and the nephew of Lord Burghley, both political advisers
to Elizabeth I. After studying law at Cambridge Bacon
began his own political career by entering parliament
in 1584. His career flourished under JAMES I, whom he
served successively as solicitor-general, attorney-general,
and, after 1618, lord chancellor. It ended abruptly in 1621
when, found guilty of corruption, he was fined £40,000
and imprisoned briefly in the Tower of London.
Bacon had earlier, in his Advancement of Learning
(1605), begun the ambitious program of working out the
methodology of and laying the foundations for the newly
emerging science of his day. Dismissive of traditional Aris-
totelian procedures (see ARISTOTELIANISM, RENAISSANCE),
he sought to develop new inductive methods, the exercise
of which would lead more readily to scientific discovery.
His Instauratio magna (The Great Renewal), an encyclope-
dic survey of all knowledge, was to have been his crown-
ing achievement, but only a fragment, the Novum organum
(1620), was completed before his death. Following his
banishment from court in 1621, Bacon did, however, man-
age to revise much of his earlier work in his De augmentis
scientiarum (1623). In a further work, published posthu-
mously as The New Atlantis (1626), Bacon described a
utopian society which contained an institution called
Solomon’s House, charged with the organized study of na-
ture. The suggestion was partially realized later in the cen-
tury by the foundation of the Royal Society.
Bacon is also known as a polished and epigrammatic
essayist. Ten essays were published in 1597 while the third
edition of the Essays (1625) contained an additional 48
pieces. He died from a chill contracted while attempting to
see “why [chicken] flesh might not be preserved in snow,
as in salt,” leaving debts of £22,000.
Further reading: Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart,
Hostage to Fortune; The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999); Julian Martin,
Francis Bacon, the State, and the Reform of Natural Philoso-
phy (Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1992); Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic
to Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
Badius Ascensius, Jodocus (Josse Bade) (1462–1535)
Flemish scholar and printer
Badius was born at Aasche, near Ghent, and after studying
in Louvain and Bologna settled in Lyons (1492), where he
taught classics. There he married the daughter of the
printer Jean (Johann) Trechsel (died 1498) and became
his editor, responsible for the first Lyons book printed in
roman type (“Italian types”), a 1492 edition of the ora-
tions of Philippus Beroaldus. His illustrated edition of Ter-
ence, first published in 1493, was reprinted many times.
In 1499 he moved to Paris, working there in association
with Jean Petit before starting on his own in 1503. In the
next 30 years he produced about 800 books, among them
ERASMUS’s early works. The designs of Badius’s books
sometimes used title-page borders modeled on manuscript
borders, for example his 1511 Cicero. His Thucydides
translation of 1528 was printed with type bought from
FROBENof Basle.
Badius was succeeded by his son-in-law, Robert ESTI-
ENNE, and a subsequent dynasty of scholar-printers.Baena, Juan Alfonso de (early 15th century) Spanish
poet
A minor CONVERSOpoet, Baena is remembered as the com-
piler of the Cancionero de Baena, a collection of 612 poems
by 54 poets which was prepared for King John II of Castile
in 1445. The anthology contains canciones (lyrics) and
decires (narratives, satires, and panegyrics) dating from
the reign of John I (1379–90) and extending into the
15th century. The lyrics are in octosyllabic lines, often var-
ied with half-lines (pie quebrado); the narratives and
satires are written either in octosyllabic lines or in 12-
syllable ARTE MAYOR. Linguistically, the anthology shows
the change from the Gallego-Portuguese (or Galician-
Portuguese) dialect used by Castilian poets in the 13th
and 14th centuries to the Castilian Spanish adopted to-
wards the end of the 14th century. LÓPEZ DE AYALAis the
earliest poet represented. Baena gives highest praise to
the trovador Alfonso Álvarez de Villasandino (c. 1345–
c. 1425). The collection as a whole reflects the Provençal
and Galician troubadour tradition of courtly poetry.
See also: CANCIONEROBaffin, William (c. 1584–1622) English explorer, who
attempted to solve some of the major navigational challenges
of his day
Little is known of Baffin’s early life, which was probably
passed in learning his trade as a seaman. In 1612 he ex-
plored the west coast of Greenland, and the following two
years led expeditions engaging in whaling to Spitzbergen
and Greenland under the sponsorship of the MUSCOVY
COMPANY. In 1615 and 1616 he took up the quest for the
NORTHWEST PASSAGE, on the latter voyage discovering and
exploring much of Baffin Bay. Ironically, although Baffin
became convinced that a northwest passage did not exist,
he did in fact discover the opening leading to it at the en-
trance to Lancaster Sound. Two later voyages (1617–19,
1620–22) took him to the East under the auspices of the
EAST INDIA COMPANY. He died while joining the Persian
army in an attack on the Portuguese-held town of Kishm.
His accounts of four of his Arctic voyages (1612,
1613, 1615, 1616) were published by Samuel PURCHAS.
They are remarkable for the scientific observations they
contain, including Baffin’s attempts to find a means of cal-
culating longitude and to deal with the problem of the
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