The Grey Friars in OxfordLittle, A. G. (Andrew George)
History
The Grey Friars in Oxford
Little, A. G. (Andrew George)
Franciscans -- Great Britain
Douai, 691 (sec. xvii), wanting chapters 38-52: this MS. has been
described by Victor Cousin, _Journal des Savants_ for 1848 (5
articles).
Printed in Bacon’s _Opera Inedita_ (Rolls Series), pp. 3-310.
Charles has been misled by a passage in the work called ‘_Communia
Naturalium_’ into thinking that this latter formed part of the _Opus
Tertium_; Charles, _R. Bacon_, pp. 65, 83-4; his description of _Opus
Tertium_ is consequently erroneous. The passage is from the Mazarine MS.
of the _Communia Naturalium_ (i.e. No. 3576), fol. 85:
‘Quod est improbatum in secunda parte primi operis, deinde in hoc
tertio opere explanavi hoc et solvi objectiones.’
These words refer to Bacon’s doctrine that the _intellectus agens_ is not
part of the soul, but God and angels. This is insisted on in the _Opus
Tertium_, cap. xxiii, and it is not likely that Bacon would do more than
refer to it again casually in the course of the same work. The relation of
the _Opus Tertium_ to the _Commun. Nat._ is probably as follows: the
latter was written or begun first. Bacon repeatedly mentions that he was,
while writing his three _Opera_ for the Pope, engaged on a larger work,
_Scriptum Principale_, which he did not send to Clement[1349]. Much of
this larger work naturally found its way, probably in a summarised form,
into the _Opus Tertium_ as we know it, the treatise actually sent to the
Pope.
_Tractatus de multiplicatione specierum_, or, _De generatione specierum et
multiplicatione et corruptione earum_, is inserted by Jebb in the _Opus
Majus_, pp. 358-445, between Part v and Part vi. The subject is however
discussed in Part iv, which is often quoted or referred to in Part v. In
the _De multiplicatione_, &c. (p. 368), are the words:
Ut tactum est in communibus naturalium.
Again (p. 358):
Recolendum est igitur quod in tertia parte hujus operis tactum est,
quod essentia, substantia, natura, potestas, potentia, virtus, vis,
significant eandem rem, sed differunt sola comparatione.
There is nothing about this in the third part of the _Opus Majus_; but it
is found in the _Communia Naturalium_. The treatise _De multiplicatione
specierum_ was therefore part of a work of which the _Communia Naturalium_
formed the third part. This large work was according to Jebb, the _Opus
Minus_; according to Charles, the _Opus Tertium_[1350]; according to
Brewer, the encyclopaedic _Compendium Philosophiae._ Brewer is no doubt
right; the _De multiplicatione_ was intended as a sub-section of the great
treatise on Physics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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