had manifested itself in many ways before the close of the
thirteenth century. An illustration of this is found in the
almost simultaneous development of centres of teaching, which
developed into the universities of Italy, France, England, and, a
little later, of Germany.

The regular list of studies that came to be adopted everywhere
comprised seven nominal branches, divided into two groups--the
so-called quadrivium, comprising music, arithmetic, geometry, and
astronomy; and the trivium comprising grammar, rhetoric, and
logic. The vagueness of implication of some of these branches
gave opportunity to the teacher for the promulgation of almost
any knowledge of which he might be possessed, but there can be no
doubt that, in general, science had but meagre share in the
curriculum. In so far as it was given representation, its chief
field must have been Ptolemaic astronomy. The utter lack of
scientific thought and scientific method is illustrated most
vividly in the works of the greatest men of that period--such men
as Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the hosts of
other scholastics of lesser rank. Yet the mental awakening
implied in their efforts was sure to extend to other fields, and
in point of fact there was at least one contemporary of these
great scholastics whose mind was intended towards scientific
subjects, and who produced writings strangely at variance in tone
and in content with the others. This anachronistic thinker was
the English monk, Roger Bacon.


ROGER BACON