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John Baconthorpe

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JOHN BACONTHORPE [ BACON , BACO , BACCONIUS ] (d. 1346), known as "the Resolute Doctor," a learned Carmelite monk, was born at Baconthorpe in Norfolk. He seems to have been the grandnephew of Roger Bacon (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 19.116). Brought up in the Carmelite monastery of Blakeney, near Walsingham, he studied at Oxford and Paris, where he was known as "Princeps" of the Averroists. Renan, however, says that he merely tried to justify Averroism against the charge of heterodoxy. In 1329 he was chosen twelfth provincial of the English Carmelites. He appears to have anticipated Wycliffe in advocating the subordination of the clergy to the king. In 1333 he was sent for to Rome, where, we are told, he first maintained the pope's authority in cases of divorce; but this opinion he retracted. He died in London in 1346. His chief work, Doctoris resoluti Joannis Bacconis Anglici Carmelitae radiantissimi opus super quattuor sententiarum libris (published 1510), has passed through several editions. Nearly three centuries latar, it was still studied at Padua, the last home of Averroism, and Lucilio Vanini speaks of him with great veneration.

See Brucker, Hist. Crit. iii. 865; Stockl, Phil. d. Mittel. ii. 1044-1045; Haureau, Phil. Scol. ii. 476; K. Prantl, Ges. d. Logik, iii. 318. For information as to his life, not found otherwise and of doubtful accuracy, see J. B. de Lezana's Annales Sacri, iv.