The Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious tome discovered in 1912 by the English book dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich, has puzzled scholars for a century. A small six inches by nine inches, but over two hundred pages long, with odd illustrations of plants, astrological diagrams, and naked women, it is written in so indecipherable a language and contains so complicated a code that mathematicians, book collectors, linguists, and historians alike have yet to solve the myste… More >>
The 13th century was one of the most productive in the history of human knowledge. Instead of relying strictly on the word of the Bible, scholars translated Greek classics, the best minds theorized about the power of natural science by drawing hypothesis and testing them with experiments. We think of that time as composed of “knights in chain-mail hoods and crosses on their chests in tournaments and plodding through dark forests on their way to Jerusaleum or Camelot.” It as a time of monks, saints, piety, barbarity and ignorance.
Travel on the European continent ‘improved with the widening of roads to accomodate oxcarts after the Dark Ages,’ the most significant technological advance in history. Oxford became a town in the 10th century when a wall was built as a defense and for protection of the inhabitants. In 1167, the small walled town in the rolling countryside became a favorite of Henry II. It became a university town when Henry forbade English students from crossing the Channel to attend school.
Roger Bacon went to school in 1228 at the Univesity of Paris in the City of Lights. “The Italians have the Papacy, the Germans had the Empire, and the French have the learning.” Bacon’s decision to learn all that was ‘knowable’ so he followed in Thomas la Becket’s shoes to seek the source of knowledge available at that time. A difficult problem for Bacon was Aristotle’s notion of the “eternity of time” — he was unable to reconcile Aristotle to Christianity without corrupting the philosopher’s words. Albert Mgnus would remain his enemy until the day he died, but it sas Albert’s protege, Thomas Acquinas, and his rejection of “experimental science” which would bring about the ruin of Roger Bacon.
The photo section of Bacon’s handwritten and illustrated in living color of his OPUS MAJUS shows his most detailed hypothesis of ‘optical science.’ Along with botany, optics was probably the most advanced science of the Middle Ages. Moral philosophy was the highest of the sciences, that to which the proper exercise of the other sciences led. It “teaches us to lay down the laws and obligations of life and to believe and approve so that man can act and live according to these laws.”
He was a lucid and passionate writer, and many of his manuscripts have been translated from the Latin into English, the universal language of the twenty-first century. The ultimate value os his works was in approach and point of view. David Lindberg has recently published ROGER BACON’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE: A CRITICAL EDITION OF DE MULTIPLICATIONE SPECIERUM AND DE SPECULIS COMBURENTIBUS.
Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone have collaborated on OUT OF THE FLAMES, USED AND RARE, SLIGHTLY CHIPPED, and WARMLY INSCRIBED. Lawrence wrote solo, RIGHTS and OFF-LINE while Nancy has written BAD BUSINESS and TRADING UP (for women).
Rating: 3 / 5
Some of the exhastive and unnecessary “history lesson” is very well written, and there is evidence of considerable research. There are some fascinating studies of certain personalities.
I wish the author(s) could have let go of the anti-religious sentiments for a while and tried to look at the history of western thought as not totally oriented toward demonstratable knowledge and the scientific outlook.
He tries to pit philosophies/outlooks against one another but does not explain how they were synthesized to create something new.
The presentation of the R.C. Church is outrageously stereotypical, (the word dogma is used over and over again) revealing very little knowledge of theologic principles the proper mode of examining medieval history. The author relies so much on his own philosophic lense that it truly cripples what otherwise could have been a fantastic opus. It is not necessary to lay aside scientific rationalism in order to give a square and balanced review of the Church, who, after all, invented the “University”
I gave it only two stars only in order to lower its overall rating. This is retribution for having not been a sincere historian.
Rating: 2 / 5
It is possible (and probably even quite likely) that the mysterious manuscript at the heart of the Goldstone’s The Friar and the Cipher is not by Roger Bacon, but to fully believe that would be to lose the story of Bacon that fills more than half the book. Bacon is an interesting character and his story is quite fascinating and fairly well told but it is to the reader’s benefit that the book is able to include, through its history of the manuscript, a host of other characters ranging from the court of Elizabeth to World War I cryptographers, and beyond. Francis Bacon is even wedged in there a bit. Sometimes the books feels a little padded but this padding, at least, keeps the reader’s attention as the centuries are spanned. A pleasant read.
Rating: 4 / 5
There are much better books out there covering these subjects. The biographies of Bacon and John Dee, for instance, are done much better in The First Scientist and The Queen’s Conjurer. The authors clearly don’t understand Bacon’s science (totally misrepresenting his idea of species) and similarly know little about cryptography. Towards the end, in the surprisingly thin section on the Voynich manuscript, they comment that “no matter how brilliant the mind that fashioned a code, an equally brilliant mind might break it”. This just isn’t true – a one time pad may be a pain to use, but it is totally impossible to break, period. A real disappointment.
Rating: 2 / 5
What struck me is that the authors don’t tell the reader why they go into John Dee and the many others who tangled with this manuscript. From the title, one thinks it is a book about Roger Bacon and the manuscript but instead the first three quarters of the book is about scientific thought in the Middle Ages.
This would be OK but the writers need to draw a line to its relevance to the Bacon/manuscript connection and they never did.
So–they either need to change the title or adjust their framework.
I’ll read their other books, though. Their writing flows and they know how to make history entertaining.
NJCher
Rating: 4 / 5