Compendium of the Study of Philosophy by Roger Bacon (review)

Thomas S. Maloney has once again provided an engaging and carefully edited translation and critical edition of a major text of Roger Bacon. Scholars of Bacon already enjoy Maloney's other edited translations, On Signs (Toronto, 2013) and The Art and Science of Logic (Toronto, 2009), as well as the critical edition of the Compendium of the Study of Theology (Leiden, 1988). Maloney turns his attention in this new volume to the English Minorite's Compendium studii philosophiae and, in addition to his commentary and translation, provides a critical edition of the Latin text based on the singular manuscript in existence (Cotton Tiberias C.V) in the British Museum.

For those unfamiliar with the Compendium, it is important to recall that Bacon composed this work in either Paris or Oxford between 1271-1276, with 1272 or thereabouts the most likely date. He had introduced many of the key themes of the Compendium in his trilogy from 1267-1268, the Opus maius, Opus minus, and Opus tertium, in response to the request of Pope Clement IV. Bacon called for nothing less than a sweeping reform of Christendom's educational curriculum that included the sciences, philosophy, and theology. At the core of his concerns lie his advocacy of language studies, so as to produce a more accurate biblical text suitable for trustworthy teaching and the promotion of missionary activities beyond the realms of Latin Christianity. The appearance of the Compendium coincided with Pope Gregory X's convocation of the Second Council of Lyon in 1272 and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio's magisterial series of lectures, known collectively as the Hexaëmeron, in Paris between Easter and Pentecost in 1273. Scholars may paint a picture of Bacon as Bonaventure's adversary and a disgruntled friar on the margins of his religious community and mid-thirteenth century ecclesiastical agendas, but that view must be challenged. Gregory IX was clearly interested in reform as his conciliar preparations reveal, and Bonaventure, along with other friars in Paris, shared a number of concerns with their confrere, Roger Bacon. As Hans Kraml has demonstrated, the emphasis of the Doctor Mirabilis on the significance of language studies and theological hermeneutics is evident in the Scriptum in primium librum sententiarum, which William de la Mare wrote sometime shortly after 1267. He was a student of the Doctor Seraphicus and became a Regent Master at the University of Paris in 1275. Like his fellow Englishman, he was keen on correcting the version of the Vulgate in use and may have collaborated with Bacon in the composition of the Correctio textus bibliae and De hebraeis et graecis vocabilis glossarum bibliae. Perhaps he also played a hand in the composition of the Compendium.

The Compendium is situated within a variegated wisdom tradition that permeates the writings of his fellow Minorite mendicants. What is noteworthy about Bacon's approach to the thematic is his assumption of their basic theological foundations and his unique turn to philosophy in the articulation of that tradition. This affords him the opportunity to argue for the cultivation of wisdom throughout society with a methodology that reflects his nascent fundamental theology. Given the content and context of the on-going reflection on wisdom among Franciscan theologians like Bonaventure in the thirteenth century, Bacon's Compendium strikes this reader as a broad philosophical effort to move an assumed theological understanding of wisdom beyond church pulpits and university aulas into the mainstream of medieval culture in order to illustrate that people throughout Christendom and beyond suffer when the gift of wisdom is neither sought out nor appreciated throughout society. The text itself is divided into nine sections that treat how and why the acquisition of wisdom is essential, the impediments to wisdom, those individuals and groups whose lack of wisdom leads to error, the importance of language studies, and guidelines for translators working with Greek and Hebrew.

The opening chapter promises to address wisdom and how it can be acquired. Four categories (pp. 2-3...