140 Roger Bacon and the Hermetic Tradition in Medieval Science

Roger Bacon and the Hermetic Tradition in Medieval Science

GEORGE MOLLAND

Roger Bacon would no more have wished to be called a Hermeticist than to be called a magician. For him magic was by its very nature bad, but this did not stop him from indulging beliefs and practices that bordered on the magical. Similarly, although he had no great or very favourable image of Hermes Trismegistus, his writings are infused with a spirit akin to what in a loose understanding of the term have been called Hermetic trends in Renaissance thought, and especially to the ` `Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science" .1 1 In exciting scholarship dating back some thirty years and more, a group of scholars, some closely associated with the Warburg Institute in London, demonstrated the vitality in Renaissance thought of quasi- magical traditions associated (sometimes rather remotely) with writings attributed to the supposed ancient Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, and urged their importance for a proper historical assessment of the nascent Scientific Revolution.2 The impact made by these studies has produced the impression that "Hermetic" influences upon science were in essence a Renaissance phenomenon and had

I The phrase is from Frances A. Yates' oft-cited article, The Hermetic Tradition in RenaissanceScience, in: Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, ed. Charles S. Singleton, Baltimore 1968, 255-74, reprinted in F. A. Yates, Ideas and Ideals in the North EuropeanRenaissance.- Collected Essays, VolumeIII, London 1984, 227-46. 2 Among important writings in this genre, together with some more critical of it, I cite here: F. A. Yates, GiordanoBruno and the HermeticTradition, London 1964; id., The RosicrucianEnlightenment, London 1972; D. P. Walker, Slbiritualand DemonicMagic,from Ficinoto Campanella,London 1958; id., The AncientTheology: Studies in ChristianPlatonism from the Fifteenthto the EighteenthCentury, London 1972; C. B. Schmitt, PerennialPhilos- ophy: fromAgostino Steuco to Leibniz, in: Journal of the History of Ideas, 27 (1966), 505- 32, reprinted in Schmitt, Studiesin RenaissancePhilosophy and Science,London 1981 ; P. Rossi, Francis Bacon:From Magic to Science,tr. S. Rabinovitch, London 1968 (originally published in Italian 1957); P. J. French, John Dee: The Worldof an ElizabethanMagus, London 1972; N. H. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy:Between Science and Religion, London 1988; J. E. McGuire &P. M. Rattansi, Newtonand the 'Pipes of Pan', in: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21 (1968), 108-43; R. S. Westman & J. E. McGuire, Hermeticismand the ScientificRevolution, Los Angeles 1977.

140 negligible medieval precedents. The aim of the present article is to help redress the balance, and, while by no means denying Renaissance originality, to show that important ideas now often regarded as characteristically Renaissance, were very much alive in the Middle Ages. To this end I shall consider two facets of the work of Roger Bacon: the role that he ascribed to prisca auctoritas, or ancient authority, and his attempt to naturalise some apparently magical practices by means of the doctrine of multiplication of species.

1. Prisca Auctoritas

The role of things ancient-I adhere to this translation against Schmitt's preferred "venerable" -in Renaissance thought has been well summarised by the late Charles B. Schmitt in an article centred on Agonisto Steuco: The word priscus, probably best translated as "venerable", is one which recurs often in Steuco. He speaks of priscissaeculis, in former centuries, prisci philosophi, prisca philosophia,and firisci alone, referring to "the venerable philosophers and theologians". None of this is accidental. Truth flows from a single fountain, as it were, but is manifested in various forms. Moreover, the revelation of truth dates back to the most ancient times, to the prisca saecula,and we can find truth in the writings derived from this period. The wisdom of earliest times is then transmitted to the later centuries, truth and wisdom being as old as man himself.33

But, for all its other virtues, Schmitt's article paid scant attention to the Middle Ages. In like vein D.P. Walker, after discussing the for- tunes of what he called Ancient Theology in the early Christian period, continued, "When in the Renaissance the Ancient Theology was revived... "4 It is as if Renaissance scholars were launching a counter-attack to the "revolt of the medievalists"5 which would have antedated many of the Renaissance's more traditional virtues, and staking a claim for originality, or rather genuine rebirth, in this less familiar and prima facie rather "irrational" territory. But here again their claim must be modified, as I hope that the example of Roger Bacon will demonstrate. The phrase prisca auctoritas occurs in the opening passage of

3 Schmitt, PerennialPhilosophy, 520. 4 Walker, Ancient Theology,2. 5 To use the phrase of Wallace K. Ferguson, The Renaissancein Historical Thought, Cambridge, MA 1948, ch. 11.

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