An Advertisement Touching a Holy War

Francis Bacon is rightly celebrated as one of the founders of the scientific and technological revolution that transformed Western civilization. His chief works argue that a society dedicated to science and technology would relieve the human estate, providing a longer, healthier, more informed, and more ennobling life for everyone. Bacon s remarkable An Advertisement Touching a Holy War stands as a document of major historical importance and intense current relevance because it offers an additional reason for the modern revolution. In it Bacon dares to suggest that a revolution in thinking and acting is necessary because European intellectual and spiritual life as well as European politics had been captured by religious fanaticism that threatened to plunge Renaissance Europe into another dark age. Bacon chose the old literary device of dialogue to present his argument for wholesale change indirectly. In the conversation of his characters he allows readers to see the reasons for kindling spiritual warfare against the spiritual rulers of European civilization. An Advertisement Touching a Holy War gives a great philosopher s reasons for initiating the war between science and religion that was actually fought in the coming centuries in Western civilization and of which we are the heirs.