Rare books 19: Threads to the Past

The theological readings of the ‘Resolute Doctor’ John Baconthorpe (died 1346 on the eve of the Black Death) by Bertholdus Crassous, still awaiting a binder in 2020 (Rome, 1710). Notes: Johannes Anglicus, also known as Johannes de Baconthorpe, was an English Carmelite and important theologian, who entered the order at Snitterley in Norfolk, studied at Oxford and Paris, and was later English Provincial. The most arresting sentence in Benedict Zimmerman’s entry for him in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-12) reads: “His writings comprised more than one hundred and twenty volumes, but are for the greater part lost.” This is where Crassous becomes vital, as he supplies insight and leads to the thought of Baconthorpe, otherwise not available. This erudite wodge of best cloth paper is very rare indeed. It has suffered damp over time but the pages have not jammed together and still open cleanly. Records online are also rare and my descriptive efforts were the result of visits for information to multiple sites on several continents, all from the comfort of my coronavirus solitude. The work must be retied to keep the signatures in order and, ideally, stored in a customised rare books box. To give an idea of the range of John Baconthorpe’s ‘mens’ I here quote Zimmerman, without further comment: “He possessed a penetrating mind, and wrote on all the subjects belonging to the ordinary course of studies. The most celebrated among them were those on the Gospels, especially St. Matthew, on St. Paul, and the commentary on the "Sentences", which was printed in 1510 at Milan, and for a time became the textbook in the Carmelite Order. Bacon follows Averroes in preference to St. Thomas [Aquinas] with whom he disagrees on many points. He adopted a system of Realism according to which the universals do not follow but precede the act of the intellect. Truth is materially and causally in the external object, formally in the intellect; in the order of generation and perfection the first subject is the individual substance; although the external object is in itself intelligible, the active intellect is required to render it ultimately intelligible; the conformity of the thing thought with the external object constitutes truth. The final cause of all things is God; but although the first object of our knowledge be the Divine essence Bacon does not admit that this knowledge comes to us by the light of our natural reason; it is, in his opinion, a supernatural gift of grace.”