s of Averrhoes and of others,
were translated in our times, and were excommunicated at Paris
before the year of our Lord 1237 on account of [their heretical
views on] the eternity of matter and of time, and on account of
the [heresies contained in the] book on Interpretation of Dreams
(which is the third book on Sleep and Wakefulness), and on
account of the many errors in the translation. The Logicalia were
also slowly received and read, for the blessed Edmund, Archbishop
of Canterbury, was the first at Oxford, in my time, to lecture on
the book of Elenchi [Sophistical Refutations] and I saw Master
Hugo who at first read the book of Posterior Analytics, and I saw
his opinion. So there were few [books] which were considered
worth [reading] in the aforesaid philosophy of Aristotle,
considering the multitudes of Latins; nay, exceedingly few and
almost none, up to this year of our Lord 1292. So, too, the
Ethics of Aristotle has been tardily tried and has lately been
read by Masters, though only here and there. And the entire
remaining philosophy of Aristotle in a thousand volumes, in which
he treated all the knowledges, has never yet been translated and
made known to the Latins.[19]

The last sentence of the account displays an ignorance of the number of
Aristotle's extant writings which was doubtless shared by all of Bacon's
contemporaries. Earlier writers, beginning with Andronicus of Rhodes
(first century B.C.), had also placed the number at one thousand; Bacon
probably copied the statement from one of these.

The attitude of ecclesiastical authorities toward the study of Aristotle
at Paris is expressed in a series of regulations extending over nearly
half a century (1210-1254). They indicate at first a fear of certain of
the newly translated books on account of their heretical views, as is
stated by Roger Bacon (p. 44). This suspicion gradually disappears; and
by 1254 all the more important works of Aristotle are not only approved,
but prescribed for study.

In 1210 a church council held at Paris sentenced certain heretics to be
burned, condemned various theological writings, and added:

Nor shall the books of Aristotle on Natural Philosophy, and the
Commentaries [of Averrhoes on Aristotle] be read in Paris in
public or in secret; and this we enjoin under pain of
excommunication.[20]

In 1215 the stat