Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi Fasc. V SECRETUM SECRETORUM CUM GLOSSIS ET NOTULIS TRACTATUS BREVIS ET UTILIS AD DECLARANDUM QUEDAM OBSCURE DICTA FRATRIS ROGER! NUNC PRIMUM EDIDIT ROBERT STEELE ACCEDUNT VERSIO ANGLICANA EX ARABICO EDITA PER A. S. FULTON VERSIO VETUSTA ANGLO-NORMANICA NUNC PRIMUM EDITA OXONII E TYPOGRAPHEO CLARENDONIANO M CM XX OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE THE issue of this series has been interrupted by the war, and this volume has been interpolated, for several reasons, somewhat out of its proper place in the order of Bacon's unpublished work, partly out of a consideration of the great importance of the text on which he comments, and partly on account of its influence on his whole work. Mediaeval students will be glad to learn that the publication of the whole of Bacon's work now seems assured. As before, I have to acknowledge the ready assistance of j mediaeval scholars, among them Prof. A. G, Little, Mr. J. P. Gilson, Dr. Cowley, Dr. Henry Bradley, the Librarian of the Grand-Ducal Library of Saxe-Gotha, who forwarded for study fv'- two Arabic MSS. of the Secretum Secretorum, happily re- 's turned to him in safety, Mrs. Henry Dakyns, who many years ago copied out and prepared the text of Le Secre de Secrez x with a view to joint publication elsewhere, to the Committee 7i of the Bacon Commemoration of 1914, who have materially 55 assisted in the preparation of this volume, and to others ~ named in the Introduction. H « . ' ROBERT STEELE. SAVAGE CLUB, W.C. a a BOUND JjJN 415716 CONTENTS PAGE iii INTRODUCTION IX The Syriac Original . xi The Western Arabic Farm ... xiii The Eastern Arabic Form • .„ . xiv The Date of the Eastern Arabic Text XV The Hebrew Version *. xvi The Translation of Johannes Hispalensis xv i The Translation of Phflip . xviii The Official Revision of Philip's Translation xxii Bacon's Edition xxiii Achillini Text . xxiii The Taegius Text . xxiv Classification of Manuscripts , . xxv Secreta Secretorum metrice composita x^xviii Bacon's Introductory Treatise . .. xxviii Bacon's Notes on the Text xxix Printed Latin Texts . xxx French MS. Versions . • . xxxj French Printed Versions .... xxxii English MS. Versions .... xxxiii English Printed Versions . * . xxxiv Welsh Versions xxxiv Early Dutch Versions xxxiv German MS. Versions .... xxxiv Italian MS. Versions .... xxxv Spanish Versions . xxxvi Arrangement of the Text . xxxvii Preliminary Matter ..... xxxvii Discourse I . ' xxxix Discourse II xxxix Discourse III . • Iii PAGE Discourse IV .......... liv Discourse V Ivii Discourse VI . Ivii Discourse VII Ivii Discourse VIII Ivii Discourse IX . Iviii Discourse X . ... Ixi The Translation from the Arabic Text . Ixiv The Anglo-Norman Version Ixv TRACTATUS BREVIS ... AD DECLARANDUM— De causa hujus operis 2 De veris mathematicis . 3 De dictis et factis falsorum mathematicorum et demonum . 6 De dictis et factis verorum mathematicorum t 8 De veris scientiis similibus in nominibus quatuor predictis . 9 De quibusdam astronomicis 12 De proprietatibus planetarum et signorum .... 17 SECRETUM SECRETORUM 25 (The chapter headings are indexed on pp. 28-35) De proprietatibus lapidum - 173 THE TRANSLATION FROM THE ARABIC . 176 List of Discourses 179 I. On the Kinds of Kings 180 II. On the Quality of the King and the Nature and Conduct Proper to him . 184 The Superior Degree of Counsel . 195 The Spring Season . 199 The Summer Season 200 The Autumn Season , 201 The Winter Season . ... 201 The Parts of the Body 202 • Diet 204 Waters 205 Wine 206 The Bath 209 Physiognomy . 219 III. On the Form of Justice . 224 IV. On Ministers 227 V. On the Writers of Royal Warrants . - • . - 242 VI. On Ambassadors . .' . • • 243 VII. On Superintendents ....... 244 VIII. On Officers and Soldiers 245 VI PAGE IX. The Conduct of Wars 247 On the Victorious and Defeated . 250 X. On Talismans and Astrology 252 NOTES 267 SUMMARY OF INTRODUCTORY TREATISE . 278 THE < ETHICS ' OF ARISTOTLE. TRANSLATION FROM THE ARABIC 284 LE SECRE DE SECREZ 287 A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 INTRODUCTION THE text of the Secretum Secretorum, which is here printed as edited by Roger Bacon with his introductory treatise and glosses, is taken from a thirteenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library from which all other existing copies of his edition appear to have been derived. To complete the work and make it more generally useful to students of mediaeval literature, certain passages unknown to Bacon, but inserted by Achillini in his edition of 1501 from a Hebrew version of the Western recension, have been added, together with a literal translation of the original Arabic made under my supervision by Mr. Ismail Ali and edited by Mr. Fulton, of the Oriental Department of the British Museum, who is preparing an edition of the Arabic text. This rendering will serve as a key to the Latin, and at the same time will show the remarkable accuracy of the original translation and the variation it has undergone. The MS. (Tanner 116) is an English manuscript, which at one time belonged Lto Archbishop Sancroft. It is described in Hack- man's Catalogue thus: ' Codex membranaceus in folio minore, ff. in, sec. xin exeuntis ; binis columnis, baud eadem manu exara- tus ; olim peculium Jacobi Windet, ex dono Jacobi Everitti Antver- piensis.' It contains (i) R. B. tractatus ad declaranda quedam obscure dicta in libro Secreti Secretorum Aristotelis (here printed, pp. 1-24). (2) Extracts from Opus Tertium, &c., see p. 24. (3) Secretum Secretorum (here printed, pp. 25-172). (4) Tracts by Simon de Faversham, &c. It was apparently in English hands at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as it contains some verses in English by Robert Dey. Later copies (almost certainly of this manuscript) are Trinity Coll. Cambridge 1036 (fifteenth century) Fitzwilliam Mus. Carnb. McClean 153 (fifteenth century), C.C.C. Ox. 149 (late fourteenth, Dr. Dee's copy). A number of Bacon's notes are incorporated in a MS. of the Secretum in the British Museum MS. 12 E. xv, which afterwards belonged to Edward IV when a youth. The date to be assigned to Bacon's share in this work lies between well-fixed limits. In the first place, the fact that he uses Vlll the method of glossing would dispose us to put it early in his career. In the second, the fa'ct that he alters the manuscripts before him when they treat of the length of the year (p. 80), preferring the worse to the better reading, shows that he had not, at the time of writing the note, arrived at the sense of the importance of accuracy in astronomy which he entertained, say, in 1267, when he wrote the Opus Majus. Thirdly, a number of the notes were written soon after his return to Oxford, after a stay in Paris (pp. 34, 38); I am therefore inclined to put the completion of the text and notes at some date before 1257, when he returned to Paris. The glosses, interlinear in the MS., are printed here immediately below the text as large-print notes. The introductory treatise is much later. It must be some time after the comet of August, 1264 (p. ios2)i It must even be after 1267. On p. 3U Bacon is very severe on 'glomerelli nescientes Grecum' for their confusion of ' matesis' and ' mathesis ', translating the first as ' knowledge' and the second as ' divination '. Unfortu- nately he had in 1267 fallen into the same mistake (Op. Maj. i. 239^), and repeated it next year (Op. Tert., Brewer, p.. 27"), though he corrected it in his Greek Grammar (p* n82), and in his Mathematics. I am inclined to place the date of the introduction at about 1270, especially in view of Bacon's remarks about a forthcoming total eclipse (u32), which must refer either to that of June 13, 1276, visible in the polar regions, or of Oct. 28, 1277, visible in East Asia, which however did not become visible in England or France (unless the passage was written before the eclipse of May 25, 1267, visible in Italy). The Secretum Secretorum exercised so great an influence on the mental development of Roger Bacon that merely on this ground a study of it would be interesting. From his first work to his last he quotes it as aruauthority, and there can be no doubt that it fortified, if it did not create, his belief in astrology and natural magic. It came to him and his contemporaries as an unquestioned work of Aristotle, which must have been known to exist for over a century, since it was quoted by Mesue, p. 273 (eleventh or twelfth century1) and a portion of it was translated c. 1135 in Spain, though Averroes in 1177 says, in his commentary to the Ethics (Lib. X in fine), that the ' de regimine vite' had not yet come into his hands. The 1 He quotes, however, only from the intrusive ' de oculis', and even then not from any text known to us. IX absence of a Greek text could make no difference to its reception— there was no original text known at the time of many other un- questioned works of Aristotle—though Bacon seems to have hypnotized himself into a belief that he had seen one (p. lyz10). The Secretum is perhaps the best known of that large family of works in which the man of the study takes upon himself the task of telling the man of affairs- what he should do. Whistler is reported to have said that if artists went upon the Stock Exchange the qualities necessary to make them good painters would enable them to beat the men of business out of hand.