Klöster im Hochmittelalter

Place, Analogy, and Transcendence | 91
of comparative meaning, which encompass this world and the next. What can be
stated with regard to the material can be said in relationship to the spiritual, but to
do so in the service of the faith demands that the physical be clarified and laid out
with precision with the assistance of the sciences. Here Bacon’s unique view emerges
as the swift movement upward of transformation through and above creatures
into God, which Bonaventure highlights in the Itinerarium, is now bracketed or
rendered temporarily “immobile” so to speak so a clearer perception of the material
world may be acquired. In particular, a firm grasp of the physical geography of the
regions around Jerusalem is crucial if the literal sense of the Sacred Scriptures is to
open up to a moral, allegorical, and anagogical reading. Bacon states, “And in these
provinces all the sacred places are found where the holy patriarchs and the prophets
first walked, followed by the Lord himself, his Mother, and his holy apostles […]
[sacred places in which] greater mysteries are contained than the ear is capable of
hearing or the human mind to understand […]”. ²⁹ At the center stands the holy city
of Jerusalem, which signifies the desire for peace; it is interpreted according to the
moral sense as the soul, allegorically as the Church militant, and anagogically as the
Church triumphant. ³⁰ Regardless of when the pilgrimage begins – from birth, at the
dawn of reason, or in old age of life’s evening – the first step of the spiritual journey
for pilgrims is to leave the world behind, that is, Jordan where Jericho is found. The
next steps are to ascend the Mount of Olives through prayer and contemplation and
cross over the Valley of Jehoshaphat in humility. Once within Jerusalem, the soul
rests in the peace of the Church Militant and by the grace of God, receives a vision
of the heavenly Jerusalem at death.
When studying this relationship between physical and spiritual realities, the
Doctor Mirabilis at times favors analogical language, but rejects the analogia entis
and offers a theory unlike any other scholastic position of the mid-thirteenth century.
³¹ He maintains there is univocity at the level of ens and unum, but analogical
reasoning is equivocal. As a result, references to dissimilarity give way to equivocation
that allows for the comparison of existing beings. While Bacon acknowledges
the Greek idea of analogy as proportio, he appeals to Cicero, to assert that analogy
29 Et in his provinciis reperiuntur omnia loca sacra, quae calcaverunt primo sancti patriarchae et prophetae,
deinde Dominus ipse et Mater ejus et apostoli sacrati […] in quibus majora mysteria continentur
quam auris mortalis possit audire aut mens humana intelligere […]. Roger Bacon, Opus majus (note 25
above), vol. 1, p. 335.
30 Roger Bacon, Opus majus (note 25 above), vol. 1, pp. 185 f.
31 Alain de Libera, Roger Bacon et la logique, in: Roger Bacon and the Sciences. Commemorative Essays,
ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 57), Leiden/New York/
Köln 1997, pp. 118 –121 and Jeremiah Hackett, Maimonides and Roger Bacon. Did Roger Bacon Read
Maimonides?, in: Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity,
ed. John Inglis, London 2002, pp. 297–299.