The Greater Work (Opus Majus), Vol. 1

NOTE.

IN the July issue of the English Historical Review, 1897, Dr. Gasquet Francis Aidan Gasquet, a prominent English Benedictine monk and historical scholar. publishes a manuscript of Bacon which he has found in the Vatican, and which he is inclined to think is a preface to the Great Work Latin: "Opus Majus.".

There is much to justify this view. The work in question describes Bacon’s overflowing gratitude for Pope Clement’s message to him; apologizes for the delay in the transmission of his works by pointing out that none of these works were in a complete state; explains the obstacles interposed by the distress of his family, ruined in the civil wars, and by the restrictions of his Order Bacon was a member of the Franciscan Order, which placed strict controls on the writing and distribution of books.; introduces his disciple John, who had been for seven years under his tuition; and finally concludes with a brief summary of the contents of the Great Work. This he describes, not as his principal work, but as a Persuasion Latin: "Persuasio," suggesting a work intended to convince the Pope of the importance of the sciences.. It has seven parts. After briefly noting the contents of the first two, Bacon passes to the seventh (published for the first time in this edition) and then comments successively on the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third.

It will be observed by readers of this short treatise that it contains little that is not set forth with much greater fullness in the Third Work Latin: "Opus Tertium.", which is to be regarded as the real Introduction to the collection of writings sent by Bacon in 1267 to Pope Clement IV. The first chapter of Dr. Gasquet’s manuscript is almost exactly identical with pages 7–12 in Brewer’s edition John Sherren Brewer, a Victorian scholar who edited Bacon's works in 1859. of the Third Work, the latter, however, having certain sentences not contained in the former. The fifth chapter is a repetition of the Great Work, part 1, chapter 16. One or two sentences, however, of this newly published work deserve attention. We learn from it that Bacon’s life in Paris between 1257 and 1267 was a time of comparative inaction: for ten years because of illnesses Latin: "a decem annis propter languores." This suggests that Bacon's productivity was hampered by poor health or perhaps the restrictive "languor" of his confinement under his Order.