§ 103.8. =Roger Bacon=, an English monk, contemporary with Lull, worked out his reform in a sounder manner by going back to the original sources and thus obtaining deliverance from the accumulated errors of later times. He appealed on matters of natural science not to corrupt translations but to the original works of Aristotle, and on matters of theology, not to the Lombard but to the Greek New Testament. He prosecuted his studies laboriously in mathematics and the Greek language. Roger was called by his friends _Doctor mirabilis_ or _profundus_. He was a prodigy of learning for his age, more in the department of physics than in those of philosophy and theology. He was regarded, however, by his own order as a heretic, and imprisoned as a trafficker in the black arts. Born in A.D. 1214 at Ilchester, he took his degree of doctor of theology at Paris, entered the Franciscan order, and became a resident at Oxford. Besides diligent study of languages, which secured him perfect command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, he busied himself with researches and experiments in physics (especially optics), chemistry, and astronomy. He made several important discoveries, _e.g._ the principle of refraction, magnifying glasses, the defects of the calendar, etc., while he also succeeded in making a combustible material which may be regarded as the precursor of gunpowder. He maintained the possibility of ships and land vehicles being propelled most rapidly without sails, and without the labour of men or animals. Yet he was a child of his age, and believed in the philosopher’s stone, in astrology, and alchemy. Thoroughly convinced of the defects of scholasticism, he spoke of Albert the Great and Aquinas as boys who taught before they learnt, and especially reproached them with their ignorance of Greek. With an amount of brag that smacks of the empiric he professed to be able to teach Hebrew in three days and Greek in the same time, and to give a full course of geometry in seven days. With fearless severity he lashed the corruptions of the clergy and the monks. Only one among his companions seems to have regarded Roger, notwithstanding all his faults, as a truly great man. That was Clement IV. who, as papal legate in England, had made his acquaintance, and as pope liberated him from prison. To him Roger dedicated his _Opus majus s. de emendandis scientiis_. At a later period the general of the Franciscan order, with the approval of Nicholas IV., had him again cast into prison, and only after that pope’s death was he liberated through the intercession of his friends. He died soon after in A.D. 1291.[307] § 103.9. =Theologians of a Biblical and Practical Tendency.=