Opus Majus

Bridges, J.H. The life work of Roger Bacon and introduction to the Opus Majus. London Williams Norgate, 1914. 173p. 

Guns were invented shortly after Bacon s death in about 1292 and so he never used the term gunpowder . However, he had certainly had experience of fireworks for which his early black powder recipe would have been perfectly suitable. In the Opus Majus he wrote ... 

Bridges, Boger Bacon—The Opus Majus, Introduction. 

Introduction to Opus Majus, Oxford Press, 1897, I, LXXVIII. 

The work begins with an introduction in which he refers to the extracts on this subject in his other works principally the Opus Majus, and that in these he has hesitated to speak clearly of these things mainly because of the undesirability of spreading information on this subject to those who are not wise. Then follows ... 

Roger Bacon appears to have been the first scholar in northern Europe who was acquainted with the use of saltpeter in incendiary and explosive mixtures. Yet the passage in which he makes specific mention of this important ingredient indicates that toy firecrackers were already in use by the children of his day. In the Opus Majus, Sixth Part, On Experimental Science, he writes ... 

A description in cypher of the composition of black powder in the treatise De nullitate magiae 12 which is ascribed to Roger Bacon has attracted considerable attention. Whether Bacon wrote the treatise or not, it is certain at any rate that the treatise dates from about his time and certain, too, that much of the material which it contains is to be found in the Opus Majus. The author describes many of the wonders of nature, mechanical, optical, medicinal, etc., among them incendiary compositions and firecrackers. 

The Opus Majus, of Roger Bacon, trans. Robert Belle Burke, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1928, Vol. 2, p. 629. 

He transported his laboratory to the shores of the Baltic Sea where he joined forces with a magistrate of the city of Treves, who also belonged to that band of erring men impelled by an almost insane force to the strange search. I am convinced/ said this magistrate, that the secret of the philosopher s stone lies in the salt of the sea. Let us rectify it day and night until it is as clear as crystal. This is the dark secret of the stone. So for more than a year they labored, but the opus majus still remained concealed. 

Bacon did not write one book for the Pope. He was to write four. The Opus Majus was the first of these, and it is his master-... 

Bacon, Roger, Opus Majus, Massachussetts Kessinger Publishing, 1990... 

Bacon, Roger. 1897-1900 rept. 1964. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, ed. with intro, by John Henry Bridges. Frankfurt/Main Minerva. 

Bridges, John Henry. 1964. Introduction. In The Opus Majus of Roger Ba-... 

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