Robert Bacon and the Early Dominican School at Oxford

Abstract

ROBERT BACON is the first Dominican master at Oxford about whom anything certain is known. Prof. J. C. Russell has collected those details about his life which can be found in chronicle and record sources. To summarize:—Bacon was already a master in 1219, when he was presented to a living at a church in Oxfordshire. He resigned in 1227, probably in order to become a Dominican; he is said to have received the habit from Jordan of Saxony, who was in Oxford in 1229/30. Bacon continued his teaching until his death in 1248. He was a friend of Grosseteste and a friend and schoolfellow of St. Edmund Rich, and he seems to have shared their views on politics. Matthew Paris tells us that Bacon preached an outspoken sermon before the king and certain bishops in 1233, when the barons had refused to meet Henry at Oxford. The king would never have peace, Bacon said, until he removed the bishop of Winchester and Peter des Rievaux from his counsels. Paris couples Bacon with another English Dominican, Richard Fishacre, who died in the same year, in a glowing tribute to the two friars. Both had a great reputation for scholarship, ‘in theologia et in aliis scientiis’, and for preaching: ‘populis gloriose praedicaverunt verbum Domini’. Bacon served on a number of commissions and was active in connexion with the Oxford Jewry. Professor Russell concludes that ‘these tasks show him a man of business ability often entrusted with responsibility’.