Few
greater men have lived. As we follow Bacon's process of
reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see that he was
divinely inspired.
On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most conscientious
men of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they
fought him steadily and bitterly. His sin was not disbelief in
Christianity, not want of fidelity to the Church, not even
dissent from the main lines of orthodoxy; on the contrary, he
showed in all his writings a desire to strengthen Christianity,
to build up the Church, and to develop orthodoxy. He was
attacked and condemned mainly because he did not believe that
philosophy had become complete, and that nothing more was to be
learned; he was condemned, as his opponents expressly declared,
"on account of certain suspicious novelties"--"_propter
quasdam novitates suspectas_."
Upon his return to Oxford, about 1250, the forces of unreason
beset him on all sides. Greatest of all his enemies was
Bonaventura. This enemy was the theologic idol of the period:
the learned world knew him as the "seraphic Doctor"; Dante gave
him an honoured place in the great poem of the Middle Ages; the
Church finally enrolled him among the saints.
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