The Friar and the Cipher Page 6

  ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI IS ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN, best loved, and most influential figures in all of religious history. Born in Italy in 1182, the ne'er-do-well son of a wealthy businessman, as a child he dreamed of the romance of chivalry and knighthood. He was given a cursory education in Latin and set up in his father's business, to which he paid little attention, preferring to spend money rather than to earn it. His life was gay, generous, and entirely frivolous.

  His conversion came swiftly and irresistibly. The emptiness of his existence struck him, and about 1206, when he was in his twenties, he began to act strangely. He for whom “the sight of lepers was so bitter in the days of vanity that he looked at their houses two miles off and held his nose,” astonished his friends by kissing one; soon after he stole money from his father in order to give it to an impoverished priest. For this act he was renounced by his family and, left entirely to his own devices, began to beg for lepers, the poor, and himself.

  In 1209, while listening to the Gospel being read at church, he had an epiphany. As the priest read from Matthew, “As ye go preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand . . . Possess neither gold nor silver nor money in your purses, no wallet for your journey, nor two coats nor shoe,” Francis cried out, “This is what I am seeking!” From that time on he devoted himself to poverty and preaching, seeking to emulate the simple life of Christ. The force of his faith, in combination with his appealing personality and gentleness, brought him a motley crew of twelve followers, including a nobleman, a peasant, and an idiot, and, being informed that he needed the pope's approval to start an order, Francis journeyed to Rome to see Innocent III.

  At the time, heretical sects were on the rise; a German bishop estimated that there were 150 operating in Europe. This increase was a threat not simply to the faith; the sects were seizing Church property and controlling sections of Europe as if the Church did not exist. Of these, the one that represented by far the greatest threat was in the south of France. Known as Cathars or Albigensians, like Francis of Assisi they preached the simple life (although they did not believe in begging), a direct response to the excesses of a Church that allowed bishops and legates to live like kings. The Albigensians did not recognize the authority of the pope, and developed their own rituals.

  Realizing that the Cathars drew their appeal from the revulsion of common people to the excesses of Church officials, Innocent had already sent a Spanish bishop, Diego de Acevedo, and his canon, Domingo de Guzmán, to Languedoc, the French province that was the Cathars' spiritual center. The two Spaniards, both with a reputation for simple piety, imitated the Cathar “perfects” (priests) and traveled about like apostles, on foot, going door to door, begging bread and preaching the Gospel. Soon the bishop died, and Domingo, or Dominic, as he was known in Latin, continued alone, amassing a group of followers who now had a pious alternative to the Cathar heresy.

  But one man could do only so much, and the number of Cathars swelled. At this point, Innocent did something unprecedented in the annals of Christian history: he called for a crusade, not against the infidel Muslims for the recapture of Jerusalem, but against fellow Europeans. Encouraged first by Philip Augustus and then by his son, Louis VIII, who saw this as an opportunity to swallow up huge sections of the south, the crusade was conducted with as great a ferocity as has ever been perpetrated in the name of God. Year after year, knights and soldiers from the north, led by Arnold Amaury, a Cistercian monk, and the ruthless warrior Simon de Montfort, the second son of an impecunious but famous noble French family, swept down the countryside, surrounding and besieging Albigensian men, women, and children. If the Cathars surrendered, they were slaughtered or horribly mutilated.

  In the face of all this, it took a pope with the clear-sighted pragmatism of Innocent to recognize that Francis of Assisi's request for a new order based on total renunciation of the temptations of worldly life was not another heretical threat but an opportunity. Francis was committed to unconditional, absolute obedience to the pope, so Innocent gave him the authority to preach and establish the Order of the Friars Minor (Little Brothers).

  It is astonishing how quickly the ideas of the Franciscans caught on. Everywhere, noblemen gave up their titles to wash the feet of lepers; businessmen surrendered their wealth to beg for themselves and the poor. Lawyers and peasants alike donned the coarse brown or gray robes tied with cord around the waist that were the trademark raiment of the mendicant order. Every friar, from the lowliest novice to the minister general, eschewed any form of medieval transportation and walked, barefoot, no matter what the weather. It is as strong a testament to the human desire for faith as has ever been recorded.

  Dominic, too, had applied to Innocent for permission to establish a new order. Dominic did not actually convert many Cathars—the brutality of the crusade saw to that—but still, he received his authority in 1215. Like the Friars Minor, Dominic's group, the Order of Friars Preachers, were mendicants whose assignment was to travel the world preaching the word of God for the salvation of souls. They too adopted a uniform—a white robe covered by a black cloak—and walked everywhere.

  Francis began with just twelve acolytes; Dominic had sixteen. Both sent their followers out into the world to carry out their missions. It was not always easy for the friars. Not everyone embraced the mendicant ethic. There were difficulties also with foreign languages and customs, as Brother Jordan, an early Franciscan convert, discovered:

  To Germany there were sent . . . John of Penna with about sixty or more Brethren. When they entered the borders of Germany, and, not knowing the language, were asked if they wanted shelter, or food, or other things of the sort, they replied “Ja,” and in this way they received a good welcome from divers folk. When they saw that by saying “Ja” they were kindly treated, they decided that they ought to reply “Ja” to whatever they were asked. So it befell that when they were asked if they were heretics, and if they had come to Germany in order to infect it in the way they had perverted Lombardy [the Cathars], they replied “Ja.” Whereupon some of them were beaten, some imprisoned, and others stripped and led naked to the local court, and made a sport for men to mock at . . . From this experience, Germany was considered by the Brethren to be such a ferocious country that only those inspired by a longing for martydom would dare return hither.

  In 1227, a new pope, Gregory IX, decided to eradicate what remained of the Albigensian heresy by appointing special prosecutors who had the authority to detain, question, and punish suspected heretics in the pope's name. For this he chose the Dominicans. They proved so successful in France that Gregory soon expanded the practice throughout Europe. So ferocious were the Friars Preachers in enforcing orthodoxy that a grim play on words circulated, separating dominicanes into domini canes, meaning “dogs of God.” Thus was born the Inquisition, an institution that would sow terror in the name of God for the next 350 years.

  In order to be effective in this and other worldly responsibilities, Dominic understood the necessity of having educated followers. Accordingly, seven of his original sixteen acolytes were sent to the University of Paris. Others went to Frederick's university at Naples, and by 1222 there were Dominicans at Oxford. The universities thus became de facto recruitment centers for the Friars Preachers.

  Learning, on the other hand, was anathema to Francis, who wanted an order where all the brethren were completely equal. He worried that distinctions of birth, wealth, knowledge, or position would overcome his vision. As beloved as he was personally, however, Francis was unwilling to impose standards of behavior on his order, choosing to lead by example. Without a strong hand at the top, almost from the first, Franciscans followed the Dominicans to the universities.

  Once at the university, to Francis's chagrin, the Friars Minor demonstrated the same zeal for learning (and recruitment of the learned into the order) that characterized their brother mendicants, the Friars Preachers. In fact, there was soon so much competition between the two for who could convert the most students that there were
frequent complaints to the papacy that one or the other was engaging in unfair recruitment practices. By the time of St. Francis's death in 1224, most of his original vision had been modified or superseded by political practicalities.

  IN 1228, DURING A CITYWIDE FESTIVAL IN PARIS, a brawl began in a bar and then spilled out onto the streets. Students were killed, and in protest, the masters shut down the university and vowed to leave Paris if their grievances were not addressed. They were not, and so there was a mass exodus of masters and students to other universities.

  With the University of Paris closed, Roger Bacon's parents chose to send him to study closer to home at the new university at Oxford, which, unbeknownst to them, happened to be the most radical school in all of Europe.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rebels in Gray Robes:

  Oxford

  • • •

  OXFORD WAS NOT EVEN A TOWN until the tenth century, when a wall was built as a defense against any invaders who might attempt to cross the Thames. There was no tradition of higher education—Oxford never even had a monastery school. In 1117, there is a record of one master and fifty pupils. Fifty years later, the small walled city in the rolling countryside along a strategic river became a favorite of Henry II (Richard and perhaps John had been born in nearby Beaumont Castle). By the beginning of the thirteenth century, Oxford was a thriving mercantile center.

  Oxford became a university town for many of the same reasons that Paris did—scholars bearing translated manuscripts came there to settle and study. Enrollment got a big boost when Henry, furious that the French were providing sanctuary for Thomas à Becket, forbade English students from crossing the Channel to attend school.

  As the number of students swelled, lodging and class space became harder to find and more expensive. Classes were held in a variety of public buildings, taverns, or church facilities, often wherever a master happened to be staying. The city was dangerous, particularly after dark when the gates were locked, with robberies and murders common. The young men who came to study, therefore, most just thirteen or fourteen years old, tried to procure lodgings close to the master with whom they would be studying.

  Oxford was officially a church school, so anyone wishing to enroll was required to become a seminarian and shave a tonsure (a bald spot on the top of the head). Clerical status, however, did not prevent the young Oxford scholars from developing much the same relationships with the townsfolk as their counterparts in Paris. Many of the students, like the young Bacon, came from wealthy families, which did not endear them to a largely working-class populace. The tonsures made the students stand out, and they made it a point to speak to one another in Latin, incomprehensible to the locals, in effect saying, “We're better than you.” Brawls were common, and tensions between the two groups often ran high as more and more people—to say nothing of livestock—were crammed within the city's walls.

  Students roomed together to save money, and, in 1209, when one of them killed a local prostitute who was sharing his rooms, some citizens, led by the mayor, attacked and killed his two roommates in retaliation. The masters closed the university in protest and then migrated to other cities to teach—thus was Cambridge founded. Oxford stayed closed until 1214, when King John handed England over to the papacy and Innocent III issued a charter to the Oxford masters similar to the one that he had provided to the University of Paris.

  By the time Roger Bacon entered the school in about 1228, Oxford had fully recovered and probably had more than a thousand students. As had happened in Paris, many students enrolled not to pursue knowledge for its own sake but because they knew that a university degree had become a necessary stepping-stone to a career in the Church or government. “A boy of parts goes to Oxford, let us say, with the help of a bishop or abbot or local landholder, or, as happened more frequently than is generally supposed, because he belongs to a family which can support him there,” observed the Oxford historian Sir Maurice Powicke. “He makes good, and in due course incepts as master of arts. An influential teacher may open the way to a career . . . If he belongs to a well-to-do local family, the scholar's future is safe.”

  Oxford structured its arts curriculum along the same lines as Paris. It was no match in theology, but that turned out to be an advantage, since Paris, specifically because of the preeminence of its theology curriculum, remained under the close scrutiny of the pope. Not so Oxford. It was too far away and deemed not sufficiently important. As a result, by 1228, Oxford was able to deviate from generally accepted teaching principles. Not only did the school teach Aristotle, but it also placed more emphasis on mathematics and experimental science than any other university in Europe. That it did so was due almost entirely to the influence of one extraordinary man, Roger Bacon's spiritual mentor, Robert Grosseteste.

  In an age where birth was everything, Grosseteste rose from poverty so extreme that no one is even sure of his family name. He was born around 1175 in Suffolk, and he must have demonstrated remarkable ability as a child. In 1192, probably through the auspices of a church patron, he was sent to study at Oxford. He so distinguished himself there that he was recommended to the bishop of Hereford and selected to study theology in Paris, an honor reserved almost exclusively for those of high birth. Afterward, he returned to teach at Oxford, eventually rising to become chancellor. In 1235, he was named bishop of Lincoln, another unheard-of honor for a man born little more than a serf, but he continued to oversee Oxford, which lay within his diocese.

  Grosseteste was not simply a scholar and a cleric. He was the most influential English clergyman of his time. His passion for his office, and the high standards he tried to implement, reverberated throughout the country. When Bacon came to Oxford in 1228, Grosseteste had just taken on the additional role as advisor to the Friars Minor. Although he never joined the Franciscans himself, he had agreed to lecture to them, which provided an enormous boost in the prestige of the order at the university. Adam Marsh, a Grosseteste protégé and one of Roger Bacon's future teachers, a man who would become extremely influential in English politics, joined the Franciscans because of Grosseteste.

  For all the political and ecclesiastic power he wielded, however, Robert Grosseteste's real legacy lay in his contribution to the advancement of science. “Master Robert, called Grosse-Teste, lately bishop of Lincoln, alone knew the sciences,” Roger Bacon would later write, and:

  For very illustrious men have been found, like Bishop Robert of Lincoln . . . who by the power of mathematics have learned to explain the causes of all things . . . Moreover, the sure proof of this matter is found in the writings of those men, as, for example, on impressions such as the rainbow, comets, generation of heat, investigation of localities on the earth and other matters, of which both theology and philosophy make use.

  Because of Grosseteste and Adam Marsh, Oxford became the center of scientific inquiry in northern Europe, and by association the order of itinerant, illiterate beggars envisioned by St. Francis became identified with the most forward-thinking intellectuals of the age.

  Grosseteste himself was the junction from which all experimental science grew. He divided scientific inquiry into three levels, based on the degree of certainty with which a person could trust his findings. At the bottom was that which could be known with surety: mathematics, for example. That a triangle was a three-sided, closed figure was an objective truth. The next level Grosseteste called natural physics, which today would incorporate a broad range of natural sciences, including botany, zoology, astronomy, optics, and chemistry. Conclusions in natural physics could be drawn with some degree of certainty through intense observation, although an experiment must yield the same result after many different trials in order to allow the experimenter to hypothesize a conclusion. A sufficient number of such conclusions would eventually yield the presence of a natural law. The highest level was what the thirteenth century called metaphysics, which was the science of God and the soul. Scholars, Grosseteste said, could not prove truth in the realm of metaphysi
cs with any degree of certainty—the study of God required divine inspiration.

  Grosseteste employed a surprisingly modern form of scientific method. He carefully observed and applied mathematics to natural phenomena such as refracted light, the movement of heavenly bodies, thunder, the nature of clouds, or the physiology of horned animals, then deduced what he called a “definition” but what today would be called a theory. However, although he asserted the necessity of empirical verification, Grosseteste was not himself an experimenter.

  When Roger Bacon enrolled at Oxford, he encountered this new dedication to science and mathematics. It is not clear whether he arrived early enough to actually attend Grosseteste's lectures, but by 1228 Grosseteste's spirit, academic commitment, and willingness to go where knowledge took him permeated the school. Aristotle's physics and metaphysics were on the curriculum, and there were classes in geometry and optics. It was an exciting time to be a student—there was the sense of breaking through academic barriers and advancing knowledge on a larger stage. “Here [at Oxford], mainly owing to Grosseteste's influence, the libri naturales [Aristotle's work on natural science] were early accepted and never had to go underground,” noted the medieval historian Gordon Leff.

  The masters, particularly Adam Marsh, recognized Bacon's potential immediately and accepted him into their inner circle. Forty years later, the pride in Bacon's voice was unmistakable when he discussed his part in that great intellectual movement. Describing the science of perspectiva (optics), he wrote to the pope: “However this science is not yet taught at Paris, nor among the Latins except twice at Oxford in England and there are not three people who know its power.”

  After he received his arts degree, the next step for someone as talented as Bacon would ordinarily have been the study of theology. With his credentials, he might well have been accepted at Paris, and the way thus paved for him to achieve great honors. But he had no taste for theology as it was taught in the thirteenth century. After experiencing the excitement and challenge of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroës, of perspectiva and the Metaphysics, he could not bring himself to the minute examination of the Sentences, which was still the core of the theological curriculum. He evidently considered it a waste of his time, and since in that age it took about thirteen years to achieve a theological degree, it was going to be a good deal of time to waste.