Robert Steele (medievalist)
Encyclopedia
Robert Steele was a British scholar, best known for editing between c. 1905 and 1941 the 16-volume Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Bacon
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods...

.

Early in his life Steele was a disciple of William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

, who was apparently influential in directing young Steele's attention towards studying medieval writings, and also attracted Steele's political views towards socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

. After studying chemistry, Steele was for a brief time a teacher of this subject at Bedford Grammar School. He soon abandoned this job and moved to London where he worked as a freelance journalist, writing for various literary and socialist publications. He became a member of the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...

.

One of his early works, with a preface by Morris, was Mediaeval lore from Bartholomew Anglicus, a selective modernization of a medieval encyclopedia, edited—according to George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

's review—"with a nice sense of how much modern readers are likely to stand." Steele's first major work on medieval manuscripts was The Earliest English Arithmetics, published with the help of the Early English Text Society
Early English Text Society
The Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...

. Later he published Early English Music Printing with the Bibliographical Society
Bibliographical Society
Founded in 1892, the Bibliographical Society is the senior learned society dealing with the study of the book and its history, based in London, England....

. He was able to visit France, Italy, and Russia; the latter visit helped him write The Art of the Russian Icon published with the Medici Society.

His publications of Bacon's works attracted funding from several learned societies, as well as a Civil List Pension and a Honorary Doctorate from Durham University
Durham University
The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...

. He was also one of the early Executive Members of the International Academy of the History of Science
International Academy of the History of Science
The International Academy of the History of Science is a membership organization for historians of science. It was founded on 17 August 1928 at the Congress of Historical Science by Aldo Mieli, Abel Rey, George Sarton, Henry E...

. His house and personal library were destroyed in a German air raid in 1941
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

. He had ten children.

Steele's edition of Bacon's Secretum secretorum
Secretum Secretorum
Secretum secretorum is a medieval treatise also known as Secret of Secrets, or The Book of the Secret of Secrets, or in Arabic Kitab sirr al-asrar, or the Book of the science of government: on the good ordering of statecraft...

, with its lengthy introduction and numerous notes, is seen as the modern basis for its study by English scholars. However, Steele's view that Bacon's reading of the Secretum was the turning point towards experimentalism in Bacon's philosophy is viewed with skepticism by later scholars like S.J. Williams, who nonetheless acknowledge the special place that the Secretum played in Bacon's own writings.

External links

  • Author entry at Worldcat
    WorldCat
    WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...

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