Stoicism 'à la mode': Senecan Ethics in Roger Bacon’s 'Moralis philosophia'

Abstract

While recent scholarship accents early Franciscans’ use of Greek and Greco-Arabic sources in their ethics, Roger Bacon’s appeal to Stoic ethics via Seneca in his Moralis philosophia, the last book of his Opus maius, has not been given its due. Bacon’s citation of Seneca’s dialogues privileges De ira and works he associates with it. Placing Bacon’s ethics in the context of classical and Christian traditions on anger, this paper argues that Bacon uses Seneca to undermine the arguments for righteous anger in both these traditions, specifically those validated by his Franciscan contemporary John of La Rochelle. Bacon’s alternative addresses ethical and political concerns he shares with his dedicatee, Pope Clement IV, and with Franciscan confrères committed to popular preaching and the apostolate to non-Christians. As such, Bacon’s Stoic ethics à la mode needs clearer recognition in the ongoing reinterpretation of thirteenth-century Franciscan thought.