BACON'S LIFE

In considering the little that is known of the life of Bacon, it is well to give precedence to the few facts that are fixed with perfect precision by his own statement. We know with entire accuracy the date of the composition of the Opus Majus, and of the two subsidiary works, the Opus Minus and the Opus Tertium. Pope Clement IV's instructions to him to transmit the results of his labours were issued June 22, 1266 from Viterbo. Within the year that followed, the Opus Majus, with its supplement, the Opus Minus, and its introduction, the Opus Tertium, had been completed and sent to the Pope. At this time he speaks of himself as an old man, and he says that he had been studying language, science, and philosophy for nearly forty years (Opus Tertium, cap. 20). From this it may be supposed that he was born between 1210 and 1215. But the place of his birth cannot be said to be fixed with certainty.

One, and only one, notice of his name occurs in a contemporary writer. Matthew Paris relates, under the year 1233, that Henry III convoked the counts and barons of the kingdom to a council at Oxford. Their animosity against Pierre des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, the king's chief adviser, who had surrounded his person with a body-guard of Poitevins and filled England with these foreigners, led them to refuse the summons.