Roger Bacon A Compendium of the Study of Philosophy

Shortly after composing his Opus maius, Opus minus, and Opus tertium (1267) Bacon felt the need once again to call attention to obstacles to the achievement of wisdom placed by the Church, academia, and civil society in the early 1270s. This he did in Part I of his Compendium of the Study of Philosophy. But his explorations in 1267 of the need for the study of languages needed, he thought, further attention. So Part II of this follow-up work renews that call with greater fervour and detail and yields a presentation of the rudiments of Greek and Hebrew, indicating how knowledge of these is needed to interpret the scriptures accurately and how many errors result from failure to recognise this.

This new edition of Bacon's Compendium of the Study of Philosophy, with facing English translation, enables today's readers to engage with Bacon's philosophy. It provides a window on academic life in Oxford and Paris of the 1270s at an important time in the development of the universities of both cities.

Thomas S. Maloney undertook his first two years of college (1953-55) at St. Mary's College (Kentucky) and his third and fourth at the Universita Gregoriana (Rome) (1955-57). Following this, he spent four years studying theology at Universita Gregoriana (1957-61), before obtaining his Ph.D. in philosophy there (1966). He taught theology and then philosophy at Bellarmine College (Louisville, KY), before moving to the Philosophy Department at the University of Louisville (USA) in 1973, where he still teaches today.

Introduction
Compendium of the Study of Philosophy
1. Wisdom, Corruption and the Need for Purification of the Church and Society
2. Ignorance, Error, and Sin as Obstacles to Wisdom
3. Four Causes of Human Error
4. Italian Civil Law as a Cause of Error in the Past Forty Years
5. Untrained Masters and Doctors as a Cause of Error in the Past Forty Years
6. Reasons why Latins Need to Study languages
7. Errors by Latins in Spelling, Pronunciation, and the Derivation of Words from the Hebrew Language
8. Eight Additional Reasons why Latins Should Study Languages and some Problems with Translations
9. The Greek Alphabet
10. Greek Diphthongs
11. Greek and Latin Syllables and their Prosodies
12. Abbreviations and other Ways of Writing Letters, Syllables, and Words
Works frequently cited
Indexes