Musical instruments in competition with magic Roger Bacon and the power of music

Roger Bacon – in particular, in the Communia mathematica and Opus tertium – borrows from accounts about the power of music on bodies and souls from a tradition dating back to Antiquity, but he gives them a renewed meaning since he infuses them within his scientific-technological project aiming at changing the world – a project framed according to an eschatological view. Extraordinary musical instruments become weapons competing successfully with magicians’ frauds.