Antichrist

Bacon's most overt statements about the apocalypse emerge in his discussions of Antichrist. Bernard McGinn writes that during the period between approximately 1200 and 1335, there are three broad Antichrist traditions. The first is the traditional view taken from Scripture, as well as a number of legends that, over the course of the Middle Ages, took on the force of Scripture. The second tradition is the application of this traditional formula to current events informing or informed by a belief that Antichrist was imminent. The third is Joachite speculation, which also argued for imminence.Footnote ¹¹ I will lay out the general medieval understanding of Antichrist and his role in the last days, and then will discuss Joachism. I will synthesize each, focusing on those ideas important to an imminent, literal expectation of the apocalypse, though a full treatment of the complexity of views on Antichrist and the end times is beyond the scope of this project. Following the short treatment of each, I will move on to Bacon's understanding of Antichrist and the final days, which is influenced by both the normative and Joachite views of Antichrist's imminence.

The following represents, in outline, the common medieval view of Antichrist.Footnote ¹² Most believed Antichrist would be born of Jewish parentage. Usually, he was thought to have descended from the tribe of Dan, which, not coincidentally, was also believed to be the tribe from which the Jewish messiah would spring. Antichrist would be born in Babylon, and possibly grow up in Palestine. Medieval descriptions usually noted Antichrist's parents as sinful human beings, though some vernacular sources described Antichrist being conceived by an evil spirit and a prostitute. Antichrist would wield both spiritual and temporal power, quickly converting the ignorant and weak-willed, and tyrannically persecuting Christians. Much of his reign would be characterized by claims to divinity, as well as counterfeit miracles meant to mimic those of Christ. He would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and would set an idol of himself within it, and would win the Jews to his cause. He would proclaim himself to be a god, and only a remnant of Christians would hold to their faith in the wake of his demonstrations of power. Fraud, deceit, and hypocrisy would characterize his reign.

One counter to the reign of Antichrist and his “purge” of Christendom would be the reappearance of the Jewish prophets Enoch and Elijah, both of whom Christians viewed as typologically foreshadowing Christ, and both of whom conveniently did not die mortal deaths.Footnote ¹³ Antichrist would kill both, but leave them unburied, and they would rise and make their heavenly ascent after three days. Their brief ministry would rally many to the true faith and their appearance would foreshadow the end of Antichrist's reign.

The manner of Antichrist's death, though the latter was a surety, was among the most debated issues in Antichrist tradition. There was some agreement that it would occur at the Mount of Olives when Antichrist attempted, like Simon Magus, to ascend to heaven on the wings of devils. He would be killed by “the spirit of Christ's mouth” (2 Thess 2:8), but interpretations varied as to whether Christ was to slay Antichrist personally or an individual figure, such as the Archangel Michael, or some group empowered by Christ, would accomplish it.

A competing apocalyptic scheme, one that Bacon knew well,Footnote ¹⁴ was that of Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1135–1202) and his inheritors.Footnote ¹⁵ After his death, commentators regarded Joachim as a prophet of Antichrist, but his impact on the medieval imagination far exceeds that of titular prophet.Footnote ¹⁶ The Franciscans especially, but also to a lesser extent the Dominicans, felt the influence of Joachim. Joachim's own order, the Florensians, was not a transnational group like the mendicants, but they too continued to ensure that the Calabrian abbot's influence was felt in southern Italy.Footnote ¹⁷ Lay groups, including various beguines in southern France, as well as the apostolic brethren under Gerardo Segarelli and then Fra Dolcino, were outlets for more radical interpretations of Joachim's foretellings.Footnote ¹⁸ Protestant reformers such as John Bale appropriated Joachim for their own apologetic ends in the wake of the Reformation.Footnote ¹⁹

The difference between Joachim's understanding and the traditional view manifests itself in a number of ways. Foremost among the novelties he introduced to apocalyptic exegesis and expectation was his scheme of trinitarian history and concordia.Footnote ²⁰ A basic understanding of this view is necessary in order to understand the more concrete predictions that emerged from Joachite speculation, including discussions of Antichrist.

Trinitarian history emerged from the exegesis of Scripture. Joachim accepted the traditional typological model that understood the events and figures of the Hebrew Bible to prefigure those of the New Testament. Yet he added to it another typological layer in which both testaments prefigured events and persons after the period of the New Testament. This relationship of the books of Scripture he called concordia. Joachim understood salvation history to unfold in patterns, especially patterns of two, three, seven, and twelve, all of which, when layered over one another, expressed the fullness of salvation history. The pattern of twos related to the two dispensations, the two covenants, the two testaments, the alpha and the omega.

Layered over this pattern of twos is a pattern of threes represented chiefly by the Trinity. Each member of the Trinity was the guiding force over one status of history. The Latin status is often translated as “age,” but this is insufficient to express the fullness of Joachim's meaning (a status was not merely a span of time, but had specific attributes or characteristics that defined one in contrast to the other).Footnote ²¹ Joachim also separately utilized the term etas (age) in his pattern of sevens. The first status belongs to the Father, the second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Spirit.Footnote ²² Joachim believed, to put it as simply as possible, that the world to date had existed in two separate ages that corresponded with the two testaments. First was an age of patriarchs, the time of the Old Testament, when God the Father ruled humankind through the commandments and the laws of Israel. The second Aae was that of the Son and the New Testament, when the precepts of Jesus Christ governed the Church. Thus, in contemplating the mystery of the Trinity, Joachim prophesied that surely a third age, that of the Holy Spirit, must follow the status of the Son and was, in addition, imminent. During this status, understanding of the revelation given in the gospel message would achieve new heights of clarity and profundity unseen even in apostolic times.Footnote ²³

Believing that the pattern of threes remained consistent with the pattern of twos, Joachim did not think that the third status would usher in a new dispensation, a new covenant, or a new church. The synagoga (synagogue) and the ecclesia (church) accounted for the pattern of twos, meaning that the ecclesia would survive into the third status. In the third status, however, the nature of the ecclesia would transform from the activa (active) to the contemplativa (contemplative).Footnote ²⁴ The third status would change the essential nature of the Christian experience, which would become characterized by a richer and fuller understanding of Scripture, a shift of emphasis, but only emphasis, from the apostle Peter to the apostle John. Joachim was clear, in a way many of his inheritors were not, that the status of the Holy Spirit would not abrogate in any way the institutions of the second status—the church, Petrine (i.e., papal) authority, and the New Testament.Footnote ²⁵

Joachim's pattern of history called for a new understanding of Antichrist, whom Joachim, echoing some patristic sources, interpreted as a twofold or multiple enemy.Footnote ²⁶ Joachim represented the final enemy in one of his most famous figurae, the drawings he made to enhance and explain the exegetical truths he inferred through concordia. In the figura of the dragon of Revelation 12:13, Antichrist is represented twice, as both the seventh head and the tail. As the seventh head, he represents the “seventh king who is rightly called Antichrist,”Footnote ²⁷ the last and worst of a series of enemies of the ecclesia during the status of the Son. Antichrist is prefigured by such personages as Herod, Nero, Mohammed, and Saladin.Footnote ²⁸ The tail Antichrist is the final enemy of the last etas and the third status, called “Gog, the final antichrist.”Footnote ²⁹ Joachim was concerned by the final Antichrist, but Antichrist of the tail was not an immediate threat, and would represent the power of Satan loosed on the world only after the thousand-year Sabbath.Footnote ³⁰ Rather, Joachim referred to the seventh tyrant as the “greatest” or “great” Antichrist, despite being a mere human.Footnote ³¹ One other key difference in Joachim's conception was that the great Antichrist would not be a Jew, but a false Christian (whose allies nevertheless were similar to those depicted in normative Antichrist legends).Footnote ³²

Another change Joachim made to the standard legend of the end times was the omission of Enoch and Elijah in favor of viri spirituales (spiritual men).Footnote ³³ Joachim stated that they would emerge as two entities, one dedicated to preaching and another to contemplation and prayer. These groups of spiritual men, under the direction of the pope, would actively, and successfully, challenge Antichrist and his followers.Footnote ³⁴ The emergence of the Franciscan and Dominican orders within a few decades of Joachim's death led to powerful assumptions, especially among some wings of the Franciscan Order, that these groups were the fulfillment of Joachim's prophetic exegesis.

Joachim's identification of new spiritual men as papal allies and foes of Antichrist eschewed elements of the Antichrist legend in favor of a characterization of the Christian ecclesia as active, even defiant, in the face of Antichrist's oppression. McGinn notes that “Joachim's writings were the first to give the papacy a special role, both in the coming crisis of the present era (the secundus status), and also in the future terrestrial triumph of the Church that the abbot spoke of as the tertius status.”Footnote ³⁵ Joachim's idea of the papal role is not limited to fighting Antichrist: “There shall ascend … a universal pope of the New Jerusalem, that is of the holy mother church … full liberty shall be given to him to renew (innouandum) the Christian religion and to preach the word of God.”Footnote ³⁶ Identified with the angel of the sixth seal (Rev 7:2),Footnote ³⁷ the pope's arrival in a Sabbath age (sabbatum) would signal evangelization of the entire world, which would begin just prior to the arrival of Antichrist.Footnote ³⁸ This latter idea, that of an ecclesia that engages the forces of Antichrist rather than merely suffering them, is central to Bacon's own apocalyptic understanding.

In the Antichrist legend, the role of the church is largely passive, and the church generally referred to as the object of oppression and subversion. Many Christians would suffer martyrdom in this period, but the heroes of the apocalyptic drama, such as Enoch and Elijah, would come from without. According to Joachim, it is the pope who would ultimately triumph over Antichrist and be regarded as the head of a true universal ecclesia at the beginning of the third status.Footnote ³⁹ This dramatic recentering of pope and church as active antagonists of Antichrist is among the most salient features of Bacon's own apocalyptic agenda, and, given his knowledge of Joachim as well as his intellectual debt to supporters, if not adherents, of Joachim, namely Adam Marsh and Robert Grosseteste,Footnote ⁴⁰ one must assume that Bacon developed his apocalyptic agenda with this new structure in mind.

Scholars are generally in agreement as to the influence Bacon had on subsequent apocalyptic development. McGinn has pointed out Bacon's contribution to the later Joachite Pastor angelicus legend, and Bigalli, Emmerson, and Gow have commented on Bacon's contribution to the standard Antichrist legend (specifically the tacit association of the Tatars as forerunners or possible armies of Antichrist). In the matter of Bacon's debt to Joachim, however, a recent study on medieval apocalypticism by Brett Whalen has concluded that “[Bacon's] writings and apocalyptic speculations showed no discernible influence from Joachim's ideas.”Footnote ⁴¹ This long-held assumption, as I will show, is in need of further examination.Footnote ⁴²

Bacon and Joachim

Bacon was not hostile to Joachim nor to the more recent and somewhat more radical works pseudonymously attributed to him. In his Opus maius Bacon advocated the study of Joachim, as well as the pseudo-Joachite tract Expositio Sybillae et Merlini, and stated that “if the Church should be willing to consider the sacred text and prophecies, also the prophecies of the Sibyl and of Merlin, Aquila, Seston, Joachim, and many others, moreover the histories and the books of philosophers, and should order a study of the paths of astronomy, it would gain some idea of greater certainty regarding the time of Antichrist.”Footnote ⁴³ Since he immediately followed this passage by stating “these matters may now be dismissed,”Footnote ⁴⁴ it would be easy to conclude that his interest in the abbot was passing.

I attribute Bacon's reticence to engage in full-blown Joachite calculation less to indifference than to the fact that he was writing from the University of Paris just more than a decade after the scandal of the Eternal Gospel took place there.Footnote ⁴⁵ In 1254, the young Franciscan Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino penned a text called the Introductorius, in which he claimed that Joachim's works superseded Scripture.Footnote ⁴⁶ The secular clergy and the preaching friars found adequate opportunity to vent their brewing ire toward lofty Franciscan claims of holiness and perfect poverty in the wake of what was, even to Joachite sympathizers, an outrageous claim. The condemnations that followed compelled the Minister General, John of Parma—a “great Joachite”Footnote ⁴⁷ —to step down from his post, in spite of his own orthodoxy and repudiation of Gerardo's claim. Though Bonaventure, Minister General of the Friars Minor during Bacon's era, was himself open to Joachite speculation, loyalty to Joachite thought brought increasing peril to its adherents during this time. Therefore, it is safer to conclude that Bacon was being cautious about Joachism rather than that Joachism did not interest him. Whalen appropriately points out that, during the period Bacon was active, “a general sense of caution pervaded the Franciscan ranks in regard to eschatological speculation and the production of any new works, which were carefully monitored by the order.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Beyond the fact that one scarcely can find a topic on which Bacon did not have an opinion, he was acutely aware of which of his writings might draw ecclesial scrutiny, and his endorsement of Joachim in the Opus maius is reflected elsewhere in his writings.Footnote ⁴⁹

One such place that suggests Bacon's Joachite sympathies comes from his discussion of geography. In the Opus tertium in a section on The Places of the World, Bacon made a sevenfold argument on the necessity, and beauty, of geography that echoes his work in the Opus maius.Footnote ⁵⁰ Much of his argument concerned itself with the need to create and use accurate maps. At an elementary level, geographical knowledge would prevent missionaries from ending up in the wrong countries or regions, or dying on account of unknown features of climate or other dangers (all of which must have been fairly common if Bacon felt the need to argue so strongly for an understanding of geography). A richer mastery of geography, when married to knowledge of astrology, includes knowledge of the “complexions” of regions and peoples, namely their proclivities and mental and physical make-up. Thanks to this astrological geography, missionaries would be able to avoid those regions “even more hostile to Latins,”Footnote ⁵¹ or, if forced to go there, might at least bring to bear the proper arguments for conversion.

Missionary activity, however, is not the only reason for the study of geography. It is, if anything, a secondary concern. The greatest reason, or, rather, the “greatest utility (utilitas maxima)” of geography arises “on account of the violence of the nations who shall invade the world, namely the Jews enclosed in the mountains of Hyrcania, and Gog and Magog, and the nations enclosed by Alexander behind the Caspian Gates, and on account of Antichrist and his followers.”Footnote ⁵² I will return to the issue of the Tatars, the Hircanian Jews, and the Caspian gates shortly, but two initial points must be made. First is that above all else, knowledge of geography is essential in the conflict with Antichrist, a claim made by Bacon in regard to many other sciences in parallel passages throughout the Opera. Second, it is not coincidental that the use of geography to locate and combat Antichrist immediately follows a passage on the use of geography for missionary work. In the authentic works of Joachim, namely the Expositio de prophetia ignota (Exposition on Unknown Prophecy), or the more widely available Liber Concordie, Joachim speaks of a pope who would convert the heathen in the final days before Antichrist.Footnote ⁵³ Bacon surely had come across these ideas, if not the works, and must have been struck by the fact that recent events appeared to depict just such an evangelizing mission underway. William of Rubruck (whose writings from his mission to the Far East Bacon read)Footnote ⁵⁴ and fellow friars had recently begun to make contact with a number of non-Christian peoples.Footnote ⁵⁵ Therefore, it makes sense to treat Bacon's discussion of geography not as two separate ideas—the success of missions to the East and the forthcoming battle with Antichrist—but as part of the same apocalyptic program. The prevailing Antichrist legend largely did not concern itself with missiology, save for the conversion of the Jews just before the advent of the Kingdom of God. Joachite apocalypticism, on the other hand, placed a premium on conversion of heathens prior to the battle with Antichrist. Bacon echoed this Joachite commitment in his Compendium studii, stating that the activity of “a most blessed pope,” among other things, would bring the “fullness of nations” under the dominion of the Church.Footnote ⁵⁶ Bacon's discussion of geography is altogether apocalyptic, and owes itself to Joachite apocalypticism.

Returning to the armies of Antichrist, we also can observe Bacon adapting parts of the standard Antichrist legend, though not particularly faithfully. Let us examine the passage in more detail:

The legend that Alexander had enclosed Gog and Magog behind a wall or gates was current in the era of Flavius Josephus and was assimilated into the medieval Antichrist legend.Footnote ⁵⁹ Further, by the twelfth century it had fused with the notion that the lost tribe of Israel would assist Antichrist, a claim Bacon first made in a parallel passage in the Opus maius.Footnote ⁶⁰ The fusion of anti-Jewish sentiment and apocalyptic claims was hardly novel in the medieval period, but what is important in this passage is Bacon's attempt to locate formally both Antichrist and his would-be allies among the current nations and regions—legendary or not—of the known world. Indeed, Bacon is far more wary of the Tatars than of Jews, reflecting, at least, the present political realities of the thirteenth century when the might of the Tatars was well known among European authors.Footnote ⁶¹ If Bacon was not convinced that the Tatars were the apocalyptic enemy, he gave them strong considerationFootnote ⁶² given that he and “all wise men” believed that the time of Antichrist was at hand.Footnote ⁶³

One Joachite element Bacon evidently did not accept was that Gog was a second Antichrist.Footnote ⁶⁴ The location and parentage of Antichrist differed from the standard legend. Bacon's description suggests that Atichrist was not of Jewish parentage or, at least, not from the tribe of Dan, since it would have been one of the lost tribes locked away in the Hircanian mountains. At no point in the Opus maius does Bacon refer to Antichrist as a Jew. While he made no positive statement as to the parentage of Antichrist, the established legend of Jewish parentage was enmeshed so profoundly in medieval religious consciousnessFootnote ⁶⁵ that his silence is suggestive. Indeed, given the fact that the Caspian gates were located east of Christendom, one might conclude that Antichrist, coming from the opposite region, was from the West. In any case, Bacon was equally silent on Antichrist's titular religious identity.Footnote ⁶⁶

Bacon's relationship to Joachism is not solely apocalyptic. Echoes of Joachim's exegetical strategy, the intellectus (sometimes intelligentia) spiritualis (spiritual understanding), were present as well. In the fifth reason for the study of geography in the Opus maius, Bacon stated that “we can know through these places [i.e., those places we have identified using maps and astronomical calculations] the whole course of sacred writing, not only for the literal sense of the text, but that spiritual senses may be drawn out from it.”Footnote ⁶⁷ This is an echo of an exegetical strategy used since Origen, who believed that place names and places within Scripture held certain spiritual truths in the moral, anagogical, and tropological sense.Footnote ⁶⁸ This is a very intriguing passage when paired with Bacon's support of Joachite calculation, since it echoes Joachim's concern with the “fullness of history.”Footnote ⁶⁹

Joachim's exegetical understanding drew on established patristic paradigms of interpreting Scripture spiritually in addition to literally. He innovated, however, in tying spiritual understanding to the course of salvation history, as part of a progressive understanding of Scripture.Footnote ⁷⁰ McGinn succinctly summed this up: “For Joachim the significance of the temporal process is identical with the unfolding of the intellectus spiritualis: the meaning of world history is the history of exegesis.”Footnote ⁷¹

Bacon did not exclude standard exegetical practices: he interpreted biblical geography in its “moral, allegorical, and analogical sense,”Footnote ⁷² and cited Origen's eighteenth homily on Joshua as an example.Footnote ⁷³ Origen devotes the final section of this homily to typological interpretation of the various cities and regions divided up by Joshua, where “a model of the future inheritance in heaven is dimly sketched.”Footnote ⁷⁴ Origen referred not only to prophecies of Christ, but also to the attainment of the heavenly Jerusalem—an apocalyptic reference, albeit obliquely made.

It is possible that Bacon was following Origen exclusively here, and not Joachim, though since Joachim's theory of concordia relied on Origen, it is difficult to tell. Origen did champion a sort of moral allegorizing and typological understanding of Scripture,Footnote ⁷⁵ but there remain sections of Bacon's analysis that fall closer to Joachim's systematic historicization of Scripture than to typology or moral allegory. Bacon used the term intellectus spiritualis, stating that “for the man ignorant of the localities of the world the rind of history frequently has no taste because of the infinite number of places … and as a consequence he will be impeded in rising to the spiritual meanings (intellectus spirituales) and only imperfectly will be able to explain them.”Footnote ⁷⁶

Bacon's own innovation, arguing for a marriage of astrological calculation and geography, diverged from both Joachite and standard exegesis, but appears rooted in a literal adaptation of the former. Joachim, near the end of his Book on the Concord of the Two Testaments, stated that the spiritual meanings garnered from consideration of scripture are limitless:Footnote ⁷⁷ “We have said that the spiritual understanding proceeds from the concordance of the two Testaments and that it is manifold so that according to it Jerusalem, Babylon and the other things written there and in the other places in Scripture have so many things to signify that from each book comes an abyss and a fountain of water gushing to eternal life”Footnote ⁷⁸ (John 4:14). Bacon neatly refashioned this statement, but applied it explicitly to the study of geography:

Given the similarity to Joachim's statement, it is not surprising to find a discussion of history immediately following his discussion of geography. Here, David Woodward and Herbert Howe point out Bacon's “insistence on the need for a systematic and mathematical way of positioning places on the earth for the practical needs of government, both to understand history and to predict from where in the world threats to Christianity are likely to come.”Footnote ⁸⁰ To this must be added Bacon's debt to Joachim and a clearer focus on Antichrist as the chief enemy with which he is concerned.Footnote ⁸¹

Bacon, however, took matters a step further, well beyond established scriptural exegesis or Joachite proclivities. He argued that one's understanding of these scriptural locales is incomplete until one knows the natures of the places themselves. Bacon was quite concerned with the natures or complexions of places, objects, and people, all of which are greatly influenced by the heavens. Astrology is required to know a location's qualities, which do not reveal themselves in strictly cartographical relationship to other regions or in anecdotal reports. To understand the character of a region—what Bacon called its “complexion”—one needs to know its latitude and longitude, topography, elevation, and climate,Footnote ⁸² as well as the morals and customs of its inhabitants, all of which reveal themselves through astrological calculation.Footnote ⁸³ This sort of astrological knowledge ties into Bacon's concern with missionary activity. It was not enough, in Bacon's opinion, merely to reach out to neighboring regions. His goal of bringing the whole world under the spiritual dominion of the pope and Latin Christendom would require the church to know thoroughly the places and peoples they will encounter.Footnote ⁸⁴ Since regional complexion—much like astrological circumstance—affects the composition of an individual complexion, the realities Bacon sought to comprehend through the science of geography are on a macro scale to the realities provided by alchemy. I will hold this aspect of discussion in abeyance for the moment, but it is important to note that Bacon's geographical studies and alchemical studies are part of an organic structure.

McGinn has demonstrated that Bacon's apocalyptic program made a significant contribution to the later medieval legend of the apocalyptic pastor angelicus (angelic pope). McGinn sees in Bacon's references to a future holy pope “the first direct, if tantalizingly brief, witness to the main line of apocalyptic papal hopes that were to crystallize in the fourteenth century.”Footnote ⁸⁵ This idea of a holy pope is not borrowed from Joachim, but McGinn points out that it has its roots in Joachim's recentering of the papacy in the apocalyptic drama. Like Bacon's discussion of the Tatars, his contribution to the development of the pastor angelicus legend fed normative apocalypticism as much as it did radical interpretation.Footnote ⁸⁶ I would add to this that it is important to make the distinction between Bacon's contribution to subsequent normative apocalypticism and the creative, even somewhat radical, apocalypticism to which he was indebted or himself generated. This is not the same as stating that Bacon sought to mediate radical apocalypticism into normative, but merely that the strands of his apocalyptic thought that influenced later speculation failed to generate a level of ecclesial suspicion like that of many of his Franciscan confreres.

Bacon's notion of the holy pope, however briefly developed, underwent some changes. In his Opera composed for Clement IV, Bacon came close to implying that his acquaintance, the erstwhile Guy Folques, could be indeed the holy pope himself.Footnote ⁸⁷ Later, in the Compendium Studii Philosophiae, penned soon after Clement IV's death, Bacon took up the issue again, this time outlining a specific apocalyptic context and agenda that drew inspiration from Joachim as well as standard apocalyptic thought:

The conversion of Israel as a final act in the drama of the end times had been championed by Augustine, but as noted earlier, the broader desire to bring all nations to the faith has its roots in Joachim. It is not clear whether the renovation of the world espoused here connects with the Joachite theme of the third status or merely stands in for the New Jerusalem of the millennium. In any case, the passage underscores Bacon's belief that the apocalypse was imminent.

On one point, Bacon's apocalyptic views are unclear. Although Bacon said a great deal about what he called civics, or moral philosophy, that is to say, ideal or even utopian government, it is not clear whether he was a millennarian. Passages such as those regarding a most blessed pope and a great conversion seem to imply that such events would take place prior to the arrival of Antichrist. As for what came after Antichrist's defeat, Bacon was far more circumspect. I will investigate some of his thoughts on this matter at the end of this paper, but now I will turn back to Antichrist and the tools Bacon would have his pope use against him.

Experimental Science

It is possible that in the quotation above from the Opus tertium Bacon was being somewhat careless with his words. At some point in his career he likely fell under suspicion of sorcery, as later works demonstrate much more attention to the meaning of magic and fervently deny that his science was illicit.Footnote ⁹⁰ That said, in this passage Bacon certainly appears to exhort the pope to begin a curriculum on magical praxis with which to combat Antichrist. And, in a way, this is exactly what Bacon was proposing. Discussion of Bacon's alchemy requires some exploration of how Bacon understood the relationship between what he called scientia experimentalis (experimental science) and magic, especially those areas which touched on alchemical practice, such as divination and astrology. Drawing on his Opera as well as the short essay (Tractatus brevis) that prefaces his edition of pseudo-Aristotle's Secret of Secrets, I also will connect experimental science to Bacon's apocalyptic concerns.

In many cases, the goals of experimental science are the very things of which a magician might be capable. Richard Kieckhefer, in his classic Magic in the Middle Ages, attends to the apparent contradiction in Bacon's thought by saying that Bacon “believed in the mysterious and awesome powers within nature, but typically used the word ‘magic’ for various kinds of frauds and deceptions.”Footnote ⁹¹ Kieckhefer's passage captures the essence of Bacon's thought on the matter, in which the key issue was a semantic one.Footnote ⁹² Bacon himself noted this fact in his introduction to pseudo-Aristotle's Secretum Secretorum (The Secret of Secrets):Footnote ⁹³ “Aristotle discusses in this book these natural sciences which can be called inappropriately geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, which are actually parts of philosophy. The translator, however, does not have appropriate terms in Latin for these sciences, therefore he accepts the names of the magical sciences which are similar to certain true sciences.”Footnote ⁹⁴ And while some of these products, including gunpowder bombs, portend more modern scientific advances, many, such as words of power, do not. Chief among the sciences of the “experimenter” (experimentator) is alchemy.

Bacon outlined three primary uses of the scientia experimentalis in relationship to other sciences:Footnote ⁹⁵ “The first is that it investigates by experiment the notable conclusions of all other sciences.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Second, it “alone is able to give us important truths within the confines of other sciences, which those sciences can learn in no other way.”Footnote ⁹⁷ That is, experience or experiment provides knowledge and techniques that deductive reasoning by itself cannot provide. For instance, Bacon argued that the principles of the astrolabe might be applied to measuring the motions of terrestrial bodies influenced by the heavens, e.g., tides, rivers, marrows, and even pathogens.Footnote ⁹⁸ Third, it grants “knowledge of the future, the past, and the present.”Footnote ⁹⁹ This final prerogative is achieved through astrology, though as Hackett points out, Bacon intimated that experimental science may make traditional astronomical devices and tables superfluous and that something like “instant intuition or inspiration” may take place.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Above all, experimental science can determine “what can be done by nature, what by the effort of art, what by trickery, what the incantations, conjurations, invocations, [supplications], sacrifices that belong to magic mean … so that all falsity may be removed and the truth alone of art and nature may be retained.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Therefore, Bacon devoted some attention to the ritual manner in which false magicians proceed, namely. the use of incantations, sigils, charms, and the like, which he groups together with sleight of hand and trickery.Footnote ¹⁰² In the Opus tertium, he allowed for the fact that demons likely do the bidding of magicians who engage in such ritual, but the argument in the Tractatus brevis took a separate tack and treated much of this activity as “purely magical.”Footnote ¹⁰³ Therefore, the power of a magnet to attract iron “seems (videretur)” to be a great miracle for those who fail to understand that this is a natural property.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Likewise, the magician who inscribes sigils on a magnet or recites charms while using it to attract metal may well fool others and himself that the attraction of iron is being done through sorcerous powers, when, in fact, no such sigils or incantations are needed.

Bacon did not, however, reject ritual activity wholesale and in his Tractatus brevis included ritual activity as an aspect of experimental science. This fact has gone unremarked in discussions of Bacon's experimental science, despite the fact that Bacon explicitly condoned not only prayer, but the potency of words of power:Footnote ¹⁰⁵

In this passage Bacon endorsed the power of ritualized utterance or inscription to alter the world or (nearly) compel behavior.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ He was unsatisfied with fascination (fascinatio) as a translation, but provided no other term.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Bacon was making an effort to strip away all the false or meaningless aspects of the word of power. By denouncing “false incantations and fraudulent characters” supplied by old womenFootnote ¹⁰⁹ and demons, Bacon made it clear that “they have abused characters and incantations written by the wise.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ Incantations and sigils were not demonic inventions, but the proper application of science. And, since the efficacy of words of power or inscriptions relies on observance of celestial movements and advantageous temporalities, he implied that some sort of ritualistic quality is present.

Celestial bodies exert their influence through bodily humors:

Bacon suggested here a kind of astrological conditioning, in which various heavenly bodies, fixed or otherwise, dispose an individual to specific actions. This might be construed as just another example of scholastic hair-splitting, but for the fact that Bacon provides a concrete activity that mitigates even the conditioning of the heavens: prayer. “Even a poor little old woman with her prayers and merits, if the kindness of God is at her side, is able to change the order of nature.”Footnote ¹¹² Bacon's concern is twofold. First, heavenly bodies do exert influence on people—from the moment of their birth or even conception and throughout every moment of their lives. The power of heavenly bodies over their terrestrial counterparts is most pronounced in his astrological discussions, but also plays a significant role in alchemical imagination, which harnesses astrological powers. His second concern is to avoid determinism. One of his goals in producing a new edition of the Secret of Secrets was to mend or improve complexions that incline rulers toward activities against their own and their subjects’ well being.Footnote ¹¹³ The informed astrologer is able to read the heavens in such a way as to mitigate the negative effects of the stars or humoral disposition. Therefore, Bacon summarized the difference between licit astrology and illicit divination to a phrase. Practitioners of divination will say something happens by necessity, but adherents of astrology, on the other hand, “always in their judgments add to the end, ‘if God wills it.’”Footnote ¹¹⁴ This oversimplification is both a gesture to his technical orthodoxy as well as to his fidelity to astrology. The error is not Bacon's; it is that of ignorant Latins operating on a false premise.

The addition of ritualized prayer and the making of talismans or special sacrifices reoriented Bacon's argument away from positivist skepticism to a more medieval point of view, where certain quasi-religious practices are condemned as unchristian, and not as mere deceit. By integrating ritualized activity as a licit practice, so long as it is sponsored by the Church, there is no observable behavioral difference that separates the mage from the philosopher.Footnote ¹¹⁵ This point is underscored by Bacon's use of the term duplex (twofold) to describe various activities such as geomancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy, where one type of the named practice is magical and another type is “a part of philosophy.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ This idea underscores the message he delivered in the Opus maius quoted at the beginning of this section: that “good and holy men could toil on the magical sciences.”

Lest one forget that Bacon's discussion of magic had an apocalyptic application, he announces, “I am writing these facts not only for scientific consideration, but because of the perils which happen and will happen to Christians and the church of God through unbelievers, and most of all through Antichrist, because he himself will employ the potency of science.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ In addition to fascination through words of power, which Bacon greatly fears, Antichrist will not hesitate to utilize science as well as deceive Christendom that his power is miraculous and not based on the exploitation of nature and art. To Bacon, the advent of Antichrist is neither simply a spiritual problem nor an impending catastrophe which might be, at best, survived, soul intact. Rather, Bacon was caught up in the violence of the struggle with Antichrist, and clearly intended Christendom to offer physical and military resistance.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Thus, experimental science responded to his apocalyptic fears in two ways. As mentioned earlier, it unmasked deceit and trickery posing as miraculous. It also offered weapons with which to counteract Antichrist's own use of science. Therefore, many examples of “the innumerable things that have strange virtues whose potency we are ignorant of solely from our neglect of experiment” were military in nature.Footnote ¹¹⁹ In addition to marvels we might expect, such as gunpowder, Bacon also advocated the construction of giant mirrors with which to burn opposing armies and fortresses, incinerating the former and reducing to slag the latter.Footnote ¹²⁰ The purpose of both gunpowder and mirrors was to kill from a distance, impersonally as it were, without endangerment. Footnote ¹²¹ As useful as these applications are, however, the adherent of the Secret of Secrets located the “greatest secret” (ultimum secretum) in the science of alchemy.

The Ultimate Secret: Alchemy and the Elixir

Bacon's regard for the power of alchemy was so high that it was, in fact, the only scientific discipline on which he withheld information in his writings. William R. Newman has written that while Bacon's alchemy is “idiosyncratic,” its union of medicine and physical alchemy is unique, if not revolutionary: “few modern scholars realize just how high Bacon's hopes were for alchemy, or how central a position it occupied in his reform of the sciences.”Footnote ¹²⁴ Newman and other scholars have sought to gauge the relative impact of Bacon's alchemy, which, generally speaking, did not contribute to future alchemical practice as much as Bacon's innovative union of medicine and alchemy might suggest.Footnote ¹²⁵ My concern, however, is what Bacon's high estimation of alchemy meant in his scheme of apocalyptic understanding.

In his Opus tertium, Bacon tells Pope Clement that, for fear of alchemical secrets falling into the wrong hands, he has consigned some of the most vital secrets to his aide, John, from whom the pope can have this knowledge transcribed.Footnote ¹²⁶ He also says that in addition to what John conveys verbally to the pope, there are two other sections Bacon had written obscurely, one in code (enigmatas) and the other in philosophical language so that a reader would assume Bacon was discussing medicine or natural philosophy instead of alchemy.Footnote ¹²⁷

While enjoinments to secrecy and code are commonplace in alchemy—Bacon's included—it is noteworthy that alchemy alone receives this treatment. Bacon conferred great power to astrology, which rivals and complements the power of alchemy, but he took care to provide a clear explication of heavenly bodies and their movements. He devoted two chapters in the Tractatus brevis to offer an explanation of astrology “on account of the difficulties in this book.”Footnote ¹²⁸ Bacon was more circumspect regarding his alchemical knowledge, however. He offered some general statements in the Opus maius and in On the multiplication of species Footnote ¹²⁹ and provided more specificity in Opus minus and Opus tertium. He included as much material in smaller, lesser-known works such as the Book on the Six Sciences and the Letter on the Secret Works of Art and Nature.

It is possible that this layering of alchemical knowledge was a result of increasing awareness of or adherence to alchemical arts over time, perhaps as a result of Bacon's later infatuation with the Secret of Secrets. There is conflicting evidence in this regard. For one, if we accept the dating of the Letter on the Secret Works of Nature and on the Nullity of Magic to the mid 1250s, or even the late 1240s, it renders the matter moot. There is, however, substantial reason to believe that the dating of this work is one, possibly two, decades too early.Footnote ¹³⁰

A piece of evidence supporting the notion of a later alchemical turn in Bacon's thought comes from a prologue to Bacon's On the multiplication of species written some years after the first version of the text. Bacon composed the original in the late 1250s or early 1260s. In the prologue from the late 1260s or later,Footnote ¹³¹ Bacon added the following note about alchemical science, a topic that went unaddressed in the earlier version of the text: “And therefore one wishing to know the generation of natural things in totality cannot proceed except through practical and speculative mathematics, and the sciences of lines of sight and of weights, just as one desiring to know of the generations of things in particularity one cannot know anything worthy without alchemy, philosophical agriculture and experimental science.”Footnote ¹³² Bacon continued that it is alchemists who comprehend and designate the elemental building blocks of animate and inanimate bodies.Footnote ¹³³ While this addition makes it seem that alchemy is a later development in the course of career-spanning interest in the generation of species, comprehensive dating of Bacon's works remains too problematic to be definitive.Footnote ¹³⁴

Returning to the idea that alchemists inform us “about the generation of things from the elements,”Footnote ¹³⁵ Bacon posited that there are two types of alchemists: those who go through the motions of alchemical processes and those who understand the true ends of alchemy. The former were described in terms much like physicians and other putative experts who operate without the benefits of experimental science. In the Opus maius, Bacon asserted that non-experimental alchemists at the most are capable of producing the twenty-four degrees of gold found in nature. “But experimental science by means of Aristotle's Secret of Secrets knows how to produce gold not only of twenty-four degrees but of thirty and forty degrees and of as many degrees as we desire.”Footnote ¹³⁶ In the Opus tertium he made the distinction more clearly, namely that a number of processes are known to “all the skilled in this science…but they do not know how to elicit the principal aim from these [operations].”Footnote ¹³⁷ Though he did not make the connection specifically, the former alchemists appear to be those who have mastered only operative alchemy, with speculative alchemy being a far rarer occupation.

Operative or practical alchemy, said Bacon, “teaches how to make metals more noble [that is, to bring them closer to gold], and to make colors and make many other things better and more abundantly through art than may occur through nature.”Footnote ¹³⁸ Even limited to the making of dyes and aurification, Bacon still ranked this science higher than all others save for the experimental and moral sciences.Footnote ¹³⁹ Bacon's notion of the operative alchemist, no matter his ability to produce gold, was something like a tradesman. Bacon compared the alchemist to a shipwright or carpenter, whose operations are subservient to the vision of the experimenter.Footnote ¹⁴⁰

Speculative alchemy, on the other hand, takes alchemical practice and marries it to experimental science, a rare scientia that Bacon claimed was known to less than three people among the Latins.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Speculative alchemists are those able to plumb the secrets of the generation of all things. Unlike operative alchemy, which seems confined to production of alchemical items and tends to revolve around inanimate matter, speculative alchemy does not limit the object of study: “The generation of men, animals and vegetal matter is from the elements and the humors, and corresponds with the generation of inanimate things.”Footnote ¹⁴²

Bacon understood the elements progressing to humors as a matter of orders. Newman has shown that Bacon's humoral-elemental theories rely on pseudo-Razi's Lumen luminum (Light of Lights) and pseudo-Avicenna's Liber de anima.Footnote ¹⁴³ Thus, Bacon agreed that the building blocks of the universe are the essential four elements of the world: fire, earth, air, and water. From these a first order of humors arises, which, like the elements, corresponds to the standard humoral model: phlegm, choler, melancholy, and blood. These are mixtures—Bacon called them conjoined natures (conjungentes naturae)—of the elements, i.e., cold and dry, hot and dry, cold and wet, and cold and dry,Footnote ¹⁴⁴ where one of the elements dominates. These are simple humors, and Bacon gave them alternate names, since he posited a second order of humors which also bear the standard names. In the secondary order of humors, one of the primary humors is dominant. Therefore bodily phlegm is a secondary humor, made up of four primary humors with primary phlegm dominant. Bacon's system, then, made animate bodies more complex expressions of humoral interaction, rather than the opposite of inanimate bodies.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Bacon made a number of general points about the utility of this alchemical model for understanding Christian scripture and doctrine: “[T]hese things are infinitely powerful in theology and philosophy.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ One argument closely mirrors his discussion of the use of geography noted in part one of this paper. There Bacon claimed that, without understanding geography, exegesis suffered because the reader of Scripture neither knew the locations of biblical events nor completely grasped their spiritual significance. With respect to alchemy, Bacon said that an understanding of alchemical principles was necessary for “the composition of the body of Adam and Eve” and the “fruit of paradise.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷ I will return to the topic of the Adamic body shortly, but Bacon implied that a full exegesis of the paradise sequence in Genesis is not possible without a complete understanding of Adam and Eve's near immortality and the means by which the fruit of paradise sustained them. Bacon similarly used the principles of natural philosophy to explain how the damned will be punished, in particular to solve the riddle of how a body might eternally burn in the lake of fire.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

Overshadowing the utility of alchemy for scriptural understanding is its potential for practical application. The fact that the alchemist is able not only to identify, but also to purify substances of the natural world, makes him an ideal authority on medicine, and Bacon posited this is the most potent ability of the alchemist. He considered it a profound error that physicians have ignored alchemical science.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Not only can alchemy purify and make better medicinals, but speculative alchemists, by analyzing and purifying elements and the attendant humors, are capable of purifying and fortifying the body in the same way.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

Bacon repeated a number of amazing stories of the long-lived throughout his works on alchemy and medicine. While jumping from the merits of consuming dragon fleshFootnote ¹⁵¹ to the tale of a farmer imbibing a golden vessel full of liquid found in the field, it might appear that Bacon was operating like a medieval chronicler—inserting into his works certain legends that struck his fancy. Despite their variance, all of these tales have some common elements explainable by Bacon's alchemical understanding of the macrocosm (the world) and the microcosm (the human body). For instance, shortly after relating the story of the farmer who drank the golden vessel, Bacon informed us, “That liquor which the rustic drank is thought to have approached an equality of elements far beyond ordinary food and drinks.”Footnote ¹⁵²

These narratives of health also serve an apologetic goal, even in cases where Bacon does not tie the potency of a remedy to elemental equilibrium. In the Opus maius, Bacon was clearly in conflict with a specific declensionist understanding of human life and health. He was willing to posit that at creation, “there was a great prolongation of life, but now it has been shortened unduly.”Footnote ¹⁵³ Yet Bacon would not agree that this must continue to be the case. Having adopted the notion that the heavens ultimately govern health and character, he said his adversaries believed “the arrangement of the heavens was best at the beginning, and that as the world grows old all things decay… . They also think that [the stars] have gradually receded from this position, and that in accordance with this recession they impose a shortened span of life.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ To combat this belief, Bacon collected the marvels confirmed by authority and experimental scienceFootnote ¹⁵⁵ to demonstrate that one can lengthen life.

Bacon also supplied an alternate explanation for the shortening of life, which was the failure to apply the principle of moderation in all things, especially food and drink, sleep and wakefulness, and “the passions of the spirit,” i.e., hope, sorrow, joy, and fear. Faye Getz posits that Bacon's thought on this matter mirrors the tone of moderation employed in Ecclesiasticus, which also states that the wise shall not ignore the medicines of the earth, which God created therein (Eccl 38:9).Footnote ¹⁵⁶ The failure of moderation, however, is a postlapsarian given, with the result that:

Bacon took care to elaborate, however, that this lengthening was accidental (acci-dentalis), owing to human sin, and thus not necessary. Further, since it was not necessary, shortened life and imperfect bodies could be remedied.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Therefore, after having provided examples of the fact that life could be lengthened as well as an alternate explanation for the shortening of life, Bacon related how one might achieve this without resorting to happenstance, and without the use of secondary medicines, like serpent flesh.

Bacon's underlying theory of the length of human life was that a long-lived and healthy person has a balanced, or nearly balanced complexion.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ Bacon tells us that corruption occurs because the body is out of balance, and therefore hungers for things that would bring it into harmony.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ Even the Adamic body required such nourishment:

Even if Adam's body was not perfect, the human body, posited Bacon, remains naturally immortal (naturaliter immortalis), meaning that it is capable of existing with a harmonious balance of elements or humors. Bacon found a model for such a body probably from Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, in which the apostle speaks of the resurrected dead as “immortal” and “uncorrupted (incorrupti)” (Vulg. 1 Cor 15:50–54). Bacon did not specifically gloss this passage, but offered the following description, which any religious of his era instantly would have tied to Paul's letter: “Indeed it is necessary that there be a possibility of this equal body since bodies in the resurrection cannot have incorruption and immortality except through this [sort of] body.”Footnote ¹⁶² Therefore, the foundation for Bacon's medical beliefs appears to be scriptural, the mode of explanation, alchemical.Footnote ¹⁶³

Bacon did imply that there is a difference between immortal bodies created by God at the resurrection of the dead, and the potentially immortal body that the alchemist can produce.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ For one, Bacon was unwilling to second guess the scriptural constraint on immortality. He repeatedly says his goal was not to confer immortality, but rather to prolong life “to the ends which God and nature established.”Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Although he did not provide a recipe for the elixir in the fragment of his Book of the Six Sciences, elsewhere he provided instructions for making the concoction (from blood mixed with mercury, a noble metal, usually gold, and a base metal).Footnote ¹⁶⁶ Bacon's formula was novel in that the union of metallurgical alchemy with the elemental-humoral model drawn from pseudo-Razi is geared toward pharmaceutical ends.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ The alchemist, by producing an elixir in perfect harmony, thus could confer its properties on the recipient of the medicine.

The elixir, however, is not complete until it also has received the power of the heavens. In the Tractatus brevis, Bacon made a point of stating that a good physician would expose his medicines out-of-doors to favorable stars (and keep them away from harmful celestial influences).Footnote ¹⁶⁸ The same regimen goes for patients, but Bacon's aim was to use the elixir to harness the beneficial properties of the heavens. Chief among these properties would seem to be incorruptibility, but Bacon also had another benefit in mind—to use celestial rays on people to “make better their complexions so that they are inclined to good and useful things both for themselves and for others, just as in wisdom as in morals.”Footnote ¹⁶⁹

Thus, Bacon's repair of the corrupted human proceeds from body to mind and morals. Bacon asserted that “if this greatest thing is done [i.e., the production of the elixir], it is evident that all other things are possible, namely that man might reach great foresight and perfect wisdom that he may know how to rule himself and others, with the help of the grace of God.”Footnote ¹⁷⁰ The notion of complexion as a descriptor not only of a person's humoral make-up, but one that applies to all other natural phenomena, especially regions and peoples, was central here.Footnote ¹⁷¹ So, too, was Bacon's assertion that astro-alchemy could change the complexion. In addition to prolonging life, the elixir also could change the character of a person, disposing him or her to good and conferring wisdom and foresight.Footnote ¹⁷²

Once Bacon had established that the elixir could change one person, he moved on to the idea that it could modify entire peoples. He provided a “historical” example of this in the Opus tertium when discussing the method by which Aristotle handed the world over to Alexander the Great:Footnote ¹⁷³

It is the manufacturing of godly persons altered “in body and soul, so that in them is furnished the natural goodness of longevity, character, foresight, and wisdom” which Bacon calls the “secret of secrets and the ultimate secret.”Footnote ¹⁷⁵ This is no less than the creation of Christian utopia by means of astrological-alchemy. That he envisions changes occurring on a massive scale is evident when he asserts that once the experimenter has managed to alter his complexion he can construct a means of harnessing, and then multiplying, celestial power without further intervention in the heavens.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ Additionally, Bacon envisions the construction of giant mirrors capable of transmitting preserved celestial rays over great distances.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ If there is any remaining question as to whether such power might be used on a massive scale, Bacon immediately follows the passage regarding Aristotle and Alexander's conquest by stating that Antichrist will use the same pacifying powers, only with far greater effect.Footnote ¹⁷⁸

Bacon offers then two ideas about the future state of man. On the one hand he provides a description of the post-resurrection body. He is clear that while such a body is fit for immortality, until the resurrection occurs the alchemically generated body still has an end appointed to God. Even in this case, however, the hardships of old age are put off for a long time and cause no suffering. Instead, one passing on “embraces the final ends of life,” which is as much an ethical claim as an alchemical one.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ The second notion was that alchemy, when combined with astrology under the auspices of an experimenter, could change the complexion not only of persons, but peoples, granting them goodness and wisdom. This ties in with Bacon's sublimated Joachism and the role of Joachim's third status.

Joachim was coy as to the exact nature of the third status and its peoples, though alternate explanations from Joachites arrived quickly. I noted in the second section of this paper a number of key descriptors of this period. The third status, the era of the Holy Spirit, ushered in the change of the church from activa to contempliva, where Scripture was not abrogated, but took on deeper meaning and more significance. I have noted already that Bacon seemed to attend to Joachim's description of spiritual understanding of Scripture in his section on geography. Bacon does imagine that his alchemical program will produce deeper theological and philosophical understanding: “from the nobility of complexion the rational soul is excited and invigorated so much that it easily can understand all the sciences, and without difficulty or labor not only through another teaching [it], but through its own diligence and advantageous study.”Footnote ¹⁸⁰ He did not mention the power to understand scripture specifically, but rather to scientiae in general.

Bacon, however, described the kind of knowledge available as pseudo-Ptolemy's “cognitionem ex se,”Footnote ¹⁸¹ which in the Opus maius he discussed as “scientiae interioris.”Footnote ¹⁸² He divided “understanding from itself” or “interior knowledge” into seven grades. Only the first grade of interior knowledge is scientific. The higher degrees are spiritual: the second grade is the practice of virtue (since “the soul disfigured by sin is like a rusty mirror”);Footnote ¹⁸³ the third grade is the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isa 11:2–3); the fourth the beatitudes; the fifth the spiritual senses; the sixth “consists in fruits, of which the peace of God which passes all understanding;”Footnote ¹⁸⁴ and the seventh in rapture. This is not a Joachite formulation, and in fact owes more to the Augustinian theory of divine illumination than to pseudo-Ptolemy.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ What is important is that this position reinforces Bacon's hierarchy of knowledge. For all of the attention Bacon gave to the sciences, the apex of learning remained moral science or theology.

Since we also are given to understand that persons endowed with alchemically ennobled complexions are more disposed to good, Bacon restated Joachim's conception of the ecclesia contemplativa to include an understanding not only of Scripture, but the whole of God's creation to the point that he is able to grasp even hidden things of the past, present, and future.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ This is like Joachim's belief that history, geography, and the composition of the world mirrored Scripture and provided a lens with which to interpret salvation history. In any case, Bacon's conception of ennobled understanding of the past and future as a type of exegesis of the natural world was not unique, and has champions in other Joachites.Footnote ¹⁸⁷