John Baconthorpe

For other people named John Bacon, see John Bacon (disambiguation).

John Baconthorpe (also Bacon, Baco, and Bacconius) (ca. 1290–1346) was a learned English Carmelite monk and scholastic philosopher.

Life

He was born at Baconsthorpe, Norfolk, he seems to have been the grandnephew of Roger Bacon (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 19. 116). Brought up in the Carmelite monastery of Blakeney, near Walsingham, he studied at Oxford and Paris, where he was known as princeps of the Averroists. Renan, however, says that he merely tried to justify Averroism against the charge of heterodoxy.

In 1329, he was chosen twelfth provincial of the English Carmelites. He appears to have anticipated Wycliffe in advocating the subordination of the clergy to the king. In 1333 he was sent for to Rome, where, we are told, he first maintained the pope's authority in cases of divorce; but this opinion he retracted. He died in London in 1346.

Works

His chief work, Doctoris resoluti Joannis Bacconis Anglici Carmelitae radiantissimi opus super quattuor sententiarum libris (published 1510), has passed through several editions.

Nearly three centuries later, it was still studied at Padua, the last home of Averroism, and Lucilio Vanini spoke of him with great veneration.

References

Attribution

 Zimmerman, B. (1913). "John Bacon". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 

 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Baconthorpe, John". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.  which in turn cites:

• Brucker, Hist. Crit. iii. 865.
• Stuckl, Phil. d. Mittel. ii. 1044-1045.
• Haureau, Phil. Scol. ii. 476.
• K. Prantl, Ges. d. Logik, iii. 318.
• J. B. de Lezana's Annales Sacri, iv. (for information as to his life not found otherwise, but of doubtful accuracy)

External links

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.