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the death of William the
Conqueror, lamenting his cruelty and greed, has more rhyme
than alliteration.
Influence of French poetry
By the end of the 12th century, English poetry had been
so heavily influenced by French models that such a work as
the long epic Brut (c. 1200) by Lawamon, a Worcestershire
priest, seems archaic for mixing alliterative lines with
rhyming couplets while generally eschewing French
vocabulary. The Brut draws mainly upon Wace’s Anglo-Norman
Roman de Brut (1155; based in turn upon Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae [History of the Kings
of Britain]), but in Lawamon’s hands the Arthurian story
takes on a Germanic and heroic flavour largely missing in
Wace. The Brut exists in two manuscripts, one written
shortly after 1200 and the other some 50 years later.
Lawamon
flourished 12th century
early
Middle English poet, author of the
romance-chronicle the Brut (c. 1200), one of the
most notable English poems of the 12th century.
It is the first work in English to treat of the
“matter of Britain”—i.e., the legends
surrounding Arthur and the knights of the Round
Table—and was written at a time when English was
nearly eclipsed by French and Latin as a
literary language.
Lawamon describes himself as a priest living at
Arley Kings in Worcestershire. His source was
the Roman de Brut by Wace, an Anglo-Norman verse
adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of
the Kings of Britain. In about 16,000 long
alliterative lines (often broken into short
couplets by rhyme), the Brut relates the
legendary history of Britain from the landing of
Brutus, great-grandson of the Trojan Aeneas, to
the final Saxon victory over the Britons in 689.
One-third of the poem deals with Arthurian
matter, but Lawamon’s is not a high chivalric
treatment: mass war is the staple, with Arthur
the splendid war leader of Germanic tradition.
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Geoffrey of Monmouth
died 1155
medieval English chronicler and bishop of St.
Asaph (1152), whose major work, the Historia
regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of
Britain), brought the figure of Arthur into
European literature.
In three passages of the Historia Geoffrey
describes himself as “Galfridus Monemutensis,”
an indication that he probably came from
Monmouth. Possibly of Breton descent, he
appeared as witness to a number of documents in
Oxford during the period 1129–51. Geoffrey
alleges that the Historia was translated from a
“very old book in the British tongue” brought by
Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, from Brittany.
This seems a pure fabrication, but it is clear
that Geoffrey was for most of his life an Oxford
cleric, closely connected with Walter and
sharing with him a taste for letters. He may
have been an Augustinian canon in the secular
college of St. George, Oxford, of which Walter
was provost.
The Historia regum Britanniae, published
sometime between 1135 and 1139, was one of the
most popular books of the Middle Ages, although
its historical value is almost nil. The story
begins with the settlement of Britain by Brutus
the Trojan, great-grandson of Aeneas, and by the
Trojan Corineus, the eponymous founder of
Cornwall, who exterminate giants inhabiting
Britain. Then follow the reigns of the early
kings down to the Roman conquest; here are found
such well-known episodes as those of Locrine and
Sabrina, the founding of Bath by Bladud and of
Leicester by Leir (Lear), and the division of
Leir’s kingdom between the two ungrateful
daughters. The story of the Saxon infiltration
during the reign of the wicked usurper
Vortigern, of the successful resistance of the
Saxons by Vortimer, and of the restoration of
the rightful line, followed by the great reigns
of Aurelius and his brother Uther Pendragon,
leads up to the account of Arthur’s conquests,
the culminating point of the work. Chapters
106–111 introduce the enchanter Merlin, who
predicts, in an obscure and apocalyptic manner,
the future political history of Britain. These
chapters were first published separately, before
1136, and dedicated to Alexander, bishop of
Lincoln. They gave rise to the genre of
political prophecies attributed to Merlin.
Probably between 1148 and 1151, Geoffrey
produced a poem in ornate Latin hexameters, the
Vita Merlini, which portrays a Merlin whose
adventures are based on genuine Celtic material
about a madman with a gift for divination.
Denounced from the first by sober historians,
Geoffrey’s fictional history nevertheless had an
enormous influence on later chroniclers.
Romanticized versions in the vernacular, the
so-called Bruts, were in circulation from about
1150. Writers of the later Middle Ages gave the
material a wide currency; and indeed Geoffrey’s
influence was at its greatest after the
accession of the Tudors. The text, with an
English translation, was published in 1929 by
Acton Griscom and Robert Ellis Jones. J.J. Parry
produced an edition of the Vita Merlini in 1925.
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That
the later version has been extensively modernized and
somewhat abridged suggests the speed with which English
language and literary tastes were changing in this period.
The Proverbs of Alfred was written somewhat earlier, in the
late 12th century; these proverbs deliver conventional
wisdom in a mixture of rhymed couplets and alliterative
lines, and it is hardly likely that any of the material they
contain actually originated with the king whose wisdom they
celebrate. The early 13th-century Bestiary mixes
alliterative lines, three- and four-stress couplets, and
septenary (heptameter) lines, but the logic behind this mix
is more obvious than in the Brut and the Proverbs, for the
poet was imitating the varied metres of his Latin source.
More regular in form than these poems is the anonymous Poema
morale in septenary couplets, in which an old man delivers a
dose of moral advice to his presumably younger audience.
By far the most brilliant poem of this period is The Owl
and the Nightingale (written after 1189), an example of the
popular debate genre. The two birds argue topics ranging
from their hygienic habits, looks, and songs to marriage,
prognostication, and the proper modes of worship. The
nightingale stands for the joyous aspects of life, the owl
for the sombre; there is no clear winner, but the debate
ends as the birds go off to state their cases to one
Nicholas of Guildford, a wise man. The poem is learned in
the clerical tradition but wears its learning lightly as the
disputants speak in colloquial and sometimes earthy
language. Like the Poema morale, The Owl and the Nightingale
is metrically regular (octosyllabic couplets), but it uses
the French metre with an assurance unusual in so early a
poem.
Didactic poetry
The 13th century saw a rise in the popularity of long
didactic poems presenting biblical narrative, saints’ lives,
or moral instruction for those untutored in Latin or French.
The most idiosyncratic of these is the Ormulum by Orm, an
Augustinian canon in the north of England. Written in some
20,000 lines arranged in unrhymed but metrically rigid
couplets, the work is interesting mainly in that the
manuscript that preserves it is Orm’s autograph and shows
his somewhat fussy efforts to reform and regularize English
spelling. Other biblical paraphrases are Genesis and Exodus,
Jacob and Joseph, and the vast Cursor mundi, whose subject,
as its title suggests, is the history of the world. An
especially popular work was the South English Legendary,
which began as a miscellaneous collection of saints’ lives
but was expanded by later redactors and rearranged in the
order of the church calendar. The didactic tradition
continued into the 14th century with Robert Mannyng’s
Handling Sin, a confessional manual whose expected dryness
is relieved by the insertion of lively narratives, and the
Prick of Conscience, a popular summary of theology sometimes
attributed to the mystic Richard Rolle.
Robert Mannyng
in full Robert Mannyng of Brunne
flourished c. 1330
early English poet and author of Handlyng
Synne, a confessional manual, and of the
chronicle Story of England. The works are
preserved independently in several manuscripts,
none of certain provenance.
The author is probably to be identified with
a Sir Robert de Brunne, chaplain, named as
executor in a Lincoln will of 1327; apart from
this mention, his biography can be reconstructed
only from his writings. He was at the University
of Cambridge around 1300. For 15 years (c.
1302–c. 1317) Mannyng was a Gilbertine canon at
Sempringham priory, Lincolnshire, where in 1303
he began Handlyng Synne and was still working at
it after 1307. For many years he was engaged on
the Story of England, which, he relates, was
finished between 3 and 4 o’clock, on Friday, May
15, 1338.
Handlyng Synne is an adaptation in about
13,000 lines, in short couplets poorly
versified, of the Manuel des Péchés (“Handbook
of Sins”), which is usually ascribed to William
of Waddington (or Widdington), an Englishman,
probably a Yorkshireman, writing in Anglo-Norman
between 1250 and 1270. Like Waddington, Mannyng
aimed to provide a handbook intended to
stimulate careful self-examination as
preparation for confession.
Mannyng deals in turn with the Ten
Commandments, the seven deadly sins and the sin
of sacrilege, the seven sacraments, the 12
requisites of confession, and the 12 graces of
confession. There is much direct instruction,
exhortation, and didactic comment; each of the
topics is illustrated by one or more tales.
These exempla have sometimes been considered to
provide the particular interest of the work. The
whole work is designed for oral delivery.
Mannyng’s merit as a storyteller lies in his apt
management of material and in his lucid, direct
narration. Otherwise the literary merits of
Handlyng Synne are negligible, although its
documentary value for social history is great.
It illustrates clearly the attitudes and values
of the English minor clergy and peasantry in the
early 14th century; throughout there is much
comment on the social, domestic, parochial, and
commercial scene.
Of similar literary quality is Mannyng’s
later work, the Story of England, but the basis
of the Story of England is fiction. As history
it is almost worthless. The work falls into two
parts. The first tells the story from the
biblical Noah to the death of the British king
Caedwalla in 689. In the second part, he takes
the story to the death of Edward I (1307).
Of particular interest is his incorporation
of elements of popular romance, such as the
story of Guy of Warwick’s encounter with the
giant Colbrand, which he inserts into his
account of Athelstan. He works into his
narrative several topical songs, mainly on the
Scottish wars of Edward I’s time.
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Verse romance
The earliest examples of verse romance, a genre that
would remain popular through the Middle Ages, appeared in
the 13th century. King Horn and Floris and Blauncheflour
both are preserved in a manuscript of about 1250. King Horn,
oddly written in short two- and three-stress lines, is a
vigorous tale of a kingdom lost and regained, with a subplot
concerning Horn’s love for Princess Rymenhild. Floris and
Blauncheflour is more exotic, being the tale of a pair of
royal lovers who become separated and, after various
adventures in eastern lands, reunited. Not much later than
these is The Lay of Havelok the Dane, a tale of princely
love and adventure similar to King Horn but more competently
executed. Many more such romances were produced in the 14th
century. Popular subgenres were “the matter of Britain”
(Arthurian romances such as Of Arthour and of Merlin and
Ywain and Gawain), “the matter of Troy” (tales of antiquity
such as The Siege of Troy and King Alisaunder), and the
English Breton lays (stories of otherworldly magic, such as
Lai le Freine and Sir Orfeo, modeled after those of
professional Breton storytellers). These relatively
unsophisticated works were written for a bourgeois audience,
and the manuscripts that preserve them are early examples of
commercial book production. The humorous beast epic makes
its first appearance in Britain in the 13th century with The
Fox and the Wolf, taken indirectly from the Old French Roman
de Renart. In the same manuscript with this work is Dame
Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort of humour
is found in The Land of Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia
better than heaven, where rivers run with milk, honey, and
wine, geese fly about already roasted, and monks hunt with
hawks and dance with nuns.
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The lyric
The lyric was virtually unknown to Old English poets.
Poems such as Deor and Wulf and Eadwacer, which have been
called lyrics, are thematically different from those that
began to circulate orally in the 12th century and to be
written down in great numbers in the 13th; these Old English
poems also have a stronger narrative component than the
later productions. The most frequent topics in the Middle
English secular lyric are springtime and romantic love; many
rework such themes tediously, but some, such as Foweles in
the frith (13th century) and Ich am of Irlaunde (14th
century), convey strong emotions in a few lines. Two lyrics
of the early 13th century, Mirie it is while sumer ilast and
Sumer is icumen in, are preserved with musical settings, and
probably most of the others were meant to be sung. The
dominant mood of the religious lyrics is passionate: the
poets sorrow for Christ on the cross and for the Virgin
Mary, celebrate the “five joys” of Mary, and import language
from love poetry to express religious devotion. Excellent
early examples are Nou goth sonne under wod and Stond wel,
moder, ounder rode. Many of the lyrics are preserved in
manuscript anthologies, of which the best is British Library
manuscript Harley 2253 from the early 14th century. In this
collection, known as the Harley Lyrics, the love poems, such
as Alysoun and Blow, Northern Wind, take after the poems of
the Provençal troubadours but are less formal, less
abstract, and more lively. The religious lyrics also are of
high quality; but the most remarkable of the Harley Lyrics,
The Man in the Moon, far from being about love or religion,
imagines the man in the Moon as a simple peasant,
sympathizes with his hard life, and offers him some useful
advice on how to best the village hayward (a local officer
in charge of a town’s common herd of cattle).
A poem such as The Man in the Moon serves as a reminder
that, although the poetry of the early Middle English period
was increasingly influenced by the Anglo-Norman literature
produced for the courts, it is seldom “courtly.” Most
English poets, whether writing about kings or peasants,
looked at life from a bourgeois perspective. If their work
sometimes lacks sophistication, it nevertheless has a
vitality that comes from preoccupation with daily affairs.
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Prose Old English prose texts were copied for more than a
century after the Norman Conquest; the homilies of Aelfric
were especially popular, and King Alfred’s translations of
Boethius and Augustine survive only in 12th-century
manuscripts. In the early 13th century an anonymous worker
at Worcester supplied glosses to certain words in a number
of Old English manuscripts, which demonstrates that by this
time the older language was beginning to pose difficulties
for readers.
The composition of English prose also continued without
interruption. Two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
exhibit very strong prose for years after the conquest, and
one of these, the Peterborough Chronicle, continues to 1154.
Two manuscripts of about 1200 contain 12th-century sermons,
and another has the workmanlike compilation Vices and
Virtues, composed about 1200. But the English language faced
stiff competition from both Anglo-Norman (the insular
dialect of French being used increasingly in the
monasteries) and Latin, a language intelligible to speakers
of both English and French. It was inevitable, then, that
the production of English prose should decline in quantity,
if not in quality. The great prose works of this period were
composed mainly for those who could read only English—women
especially. In the West Midlands the Old English
alliterative prose tradition remained very much alive into
the 13th century, when the several texts known collectively
as the Katherine Group were written. St. Katherine, St.
Margaret, and St. Juliana, found together in a single
manuscript, have rhythms strongly reminiscent of those of
Aelfric and Wulfstan. So to a lesser extent do Hali Meithhad
(“Holy Maidenhood”) and Sawles Warde (“The Guardianship of
the Soul”) from the same book, but newer influences can be
seen in these works as well: as the title of another
devotional piece, The Wohunge of Ure Lauerd (“The Wooing of
Our Lord”), suggests, the prose of this time often has a
rapturous, even sensual flavour, and, like the poetry, it
frequently employs the language of love to express religious
fervour.
Further removed from the Old English prose tradition,
though often associated with the Katherine Group, is the
Ancrene Wisse (“Guide for Anchoresses,” also known as the
Ancrene Riwle, or “Rule for Anchoresses”), a manual for the
guidance of women recluses outside the regular orders. This
anonymous work, which was translated into French and Latin
and remained popular until the 16th century, is notable for
its humanity, practicality, and insight into human nature
but even more for its brilliant style. Like the other prose
of its time, it uses alliteration as ornament, but it is
more indebted to new fashions in preaching, which had
originated in the universities, than to native traditions.
With its richly figurative language, rhetorically crafted
sentences, and carefully logical divisions and subdivisions,
it manages to achieve in English the effects that such
contemporary writers as John of Salisbury and Walter Map
were striving for in Latin.
Little noteworthy prose was written in the late 13th
century. In the early 14th century Dan Michel of Northgate
produced in Kentish the Ayenbite of Inwit (“Prick of
Conscience”), a translation from French. But the best prose
of this time is by the mystic Richard Rolle, the hermit of
Hampole, whose English tracts include The Commandment,
Meditations on the Passion, and The Form of Perfect Living,
among others. His intense and stylized prose was among the
most popular of the 14th century and inspired such later
works as Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection,
Julian of
Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, and the
anonymous Cloud of Unknowing.
Peter S. Baker
John of Salisbury
English scholar
born 1115/20, Salisbury, Wiltshire, Eng.
died Oct. 25, 1180, probably at Chartres, France
Main
one of the best Latinists of his age, who was
secretary to Theobald and Thomas Becket,
archbishops of Canterbury, and who became bishop
of Chartres.
After 1135 he attended cathedral schools in
France for 12 years and studied under Peter
Abelard (1136). He was a clerk in Theobald’s
household in 1148 and during the next five years
was mainly employed by the archbishop on
missions to the Roman Curia. His Historia
pontificalis (c. 1163) gives a vivid description
of the papal court during this period, partly
through its character sketches. From 1153 John’s
main duty was to draft the archbishopric’s
official correspondence with the Curia,
especially in connection with appeals. In the
late summer of 1156 this activity angered King
Henry II, who regarded him as a champion of
ecclesiastical independence.
The
crisis passed, but to some extent it influenced
John’s two books, the Policraticus and the
Metalogicon (both 1159), in which his general
intention was to show his contemporaries that in
their thought and actions they were defecting
from the true task of humanity. His work
represented a protest against the professional
specialization slowly developing in royal and
papal administration and in the universities. He
unfavourably contrasted the way of life followed
by courtiers and administrators with an ideal
practice derived from Latin poets and from
classical and patristic writers.
Out of
favour with Henry, John was exiled to France
(1163) shortly before Becket was exiled. From
his refuge in the monastery of Saint-Rémi at
Reims, John wrote many letters assessing the
prospects of the Canterbury case. After the
reconciliation of Henry and Becket, he returned
to England (1170) and was in Canterbury
Cathedral when Becket was assassinated (Dec. 29,
1170). Thereafter, John was occupied with
collecting Becket’s correspondence and preparing
a biographical introduction. He became bishop of
Chartres in 1176 and took an active part in the
third Lateran Council (March 1179). He was
buried at Chartres.
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Walter Map
born c. 1140, Hereford?, England
died c. 1209
English
churchman and writer whose work helps to
illuminate the society and religious issues of
his era.
Probably
of Welsh descent, Map studied at the University
of Paris from about 1154 to 1160. He took holy
orders and became a clerk in the household of
Henry II, and he served the king as an itinerant
judge and represented him at the third Lateran
Council (1179). After holding various church
positions, he became archdeacon of Oxford in
1197.
It was
as a writer rather than an ecclesiastic,
however, that Map came to be remembered. Between
1181 and 1192 he composed De nugis curialium
(Courtiers’ Trifles). A miscellany written in
Latin, it contains legends, folklore, and tales
as well as gossip, observations, and
reflections, and it reveals the author to have
been knowledgeable and shrewd and a man of
considerable wit. Perhaps the best-known item is
the letter from Valerius to Rufinus on the folly
of marrying that is referred to in the prologue
to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales. The book also includes
valuable histories of Christian heretical sects
of the period and of the Anglo-Norman kings.
Other works once attributed to Map, including
Arthurian romances and goliardic satires against
the clergy, are no longer thought to be his
work.
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Richard Rolle
born c. 1300, Thornton, Yorkshire [now in North
Yorkshire] Eng.
died Sept. 29, 1349, Hampole, Yorkshire [now in
South Yorkshire]
English
mystic and author of mystical and ascetic
tracts.
Rolle attended the University of Oxford but,
dissatisfied with the subjects of study and the
disputatiousness there, left without a degree.
He established himself as a hermit on the estate
of John Dalton of Pickering, but he later moved
to other hermitages and probably always led a
wandering life, rousing some opposition but
winning much admiration. He kept in touch with a
number of religious communities in the north and
seems to have become spiritual adviser to the
nuns at Hampole, in south Yorkshire, before his
death there.
Rolle’s
importance lies in the devotional prose he
composed in the vernacular for women readers. It
is sometimes difficult to distinguish his
writings from those of his followers and
imitators. Those English or Latin epistles and
treatises that have definitely been attributed
to Rolle, however, reflect his fervent devotion
and his emphasis on a rapturous mystical union
with God. Throughout his writings the life of
contemplation and solitude is exalted. Rolle’s
writings in Latin are overly rhetorical, but his
English prose style is lively, flexible, and
persuasive. His influence and reputation lasted
until the Protestant Reformation.
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Walter Hilton, Scala Perfectionis, London 1533
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Walter Hilton
born c. 1340
died March 24, 1396, Thurgarton Priory,
Nottinghamshire, Eng.
devotional writer, one of the greatest
English mystics of the 14th century.
Hilton studied at the University of Cambridge
before becoming a hermit and later joined the
Augustinians at Thurgarton Priory, where he
remained for the rest of his life. His major
work was The Scale [or Ladder] of Perfection,
written separately in two books. The first
teaches the means by which a soul may advance
toward perfection by destroying the image of sin
and forming the image of Christ through the
practice of virtue. The second distinguishes
between the active, ascetic life and the
contemplative, mystical life and describes the
early stages of mystical contemplation,
apparently from Hilton’s own experience. Because
of its sober and methodical character, The Scale
became and remained a popular devotional classic
through the 15th and early 16th centuries and is
regarded as the finest treatise on contemplation
written in the late European Middle Ages.
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Julian of
Norwich
born 1342, probably Norwich, Norfolk,
Eng.
died after 1416
celebrated mystic whose Revelations of Divine
Love (or Showings) is generally considered one
of the most remarkable documents of medieval
religious experience. She spent the latter part
of her life as a recluse at St. Julian’s Church,
Norwich.
On May 13, 1373, Julian was healed of a
serious illness after experiencing a series of
visions of Christ’s suffering and of the Blessed
Virgin, about which she wrote two accounts; the
second, longer version was composed 20 or 30
years after the first. Unparalleled in English
religious literature, Revelations spans the most
profound mysteries of the Christian faith—such
as the problems of predestination, the
foreknowledge of God, and the existence of evil.
The clarity and depth of her perception, the
precision and accuracy of her theological
presentation, and the sincerity and beauty of
her expression reveal a mind and personality of
exceptional strength and charm. Never beatified,
Julian is honoured on the unofficial feast day
of May 13. A modern chapel in the Church of St.
Julian has been dedicated to her memory. A
critical edition in Middle English of both the
short and long versions of her account is A Book
of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich,
ed. by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh in 2 vol.
(1978); Colledge and Walsh also published an
English translation, Showings, in the same year.
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APPENDIX
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Roger Bacon
English philosopher and scientist
byname Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: “Wonderful Teacher”)
born c. 1220, Ilchester, Somerset, or Bisley, Gloucester?,
Eng.
died 1292, Oxford?
Main
English Franciscan philosopher and educational reformer who
was a major medieval proponent of experimental science.
Bacon studied mathematics, astronomy, optics, alchemy, and
languages. He was the first European to describe in detail
the process of making gunpowder, and he proposed flying
machines and motorized ships and carriages. Bacon (as he
himself complacently remarked) displayed a prodigious energy
and zeal in the pursuit of experimental science; indeed, his
studies were talked about everywhere and eventually won him
a place in popular literature as a kind of wonder worker.
Bacon therefore represents a historically precocious
expression of the empirical spirit of experimental science,
even though his actual practice of it seems to have been
exaggerated.
Early life
Bacon was born into a wealthy family; he was well-versed in
the classics and enjoyed the advantages of an early training
in geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. Inasmuch as
he later lectured at Paris, it is probable that his master
of arts degree was conferred there, presumably not before
1241—a date in keeping with his claim that he saw the
Franciscan professor Alexander of Hales (who died in 1245)
with his own eyes and that he heard the master scholar
William of Auvergne (d. 1249) dispute twice in the presence
of the whole university.
University and scientific career.
In the earlier part of his career, Bacon lectured in the
faculty of arts on Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian
treatises, displaying no indication of his later
preoccupation with science. His Paris lectures, important in
enabling scholars to form some idea of the work done by one
who was a pioneer in introducing the works of Aristotle into
western Europe, reveal an Aristotelianism strongly marked by
Neoplatonist elements stemming from many different sources.
The influence of Avicenna on Bacon has been exaggerated.
About 1247 a considerable change took place in Bacon’s
intellectual development. From that date forward he expended
much time and energy and huge sums of money in experimental
research, in acquiring “secret” books, in the construction
of instruments and of tables, in the training of assistants,
and in seeking the friendship of savants—activities that
marked a definite departure from the usual routine of the
faculty of arts. The change was probably caused by his
return to Oxford and the influence there of the great
scholar Robert Grosseteste, a leader in introducing Greek
learning to the West, and his student Adam de Marisco, as
well as that of Thomas Wallensis, the bishop of St. David’s.
From 1247 to 1257 Bacon devoted himself wholeheartedly to
the cultivation of those new branches of learning to which
he was introduced at Oxford—languages, optics, and
alchemy—and to further studies in astronomy and mathematics.
It is true that Bacon was more skeptical of hearsay claims
than were his contemporaries, that he suspected rational
deductions (holding to the superior dependability of
confirming experiences), and that he extolled
experimentation so ardently that he has often been viewed as
a harbinger of modern science more than 300 years before it
came to bloom. Yet research on Bacon suggests that his
characterization as an experimenter may be overwrought. His
originality lay not so much in any positive contribution to
the sum of knowledge as in his insistence on fruitful lines
of research and methods of experimental study. As for actual
experiments performed, he deferred to a certain Master Peter
de Maricourt (Maharn-Curia), a Picard, who alone, he wrote,
understood the method of experiment and whom he called
dominus experimentorum (“master of experiments”). Bacon, to
be sure, did have a sort of laboratory for alchemical
experiments and carried out some systematic observations
with lenses and mirrors. His studies on the nature of light
and on the rainbow are especially noteworthy, and he seems
to have planned and interpreted these experiments carefully.
But his most notable “experiments” seem never to have been
actually performed; they were merely described. He
suggested, for example, that a balloon of thin copper sheet
be made and filled with “liquid fire”; he felt that it would
float in the air as many light objects do in water. He
seriously studied the problem of flying in a machine with
flapping wings. He was the first person in the West to give
exact directions for making gunpowder (1242); and, though he
knew that, if confined, it would have great power and might
be useful in war, he failed to speculate further. (Its use
in guns arose early in the following century.) Bacon
described spectacles (which also soon came into use);
elucidated the principles of reflection, refraction, and
spherical aberration; and proposed mechanically propelled
ships and carriages. He used a camera obscura (which
projects an image through a pinhole) to observe eclipses of
the Sun.
Career as a friar.
In 1257 another marked change took place in Bacon’s life.
Because of ill health and his entry into the Order of Friars
Minor, Bacon felt (as he wrote) forgotten by everyone and
all but buried. His university and literary careers seemed
finished. His feverish activity, his amazing credulity, his
superstition, and his vocal contempt for those not sharing
his interests displeased his superiors in the order and
brought him under severe discipline. He decided to appeal to
Pope Clement IV, whom he may have known when the latter was
(before his election to the papacy) in the service of the
Capetian kings of France. In a letter (1266) the pope
referred to letters received from Bacon, who had come
forward with certain proposals covering the natural world,
mathematics, languages, perspective, and astrology. Bacon
had argued that a more accurate experimental knowledge of
nature would be of great value in confirming the Christian
faith, and he felt that his proposals would be of great
importance for the welfare of the church and of the
universities. The pope desired to become more fully informed
of these projects and commanded Bacon to send him the work.
But Bacon had had in mind a vast encyclopaedia of all the
known sciences, requiring many collaborators, the
organization and administration of which would be
coordinated by a papal institute. The work, then, was merely
projected when the pope thought that it already existed. In
obedience to the pope’s command, however, Bacon set to work
and in a remarkably short time had dispatched the Opus majus
(“Great Work”), the Opus minus (“Lesser Work”), and the Opus
tertium (“Third Work”). He had to do this secretly and
notwithstanding any command of his superiors to the
contrary; and even when the irregularity of his conduct
attracted their attention and the terrible weapons of
spiritual coercion were brought to bear upon him, he was
deterred from explaining his position by the papal command
of secrecy. Under the circumstances, his achievement was
truly astounding. He reminded the pope that, like the
leaders of the schools with their commentaries and scholarly
summaries, he could have covered quires of vellum with
“puerilities” and vain speculations. Instead, he aspired to
penetrate realms undreamed of in the schools at Paris and to
lay bare the secrets of nature by positive study. The Opus
majus was an effort to persuade the pope of the urgent
necessity and manifold utility of the reforms that he
proposed. But the death of Clement in 1268 extinguished
Bacon’s dreams of gaining for the sciences their rightful
place in the curriculum of university studies.
Bacon projected yet another encyclopaedia, of which only
fragments were ever published, namely, the Communia
naturalium (“General Principles of Natural Philosophy”) and
the Communia mathematica (“General Principles of
Mathematical Science”), written about 1268. In 1272 there
appeared the Compendium philosophiae (“Compendium of
Philosophy”). In philosophy—and even Bacon’s so-called
scientific works contain lengthy philosophical
digressions—he was the disciple of Aristotle; even though he
did incorporate Neoplatonist elements into his philosophy,
his thought remains essentially Aristotelian in its main
lines.
Sometime between 1277 and 1279, Bacon was condemned to
prison by his fellow Franciscans because of certain
“suspected novelties” in his teaching. The condemnation was
probably issued because of his bitter attacks on the
theologians and scholars of his day, his excessive credulity
in alchemy and astrology, and his penchant for
millenarianism under the influence of the prophecies of
Abbot Joachim of Fiore, a mystical philosopher of history.
How long he was imprisoned is unknown. His last work (1292),
incomplete as so many others, shows him as aggressive as
ever.
The Rev. Theodore Crowley, O.F.M.
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William of Ockham
English philosopher
also called William Ockham, Ockham also spelled Occam,
byname Venerabilis Inceptor (Latin: “Venerable
Enterpriser”), or Doctor Invincibilis (“Invincible Doctor”)
born c. 1285, Ockham, Surrey?, Eng.
died 1347/49, Munich, Bavaria [now in Germany]
Main
Franciscan philosopher, theologian, and political writer, a
late scholastic thinker regarded as the founder of a form of
nominalism—the school of thought that denies that universal
concepts such as “father” have any reality apart from the
individual things signified by the universal or general
term.
Early life
Little is known of Ockham’s childhood. It seems that he was
still a youngster when he entered the Franciscan order. At
that time a central issue of concern in the order and a main
topic of debate in the church was the interpretation of the
rule of life composed by St. Francis of Assisi concerning
the strictness of the poverty that should be practiced
within the order. Ockham’s early schooling in a Franciscan
convent concentrated on the study of logic; throughout his
career, his interest in logic never waned, because he
regarded the science of terms as fundamental and
indispensable for practicing all the sciences of things,
including God, the world, and ecclesiastical or civil
institutions; in all his disputes logic was destined to
serve as his chief weapon against adversaries.
After his early training, Ockham took the traditional
course of theological studies at the University of Oxford
and apparently between 1317 and 1319 lectured on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard—a 12th-century theologian whose
work was the official textbook of theology in the
universities until the 16th century. His lectures were also
set down in written commentaries, of which the commentary on
Book I of the Sentences (a commentary known as Ordinatio)
was actually written by Ockham himself. His opinions aroused
strong opposition from members of the theological faculty of
Oxford, however, and he left the university without
obtaining his master’s degree in theology. Ockham thus
remained, academically speaking, an undergraduate—known as
an inceptor (“beginner”) in Oxonian language or, to use a
Parisian equivalent, a baccalaureus formatus.
Ockham continued his academic career, apparently in
English convents, simultaneously studying points of logic in
natural philosophy and participating in theological debates.
When he left his country for Avignon, Fr., in the autumn of
1324 at the pope’s request, he was acquainted with a
university environment shaken not only by disputes but also
by the challenging of authority: that of the bishops in
doctrinal matters and that of the chancellor of the
university, John Lutterell, who was dismissed from his post
in 1322 at the demand of the teaching staff.
However abstract and impersonal the style of Ockham’s
writings may be, they reveal at least two aspects of
Ockham’s intellectual and spiritual attitude: he was a
theologian-logician (theologicus logicus is Luther’s term).
On the one hand, with his passion for logic he insisted on
evaluations that are severely rational, on distinctions
between the necessary and the incidental and differentiation
between evidence and degrees of probability—an insistence
that places great trust in man’s natural reason and his
human nature. On the other hand, as a theologian he referred
to the primary importance of the God of the creed whose
omnipotence determines the gratuitous salvation of men;
God’s saving action consists of giving without any
obligation and is already profusely demonstrated in the
creation of nature. The medieval rule of economy, that
“plurality should not be assumed without necessity,” has
come to be known as “Ockham’s razor”; the principle was used
by Ockham to eliminate many entities that had been devised,
especially by the scholastic philosophers, to explain
reality.
Treatise to John XXII
Ockham met John Lutterell again at Avignon; in a treatise
addressed to Pope John XXII, the former chancellor of Oxford
denounced Ockham’s teaching on the Sentences, extracting
from it 56 propositions that he showed to be in serious
error. Lutterell then became a member of a committee of six
theologians that produced two successive reports based on
extracts from Ockham’s commentary, of which the second was
more severely critical. Ockham, however, presented to the
pope another copy of the Ordinatio in which he had made some
corrections. It appeared that he would be condemned for his
teaching, but the condemnation never came.
At the convent where he resided in Avignon, Ockham met
Bonagratia of Bergamo, a doctor of civil and canon law who
was being persecuted for his opposition to John XXII on the
problem of Franciscan poverty. On Dec. 1, 1327, the
Franciscan general Michael of Cesena arrived in Avignon and
stayed at the same convent; he, too, had been summoned by
the pope in connection with the dispute over the holding of
property. They were at odds over the theoretical problem of
whether Christ and his Apostles had owned the goods they
used; that is, whether they had renounced all ownership
(both private and corporate), the right of property and the
right to the use of property. Michael maintained that
because Christ and his Apostles had renounced all ownership
and all rights to property, the Franciscans were justified
in attempting to do the same thing.
The relations between John and Michael grew steadily
worse, to such an extent that, on May 26, 1328, Michael fled
from Avignon accompanied by Bonagratia and William. Ockham,
who was already a witness in an appeal secretly drafted by
Michael on April 13, publicly endorsed the appeal in
September at Pisa, where the three Franciscans were staying
under the protection of Emperor Louis IV the Bavarian, who
had been excommunicated in 1324 and proclaimed by John XXII
to have forfeited all rights to the empire. They followed
him to Munich in 1330, and thereafter Ockham wrote fervently
against the papacy in defense of both the strict Franciscan
notion of poverty and the empire.
Instructed by his superior general in 1328 to study three
papal bulls on poverty, Ockham found that they contained
many errors that showed John XXII to be a heretic who had
forfeited his mandate by reason of his heresy. His status of
pseudo-pope was confirmed in Ockham’s view in 1330–31 by his
sermons proposing that the souls of the saved did not enjoy
the vision of God immediately after death but only after
they were rejoined with the body at the Last Judgment, an
opinion that contradicted tradition and was ultimately
rejected.
Nevertheless, his principal dispute remained the question
of poverty, which he believed was so important for religious
perfection that it required the discipline of a theory:
whoever chooses to live under the evangelical rule of St.
Francis follows in the footsteps of Christ who is God and
therefore king of the universe but who appeared as a poor
man, renouncing the right of ownership, submitting to the
temporal power, and desiring to reign on this earth only
through the faith vested in him. This reign expresses itself
in the form of a church that is organized but has no
infallible authority—either on the part of a pope or a
council—and is essentially a community of the faithful that
has lasted over the centuries and is sure to last for more,
even though temporarily reduced to a few, or even to one;
everyone, regardless of status or sex, has to defend in the
church the faith that is common to all.
For Ockham the power of the pope is limited by the
freedom of Christians that is established by the gospel and
the natural law. It is therefore legitimate and in keeping
with the gospel to side with the empire against the papacy
or to defend, as Ockham did in 1339, the right of the king
of England to tax church property. From 1330 to 1338, in the
heat of this dispute, Ockham wrote 15 or 16 more or less
political works; some of them were written in collaboration,
but Opus nonaginta dierum (“Work of 90 Days”), the most
voluminous, was written alone.
Excommunication
Excommunicated after his flight from Avignon, Ockham
maintained the same basic position after the death of John
XXII in 1334, during the reign of Benedict XII (1334–42),
and after the election of Clement VI. In these final years
he found time to write two treatises on logic, which bear
witness to the leading role that he consistently assigned to
that discipline, and he discussed the submission procedures
proposed to him by Pope Clement. Ockham was long thought to
have died at a convent in Munich in 1349 during the Black
Death, but he may actually have died there in 1347.
Paul D. Vignaux
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