Editing Roger Bacon (section)

===Apocrypha===
''[[The Mirror of Alchimy]]''<!--sic--> (''{{lang|la|Speculum Alchemiae}}''), a short treatise on the origin and composition of metals, is traditionally credited to Bacon.<ref>{{citation |last=Zwart |first=Hub |author-mask=Zwart |title=Understanding Nature |date=2008 |page=236 }}</ref> It espouses the Arabian theory of [[Mercury (element)|mercury]] and [[Sulfur|sulphur]] forming the other metals, with vague allusions to [[Alchemy|transmutation]]. [[John Maxson Stillman|Stillman]] opined that "there is nothing in it that is characteristic of Roger Bacon's style or ideas, nor that distinguishes it from many unimportant alchemical lucubrations of anonymous writers of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries", and [[M. M. Pattison Muir|Muir]] and [[Edmund Oscar von Lippmann|Lippmann]] also considered it a [[Pseudepigrapha|pseudepigraph]].{{sfnp|Stillman|1924|p=271}}

The cryptic [[Voynich manuscript]] has been attributed to Bacon by various sources, including by its first recorded owner,{{sfnp|Newbold & al.|1928}}{{sfnp|Goldstone & al.|2005}}<ref>{{citation |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E4DD103AF933A15751C0A9639C8B63&pagewanted=1 |contribution=The Bacon Code |last=Steele |first=Margaret Farley |author-mask=Steele |date=20 Feb 2005 |title=NY Times }}</ref> but [[history of science|historians of science]] [[Lynn Thorndike]] and [[George Sarton]] dismissed these claims as unsupported,<ref>{{citation |last=Thorndike |first=Lynn |author-mask=Thorndike |author-link=Lynn Thorndike |contribution=Review of ''The Cipher of Roger Bacon'' |title=The American Historical Review |volume=34, No.&nbsp;2 |issue=2 |pages=317–319 |date=Jan 1928 |jstor=1838571 |title-link=The American Historical Review |publisher=Oxford University Press, American Historical Association |doi=10.2307/1838571 }}</ref><ref>{{citation |last=Sarton |first=George |author-mask=Sarton |author-link=George Sarton |contribution=Review of ''The Cipher of Roger Bacon'' |title=Isis |volume=11, No.&nbsp;1 |issue=1 |pages=141–145 |jstor=224770 |date=Sep 1928 |doi=10.1086/346365 |publisher=The University of Chicago Press, The History of Science Society }}</ref><ref>{{citation |last=Foster |first=Benjamin R. |author-mask=Foster |editor-last=Garraty |editor-first=John Arthur |editor2-last=Carnes |editor2-first=Mark Christopher |display-editors=0 |title=American National Biography |contribution=William Romaine Newbold |date=1999 |title-link=American National Biography }}</ref> and the [[vellum]] of the manuscript has since been dated to the 15th century.<ref>{{cite web|title=UA Experts Determine Age of Book 'Nobody Can Read'|url=http://uanews.arizona.edu/story/ua-experts-determine-age-of-book-nobody-can-read|publisher=University of Arizona|access-date=3 December 2015|date=9 February 2011}}</ref>