Roger Bacon was overshadowed by later myth-making about him

Evidence

In displaying one small corner of his thought, I shall display a sensible man of statesmanlike views, better informed than most of his contemporaries, but sharing their hopes and fears, and working within the framework of the inherited methods of the great schools of Paris and Oxford. — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 320

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the standing taste for claims that deflate a historical figure’s myth — a pattern Southern returns to across the book.

Related

• Bacon abandoned biblical prophecy to read Islam through philosophy (similarity 0.85)
• Roger Bacon held Islam as imperfect Christianity from ignorance, not evil (similarity 0.81)
• Bacon saw Christianity as intellectually indebted to its infidel enemies (similarity 0.80)
• Bacon’s scientific framing removed Satan as the explanation for Muhammad unlike earlier polemicists (similarity 0.80)
• Bacon omitted satanic agency from his account of Islam (similarity 0.79)