Roger Bacon as Magician

Source: Roger Bacon as Magician Author: A.G. Molland From: Traditio, via JSTOR

Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought, and Religion is an international journal, published annually.

How magic was viewed in the Renaissance

The practice of magic was much in vogue in the Renaissance, the word “magic” had gained some respectability. E.g. Bishop John Wilkins published a book titled Mathematicall Magick.¹

The widespread acceptance of natural magic in the Renaissance didn’t mean that the term was synonymous with what we now call science.² Molland makes reference here to:

• Marsilio Ficino chanting Orphic hymns
• John Dee conversing with spirits through his medium Edward Kelly
• Tommaso Campanella and Pope Urban VII performing secret rites to ward of the plague

Writers on magic referenced earlier “workers in the tradition”: Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and Hermes Trismegistus. They also mentioned more current “figures”: in his Apologia of 1487 Pico della Mirandola listed Alkindi, Roger Bacon, and William of Auvergne “who had detected the nature of good non-demonic magic.”

Also commonly mentioned: Albertus Magnus, Arnald of Villanova, Cecco d’Ascoli, Michael Scot, Peter of Abano, Ramon Lull,…

Molland suspects that there was a legendary (oral) tradition about these people/figures/men — that their reputation wasn’t based solely on their writings; “…in nineteenth-century Italy orally transmitted folklore about Michael Scot was still current.”³

Renaissance sources for legends about Roger Bacon

A prose romance from the late-sixteenth century: The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon. Containing the Wonderfull Things that he did in his Life: also the Manner of his Death; with the Lives and Deaths of the two Coniurers, Bungye and Vandermast. Very Pleasand and Delightfull to be Read. (Referred to by Molland as Famous Historie.)

A recital of deeds of Franciscans written in Dubrovnik in 1384-85 by Peter of Trau. Here Bacon is not spoken of as a magician, but as a person interested in performing experiments in real philosophy. What’s described are things that would later be termed magical.

Both of these accounts probably made use of oral tradition.

The bibliographer John Bale (in his Summarium of 1548): described Bacon as a “juggler and necromantic mage” who was said to have performed great marvels at Oxford “not by the power of God but by the operation of evil spirits.”⁴ But 10 years later wrote: “He was possessed of incredible skill in mathematics, but devoid of necromancy, although many have slandered him with it.”⁵

Molland is reluctant to take the legends at face value, but writes “…the very existence of the Bacon legends may be held to give us prima facie evidence that he indulged in activities which could give plausibility to the stories about him.”⁶

In the sixteenth-century there were attempts to dissociate Bacon from magic: “Roger Bacon was being transformed from a magician into a hero of experimental science.”⁷

From the middle of the nineteenth-century a more critical evaluation has taken place — he’s been “dethroned from his position as a man three hundred years ahead of his time and shown to have been in many ways a typical Scholastic thinkier.”⁸

The Brazen Head

In the fifth chapter of the Famous Historie it’s related that Bacon found he could surround ENgland with a wall of brass for her protection if he made a brazen head and heard it speak. The production of the head was made to seem relatively easy, but making it speak was more difficult. His collaborator in this was Bungay (Bungye, from the full title of the Hostorie). They sought the advice of a devil who informed them of the operations necessary and emphasized that it was essential they should hear the head when it did speak. The process was long and arduous. The head uttered its few words while the friars (I guess Bungay was a friar too) were asleep. Bacon’s servant Miles prevented them from being awakened before the head disintegrated in a vast explosion.

In the seventeenth-century, Sir Thomas Browne explained the story as:

Every ear is filled with the story of Frier Bacon, that made a brazen head to speak these words, Time is, Which though the want not the like relations, is surely too literally received, and was but a mystical fable concerning the Philosophers great work, wherein he eminently laboured: implying no more by the copper head than the vessel wherein it was wrought, and by the words it spake, then the opportunity to be watched, about the Tempus ortus, or birth of the mystical child, or Philosophical Kind of Lullis: the rising of the Terra foliata of Arnoldus, when the earth, sufficiently impregnated with the water, ascendeth white and splendent. Which not observed, the work is irrecoverably lost. … Now letting slip this critical opportunity, he missed the intended treasure. Which had he obtained, he might have made out the tradition of a brazen wall about England. That is, the most powerfull defence, and strongest fortification which Gold could have effected.⁹

Browne is explaining the story as an allegorical account of an alchemical process. Molland is (to be expected) not so sure.

Stories about artificial speaking heads were very common and attached to (among others): Virgil, Gerbert, Robert Grosseteste, and Albertus Magnus.¹⁰

A possible explanation for the widespread medieval notion of speaking heads

Lynn White, in Medieval Technology and Social Change (London 1964) 90-92 suggests there’s evidence of medieval sufflators or fire blowers shaped in the form of human heads. Wat was put into these vessels and they were then placed near a fire. The water would boil and a mixture of air and steam would blow out of the mouth, causing the fire to burn more fiercely. Presumably (I think this is Molland’s idea from here on) the devices made some kind of noise. A similar machine is described by Hero of Alexandria that was designed to blow a trumpet or imitate birdsongs. The embellishments made to medieval water clocks and early mechanical clocks suggest that men of the Middle Ages had tastes similar to the Alexandrian Greeks in these matters. By the end of the thirteenth-century, the Castle of Hesdin in Artois had a very large collection of trick machinery.¹¹ “We have no definitie evidence for associating any of these divices with Bacon himself, but it is certain that he, like other practically minded philosophers, would have been fascinated by such machines and could even have designed some for himself and displayed them to his colleagues.”¹²

Optical devices

Connections between Bacon and optical devices mentioned in Famous Historie are easier to confirm, because they can be compared with what’s in Bacon’s writing.

From Famous Historie:

It did chance that the Kind of England …went into France with a great armie, where after many victories, he did beseige a strong towne and lay before it full three moneths, without doing to the towne any great damage, but rather received the hurt himselfe.

The kind announced he would give a reward to anyone who could capture the town for him. Friar Bacon heard of this and journeyed to France. When he reached the king he made a long speech about the marvels that may be performed by art with the use of magic:

Physicall figurations are farre more strange: for by that may be framed perspects and looking-glasses, that one thing shall appeare to be many, as one man shall appeare to be a while army, and one sunne or moone shall seem divers. Also perspects may be so framed, that things farre off shall seem most nigh unto us: with one of these did Iulius Caesar from the sea coasts in France marke and observe the situation of the castles in England. Bodies may also be so framed that the greatest things shall appeare to be the least, the highest lowest, the most secret to bee the most manifest, and in such like sort the contrary. Thus did Socrates perceive, that the dragon which did destroy the citie and countrey adioyning, with his noisome breath, and contagious influence, did lurke in the dennes between the mountaines: and thus may all things that are done in cities or armies be discovered by the enemies. Againe, in such wise may bodies be framed, that venemous and infectious influences may be brought whither a man will: in this did Aristotle instruct Alexander; through which instruction the poyson of a basiliske, being lift up upon the wall of a citie, the poison was convayd into the citie, to the desctuction thereof; also perspects may be made to deceive the sight, as to make a man beleeve that hee seeth great store of riches, when that there is not any. But it appertaineth to a higher power of figuration, that beams should be brought and assembled by divers flexions and reflexions in any distance that we will, to burne any thing that is opposite unto it, as it is witnessed by those perspects or glasses that burne before and behinde.

This speech is lifted almost verbatim from Bacon’s Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae¹³

A similar account from 1385 is given by Peter of Trau:

He was so complete a master of optics that from love of experiments he beglected teaching and writing, and made two morrors in the University of Oxford: by one of them you could light a candle at any hour, day or night: in the other you could see what people were doing in any part of the world. By experimenting with the first, students spend more time in lighting candles than in studying books; and seeing in the second their relations dying or ill or otherwise in trouble, they got into the habit of ‘going down’ to the ruin of the university: so by common counsel of the University both mirrors were broken.¹⁴

There’s also a story from Francis Bacon:

They have an old tale in Oxford, that Friar Bacon walked between two steeples: which was thought to be done by glasses, when he walked upon the ground.

What optical devices did Bacon have?

“…at the time of writing the works for the pope around 1276, it does not seem that Bacon had a large range of lenses, for, when he gets down to practical details instead of merely saying what can be done, he speaks of a crystal sphere or hemisphere or else of a round glass filled with water.”¹⁵ It’s possible that before the end of his life a wider supply of lenses became available to Bacon.

There’s evidence that he produced burning mirrors though. (He mentions them in Opus maius and Opus tertium*).

The theory and construction of parabolic burning mirrors had been written about by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen). It had been translated anonymously into Latin under the title De speculis comburentibus.

“Bacon has very much an eye to the deceits that may be performed with optical instruments. To this end he regards ‘broken mirrors’ as particularly efficacious, for, by means of such, multiple images may be produced.”¹⁶

What is a broken mirror in this context?

He’s probably not using “broken” in the sense of shattered. I’m guessing that “broken” means multi-faceted, or some arrangement of multiple mirrors.

Who are the “jugglers” that are mentioned by Molland?

Bacon seems to have taken inspiration for optical tricks from “jugglers”. I’m guessing itinerant entertainers doing juggling and stage magic, storytelling, etc. I’m guessing though…

“Thus it seems certain that in Bacon’s time jugglers were making use of optical illusions, and Bacon himself would have been very interested, for he certainly thought it relevant to include in the paean of praises that he accorded Petrus Peregrinus the fact that he examined ’the illusions and devices of all the jugglers’”. ¹⁷ (Note: Bacon wrote to Pope Clement IV (that’s who the Opus works were addressed to) about the optical work of Petrus Peregrinus.)

Could Bacon see distant objects as near?

In the Opus maius he writes about the possibility of combining both mirrors and perspect glasses to see distant objects as near. Robert Grosseteste wrote something similar. It’s probable that by the time he wrote Opus maius he had experimented with crystal balls ans flasks of water and observed a large, though distorted magnification.¹⁸

Forbidden Magic

Molland writes that what’s been discussed so far would not have been termed magical by Bacon himself. I’m not sure if Molland is ignoring the brazen head and only talking about the optical instruments. In any case, the Famous Historie gets into the idea of raising spirits, actual magic:

“[We] may cite as one example a contest between Bacon and the German conjuror Vandermast. At the close of a banquet Vandermast raises the spirit of Pompey for the delectation of the English kind. Bacon promptly replies by producing the ghost of Julius Caesar. The two spririts fight; Caesar kills Pompey; Bacon wins the contest.”

Bacon’s definition of magic: “In his attempt to divide philosophy from magic, or, as he more frequently says, true mathematics from false mathematics, Bacon’s main criteriou seems to be whether one is morally or theologically justified in holding certain beliefs or indulging in certain practices. If a practice is licit, it is not magic; if it is illicit and has to do with the misuse of knowledge, it is magic.”

Bacon writes about the characteristics of “false mathematics” in his introduction to Secretum secretorum. False mathematicians have two main faults. First, the believe everything happens of necessity. This is the doctrine of astrological determinism. The second is that they make use of demons. Molland suggests that Bacon is conflicted about the demon issue. “for one of his most central doctrines is that there are many marvels of art and nature that can and should be investigated and applied to the utmost good of Christendom. This is surely going to mean that he will have to approach very near to forbidden ground, and there is evidence that in fact he does.”

Bacon writes: “It is therefore necessary to be very cautious in one’s decisions in these matters, for a man may easily fall into error, and many do err in both directions, for some decline every operation, while others to to excess and fall into magic.”¹⁹

Bacon may have favoured the rasher policy. He praises Petrus Peregrinus for his investigations “of the experiments, prophecies, and songs of old women and of all magicians.”²⁰

One of the few contemporary references of Bacon describes him as “listening to one Peter of Ardene giving an account of how he attended five seances at which a certain Spanish master called up his demon, who answered the questions that those present put to it.”²¹