Bacon, Roger(the Wonderful Doctor; the Admirable Doctor; Doctor Mirabilis)

1214 - Bacon is though to have been born near Ilchester in Somerset, even though he has also been claimed by Bisley in Gloucestershire. His date of birth is equally unknown.

1227 - At 13 he entered Oxford University, where he spent 8 years.

1240 - Lectured at the University of Paris on the works of Aristotle. During this time he also wrote three works on logic.

1252 - Became a Franciscan. Franciscans were required to take a vow of poverty, but their work had swelled to such size and importance that it was impossible to continue it unless the order owned or at least administered property and other possessions.

1257 - Around this year Bacon was taken from England to France and, for unknown reasons, underwent some kind of confinement, perhaps even an imprisonment, in a French monastery. During his period of confinement Bacon wrote his greatest works: the Opus majus, the Opus minus, and the Opus tertium.

1272 - Published Compendium of the Study of Philosophy, in which the old, angry, polemical Bacon reemerges, in which he claimed to see in the then-warring factions of Christendom the presence of the antichrist and in which he took in general the extreme view of Franciscan life identified with Joachim of Fiore.

1294 - The span of his imprisonment and the causes of his release are again matters of educated guesswork. He was free enough late in life to write Compendium of Theology. He was not imprisoned at the time of his death.