THE LIFE AND LEGEND
OF MICHAEL SCOT

Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable
FOR
DAVID DOUGLAS

An Enquiry into
The Life and Legend of
Michael Scot

By Rev. J. WOOD BROWN, M.A.

AUTHOR OF ‘AN ITALIAN CAMPAIGN,’ ‘THE COVENANTERS OF THE MERSE,’ ETC.

‘Michael next ordered that Eildon Hill, which was then a uniform cone, should be divided into three.’—Lay of Last Minstrel, note.

EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS
1897

[All rights reserved]

D. D. D.
ALMAE MATRI SUAE
EDINBURGENSI
HAUD IMMEMOR
AUCTOR

PREFACE

After some considerable time spent in making collections for the work which is now submitted to the public, I became aware that a biography of Michael Scot was in existence which had been composed as early as the close of the sixteenth century. This is the work of Bernardino Baldi of Urbino, who was born in 1553. He studied medicine at Padua, but soon turned his attention to mathematics, especially to the historical developments of that science. Taking holy orders, he became Abbot of Guastalla in 1586, and in the quiet of that cloister found time to produce his work ‘De le vite de Matematici’ of which the biography of Scot forms a part. He died in 1617.

This discovery led me at first to think that my original plan might with some advantage be modified. Baldi had evidently enjoyed great advantages in writing his life of Scot. His time lay nearer to that of Scot by three hundred years than our own does. He was a native of Italy, where so large a part of Scot’s life was passed. He had studied at Padua, the last of the great schools in which Averroës, whom Scot first introduced to the Latins, still held intellectual sway. All this seemed to indicate him as one who was exceptionally situated and suited for the work of collecting such accounts of Michael Scot as still survived in the south when he lived and wrote. The purpose he had in view was also such as promised a serious biography, not entirely, nor even chiefly, occupied with the recitation of traditional tales, but devoted to a solid account of the philosopher’s scientific fame in what was certainly one of the most considerable branches of science which he followed. It occurred to me therefore that an edition of Baldi’s life of Scot, which has never yet been printed, might give scope for annotations and digressions embodying all the additional material I had in hand or might still collect, and that a work on this plan would perhaps best answer the end in view.

A serious difficulty, however, here presented itself, and in the end proved insuperable, as I was quite unable to gain access to the work of Baldi. It seems to exist in no more than two manuscripts, both of them belonging to a private library in Rome, that of the late Prince Baldassare Boncompagni, who had acquired them from the Albani collection. The Boncompagni library has been now for some time under strict seal, pending certain legal proceedings, and all my endeavours to get even a sight of the manuscripts were in vain. In these circumstances I fell back upon a printed volume, the Cronica de Matematici overo Epitome dell’Istoria delle vite loro, which is an abbreviated form of Baldi’s work and was published at Urbino in 1707. The account of Michael Scot which it gives is not such as to increase my regret that I cannot present this biography to the reader in its most complete form. Thus it runs: ‘Michele Scoto, that is Michael the Scot, was a Judicial Astrologer, in which profession he served the Emperor Frederick II. He wrote a most learned treatise by way of questions upon the Sphere of John de Sacrobosco which is still in common use. Some say he was a Magician, and tell how he used to cause fetch on occasion, by magic art, from the kitchen of great Princes whatever he needed for his table. He died from the blow of a stone falling on his head, having already foreseen that such would be the manner of his end.’ Now Scot’s additions to the Sphere of Sacrobosco are among the more common of his printed works, while the tales of his feasts at Bologna, and of his sudden death, are repeated almost ad nauseam by almost every early writer who has undertaken to illustrate the text of Dante. So far as we can tell, therefore, Baldi would seem to have made no independent research on his own account regarding Scot’s life and literary labours, but to have depended entirely upon very obvious and commonplace printed authorities. To crown all, he assigns 1240 as the floruit of Michael Scot, a date at least five years posterior to that of his death! On the whole then there is little cause to regret that his work on this subject is not more fully accessible.

My study of the life and times of Scot thus resumed its natural tendency towards an independent form, there being no text known to me that could in any way supply the want of an original biography. It is for the reader to judge how far the boldness of such an attempt has been justified by its success. The difficulties of the task have certainly been increased by the want of any previous collections that could be called satisfactory. Boece, Dempster, and Naudé yield little in the way of precise and instructive detail; their accounts of Scot fall to be classed with that of Baldi as partly incorrect and partly commonplace. Schmuzer alone seems by the title of his work[1] to promise something more original. Unfortunately my attempts to obtain it have been defeated by the great rarity of the volume, which is not to be found in any of the libraries to which I have access.

This failure in the department of biography already formed has obliged me to a more exact and extensive study of original manuscript sources for the life of Scot than I might otherwise have thought necessary, and has proved thus perhaps rather of advantage. It is inevitable indeed that a work of this kind, undertaken several ages too late, should be comparatively barren in those dates and intimate details which are so satisfactory to our curiosity when we can fall upon them. In the absence of these, however, our attention is naturally fixed, and not, as it seems to me, unprofitably, on what is after all of higher or more enduring importance. The mind is free to take a wider range, and in place of losing itself in the lesser facts of an individual life, studies the intellectual movements and gauges the progress of what was certainly a remarkable epoch in philosophy, science, and literature. The almost exact reproduction in Spain during the thirteenth century of the Alexandrian school of thought and science and even superstition; the part played by the Arab race in this curious transference, and the close relation it holds to our modern intellectual life—if the volume now published be found to throw light on subjects so little understood, yet so worthy of study, I shall feel more than rewarded for the pains and care spent in its preparation.

In the course of researches among the libraries of Scotland and Italy, of England and France, of Spain and Germany, I have received much kindness from the learned men who direct these institutions. I therefore gladly avail myself of this opportunity to express my thanks in general to all those who have so kindly come to my help, and in particular to Signor Comm. G. Biagi, and Signor Prof. E. Rostagno of the Laurentian Library; to Signore L. Licini of the Riccardian Library; to the Rev. Padre Ehrle of the Vatican Library; to Signor Cav. Giorgi, and the Conte Passerini of the Casanatense; to Signor Prof. Menghini of the Vittorio Emanuele Library, Rome; and to Signor Comm. Cugnoni of the Chigi Library. I am also much indebted to the kindness of Professor R. Foerster of Breslau; of Mr. W. M. Lindsay, Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and the Rev. R. Langton Douglas of New College, who have furnished me with valuable notes from the libraries of that university, and, not least of all, to the interest taken in my work by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, who has been good enough to read it in manuscript, and to favour me with curious material and valuable suggestions.

If the result of my studies should prove somewhat disappointing to the reader, I can but plead the excuse with which Pliny furnishes me, it is one having peculiar application to such a task as is here attempted: ‘Res ardua,’ he says, ‘vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, obscuris lucem, fastiditis gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero naturam, et naturae suae omnia.’

17 Via Montebello,
Florence, November 17th, 1896.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Frontispiece], A Magician, from the S. Maria Novella Fresco—Photogravure by Alinari, Florence

[Vignette on Title]—The Eildons, from an engraving kindly lent by Messrs. A. and C. Black, London

Facsimile of colophon to Scot’s Abbreviatio Avicennae (Fondo Vaticano 4428, p. 158 recto), [to face page 55]

CHAPTER I
BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY STUDIES OF MICHAEL SCOT

In the Borders of Scotland it is well known that any piece of hill pasture, if it be fenced in but for a little from the constant cropping of the sheep, will soon show springing shoots of forest trees indigenous to the soil, whose roots remain wherever the plough has not passed too deeply. Centuries ago, when nature had her way and was unrestrained, the whole south-eastern part of the country was covered with dense forests and filled with forest-dwellers; the wild creatures that form the prey of the snare and the quarry of the chase. In the deep valleys, and by the streams of Tweed and Teviot, and many another river of that well-watered land, stood the great ranks and masses of the oak and beech as captains and patriarchs of the forest, mingled with the humbler whitethorn which made a dense undergrowth wherever the sun could reach. On the heights grew the sombre firs; their gnarled and ruddy branches crowned with masses of bluish-green foliage, while the alders followed the water-courses, and, aided by the shelter of these secret valleys, all but reached the last summits of the hills, which alone, in many a varied slope and peak and swelling breast, rose eminent and commanding over these dark and almost unbroken woodlands.

Such was south-eastern Scotland in the twelfth century: a country fitted to be the home of men of action rather than of thought; men whose joy should lie in the chase and the conflict with nature as yet unsubdued, who could track the savage creatures of the forest to their dens, and clear the land where it pleased them, and build, and dwell, and beget children in their own likeness, till by the labours of generations that country should become pastoral, peaceful, and fit for fertile tillage as we see it now.

Already, at the early time of which we speak, something of this work had been begun. There were gaps in the high forest where it lay well to the sun: little clearings marked by the ridge and furrow of a rude agriculture. Here and there a baron’s lonely tower raised its grey horn on high, sheltering a troop of men-at-arms who made it their business to guard the land in war, and in peace to rid it of the savage forest-creatures that hindered the hind and herd in their labour and their hope. In the main valleys more than one great monastery was rising, or already built, by the waters of Tweed and Teviot. The inmates of these religious houses took their share in the whole duty of peaceful Scottish men by following trades at home or superintending the labours of an army of hinds who broke in and made profitable the wide abbey lands scattered here and there over many a lowland county. All was energy, action, and progress: a form of life which left but little room for the enterprises of the mind, the conflicts and conquests which can alone be known and won in the world of thought within.

These conditions we know to have reared and trained generations of men well fitted to follow the pursuits of hardy and active life, yet they cannot have been so constraining as to hinder the birth of some at least who possessed an altogether different temper of mind and body. The lowland Scots were even then of a mixed race: the ancestry which tends more than any other to the production of life-eddies, where thought rather than activity naturally forms and dwells, while the current of the main stream sweeps past in its ordinary course. Grant the appearance of such natures here and there in these early times, and it is easy to see much in the only life then possible that was fit to foster their natural tendencies. The deep woodlands were not only scenes of labour where sturdy arms found constant employment, they were homes of mystery in which the young imagination loved to dwell; peopling them with half-human shapes more graceful than their stateliest trees, and half-brutal monsters more terrible than the fiercest wolf or bear. The distant sun and stars were more than a heavenly horologe set to mark the hours for labour or vigil, they were an unexplored scene of wonder which patient and brooding thought alone could reach and interpret. The trivial flight and annual return of birds, tracing like the wild geese a mysterious wedge against the sky of winter, gave more than a signal for the chase, which was all that ordinary men saw in it. To these finer natures it brought the awakening which those know who have learned to ask the mighty questions—Why? Whence? and Whither? demands which will not be denied till they have touched the heights and fathomed the depths of human life itself. Our life is a bird, said one in these early ages, which flies by night, and, entering lighted hall at one end, swiftly passeth out at the other. So come we, who knoweth whence, and so pass we, who knoweth whither? From the darkness we come and to the darkness we go, and the brief light that is meanwhile ours cannot make the mystery plain.

But though the nature of this primitive life in early Scottish days could not hinder the appearance of men of thought, and even helped their development as soon as they began to show the movements of active intellect, yet on the other hand Scotland had not reached that culture which affords such natures their due and full opportunity. Centuries were yet to pass before the foundation of St. Andrews as the first Scottish university. The grammar-schools of the country[2] were but a step to the studies of some foreign seat of learning. The churchmen who filled considerable positions at home were either Italians, or had at least been trained abroad, so that everything in those days pointed to that path of foreign study which has since been trodden by so many generations of Scottish students. The bright example of Scotus Erigena, who had reached such a high place in France under Charles the Bald, was an incitement to the northern world of letters. Young men of parts and promise naturally sought their opportunity to go abroad in the hope of finding like honourable employment, or, better still, of returning crowned with the honours of the schools to occupy some distinguished ecclesiastical position in their native country.

This then was the age, and these were the prevailing conditions, under which Michael Scot was born. To the necessary and common impulse of Scottish scholars we are to trace the disposition of the great lines on which his life ran its remarkable and distinguished course. He is certainly one of the most notable, as he is among the earliest, examples of the student Scot abroad.

There can be little doubt regarding the nation where he had his birth. Disregarding for a moment the varying accounts of those who lived centuries after the age of Scot himself, let us make a commencement with one whose testimony is of the very highest value, being that of a contemporary. Roger Bacon, the famous scientist of the thirteenth century, introduces the name of Michael Scot in the following manner: ‘Unde, cum per Gerardum Cremonensem, et Michaelem Scotum, et Aluredum Anglicum, et Heremannum (Alemannum), et Willielmum Flemingum, data sit nobis copia translationum de omni scientia.’[3] In this passage the distinctive appellation of each author is plainly derived from that of his native country. That Bacon believed Michael to be of Scottish descent is therefore certain, and his opinion is all the more valuable since he was an Englishman, and not likely therefore to have confused the two nations of Great Britain as a foreigner might haply have done. To the same purpose is the testimony of Guido Bonatti, the astrologer, who also belonged to the age of Bacon and Scot. ‘Illi autem,’ he says,[4] ‘qui fuerunt in tempore meo, sicut fuit Hugo ab Alugant, Beneguardinus Davidbam, Joannes Papiensis, Dominicus Hispanus, Michael Scotus, Stephanus Francigena, Girardus de Sabloneta Cremonensis, et multi alii.’ Here also the significance of Scotus, as indicating nationality, is one that hardly admits of question. It was in all probability on these or similar authorities that Dempster relied when he said of Michael:[5] ‘The name Scot, however, is not a family one, but national,’ though he seems to have pressed the matter rather too far, it being plainly possible that Scotus might combine in itself both significations. In Scotland it might indicate that Michael belonged to the clan of Scott, as indeed has been generally supposed, while as employed by men of other nations, it might declare what they believed to have been this scholar’s native land.

At this point, however, a new difficulty suggests itself. It is well known that the lowland Scots were emigrants from the north of Ireland, and that in early times Scotus was used as a racial rather than a local designation. May not Michael have been an Irishman? Such is the question actually put by a recent writer,[6] and certainly it deserves a serious answer. We may commence by remarking that even on this understanding of it the name is an indefinite one as regards locality, and might therefore have been applied to one born in Scotland just as well as if he had first seen the light in the sister isle. So certainly is this the case that when we recall the name of John Scotus we find it was customary to add the appellative Erigena to determine his birthplace. At that time the separation of race was much less marked than it had become in Michael’s day, and it seems certain therefore that if Michael Scotus was thought a sufficient designation of the man by Bacon and Bonatti, they must have used it in the sense of indicating that he came of that part of the common stock which had crossed the sea and made their home in Scotland. But to find a conclusive answer to this difficulty we need only anticipate a little the course of our narrative by mentioning here a highly curious fact which will occupy our attention in its proper place. When Michael Scot was offered high ecclesiastical preferment in Ireland he declined it on the ground that he was ignorant of the vernacular tongue of that country.[7] This seems to supply anything that may have been wanting in the other arguments we have advanced, and the effect of the whole should be to assure our conviction that there need be now no further attempt made to deny Scotland the honour of having been the native land of so distinguished a scholar.

Nor are we altogether without the means of coming to what seems at least a probable conclusion regarding the very district of the Scottish lowlands where Michael Scot was born. Leland the antiquary tells us that he was informed on good authority that Scot came from the territory of Durham.[8] Taken literally this statement would make him an Englishman, but no one would think of quoting it as of sufficient value to disprove the testimony of Bacon and Bonatti who both believed Michael to have been born in Scotland. If, however, there should offer itself any way in which both these apparently contending opinions can be reconciled, we are surely bound to accept such an explanation of the difficulty, and in fact the solution we are about to propose not only meets the conditions of the problem, but will be found to narrow very considerably the limits of country within which the birthplace of Scot is to be looked for.

The See of Durham in that age, and for long afterwards, had a wide sphere of influence, extending over much of the south-eastern part of the Scottish Borders. Many deeds relating to this region of Scotland must be sought in the archives that belong to the English Cathedral. To be born in the territory of Durham then, as Leland says Scot had been, was not necessarily to be a native of England, and the anonymous Florentine commentator on Dante uses a remarkable expression which seems to confirm this solution as far as Scot is concerned. ‘This Michael,’ he says, ‘was of the Province of Scotland’;[9] and his words seem to point to that part of the Scottish lowlands adjacent to the See of Durham and in a sense its province, as subject to its influence, just as Provence, the analogous part of France, had its name from the similar relation it bore to Rome. The most likely opinion therefore that can now be formed on the subject leads us to believe that Scot was born somewhere in the valley of the Tweed; if we understand that geographical expression in the wide sense which makes it equivalent to the whole of the south-eastern borders of Scotland.

Nor is this so contrary as might at first appear to the tradition which makes Scot a descendant of the family of Balwearie in Fife. Hector Boëce, Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, who first gave currency to the story,[10] could hardly have meant to imply that Michael was actually born at Balwearie. It is to be presumed that he understood Scotus to have been a family name; and the Scotts, who became of Balwearie by marriage with the heiress of that estate, did not enter into possession of it till long after the close of the twelfth century.[11] To call Michael a son of Balwearie in the genealogical sense, however, is in perfect agreement with the conclusion regarding his origin which we have just reached; for the original home of the Scotts who afterwards held that famous property as their chef lieu, lay by the upper streams of Tweed in the very district which every probability has already indicated to us as that of Michael’s birthplace. In 1265 we find an entry of money paid by the Crown ‘to Michael Scot and Richard Rufus who have occupied the waste lands at Stuth,’ near Peebles.[12] Identification is here out of the question, as Michael the scholar, of whom we write, was by this time long in his grave, but the entry we have quoted shows that a family of this surname, who still used the Christian name of Michael, was flourishing in this part of Scotland during the second half of the thirteenth century.

It is to be remarked, too, that the Scottish tales of wonder relating to Michael Scot have a local colour that accords well with the other signs we have noticed. The hill which the sorcerer’s familiar spirit cleaves in sunder is the triple peak of Eildon; the water which he curbs is that of Tweed; from Oakwood he rides forth to try the witch of Falsehope, and in Oakwood tower may still be seen the Jingler’s room: a curious anachronism, for Oakwood is a building much more recent than the days of Michael Scot, yet one which fixes for us in a picturesque and memorable way the district of country where, according to the greatest number of converging probabilities, this remarkable man was born.

As to the date of his birth, it is difficult to be very precise. The probability that he died suddenly, and before he had completed the measure of an ordinary lifetime, prevents us from founding our calculations upon the date of his decease, which can be pretty accurately determined. A more certain argument may be derived from the fact that Scot had finished his youthful studies, made some figure in the world, and entered on the great occupation of his life as an author, as early as the year 1210.[13] Assuming then that thirty was the least age he could well have attained at the period in question, the year 1180 would be indicated as that of his birth, or rather as the latest date to which it can with probability be referred; 1175 being in every way a more likely approximation to the actual time of this event.

It is unfortunate that we find ourselves in the same position with regard to the interesting question of Scot’s early education, having only the suggestions derived from probable conjecture to offer on this subject also. Du Boulay indeed, in his account of the University of Paris,[14] pretends to supply a pretty complete account of the schools which Scot attended, but, as he adds that this was the usual course of study in those days, we find reason to think that he may have been guided in his assertions, rather by the probabilities of the case, than by any exact evidence. Nor is it likely that any more satisfactory assurance can now be had on this point: the time being too remote and the want of early material for Scot’s biography defeating in this respect all the care and attention that can now be given to the subject.

We know, however, that there was a somewhat famous grammar-school at Roxburgh in the twelfth century,[15] and considering the rarity of such an opportunity at so early a period, and the proximity of this place to the district in which Scot was born, we may venture to fancy that here he may have learned his rudiments, thus laying the foundation of those deeper studies, which he afterwards carried to such a height.

With regard to Durham, the matter may be considered to stand on firmer ground. The name of Michael Scot, as we have already seen, has for many ages been associated with this ancient Cathedral city by the Wear. If the question of his birthplace be regarded as now determined in favour of Scotland, no reason remains for this association so convincing as that which would derive it from the fact that he pursued his education there. The Cathedral School of Durham was a famous one, which no doubt exerted a strong attraction upon studious youths throughout the whole of that province. In Scot’s case the advantages it offered may well have seemed a desirable step to further advances; his means, as one of a family already distinguished from the common people, allowing him to plan a complete course of study, and his ambition prompting him to follow it.

The common tradition asserts that when he left Durham, Scot proceeded to Oxford. This is not unlikely, considering the fame of that University, and the number of students drawn from all parts of the land who assembled there.[16] The only matters, however, which offer themselves in support of this bare conjecture are not, it must be said, very convincing. Roger Bacon shows great familiarity with Scot, and Bacon was an Oxford scholar, though his studies at that University were not begun till long after the time when Scot could possibly have been a student there. It is quite possible, however, that the interest shown by Bacon in Scot’s labours and high reputation—not by any means of a kindly sort—may have been awakened by traditions that were still current in the Schools of Oxford when the younger student came there. Near the end of his life, Scot visited in a public capacity the chief Universities of Europe, and brought them philosophic treasures that were highly thought of by the learned. It seems most probable, from the terms in which Bacon speaks of this journey,[17] that it may have included a visit to Oxford. This might of course be matter of mere duty and policy, but one cannot help observing how well it agrees with the tradition that these schools were already familiar to Scot. As a recognised alumnus of Oxford, he would be highly acceptable there, being one whose European fame shed no small lustre upon the scene of his early studies.

As to Paris, the next stage in Scot’s educational progress, the historian of that University becomes much more convincing when he claims for Lutetia the honour of having contributed in a special sense to the formation of this scholar’s mind. For here tradition has preserved one of those sobriquets which are almost invariably authentic. Scot, it seems, gained here the name of Michael the Mathematician,[18] and this corresponds, not only with what is known concerning the character of his studies, but also with the nature of the course for which Paris was then famous. There is another circumstance which seems to point strongly in the same direction. Every one must have noticed how invariably the name of Scot is honoured by the prefix of Master. This is the case not only in his printed works, but also in popular tradition, as may be seen in the well-known rhyme:—‘Maister Michael Scot’s man.’[19] A Florence manuscript, to which we shall presently refer more fully, throws some light upon the meaning of this title, by describing Scot as that scholar, ‘who among the rest is known as the chief Master.’[20] It is matter of common knowledge, that this degree had special reference to the studies of the Trivium and Quadrivium, being the scholastic crown reserved for those who had made satisfactory progress in the liberal arts. Scot then, according to the testimony of early times, was the supreme Master in this department of knowledge. But it is also certain that Paris was then recognised as the chief school of the Trivium and Quadrivium, just as Bologna had a like reputation for Law, and Salerno for Medicine.[21] We are therefore warranted to conclude that Michael Scot could never have been saluted in European schools as ‘Supreme Master,’ had he not studied long in the French capital, and carried off the highly esteemed honours of Paris.

Another branch of study which tradition says Scot followed with success at Paris was that of theology. Du Boulay declares, indeed, that he reached the dignity of doctor in that faculty, and there is some reason to think that this may actually have been the case. There can be no doubt that an ecclesiastical career then offered the surest road to wealth and fame in the case of all who aspired to literary honours. That Scot took holy orders[22] seems very probable. He may well have done so even before he came to Paris, for Bacon makes it one of his reproaches against the corruption of the times, that men were ordained far too readily, and before they had reached the canonical age: from their tenth to their twentieth year, he says.[23] It is difficult to verify Dempster’s assertion that Scot’s renown as a theologian is referred to by Baconthorpe the famous Carmelite of the following century.[24] This author was commonly known as the Princeps Averroïstarum. If he really mentions Michael, and does not mean Duns Scotus, as there is some reason to suspect, his praise may have been given quite as much on the ground of profane as of religious philosophy. On the other hand we find abounding and unmistakable references to Scripture, the Liturgy, and ascetic counsels in the writings of Scot, from which it may safely be concluded that he had not merely embraced the ecclesiastical profession as a means of livelihood or of advancement, but had seriously devoted himself to sacred studies. It is true that we cannot point to any instance in which he receives the title of doctor, but this omission may be explained without seriously shaking our belief in the tradition that Scot gained this honour at Lutetia. During the twelfth century the Bishop of Paris forbade the doctors of theology to profess that faculty in any other University.[25] Scot may well, therefore, have been one of those philosophical divines who taught entre les deux ponts, as the same statute commanded they should, though in other lands and during his after-life, he came to be known simply as the ‘Great Master’: the brightest of all those choice spirits of the schools on which Paris set her stamp.

At this point we may surely hazard a further conjecture. Bacon tells us that in those days it was the study of law, ecclesiastical and civil, rather than of theology, which opened the way to honour and preferment in the Church.[26] Now Paris was not more eminently and distinctly the seat of arts than Bologna was the school of laws.[27] May not Michael Scot have passed from the French to the Italian University? Such a conjecture would be worth little were it not for the support which it undoubtedly receives from credible tradition. Boccaccio in one of his tales[28] mentions Michael Scot, and tells how he used to live in Bologna. Many of the commentators on the Divine Comedy of Dante dwell on the theme, and enrich it with superstitious wonders.[29] It would be difficult to find a period in the scholar’s life which suits better with such a residence than that we are now considering. On all accounts it seems likely that he left Paris for Bologna, and found in the latter city a highly favourable opening, which led directly to the honours and successes of his after-life.

He was now to leave the schools and enter a wider sphere, not without the promise of high and enduring fame. A child of the mist and the hill, he had come from the deep woods and wild outland life of the Scottish Border to what was already no inconsiderable position. He knew Paris, not, need it be said, the gay capital of modern days, but Paris of the closing years of the twelfth century, Lutetia Parisiorum: her low-browed houses of wood and mud; her winding streets, noisome even by day, and by night still darker and more perilous; her vast Latin Quarter, then far more preponderant than now—a true cosmopolis, where fur-clad barbarians from the home of the north wind sharpened wits with the Latin races haply trained in southern schools by some keen-browed Moor or Jew. And Paris knew him, watched his course, applauded his success, crowned his fame by that coveted title of Master, which he shared with many others, but which the world of letters made peculiarly his own by creating for him a singular and individual propriety in it. From Paris we may follow him in fancy to Bologna, yet it is not hard to believe he must have left half his heart behind, enchained in that remarkable devotion which Lutetia could so well inspire in her children.[30] Bologna might be, as we have represented it, the gate to a new Eden, that of Scot’s Italian and Spanish life, yet how could he enter it without casting many a longing glance behind to the Paradise he had quitted for ever when he left the banks of the Seine?

CHAPTER II
SCOT AT THE COURT OF SICILY

All tradition assures us that the chief occupation of Scot’s life was found at the Court of Frederick II., King of Sicily, and afterwards Emperor of Germany: a Prince deservedly famous, not only for his own talent, but for the protection and encouragement he afforded to men of learning. A manuscript in the Laurentian Library,[31] hitherto unnoticed in this connection, seems to throw some light upon the time and manner of this employment: points that have always been very obscure. The volume is a collection of Occulta, and at p. 256 we find the following title, ‘An Experiment of Michael Scot the magician.’ What follows is of no serious importance: such as it has we shall consider in speaking of the Master’s legendary fame. The concluding words, however, are of great interest, especially when we observe that this part of the manuscript, though written between 1450 and 1500, is said[32] to have been copied ‘from a very ancient book.’ The colophon runs thus: ‘Here endeth the necromantic experiment of the most illustrious doctor, Master[33] Michael Scot, who among other scholars is known as the supreme Master; who was of Scotland, and servant to his most distinguished chief Don Philip,[34] the King of Sicily’s clerk;[35] which experiment he contrived[36] when he lay sick in the city of Cordova. Finis.’

Taking the persons here named in the order of their rank, we notice first the great Emperor Frederick II., the patron of Michael Scot. It is worth remark that he is styled simply ‘King of Sicily,’ a title which belongs to the time previous to 1215, when he obtained the Imperial crown. This is a touch which seems to give high originality and value to the colophon. We may feel sure that it was not composed by the fifteenth century scribe, who would certainly have described Frederick in the usual style as Emperor and Lord of the World. He must have copied it, and everything leads one to suppose that he was right in describing the source from which he drew as ‘very ancient.’

Next comes Don Philip, whom we have rightly described as the clerk of Sicily, for the word coronatus in its mediæval use is derived from corona in the sense of the priestly tonsure, so that Philippus coronatus is equivalent to Philippus clericus.[37] Of this distinguished man we find many traces in the historical documents of the period.[38] Two deeds passed the seals of Sicily in the year 1200 when the King, then a boy of five years old, was living under the care of his widowed mother the Queen Constantia. These are countersigned by the royal notary, who is described as ‘Philippus de Salerno, notarius et fidelis noster scriba.’ His name is found in the same way, apparently for the last time, in 1213. This date, and the particular designation of Philip the Notary as ‘of Salerno,’ connect themselves very naturally with the title of a manuscript belonging to the De Rossi collection.[39] It is as follows: ‘The Book of the Inspections of Urine according to the opinion of the Masters, Peter of Berenico, Constantine Damascenus, and Julius of Salerno; which was composed by command of the Emperor Frederick, Anno Domini 1212, in the month of February, and was revised by Master Philip of Tripoli and Master Gerard of Cremona at the orders of the King of Spain,’ etc. The person designed as Philip of Salerno was very likely to be put in charge of the revision of a medical treatise, and as he disappears from his duties as notary for some time after 1213 we may suppose that it was then he passed into the service of the King of Spain. This conjecture agrees also with the mention of Cordova in the Florence manuscript, and with other peculiarities it displays, such as the spelling of the name Philippus like Felipe, and the way in which the title Dominus is repeated, just as Don might be in the style of a Spaniard. There is, in short, every reason to conclude that Philip of Salerno and Philip of Tripoli were one and the same person. We may add that Philip was the author of the first complete version in Latin of the book called Secreta Secretorum, the preface of which describes him as a clericus of the See of Tripoli. As will presently appear, Michael Scot drew largely from this work in composing one of his own;[40] another proof that in confronting with each other these three names—Philippus coronatus or clericus; Philippus de Salerno, and Philippus Tripolitanus—and in concluding that they belong to one and the same person, we have a reasonable amount of evidence in our favour.

From what has just been said it is plain that three distinct periods must have composed the life of Philip so far as we know it: the first when he served as an ecclesiastic in Tripoli of Syria or its neighbourhood; the second when he came westward, and, not without a certain literary reputation, held the post of Clerk Register in Sicily; the last when Frederick sent him, in the height of his powers and the fulness of his fame, to that neighbouring country of Spain, then so full of attraction for every scholar. In which of these periods then was it that Michael Scot first came into those relations with Philip of which the Florentine manuscript speaks? The time of his residence in Spain, likely as it might seem on other accounts, would appear to be ruled out by the fact that it was too late for Philip to be then described as servant of the King of Sicily. Nor did he hold this office, so far as we can tell, until he had left Tripoli for the West. We must pronounce then for the Sicilian period, and precisely therefore for the years between 1200 and 1213. This conclusion, however, does not hinder us from supposing that the relation then first formally begun between Michael and Philip continued to bind them, in what may have been a friendly co-operation, during the time spent by both in Spain.

The period thus determined was that of the King’s boyhood, and this opens up another line of argument which may be trusted not only to confirm the results we have reached, but to afford a more exact view of Scot’s occupation in Sicily. Several of his works are dedicated to Frederick, from which it is natural to conclude that his employment was one which brought him closely in contact with the person of the King. When we examine their contents we are struck by the tone which Scot permits himself to use in addressing his royal master. There is familiarity when we should expect flattery, and the desire to impart instruction instead of the wish to display obsequiousness. Scot appears in fact as one careless to recommend himself for a position at Court, certain rather of one which must have been already his own. What can this position have been?

A tradition preserved by one of the commentaries on Dante[41] informs us that Michael Scot was employed as the Emperor’s tutor, and this explanation is one which we need feel no hesitation in adopting, as it clears up in a very convincing way all the difficulties of the case. His talents, already proved and crowned in Paris and Bologna, may well have commended him for such a position. The dedication of his books to Frederick, and the familiar style in which he addresses the young prince, are precisely what might be expected from the pen of a court schoolmaster engaged in compiling manuals in usum Delphini.[42] Nay the very title of ‘Master’ which Scot had won at Paris probably owed its chief confirmation and continued employment to the nature of his new charge. Since the fifth century there had prevailed in Spain the habit of committing children of position to the course of an ecclesiastical education.[43] They were trained by some discreet and grave person called the magister disciplinae, deputed by the Bishop to this office. Such would seem to have been the manner of Frederick’s studies. His guardian was the Pope; he lived at Palermo under charge of the Canons of that Cathedral,[44] and no doubt the ecclesiastical character of Michael Scot combined with his acknowledged talents to point him out as a suitable person to fill so important a charge. It was his first piece of preferment, and we may conceive that he drew salary for his services under some title given him in the royal registry. This would explain his connection with Philip, the chief notary, on which the Florentine manuscript insists. Such fictitious employments have always been a part of court fashion, and that they were common in Sicily at the time of which we write may be seen from the case of Werner and Philip de Bollanden, who, though in reality most trusted and confidential advisers of the Crown, were known at Court as the chief butler and baker, titles which they were proud to transmit to their descendants.[45]

It was at Palermo, then, that Michael Scot must have passed the opening years of the thirteenth century; now more than ever ‘Master,’ since he was engaged in a work which carried with it no light responsibility: the early education of a royal youth destined to play the first part on the European stage. The situation was one not without advantages of an uncommon kind for a scholar like Scot, eager to acquire knowledge in every department. Sicily was still, especially in its more remote and mountainous parts about Entella, Giato, and Platani, the refuge of a considerable Moorish population, whose language was therefore familiar in the island, and was heard even at Court; being, we are assured, one of those in which Frederick received instruction.[46] There can be little doubt that Scot availed himself of this opportunity, and laid a good foundation for his later work on Arabic texts by acquiring, in the years of his residence at Palermo, at least the vernacular language of the Moors.

The same may be said regarding the Greek tongue: a branch of study much neglected even by the learned of those times. We shall presently produce evidence which goes to show that Michael Scot worked upon Greek as well as Arabic texts,[47] and it was in all probability to his situation in Sicily that he owed the acquisition of what was then a very rare accomplishment. Bacon, who deplores the ignorance of Greek which prevailed in his days, recommends those who would learn this important language to go to Italy, where, he says, especially in the south, both clergy and people are still in many places purely Greek.[48] The reference to Magna Grecia is obvious, and to Sicily, whose Greek colonies preserved, even to Frederick’s time and beyond it, their nationality and language. So much was this the case, that it was thought necessary to make the study of Greek as well as of Arabic part of Frederick’s education. We can hardly err in supposing that Scot profited by this as well as by the other opportunity.

In point of general culture too a residence at Palermo offered many and varied advantages. Rare manuscripts abounded, some lately brought to the island, like that of the Secreta Secretorum, the prize of Philip the Clerk, which he carried with him when he came from Tripoli to Sicily, and treasured there, calling it his ‘precious pearl’;[49] others forming part of collections that had for some time been established in the capital. As early as the year 1143, George of Antioch, the Sicilian Admiral, had founded the Church of St. Maria della Martorana in Palermo, and had enriched it with a valuable library, no doubt brought in great part from the East.[50] A better opportunity for literary studies could hardly have been desired than that which the Prince’s Master now enjoyed.

The society and surroundings in which Michael Scot now found himself were such as must have communicated a powerful impulse to the mind. The Court was grave rather than gay, as had befitted the circumstances of a royal widow, and now of an orphan still under canonical protection and busied in serious study, but this allowed the wit and wisdom of learned men free scope, and thus invited and encouraged their residence. Already, probably, had begun that concourse and competition of talents, for which the Court of Frederick was afterwards so remarkable. Amid delicious gardens at evening, or by day in the cool shade of courtyards: those patios which the Moors had built so well and adorned with such fair arabesques, all that was rarest in learning and brightest in wit, held daily disputation, while the delicate fountains played and Monte Pellegrino looked down on the curving beauties of the bay and shore. A strange contrast truly to the arcades of Bologna, now heaped with winter snow and now baked by summer sun; to the squalor of mediæval Paris, and much more to the green hillsides and moist forest-clad vales of southern Scotland. Here at last the spirit of Michael Scot underwent a powerful and determining influence which left its mark on all his subsequent life.

As royal tutor, his peculiar duty would seem to have been that of instructing the young Prince in the different branches of mathematics. This we should naturally have conjectured from the fact that Scot’s fame as yet rested entirely upon the honours he had gained at Paris, and precisely in this department of learning; for ‘Michael the Mathematician’ was not likely to have been called to Palermo with any other purpose. We have direct evidence of it however in an early work which came from the Master’s pen, and one which would seem to have been designed for the use of his illustrious pupil. This was the Astronomia, or Liber Particularis, and in the Oxford copy,[51] the colophon of that treatise runs thus: ‘Here endeth the book of Michael Scot, astrologer to the Lord Frederick, Emperor of Rome, and ever August; which book he composed in simple style[52] at the desire of the aforesaid Emperor. And this he did, not so much considering his own reputation, as desiring to be serviceable and useful to young scholars, who, of their great love for wisdom, desire to learn in the Quadrivium the Art of Astronomy.’ The preface says that this was the second book which Scot composed for Frederick.

The science of Astronomy was so closely joined in those times with the art of Astrology, that it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between them as they were then understood. The one was but the practical application of the other, and in common use their names were often confused and used interchangeably. We are not surprised then to find the title of Imperial Astrologer given to Michael Scot in the colophon to his Astronomia; he was sure to be employed in this way, and the fact will help us to determine with probability what was the first book he wrote for the Emperor, that to which the Liber Particularis was a sequel. For there is actually extant under Scot’s name an astrological treatise bearing the significant name of the Liber Introductorius.[53] This title agrees exceedingly well with the position we are now inclined to give it, and an examination of the preface confirms our conjecture in a high degree. It commences thus: ‘Here beginneth the preface of the Liber Introductorius which was put forth by Michael Scot, Astrologer to the ever August Frederick, Emperor of the Romans, at whose desire he composed it concerning astrology,[54] in a simple style[55] for the sake of young scholars and those of weaker capacity, and this in the days of our Lord Pope Innocent IV.’[56] One cannot help noticing the close correspondence between this and the colophon of the Astronomia. The two treatises were the complement each of the other. They must have been composed about the same time, and were doubtless meant to serve as text-books to guide the studies of Frederick’s youth. That this royal pupil should have been led through astrology to the higher and more enduring wonders of astronomy need cause no surprise, for such a course was quite in accordance with the intellectual habits of the age. It may be doubted indeed whether the men of those times would have shown such perseverance in the observations and discoveries proper to a pure science of the heavens, had it not been for the practicable and profitable interest which its application in astrology furnished. Astronomy, such as it then was, formed the last and highest study in the Quadrivium.[57] It was here that Scot had carried off honours at Paris, and now in his Liber Introductorius and Astronomia, we see him imparting the ripe fruits of that diligence to his royal charge, whose education, so far as regarded formal study, was thereby brought to a close.

In the year 1209, when Frederick was but fourteen years of age, the quiet study and seclusion in which he still lived with those who taught him was brought to an abrupt and, one must think, premature conclusion. The boy was married, and to a lady ten years his senior, Constance, daughter of the King of Aragon, and already widow of the King of Hungary. It is not hard to see that such a union must have been purely a matter of arrangement. The Prince of Palermo, undergrown and delicate as he was,[58] promised to be, as King of Sicily and possibly Emperor, the noblest husband of his time. Pope Innocent III., his guardian, foresaw this, and chose a daughter of Spain as most fit to occupy the proud position of Frederick’s wife, queen, and perhaps empress. Had the wishes of Rome prevailed at the Court of Aragon from the first, this marriage would have taken place even earlier than it did. The delay seems to have been owing, not to any reluctance on the part of the bride’s parents, but solely to the doubt which of two sisters, elder or younger, widow or maid, should accept the coveted honour.

It was in spring, the loveliest season of the year in that climate, that the fleet of Spain, sent to bear the bride and her suite, rose slowly over the sea rim and dropped anchor in the Bay of Palermo. Constantia came with many in her company, the flower of Catalan and Provençal chivalry, led by her brother, Count Alfonso. The Bishop of Mazara, too, was among them, bearing a commission to represent the Pope in these negotiations and festivities. And now the stately Moorish palace, with its courtyard, its fountains, and its gardens, became once more a scene of gaiety, as—in the great hall of forty pillars, beneath a roof such as Arabian artists alone could frame, carved like a snow cave, or stained with rich and lovely colour like a mass of jewels set in gold—the officers of the royal household passed solemnly on to offer homage before their Prince and his bride. In the six great apartments of state the frescoed forms of Christian art: Patriarchs in their histories, Moses and David in their exploits, and the last wild charge of Barbarossa’s Crusade,[59] looked down upon a moving throng of nobles and commons who came to present their congratulations, while the plaintive music of lute, of pipe, and tabor, sighed upon the air, and skilful dancers swam before the delighted guests in all the fascination of the voluptuous East.

What part could Michael Scot, the grave ecclesiastic, and now doubly the ‘Master’ as Frederick’s trusted tutor, play in the gay scene of his pupil’s marriage? For many ages it has been the custom among Italian scholars, the attached dependants of a noble house, to offer on such occasions their homage to bride and bridegroom in the form of a learned treatise; any bookseller’s list of Nozze is enough to show that the habit exists even at the present day. This then was what Scot did; for there is every reason to think that the Physionomia, which he composed and dedicated to Frederick, was produced and presented at the time of the royal marriage. No date suits this publication so well as 1209, and nothing but the urgent desire of Court and people that the marriage should prove fruitful can explain, one might add excuse, some passages of almost fescennine licence which it contains.[60] We seem to find in the advice of the preface that Frederick should study man, encouraging the learned to dispute in his presence what may well have been the last word of a master who saw his pupil passing to scenes of larger and more active life at an unusually early age, and before he could be fully trusted to take his due place in the great world of European politics.

The Physionomia, however, is too important a work to be dismissed in a paragraph. Both the subject itself, and the sources from which Scot drew, deserve longer consideration. The science of physiognomy, as its name imports, was derived from the Greeks. Achinas, a contemporary of the Hippocratic school, and Philemon, who is mentioned in the introduction to Scot’s treatise, seem to have been the earliest writers in this department of philosophy. It was a spiritual medicine,[61] and formed part of the singular doctrine of signatures, teaching as it did that the inward dispositions of the soul might be read in visible characters upon the bodily frame. The Alexandrian school made a speciality of physiognomy. In Egypt it attained a further development, and various writings in Greek which expounded the system passed current during the early centuries of our era under the names of Aristotle and Polemon. Through the common channel of the Syriac schools and language it reached the Arabs, and in the ninth century had the fortune to be taken up warmly by Rases and his followers, who made it a characteristic part of their medical system. From this source then Scot drew largely; chapters xxiv.-xxv. in Book II. of his Physionomia correspond closely with the De Medicina ad Regem Al Mansorem[62] of Rases.[63]

Among ancient texts on physiognomy, however, perhaps the most famous was the Sirr-el-asrar, or Secreta Secretorum, which was ascribed to Aristotle. Its origin, like that of other pseudo-Aristotelic writings, seems to have been Egyptian. When the conquests of Alexander the Great had opened the way for a new relation between East and West, Egypt, and especially its capital, Alexandria, became the focus of a new philosophic influence. The sect of the Essenes, transported hither, had given rise to the school of the Therapeutae, where Greek theories developed in a startling direction under the power of Oriental speculation. The Therapeutae were sun-worshippers, and eager students of ancient and occult writings, as Josephus[64] tells us the Essenes had been. We find in the Abraxas gems, of which so large a number has been preserved, an enduring memorial of these people and their system of thought.[65]

The preface to the Sirr-el-asrar affords several matters which agree admirably with what we know of the Therapeutae. The precious volume was the prize of a scholar on his travels, who found it in the possession of an aged recluse dwelling in the penetralia of a sun-temple built by Æsculapius.[66] All this is characteristic enough, and when we examine the substance of the treatise it appears distinctly Therapeutic. Much of it is devoted to bodily disease, to the regimen of the health, and to that science of physiognomy which professed to reveal, as in a spiritual diagnosis, the infirmities of the soul. The ascription of the work to Aristotle, Alexander’s tutor, seems quite in accordance with this theory; in short, there is no reason to doubt that it first appeared in Egypt, where it probably formed one of the most cherished texts of the Therapeutae.

The preface to the Sirr-el-asrar throws light not only upon the origin of the treatise but also upon its subsequent fortunes. It is said to have been rendered from the Greek into Chaldee or Syriac,[67] and thence into Arabic, the usual channel by which the remains of ancient learning have reached the modern world. The translator’s name is given as Johannes filius Bitricii, but this can hardly have been the well-known Ibn-el-Bitriq, the freedman of Mamoun. To this latter author indeed, the Fihrist, composed in 987, ascribes the Arabic version of Aristotle’s De Cœlo et Mundo, and of Plato’s Timaeus, so that his literary faculty would seem to accord very well with the task of translating the Sirr-el-asrar. But Foerster has observed[68] that we find no trace of this book in Arabian literature before the eleventh century. Now the famous Ibn-el-Bitriq lived in the ninth, as appears from several considerations. His works were revised by Honain ibn Ishaq (873), and, if we believe in the authenticity of the El Hawi, where he is mentioned by name, then he must have belonged to an age at least as early as that of Rases who wrote it. In these perplexing circumstances, Foerster gives up the attempt to determine who may have been the translator of the Sirr-el-asrar, contenting himself with the conjecture that some unknown scholar had assumed the name of El Bitriq to give importance to the production of his pen. We may be excused, however, if we direct attention to two manuscripts of the British Museum[69] which do not seem to have been noticed by those who have devoted attention to this obscure subject. One of these, which is written in a hand of the thirteenth century, informs us that the man who transcribed it was a certain Said Ibn Butrus ibn Mansur, a Maronite priest of Lebanon in the diocese of Tripolis, a prisoner for twelve years in the place where the royal standards were kept (? at Cairo), who was released from that confinement in the time of al Malik an Nazir. The other—a mere fragment—contains a notice of the priest Yahyā, or Yuhannā, ibn Butrus, who died in the year 1217 A.D. It is not unlikely that some confusion might arise between the names Patrick and Peter, often used interchangeably. ‘Filius Patricii’ then may have been no assumed designation, but the equivalent of Ibn Butrus, the real name of this priest of Tripoli, who was perhaps the translator of the Sirr-el-asrar at the close of the twelfth century.

Those chapters of the Sirr-el-asrar which relate to regimen were translated into Latin by Johannes Hispalensis. Jourdain identifies this author with John Avendeath, who worked for the Archbishop of Toledo between the years 1130 and 1150.[70] But Foerster shows that caution is needed here.[71] The Latin version was dedicated to Tarasia, Queen of Spain. A queen of this name certainly lived contemporaneously with John Avendeath, but she was Queen of Portugal. Another Tarasia, however, was Queen of Leon from 1176 to 1180. We may observe that this latter epoch agrees well enough with the lifetime of Ibn Butrus, who died in 1217, and we find trace of another Johannes Hispanus, who was a monk of Mount Tabor in 1175. Such a man, who from his situation in Syria could scarcely have been ignorant of Arabic, and whose nationality agrees so well with a dedication to the Queen of Spain, and who was a contemporary of Tarasia of Leon, may well have translated the Sirr-el-asrar into Latin. That part of the book thus made public in the West appeared under the following title: ‘De conservatione corporis humani, ad Alexandrum.’ It is found in several manuscripts of the Laurentian Library in Florence.[72]

Soon afterwards, and probably in the opening years of the thirteenth century, the whole book was published in a Latin version by the same Philippus Clericus, with whom we have already become acquainted. We may recall the fact that he belonged to the diocese of Tripoli, as Ibn Butrus also did, and as Johannes Hispanus was also a monk of Syria, these three scholars are seen to be joined by a link of locality highly increasing the probability that they actually co-operated in the publication of this hitherto unknown text. In his preface, Philip speaks of the Arabic manuscript as a precious pearl, discovered while he was still in Syria. This leads us to think that his work in translating it was done after he had left the East, and possibly in the course of his voyage westward. We know that the Hebrew version of Aristotle’s Meteora was produced in similar circumstances. Samuel ben Juda ben Tibbun says he completed that translation in the year 1210, while the ship that bore him from Alexandria to Spain was passing between the isles of Lampadusa and Pantellaria.[73] However this may be, Philip of Tripoli dedicated his version of the Sirr-el-asrar, which he called the Secreta Secretorum, to the Bishop under whom he had hitherto lived and laboured: ‘Guidoni vere de Valentia, civitatis Tripolis glorioso pontifici’: a name and title little understood by the copyists, who have subjected them to strange corruptions.[74]

It is highly in favour of our identifying, as we have already done, Philip of Tripoli, the translator of the Secreta, with Philip of Salerno, the Clerk Register of Sicily, that we find Michael Scot, who stood in an undoubtedly close relation to the Clerk Register, showing an intimate acquaintance with the Secreta Secretorum. Foerster has given us a careful and exact account of several passages in different parts of the Physionomia of Scot, which have their correspondences in the works of Philip, so that it is beyond question that the Latin version of the Secreta was one of the sources from which Scot drew. Before leaving this part of the subject, we may notice that translations of Philip’s version into the vernacular languages of Italy, France, and England were made at an early date, both in prose and verse.[75] The English version of the Secreta came from the hand of the poet Lydgate.

Another treatise of the same school, to which Scot was also indebted, is to be found in the Physionomia ascribed, like the Secreta, to Aristotle. The Latin version of this apocryphal work was made, it is said, directly from a Greek original, by Bartholomew of Messina. This author wrote for Manfred of Sicily, and at a time which excludes the notion that Scot could have seen or employed his work. Yet several passages in the preface to Book II. of Scot’s Physionomia have evidently been borrowed from that of the Pseudo-Aristotle. As no Arabic version of the treatise is known to exist, the fact of this correspondence is one of the proofs on which we may rely in support of the conclusion that Scot must have known and used the Greek language in his studies.

The last two chapters of Book I. in the Physionomia of Scot show plainly that he had the Arabic version of Aristotle’s History of Animals before him as he wrote. We shall recur to this matter when we come to deal with the versions which Scot made expressly from these books. Meanwhile let us guard against the impression naturally arising from our analysis of the Physionomia, that it was a mere compilation. Many parts of the work show no correspondence with any other treatise on the subject that is known to us, and these must be held as the results of the author’s own observations. The arrangement of the whole is certainly original, nor can we better conclude our study of the Physionomia, than by giving a comprehensive view of its contents in their order. The work is divided into three books, each having its own introduction. The first expounds the mysteries of generation and birth, and reaches, as we have already remarked, even beyond humanity to a considerable part of the animal world so much studied by the Arabians. The second expounds the signs of the different complexions, as these become visible in any part of the body, or are discovered by dreams. The third examines the human frame member by member, explaining what signs of the inward nature may be read in each. The whole forms a very complete and interesting compendium of the art of physiognomy as then understood, and must have seemed not unworthy of the author, nor unsuitable as an offering to the young prince, who by marriage was about to enter on the great world of affairs, where knowledge of men would henceforth be all-important to his success and happiness. The book attained a wide popularity in manuscript, and the invention of printing contributed to increase its circulation in Europe:[76] no less than eighteen editions are said to have been printed between 1477 and 1660.[77]

In the copy preserved at Milan, the Physionomia is placed immediately after the Astronomia, or Liber Particularis. A similar arrangement is found in the Oxford manuscript. This fact is certainly in favour of the view we have adopted, and would seem to fix very plainly the date and relation of these works. They stand beside the Liber Introductorius, and, together with it, form the only remains we have of Scot’s first literary activity, being publications that were called out in the course of his scholastic duty to the King of Sicily. The Liber Introductorius opens this series. It is closely related by the nature of its subject-matter to the Astronomia, or Liber Particularis, while the Physionomia forms a fitting close to the others with which it is thus associated. In this last treatise Michael Scot sought to fulfil his charge by sending forth his pupil to the great world, not wholly unprovided with a guide to what is far more abstruse and incalculable than any celestial theorem, the mystery of human character and action.

In presenting the Physionomia to Frederick, Scot took what proved a long farewell of the Court; for many years passed before he saw the Emperor again. The great concourse of the Queen’s train, together with the assembly of Frederick’s subjects at Palermo, bred a pestilence under the dangerous heats of spring. A sudden horror fell on the masques and revels of these bright days, with the death of the Queen’s brother, Count Alfonso of Provence, and several others, so that soon the fair gardens and pleasant palace were emptied and deserted as a place where only the plague might dare to linger. The King and Queen, with five hundred Spanish knights and a great Sicilian following, passed eastward; to Cefalù first, and then on to Messina and Catania, as if they could not put too great a distance between themselves and the infected spot. Meanwhile Michael Scot, whose occupation in Palermo, and indeed about the King, was now gone, set sail in the opposite direction and sought the coast of Spain. Whether the idea of this voyage was his own, was the result of a royal commission, or had been suggested by some of the learned who came with Queen Constantia from her native land, it is now impossible to say. It was in any case a fortunate venture, which did much, not only for Scot’s personal fame, but for the general advantage in letters and in arts.

CHAPTER III
SCOT AT TOLEDO

In following the course which Michael Scot held in his voyage to Spain, we approach what was beyond all doubt the most important epoch in the life of that scholar. Hitherto we have seen him as the student preparing at Paris or Bologna for a brilliant future, or as the tutor of a youthful monarch, essaying some literary ventures, which justified the position he held in Sicily, and recommended him for future employment. But the moment was now come which put him at last in possession of an opportunity suitable to his training and talents. We are to see how he won in Spain his greatest reputation in connection with the most important literary enterprise of the age, and one which is indeed not the least remarkable of all time.

The part which the Arabs took in the intellectual awakening of Europe is a familiar theme of early mediæval history. That wonderful people, drawn from what was then an unknown land of the East, and acted on by the mighty sense of religion and nationality which Mohammed was able to communicate, fell like a flood upon the weak remains of older civilisations, and made huge inroads upon the Christian Empire of the East. Having reached this point in their career of conquest they became in their turn the conquered, not under force of arms indeed, but as subdued by the still vital intellectual power possessed by those whom they had in a material sense overcome. In their new seat by the streams of the Euphrates they learned from their Syrian subjects, now become their teachers, the treasures of Greek philosophy which had been translated into the Aramaic tongue. Led captive as by a spell, the Caliphs of the Abassid line, especially Al Mansour, Al Rachid, and Al Mamoun, encouraged with civil honours and rewards the labours of these learned men. Happy indeed was the Syrian who brought to life another relic of the mighty dead, or who gave to such works a new immortality by rendering them into the Arabic language.

Meanwhile the progress of the Ommiad arms, compelled to seek new conquests by the defeat they had sustained in the East from the victorious Abbassides, was carrying the Moors west and ever westward along the northern provinces of Africa. Egypt and Tripoli and Tunis successively fell before their victorious march; Algiers and Morocco shared the same fate, and at last, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, the Moors overran Spain, making a new Arabia of that western peninsula, which in position and physical features bore so great a likeness to the ancient cradle of their race.

It is true indeed that long ere the period of which we write the Moorish power in the West had received a severe check, and had, for at least a century, entered on its period of decay. The battle of Tours, fought in 732, had driven the infidels from France. The Christian kingdoms of Spain itself had rallied their courage and their forces, and, in a scene of chivalry, which inspired many a tale and song, had freed at least the northern provinces of that country from the alien power. But weapons of war, as we have already seen in the case of the Arabs themselves, are not the only means of conquest. The surest title of the Moors to glory lies in the prevailing intellectual influence they were able to exert over that Christendom which, in a political sense, they had failed to subdue and dispossess. The scene we have just witnessed in the East was now repeated in Spain, but was repeated in an exactly opposite sense. The mental impulse received from the remains of Greek literature at Bagdad now became in its turn the motive power which not only sufficed to carry these forgotten treasures westward in the course of Moorish conquest, but succeeded, through that nation, in rousing the Latin races to a sense of their excellence, and a generous ambition to become possessed of all the culture and discipline they were capable of yielding.

The chief centre of this influence, as it was the chief scene of contact between the two races, naturally lay in Spain. During the ages of Moorish dominion the Christians of this country had lived in peace and prosperity under the generous protection of their foreign rulers. To a considerable extent indeed the Moors and Spaniards amalgamated by intermarriage. The language of the conquerors was familiarly employed by their Spanish subjects, and these frequented in numbers the famous schools of science and literature established by the Moors at Cordova, and in other cities of the kingdom. Proof of all this remains in the public acts of the Castiles, which continued to be written in Arabic as late as the fourteenth century, and were signed by Christian prelates in the same characters;[78] in the present language of Spain which retains so many words of eastern origin; but, above all, in the profound influence, now chiefly engaging our attention, which has left its mark upon almost every branch of our modern science, literature, and art.

This result was largely owing to a singular enterprise of the twelfth century with which the learned researches of Jourdain have made us familiar.[79] Scholars from other lands, such as Constantine, Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II., Adelard of Bath, Hermann, and Alfred and Daniel de Morlay, had indeed visited Spain during that age and the one which preceded it, and had, as individuals, made a number of translations from the Arabic, among which were various works in medicine and mathematics, as well as the first version of the Koran. But in the earlier half of the twelfth century, and precisely between the years 1130 and 1150, this desultory work was reduced to a system by the establishment of a regular school of translation in Toledo. The credit of this foundation, which did so much for mediæval science and letters, belongs to Don Raymon, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. This enlightened and liberal churchman was by origin a French monk, born at Agen, whom Bernard, a previous Primate, had brought southward in his train, as he returned from a journey beyond the Pyrenees. Don Raymon associated with himself his Archdeacon, Dominicus Gundisalvus, and a converted Jew commonly known as Johannes Hispalensis or John of Seville, whom Jourdain has identified with Johannes Avendeath: this latter being in all probability his proper name. These formed the heads of the Toledo school in its earliest period, and the enterprise was continued throughout the latter half of the century by other scholars, of whom Gherardus Cremonensis the elder was probably the chief. Versions of the voluminous works of Avicenna, as well as of several treatises by Algazel and Alpharabius, and of a number of medical writings, were the highly prized contribution of the Toledo school to the growing library of foreign authors now accessible in the Latin language.

It is probable that when Michael Scot left Sicily he did so with the purpose of joining this important enterprise. His movements naturally suggest such an idea, as he proceeded to Toledo, still the centre of these studies, and won, during the years of his residence there, the name by which he is best known in the world of letters, that of the chief exponent of the Arabo-Aristotelic philosophy in the West.

The name and fame of Aristotle, never quite forgotten even in the darkest age,[80] and now known and extolled among Moorish scholars, formed indeed the ground of that immense reputation which Arabian philosophy enjoyed in Europe. The Latin schools had long been familiar with the logical writings of Aristotle, but the modern spirit, soon to show itself as it were precociously in Bacon and Albertus Magnus, was already awake, and under its influence men had begun to demand more than the mere training of the mind in abstract reasoning. Even the application of dialectics to evolve or support systems of doctrine drawn from Holy Scripture could not content this new curiosity. Men were becoming alive to the larger book of nature which lay open around them, and, confounded at first by the complexity of unnumbered facts in sea and sky, in earth and air, they began to long for help from the great master of philosophy which might guide their first trembling footsteps in so strange and untrodden a realm of knowledge. Nor was the hope of such aid denied them. There was still a tradition concerning the lost works of Aristotle on physics. The Moors, it was found, boasted their possession, and even claimed to have enriched these priceless pages by comments which were still more precious than the original text itself.

The mere hope that it might be so was enough to beget a new crusade, when western scholars vied with each other in their efforts to recover these lost treasures and restore to the schools of Europe the impulse and guidance so eagerly desired. Such had, in fact, been the aim of Archbishop Raymon and the successive translators of the Toledan school. The important place they assigned to Avicenna among those whose works they rendered into Latin was due to the fact that this author had come to be regarded in the early part of the twelfth century as the chief exponent of Aristotle, whose spirit he had inherited, and on whose works he had founded his own.

The part of the Aristotelic writings to which Michael Scot first turned his attention would seem to have been the history of animals. This, in the Greek text, consisted of three distinct treatises: first the De Historiis Animalium in ten books; next the De Partibus Animalium in four books; and lastly, the De Generatione Animalium in five books. The Arabian scholars, however, who paid great attention to this part of natural philosophy and made many curious observations in it, were accustomed to group these three treatises under the general title De Animalibus, and to number their books or chapters consecutively from one to nineteen, probably for convenience in referring to them. As Scot’s work consisted of a translation from Arabic texts it naturally followed the form which had been sanctioned by the use and wont of the eastern commentators.

At least two versions of the De Animalibus appeared from the pen of Scot. These have sometimes been confounded with each other, but are really quite distinct, representing the labours of two different Arabian commentators on the text of Aristotle. We may best commence by examining that of which least is known, the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, as it is commonly called, and this the rather that there is good reason to suppose it represents the first Arabian work on Natural History which came into Scot’s hands.

Nothing is known certainly regarding the author of this commentary. Jourdain and Steinschneider conclude with reason that the text must have been an Arabic and not a Hebrew one, as Camus[81] and Wüstenfeld[82] contend. No one, however, has hitherto ventured any suggestion throwing light on the personality of the writer. The colophon to the copy of Scot’s version in the Bibliotheca Angelica of Rome contains the word Alphagiri, which would seem to stand for the proper name Al Faquir. But in all probability, as we shall presently show, this may be merely the name of the Spanish Jew who aided Michael Scot in the work of translation.

The expression ‘secundum extractionem Michaelis Scoti,’ which is used in the same colophon, would seem to indicate that this version, voluminous as it is, was no more than a compend of the original. The title of the manuscript too: ‘Incipit flos primi libri Aristotelis de Animalibus’ agrees curiously with this, and with the word Abbreviatio (Avicennae), used to describe Scot’s second version of the De Animalibus of which we are presently to speak. Are we then to suppose that in each case the translator exercised his faculty of selection, and that the form of these compends was due, not to Avicenna, nor to the unknown author of the text called in Scot’s version the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, but to Scot himself? The expressions just cited would seem to open the way for such a conclusion.

The contents of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem may be inferred from the Prologue which is as follows: ‘In Nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Omnipotentis Misericordis et Pii, translatio tractatus primi libri quem composuit Aristoteles in cognitione naturalium animalium, agrestium et marinorum, et in illo est conjunctionis animalium modus et modus generationis illorum cum coitu, cum partitione membrorum interiorum et apparentium, et cum meditatione comparationum eorum, et actionum eorum, et juvamentorum et nocumentorum eorum, et qualiter venantur, et in quibus locis sunt, et quomodo moventur de loco ad locum propter dispositionem presentis aetatis, aestatis et hiemis, et unde est vita cuiuslibet eorum, scilicet modorum avium, et luporum, et piscium maris et qui ambulant in eo.’ It seems tolerably certain that the substance of this prologue came from the Arabic original, which must have commenced with the ascription of praise to God so commonly employed by Mohammedans: ‘Bi-smilláhi-r-rahhmáni-r-rahheém’ (In the Name of God, the Compassionate; the Merciful).[83] The clumsiness of the Latin, which here, as in the body of the work, seems to labour heavily in the track of a foreign text,[84] adds force to this assumption. The hand of Scot is seen, however, where the name of our Saviour has been substituted for that of Allah, and also in the closing words, which ring with a strong reminiscence of the eighth Psalm. The churchman betrays himself here as in not a few other places which might be quoted from his different writings.

By far the most interesting matter, however, which offers itself for our consideration here, lies in the comparison we are now to make between this book and a former work of Scot, the De Physionomia. This comparison, which has never before been attempted, will throw light on both these texts, but has a special value as it affords the means of dating, at least approximately, the composition of Scot’s version of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem.

We have already remarked that the last two chapters of the first book of the Physionomia suggest that in compiling them the author had before him an Arabic treatise on Natural History. A natural conjecture leads us further to suppose that this may have been the original from which he translated the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, and this idea becomes a certainty when we pursue the comparison a little more closely. Take for example this curious passage from the Physionomia (Book I. chap, ii.): ‘Incipiunt pili paulatim oriri in pectine unitas quorum dicitur femur … item sibi vox mutatur.’ Its obscurity disappears when we confront it with the corresponding words in the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, and thus discover what was no doubt the original source from which Scot derived it: ‘Incipiunt pili oriri in pectore Kameon alkaratoki, et in isto tempore mutatur vox eius.’[85] There is no need to extend the comparison any further than this significant passage. Doubt may arise regarding the depth and accuracy of Scot’s knowledge of the Arabic tongue, the nature of the text that lay before him, or the reason he may have had for retaining foreign words in the one version which he translated in the other; but surely this may be regarded as now clearly established, that some part of the first book of the Physionomia was derived by compilation from the same text which appeared in a Latin dress as the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, and that this source was an Arabic one.

This point settled, it becomes possible to establish another. One of the copies of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem[86] has the following colophon: ‘Completus est liber Aristotelis de animalibus, translatus a magistro michaele in tollecto de arabico in latinum.’ Now if the version was made in Toledo, it was probably posterior in date to the Physionomia. This indeed is no more than might have been asserted on the ground of common likelihood; for, when a compilation and a complete version of one of the sources from which it was derived are both found passing under the name of the same author, it is but natural to suppose that the first was made before the other, and that in the interval the author had conceived the idea of producing in a fuller form a work he had already partially published.

Resuming then the results we have reached, it appears that Scot had met with this Arabic commentary on the Natural History of Aristotle while he was still in Sicily, and had made extracts from it for his Physionomia. Coming to Spain he probably carried the manuscript with him, and as his version of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem seems to have been the first complete translation he made from the Arabic, and to have been published shortly after he came to the Castiles, he may possibly have begun work upon it even before his arrival there. On every account, there being no positive evidence to the contrary, we may conjecture that the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, like the Physionomia, belongs to the year 1209. If the latter work appeared at Palermo in time for the royal marriage, which took place in spring, the former may well have been completed and published towards the end of the same year, when Scot had no doubt been already some time settled in Toledo.

The second form in which Michael Scot produced his work upon the Natural History of Aristotle was that of a version called the Abbreviatio Avicennae. The full title as it appears in the printed copy[87] is: ‘Avicenna de Animalibus per Magistrum Michaelem Scotum de Arabico in Latinum translatus.’ Like the De Animalibus ad Caesarem it consists of nineteen books, thus comprehending the three Aristotelic treatises in one work.

The name of Ibn Sina or Avicenna, the author of the Arabic original, is significant, as it enables us to connect in a remarkable way the present labours of Scot’s pen with those which had in a past age proceeded from the school of translators at Toledo, and to place the Abbreviatio in its true relation with the system of versions which had been published there nearly a century before. We have already remarked that Don Raymon directed the attention of his translators to Avicenna as the best representative, both of Aristotle himself and of the Arabian wisdom which had gathered about his writings. A manuscript of great interest preserved in the library of the Vatican[88] shows what the labours of Gundisalvus, Avendeath, and their coadjutors had been, and how far they had proceeded in the task of making this author accessible to Latin students. From it we learn that the Logic, the Physics, the De Cœlo et Mundo, the Metaphysics; the De Anima, called also Liber sextus de Naturalibus; and the De generatione Lapidum of Avicenna, had come from the school of Toledo during the twelfth century in a Latin dress. The last-named treatise was apparently a comment on the Meteora of Aristotle, and the whole belonged to that Kitab Alchefâ, which was called by the Latins the Assephae, Asschiphe or Liber Sufficientiae. This collection was said to form but the first and most common of the three bodies of philosophy composed by Avicenna. It represented the teaching of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, while the second expounded the system of Avicenna himself, and the third contained the more esoteric and occult doctrines of natural philosophy.[89] Of these the first alone had reached the Western schools.

It is plain then that until Michael Scot took the work in hand Toledo had not completed the Latin version of Avicenna by translating that part of the Alchefâ which concerned the Natural History of Animals. The Abbreviatio Avicennae thus came to supply the defect and to crown the labours of the ancient college of translators. This place of honour is actually given to it in the Vatican manuscript just referred to, where it follows the De generatione Lapidum, and forms the fitting close of that remarkable series and volume. Thus, while the De Animalibus ad Caesarem connects itself with the Physionomia, and with Scot’s past life in Sicily, the Abbreviatio Avicennae joins him closely and in a very remarkable way with the whole tradition of the Toledo school, of which, by this translation, he at once became not the least distinguished member.

FROM M.S. FONDO VATICANO 4428, p. 158, recto

The authority of this manuscript, now perhaps for the first time appealed to, is sufficient not only to determine the relation of Scot’s work to that of the earlier Toledan school, but even, by a most fortunate circumstance, enables us to feel sure of the exact date when the translation of the Abbreviatio was made. For the colophon to the Vatican manuscript, brief as it is, contains in one line a fact of the utmost interest and importance to all students of the life of Scot. It is as follows: ‘Explicit anno Domini mºcºcºx.’[90] The researches of Jourdain had the merit of making public two colophons from the manuscripts of Paris, containing the date of another and later work of Scot,[91] but since the days of that savant no further addition of this valuable kind has been made to our knowledge of the philosopher’s life. The date just cited from the Vatican copy of the Abbreviatio shows, however, that further inquiry in this direction need not be abandoned as useless. We now know accurately the time when this version was completed, and find the date to be such as accords exactly with our idea that Scot must have quitted Sicily soon after the marriage of Frederick; for the year 1210 may be taken as a fixed point determining the time when he first became definitely connected with the Toledo school. It will be remembered that we anticipated this result of research so far as to use it in our attempt to conjecture the date of Scot’s birth.[92]

Like the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, the Abbreviatio Avicennae bears a dedication to Frederick conceived in the following terms: ‘O Frederick, Lord of the World and Emperor, receive with devotion this book of Michael Scot, that it may be a grace unto thy head and a chain about thy neck.’[93] It will always be matter of doubt whether in this address Scot appealed to a taste for natural history already formed in his pupil before he left Palermo, or whether the interest subsequently shown by this monarch in studying the habits of animals was awakened by the perusal of these two volumes. In any case they must have done not a little to guide both his interest and his researches. The chroniclers tell us of Frederick’s elephant, which was sent to Cremona, of the cameleopard, the camels and dromedaries, the lions, leopards, panthers, and rare birds which the royal menagerie contained, and of a white bear which, being very uncommon, formed one of the gifts presented by the Emperor on an important occasion. We hear too that Frederick, not content with gathering such rarities under his own observation, entered upon more than one curious experiment in this branch of science. Desiring to learn the origin of language he had some children brought up, so Salimbene tells us, beyond hearing of any spoken tongue. In the course of another inquiry he caused the surgeon’s knife to be ruthlessly employed upon living men that he might lay bare the secrets and study the process of digestion. If these experiments do not present the moral character of the Emperor in a very attractive light, they may at least serve to show how keenly he was interested in the study of nature.

This interest indeed went so far as to lead Frederick to join the number of royal authors by publishing a work on falconry.[94] In it he ranges over all the species of birds then known, and insists on certain rarities, such as a white cockatoo, which had been sent to him by the Sultan from Cairo. He thus appears in his own pages, not merely as a keen sportsman, but as one who took no narrow interest in natural history. Clearly the dedication of the De Animalibus and the Abbreviatio Avicennae was no empty compliment as it flowed from the pen of Scot. He had directed his first labours from Toledo to one who could highly appreciate them, and to these works must be ascribed, in no small measure, the growth of the Emperor’s interest in a subject then very novel and little understood.

As regards the Abbreviatio Avicennae indeed, we have actual evidence of the esteem in which Frederick held it. The book remained treasured in the Imperial closet at Melfi for more than twenty years, and, when at last the Emperor consented to its publication, so important was the moment deemed, that a regular writ passed the seals giving warrant for its transcription.[95] Master Henry of Colonia[96] was the person selected by favour of Frederick for this work, and, as most of the manuscripts of the Abbreviatio now extant have a colophon referring in detail to this transaction, we may assume that Henry’s copy, made from that belonging to the Emperor, was the source from which all others have been derived.

This Imperial original would seem to be more nearly represented by the Vatican copy[97] than by any other which remains in the libraries of Europe. From it we discover that the Arabic names with which the Abbreviatio abounds were given in Latin in the margin of the original manuscript, which Scot sent to the Emperor.[98] These hard words and their explanations were afterwards gathered in a glossary, and inscribed at the end of the treatise; an improvement which was probably due to Henry of Colonia. The glossary has, however, been quite neglected by later copyists, nor does it appear in the printed edition of the Abbreviatio Avicennae. The completeness with which it is found in the Vatican manuscript shows the close relation which that copy holds to the one first made by the Emperor’s permission. The Chigi manuscript[99] seems to be the only other in which the glossary is to be found. It therefore ranks beside that of the Vatican, but is inferior to it as it presents the glossary in a less complete form.

The originality of the Vatican text perhaps appears also in the curious triplet with which it closes: ‘Liber iste inceptus est et expletus cum adiutorio Jesu Christi qui vivit, etc.

Frenata penna, finito nunc Avicenna

Libro Caesario, gloria summa Deo

Dextera scriptoris careat gravitate doloris.’[100]

Several other copies of the Abbreviatio have the first two lines, but this alone contains the third. In the Chigi manuscript, the place of these verses is occupied by a curious feat of language:—

To whatever period it belongs, the writer’s purpose was doubtless to recall to the mind the four nations over which Frederick II. ruled, and the splendid kingdoms of Sicily, Germany, and Jerusalem which he gathered in one under his imperial power.

In the Laurentian Library there is a valuable manuscript, written during the summer and autumn of 1266, for the monks of Santa Croce.[102] It contains the De Animalibus ad Caesarem; the Abbreviatio Avicennae, and, as a third and concluding article, an independent version of the Liber de Partibus Animalium, corresponding, as has been said, to books xi.-xiv. of the other versions which the volume contains. Bandini, in the printed catalogue of the library, asserts that this third translation, unlike the two which precede it, was made from the Greek. This is probably correct, as it was only the Greek text which treated these four chapters of the Natural History as a distinct work. He further ascribes the version to Michael Scot, relying no doubt on the general composition of the volume, for this particular translation does not seem to contain any direct evidence of authorship. Thus the doubt expressed by Jourdain in this matter[103] is not without reason, though the balance of probability would seem to incline in favour of Bandini’s opinion; for such a volume can scarcely be assumed to have been a mere miscellany without clear evidence that the contents come from more than one author. Taking it for granted then that the De Partibus Animalium came from Scot’s pen, then this is the third form in which his labours on the Natural History of Aristotle appeared.

In any case, however, his chief merit in this department of study belonged to Michael Scot as the exponent of the Arabian naturalists. It is difficult for any one who has not read the books in question to form an adequate idea of their contents, and still more of their style; even from the most careful description. We are made to feel that the task of the translator must have been a very difficult one. There is a concentration combined with great wealth of detail, and withal a constant nimble transition from one subject to another, seemingly remote, under the suggestion of some subtle connection, which result in a style almost baffling to one who sought to reproduce it in his comparatively slow and clumsy Latin.

No greater contrast could be imagined than that which separates such works from those which are the production of our modern writers on the same subject. Nor does this difference depend, as one might suppose, on the fact that a wider field of observation is open to us, and more adequate collections of facts are at our disposal. Rather is it the case that between ancients and moderns, between the eastern and western world, there is an entirely different understanding of the whole subject. A different principle of arrangement is at work, and results in the wide diversity of manner which strikes us as soon as we open the De Animalibus or the Abbreviatio. We find ourselves in the presence of a system of ideas, more or less abstract, which a wealth of facts derived from keen and wide observation of the world of nature is employed to illustrate. There is a finer division than with us. The unit in these works is not the species nor even the individual, but some single part or passion. This the author follows through all he knew of the multitudinous maze of nature, comparing and discerning and recording with a bizarrerie which comes to resemble nothing so much as the fantastic dance of form and colour in a kaleidoscope.

‘Birds,’ says Avicenna,[104] ‘have a way of life that is peculiar to themselves. Those that are long-necked drink by the mouth, then lift their head till the water runs down their neck. The reason of this is that their neck is long and narrow, so that they cannot satisfy their thirst by putting beak in water and straightway drinking. There is, however, a great difference between different birds in their way of drinking, and the mountain hog loveth roots to which his tusk helpeth, wherewith he turneth up the ground and breaketh out the roots. Six days or thereabout are proper for his fattening, wherein he drinketh not for three, and there are some who feed their hogs and yet will not water them for perchance seven days on end. And in their fattening all animals are helped by moderate and gentle exercise, save the hog, who fatteneth lying in the mud, and that mightily, for thereby his pores are shut upon him so that he loseth nothing by evaporation. And the hog will fight with the wolf, and that is his nature, and cows fatten on every windy thing, such as vetches, beans, and barley, and if their horns be anointed with soft wax, straightway, even while still upon the living animal, they become soft, and if the horns of ox or cow be anointed with marrow, oil, or pitch, this easeth them of the pain in their feet after a journey.’

In another place[105] he continues: ‘Some animals have teeth which serve them not save for fighting, and not for the mastication of their food. Such are the hog and the elephant, for the elephant’s tusks are of use to him in this matter as we have said. And there are animals which make no use of their teeth save for eating or fighting, nay, I believe that every animal having teeth will fight with them upon occasion, and some there are whose teeth are sharp and stand well apart, so that they are therewith furnished to tear prey: such is the lion. And those animals that have need to crop their food, as grass and the like, from the ground, have level and regular teeth, and not long tusks or canines, which would hinder them from cropping; and since in some kinds the males are more apt to anger than the females, tusks have been given them that they may defend the females, because these are weaker in themselves and of a worse complexion, and this is true in a general way of all animals, even in those kinds that eat no flesh, and need not their tusks for eating, but only for defence, such as boars, and this is the reason why they have the strength of which we have just spoken. It is the same with the camel, and so we pass to speak of this general truth as it appears with regard to all other means of defence. Hence hath the stag his horn and not the hind; the ram and not the ewe; the he-goat and not his female, and fish which eat not flesh have no need of teeth that are sharp.’

The city where these strange writings were deciphered and translated into Latin, being itself so strange and remote from the ways of modern life, had a certain poetic fitness as the scene where Michael Scot undertook his labours upon the Arabian authors. No passage of all their texts was more bizarre and tortuous than the mass of intricate lanes which formed then, as they form to-day, the thoroughfares of communication in Toledo. No hidden jewel of knowledge and observation could surprise and reward the translator in the midst of his tedious labours with a flash of sudden light and glory more unexpectedly delicious than that felt by the traveller, when, after long wandering in that maze and labyrinth, he finds a wider air; a stronger light beats before him, beckoning, and in a moment he stands in the full sunshine of the plaza mayor, with space to see and light to show the wonders of mind and hand, and all the toil of past ages in the fabric of the great cathedral.

Such as it now stands, the Cathedral of Toledo had not yet begun to rise above ground when Michael Scot had his residence there, but enough of the ancient city remains to show what Toledo must have been like in these early days. The splendid and commanding site, swept about by the waves of the Tagus; the famous bridge of Alcantara; the steep slope of approach crowned by ancient fortifications; and above all the massed and massive houses of the old town, so closely crowded together as hardly to give room for streets that should rather be called lanes; all this, beneath the unchanging sky of the south, recalls sufficiently what must have been the surroundings of Scot’s life during ten laborious years. Even yet, where white-wash peels and stucco fails, strange records of that forgotten past reveal themselves in the walls and on the house fronts: sculptured stones of every age; bas-reliefs, arabesques; windows in the delicate Moorish manner of twin arches, and a central shaft with carved cornices, long built up and forgotten till accident has revealed them.

Here then, perhaps in some house still standing, the scholar come from Sicily made his home. The quiet courtyard is forgotten; the azulejos have disappeared from walls and pavement; the rich wood-work of the ceilings, still bearing dim traces of colour and gold, looks down on the life of another age; even the curious cedar book-chest has crumbled to dust, for all its delicate defence of ironwork spreading away like a spider’s web from hinges and from lock. But the name and the fame endure, and the years which Michael Scot spent in Toledo have left a deep mark upon that and every succeeding age.

CHAPTER IV
THE ALCHEMICAL STUDIES OF SCOT

The Moorish schools of Spain were famous, not only for their researches in natural history, but also for the interest they took in chemistry, then called alchemy: a name which sufficiently indicates the nation which chiefly pursued these studies, and the language that recorded their progress. The practical turn taken by alchemy, as the foundation of a scientific materia medica in minerals, is shown by the writings of Rases. This author, who belonged to the ninth and tenth centuries (860-940), produced a considerable work on medicine in which he devoted special attention to the diseases of children. Under his name appeared several alchemical writings, either his own or the productions of the school which followed his teaching and borrowed his name.

Michael Scot, as we know, had become familiar with the works of Rases while still in Sicily, and thought so highly of the De Medicina as to borrow thence for his treatise on physiognomy no fewer than thirty-one chapters relating to that subject.[106] It is a natural conjecture then which leads us to find in his acquaintance with this author’s writings the starting-point of Scot’s interest both in medicine and in alchemy. Leaving for the present what may hereafter be said of his name and fame as a physician, let us examine the origin and nature of his work as a student of the Arabian chemistry. We have reached what would seem to be the proper moment for such an inquiry. The treatises of Michael Scot on this subject are not dated indeed, but their form shows them to belong to the epoch of his work as a translator. They were therefore probably produced during the period of his residence at Toledo, and as there is a long interval, otherwise unaccounted for, between 1210, when the Abbreviatio Avicenna appeared, and the date of his next publication some seven years later, this blank cannot be better filled than by supposing that it was during these years he found time for the study of alchemy, and for the translation or composition of the writings in that branch of science which still bear his name.

In this, as in almost all his other studies, Michael Scot sat at the feet of Eastern masters. But the Arabians themselves had derived their chemical science, at least in its first principles and primitive processes, from still older peoples. If we are to understand the progress of human thought in this science we must trace it from the beginning, following again that beaten track of tradition by which not physiognomy and alchemy alone, but almost all the secrets of early times, have reached the modern world.

Primitive chemistry was closely connected with the still older art of metallurgy, out of which it arose by a natural process of development. Those who worked with ores soon discovered the secret of alloys, whereby a considerable quantity of baser metal, such as copper, lead or tin, could be added to gold or silver, so as greatly to increase the bulk of the whole without injuring either its appearance or usefulness. The problem of the crown set before Archimedes, and happily solved by that philosopher in the bath, shows how dexterously alloys were used by the Greeks, and what subtle means were necessary for their detection.

M. Berthelot has reminded us[107] that the transmission of receipts for such processes from early times to our own has been naturally and inevitably secured by the unbroken continuity of practice in the arts which gave them birth, and that they thus passed safely from generation to generation, and even spread from the tribes that originated them to other and distant peoples. He cites in support of this observation a papyrus of the third century, preserved at Leyden, which, he says, contains what are substantially the same directions as those of the chief mediæval authorities in such matters: the Mappae Clavicula and the Compositiones ad Tingenda.[108] These receipts are not unnaturally entitled ‘How to make Gold,’ and it is curious to find in them the veritable starting-point of the dreams which made so many a furnace smoke, and so many a crucible glow during the course of centuries, in the vain hope of effecting an actual transmutation of substance.

Thus it was that in the first ages, long before authentic record, in the dimness of early Egyptian history, or of that still more ancient Pelasgic civilisation from which the pyramid-builders learned so much, the germs of this science may already be perceived. Only one source of genuine gold seems then to have been known: the mines of Ophir. This circumstance, by making the supplies of precious metal small and uncertain, mightily encouraged the art which taught men to counterfeit its appearance in a colourable way. How this was done may be judged of by the receipts themselves. The Mappae Clavicula, for instance, has the following: ‘To make gold. Silver, one pound; copper, half-a-pound; gold, a pound; melt, etc.’ Here indeed a considerable proportion of the precious metal itself was required, but there are other receipts which dispense with any such admixture. It is said, for example, that one hundred parts of copper and seventeen of zinc joined in a state of fusion with divers small proportions of magnesia, sal ammoniac, quicklime, and tartar, yield an alloy which is fine in grain and malleable, which may be polished and used in damascening just as if it were the pure gold that it has all the appearance of being. Such then were the receipts which formed the hereditary riches of the mighty clan of the Smiths. It is easy to see how the famous ‘powder of projection,’ so much sought in later times, was, in fact, but the transfiguration of one of these formulae.

When, during the early centuries of the Christian era, the traditions of Greece found a new home in lower Egypt, and especially in Alexandria, they were profoundly influenced by the still more ancient philosophy of the East. We have already remarked this in the case of another science, that of physiognomy, but the same influence may also be traced in the modification it brought to the notions of primitive chemistry. The Chaldæans and Persians had long believed that the heavens influenced the earth, and were capable of producing strange effects in the lower spheres of being.[109] Their wise men considered that an individual connection could be established between the stars and the elements, the planets and the metals. It was in contact with this new doctrine and under its influence that there arose the hope, soon hardening into a settled belief, that the rules of art might be sufficient to effect an actual transmutation of the baser into the nobler metals, of copper into gold, and of tin or lead into silver.

This opinion must have been immensely heightened, and its authority reinforced, by the secrecy with which the receipts for alloying metals were guarded. These were handed down orally from father to son; were not committed to writing till a comparatively late period, and even then remained for the most part the cherished treasures of temple guilds. On the well-known principle of the proverb, ‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico’ this secrecy tended to confirm the impression that, however much had been communicated, more remained untold, to await discovery by the patient and undaunted chemist. The Therapeutæ or Essenes were among the earliest representatives of this new tendency, as appears from the testimony of Josephus,[110] who describes them as not only devoted to ancient writings, but eager to investigate the properties of minerals. The chief object of their inquiries, the maintenance of health by medicines thus derived from the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, is not only an early instance of the connection between chemistry and pharmacy, but is remarkable as the probable starting-point of the search for the elixir of life: that other and nobler dream which so much of the enthusiastic energy of the mediæval alchemists was spent to realise.

The point of connection between these speculations of Eastern philosophy and the practice of the primitive chemistry may with probability be sought in the fire which of necessity played so large a part in the operations of the metal-worker. Fire bore a highly sacred character in the philosophy and religion of the East. This element, it soon came to be thought by those whom Eastern speculation influenced, might be trusted not only to melt, to calcine and to sublime in the vulgar way, but to form the long-sought link of sympathy between the stars of heaven, themselves compact of fire, and the elements of earth, as these were subjected to its piercing and transforming power. In its due employment the suspected connection between the higher and lower worlds would become an accomplished fact. Thus, under the power of the planets, in some favourable hour and fortunate conjunction, the mighty work would be done: the philosopher’s stone discovered, the metals transmuted, and the elixir of life produced.

It is highly curious to find this idea presented in a novel and perhaps an exaggerated form by a writer of the sixteenth century. This was Fra Evangelista Quattrami of Gubbio, semplicista, or master of the still-room, to the Cardinal d’Este. He wrote a book entitled, The true declaration of all the metaphors, similitudes, and riddles of the ancient Alchemical Philosophers, as well among the Chaldeans and Arabians as the Greeks and Latins.[111] According to this work, the potable gold; the elixir of life; the quintessence, and the philosopher’s stone were nothing but fantastic names for the fire itself which was used in distillation and other chemical operations. In this the Frate may possibly have touched the true sense of Al Kindi at least, who, in his commentary on the Meteora,[112] speaks of fire as if it were the all in all of the alchemist.

While the primitive chemical practice followed the progress of the arts which it served, the new theory of alchemy, with the ever-growing tradition of fantastic experiments arising out of it, found different and less direct channels in its descent from ancient to modern times. It has been customary to speak of the Arabs as if that nation had been the chief means of transmitting the knowledge of Greek doctrine to our mediæval scholars, but we now know that there was a previous link in the chain of intellectual succession. This was supplied by the care and industry of the Syrian subjects of the early Caliphs, nor did their learned men play a less important part in the history of chemistry than in that of the other sciences. Sergius of Resaina, a scholar of the fifth century, was, it is said, the first Syrian who attempted to translate the Greek chemists, several of whom mention him by name. The chief development of this work belongs, however, to the ninth and tenth centuries, and its glory must ever remain with the great school of Bagdad. Chemical treatises composed by Democritus and Zosimus[113] were there and then rendered into Syriac, as may be seen by the manuscripts still preserved in the British Museum and at Cambridge.

It was not long before the Arabs themselves began to feel powerfully the intellectual impulse thus communicated to them in the heart of a country which they had made their own. Khaled ben Yezid ibn Moauia, who died in the year 708, is said by their historians to have been the first of that nation who devoted his attention to chemistry. In his case the filiation of doctrine would seem very plain, as he was the pupil of a Syrian monk named Mariannos. Djabar, the Geber of Western writers, followed in the same line of study, and from the ninth century there was a regular school of Arabian chemists whose labours may be studied in the manuscript collections of Paris and Leyden.

In the eleventh century appeared a curious phenomenon, in the shape of a dispute among the Arabians of that day regarding the truth of the tradition which pronounced the transmutation of metals possible. The unwearied but still unavailing experiments which had now been carried on through several ages, produced at last their inevitable effect in the shape of philosophic doubt, eagerly urged on the one part and as eagerly repelled on the other. The chemical school was now divided according to these opposite opinions, and each party in their writings sought to give weight to what they taught by borrowing in support of their arguments the names of the mighty dead. In this conflict it was left to the followers of Rases to sustain the affirmative and to assert the possibility of transmutation. These were the apologists for the past, and the advocates, in the name of their great master, of that hope which had inspired previous research and borne fruit in so many important discoveries.

The defence of the new doubt belonged on the other hand to the school of Al Kindi. This chemist lived and died during the ninth century. He was probably the earliest Arabian commentator on Aristotle, and seems to have paid special attention to the Meteora of that author. The treatise De Mineralibus, so often appended to the Meteora as a supplement, is ascribed to Al Kindi in the Paris manuscript.[114] It represents the alchemy of the time.

Between these two contending parties stood the school of Avicenna, which now occupied an intermediate position and doubted of the doubt. That this had not always been the opinion of Avicenna himself is plain, however, from a passage which occurs in his Sermo de generatione lapidum, where the author unhesitatingly pronounces against the theory of transmutation. ‘Those of the chemical craft,’ he says, ‘know well that no change can be effected in the different species of things, though they can produce the appearance of them: tinging that which is ruddy with yellow till it looks like gold, and that which is white with colour at their pleasure till the same effect is in great measure produced. Nay, they can also remove the impurity from lead, so that it looks like silver, though it be lead still, and can endue it with such strange qualities as to deceive men’s senses, and this by the use of salt and sal ammoniac.’[115] Avicenna was evidently well acquainted with the secrets of art and held them at their proper value. Had his followers in the eleventh century done the same they would have supported the school of Al Kindi instead of taking a less definite position.

This view of the later Arabian schools and their differences is forced upon us by the fact, that works are extant under the names of Rases, Al Kindi, and Avicenna, which evidently belong to the eleventh century, the period when they first appeared, and could not therefore have been written by authors who lived at an earlier date. They are plainly the production of later chemists who followed more or less intelligently the doctrine of these great masters in alchemy. The artifice involved in this ascription of authorship is one which has always been common in Eastern literature.

We have a direct interest in observing that Spain was the country where these developments of the later Arabian chemistry arose, contended and flourished. Spain, therefore, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, became, by the attraction she offered to European scholars, the country where these theories first reached the Latin races, and began to find an entrance among them. M. Berthelot indeed, by a happy citation, has enabled us to fix, almost with certainty, the very moment of this important event. Robert Castrensis, the author alluded to, remarks: ‘Your Latin world has not as yet learned the doctrine of Alchemy.’ These words are taken from the preface to this author’s version of the Liber de Compositione Alchimiae, and a colophon informs us that the translation was completed on the 11th of February 1182. We may add that the same year, corrected, however, in one copy to 1183, was the date of another of these versions of the Arabian chemistry: that of the treatise called Interrogationes Regis Kalid, et responsiones Morieni.[116] Here then we stand on the threshold of a new age, and find ourselves in presence of an intellectual movement which was certainly of the greatest importance, since in it we may trace the origin of our modern chemistry. The knowledge of what had already been gained by Greek and Arabian alchemists was the first step to independent research among the Latins. The closing years of the twelfth century saw that knowledge at last beginning to unfold itself in a form intelligible to the Western schools.

As in Bagdad during the ninth century, the palmy period of Syrian studies, so in Spain three hundred years later, the work was in its commencement essentially one of interpretation, and the first age of these labours was distinguished by the number of versions which were then produced. From 1182, through the whole of the following century, students laboured in the translation of Moorish books on chemistry. Only towards the close of this period did a tendency become apparent which led in the direction of improvement and innovation. The seed already sown had begun to bear fruit. The material thus derived from Eastern sources was now treated with a new freedom, enriched by the results of original experiment, and edited in forms which betray the influence of scholastic philosophy. The criticism, however, which would determine the precise point when this change began to be operative, and the extent to which it proceeded, attempts what is perhaps an impossible and certainly a difficult task. For it is a remarkable fact that no Arabic texts have been preserved to us which can be regarded as the originals from which these earlier Latin versions were made. This want is probably due to the widespread destruction which overtook the Moorish libraries of Spain.[117] That such originals did at one time exist, however, is made certain by the correspondence which the Latin translations show with those which have come down to us in another language, the Hebrew. The labours of these Latin translators during a hundred years may be found in the manifold collections of chemical treatises, containing some forty or fifty articles apiece, which were arranged and copied out at the beginning of the fourteenth century. These volumes became, after the invention of printing, the chief quarry whence were composed the Ars Aurifera; the Theatrum Chemicum of Zetzner, and the Bibliotheca of Manget.

We are now in a position to understand, not only the nature and progress of the work in which Michael Scot took part, but the exact development which alchemy had reached in his day, and therefore the relation which his chemical publications bore to the general direction of study in this department of science. The time and care which our survey of the field has demanded need not be thought ill spent. It has prepared the way for a more intelligent appreciation of Scot’s labours as a chemist, and has furnished us with the means of coming to a true judgment regarding their authenticity and value.

To put the matter to the proof: we may begin by dismissing altogether from consideration a treatise which has long been attributed to Scot, and still appears in the most recent list of his works: the Quaestio curiosa de natura Solis et Lunae. It has probably received more attention than it deserves since it appeared under Scot’s name in the Theatrum Chemicum.[118] The subject of this treatise is indeed an alchemical one; for the sun and moon of which it speaks are not these heavenly bodies themselves, but, by an allegorical use common in the Middle Ages, and derived from the Eastern theories of sympathy already mentioned, stand for the nobler metals of gold and silver. A brief examination, however, shows that Scot could not have been the author. The very style suggests this conclusion; for it is distinctly scholastic, and proper therefore to a later age than that which aimed at the direct and simple reproduction of Eastern texts. It is satisfactory to find that this criticism, hardly convincing per se, is fully borne out by what occurs in the substance of the work itself. The author quotes from the De Mineralibus of Albertus. Now Albertus Magnus, by common testimony, produced this treatise after the year 1240, and we may anticipate what is afterwards to be told of Michael Scot’s death so far as to say here that he had then been long in his grave. The De Natura Solis et Lunæ then must be ascribed to some other and later alchemist, who lived in the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. A more careful examination of the treatise than has been necessary for our purpose might succeed in fixing its date with greater precision, and might possibly throw some light upon the person of its true author.

Another work ascribed to the pen of Michael Scot, and one which seems likely to be authentic, is that contained in the Speciale Manuscript. This volume is one of those collections of alchemical tracts made in the fourteenth century to which we have already alluded. It belonged to the library of the Speciale family in Palermo, and has been made the subject of an interesting monograph by Carini.[119] No. 44 of this manuscript is entitled Liber Magistri Miccaelis Scotti in quo continetur Magisterium. The term Magisterium, or supreme secret of art, would seem to carry with it a certain reference to Aristotle, ‘Il Maestro di color che sanno,’ as Dante calls him.[120] Curious as the appearance of such a name in connection with alchemy may seem to us, it is certain that Aristotle held a high place in the chemical traditions of the Middle Ages. The Meteora afforded a text which lent itself readily to large commentaries by the Arabian chemists. The tract De Mineralibus, which we noticed when speaking of Al Kindi, was one of these commentaries, and it is easy to see how it became confused with the text which it illustrated so as in time to be considered the work of Aristotle himself. This, we may believe, was the ground on which so many alchemical works were afterwards published under the same mighty name.[121] An interesting example appears in the Speciale collection itself which contains the following title: Liber perfecti Magisterii Aristotelis qui incipit cum studii solertis indigere.[122] The treatise Cum studii is also found in the Paris manuscript,[123] where it is ascribed to Rases. To the school of Rases then we are inclined to attribute the works on the Magisterium, and among the rest therefore, this treatise in the Speciale Manuscript, which bears the name of Michael Scot, seemingly because he translated it from the Arabic. This conclusion is confirmed when we notice the character of some of the chapter headings as given by Carini; for example: ‘Qualiter Venus mutatur in Solem’; and again, ‘Transformatio Mercurii in Lunam.’ These show beyond all doubt that the doctrine which Michael Scot published by means of this version was that held by the school of Rases.

A curious question here offers itself for our consideration. In the times of Robert Castrensis alchemy was as yet unknown to the Latins. Michael Scot, as we shall presently see, described it in one of his works as meeting with but a poor reception at its first introduction among them.[124] How then did it come to pass that in a few years the theory of Rases became so popular in the West, and continued for so many ages to direct the progress of chemical study among the European nations with enduring power? We find the explanation of this sudden change in the fact that human thought has always been subject to the tyranny of ruling ideas. In our own day the place of direction is filled by a doctrine of development which is eagerly made use of in every department of knowledge. In those earlier ages the same place seems to have been held by a doctrine of transformation. This idea ruled the thoughts of men like an obsession, in whatever direction they turned their minds. We see it in their superstitions, suggesting the wild tales of were-wolves and of other animal forms assumed at will by wizard and witch. We find it in religion, infusing a new meaning into the hyperbolical language of still earlier times, till, under this direction, there came to be fastened upon the Church a full-formed doctrine of Transubstantiation.[125] It is the operation of the same idea then that we are to remark also in the scientific sphere. As soon as the first shock of their surprise was over, the Latins greedily embraced a theory of chemical change which related itself so naturally to the prevailing habit of their minds, and which promised to show as operative in the mineral kingdom a law already conceived to hold good in the world of organic life.

The Riccardian Library of Florence possesses another of those volumes to which we have already referred: a collection of alchemical treatises formed in the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century.[126] Among these appears one called the Liber Luminis Luminum. It is said to have been translated by Michael Scot, and, as there is no reason to doubt this ascription, we have now the means of determining with some fulness and accuracy the lines on which the philosopher proceeded in his chemical researches.

The book opens with a preface somewhat scholastic,[127] and one which, on this ground as well as on others, is probably to be ascribed to Scot himself. In this part of the work he informs us that he took as his basis in the following compilation a text called the Secreta Naturae. To it he added material derived from other sources, which seemed necessary in order to complete the doctrine of chemistry contained in the Secreta. In this way he endeavoured to present his readers with a full and practical body of Alchemy according to the teaching of the school to which he belonged.

In the study of a composite work, such as the Liber Luminis is thus declared to be, our first problem is naturally to determine and separate the original text from the additions which have been made to it. Which then are those parts of the Liber Luminis that represent the Secreta Naturae? Very fortunately the volume where the Liber Luminis is found contains another treatise that throws considerable light on the matter. This is the Liber Dedali Philosophi. The correspondences between that book and the Liber Luminis are so many, close, and verbal, that it is evident both have borrowed from the same source. This source can hardly have been other than the Secreta Naturae, so that a comparison of these two books such as is attempted in the Appendix[128] should go far to determine what that hitherto unknown text was.

The question of the chemical doctrine contained in the Secreta is an interesting one, and we shall return to it, but meanwhile, let us observe that the Liber Luminis contains hints which seem to carry us further still, and throw some light upon the source from which the Secreta was itself derived. One of the authors quoted is a certain ‘Archelaus.’ Now there was a veritable chemist of this name who lived during the fifth century. This author wrote a treatise on his art in Greek verse. In later times his name seems to have become common property, as did so many others distinguished in alchemy, and to have been freely used by some who wrote long after his day. Thus the Riccardian manuscript itself contains no less than three books ascribed to this author: the Liber Archelai Philosophi de arte alchimiae,[129] called also in the margin Practica Galieni in Secretis secretorum;[130] the Summula, ‘quam ego Archilaus transtuli de libro secretorum’;[131] and finally the Mappa Archilei nobilis philosophi.[132]

The fact that these titles mention the Secreta is enough to show us that in following up the alchemy of the Pseudo-Archelaus, we are on the right track. As we proceed the traces become still more interesting and significant. The Summula offers the following curious passage: ‘Et hoc feci amore Dei et cuidam compatri meo, qui pauper sint [sic] et infortunatus, et postea fortunatus fortuna bona et amore Imperatoris Emanuelis et Frederici.’[133]

The name Emanuel is found in other alchemical writings. The De Perfecto Magisterio, for example, which has been reprinted by Zetzner, embodies another work, the Liber duodecim aquarum which is expressly said to be taken from the ‘Liber Emanuelis.’ Pursuing the matter further still, we come to the Liber Aristotelis which commences, ‘Cum de sublimiori atque precipuo.’ The author of this treatise, we find, claims not only the Liber duodecim aquarum (‘quae qualiter se habeant in libro quem XII. aquarum vocabulo descripsimus, prudens lector intelligere poterit’), but also, it would seem, the very one of which we are in search (‘in libro secretorum a nobis dictum est’). Everything inclines us to the belief that we here touch the source from which the main part of the Liber Luminis was drawn, and this conclusion is not a little strengthened when we observe that the treatise ‘Cum de sublimiori’ is called the Lumen Luminum in the Riccardian copy.[134]

The Secreta, however, was not the only source from which the Liber Luminis and the Liber Dedali were drawn, and the assertion of the preface that the former was composed of extracts from many different philosophers is fully borne out when we examine the substance of the books themselves. A strain of Greek influence is to be traced, for example, in the names of Archelaus, Dedalus, Plato, and Hermes, as well as in the use of ciatus as an equivalent for the word ‘cup,’ and this reminds us strongly of the Summula with its reference to the Emperor Manuel. It is not impossible that Scot may have borrowed much from the Byzantine chemists of the twelfth century. With this notion agrees the passage of the Liber Dedali where Saracens are spoken of as foreigners. On the other hand, much had evidently been taken from Arabic sources, as is plain from the names given to several of the vessels used in alchemy, such as the alembic and aludel. Indeed, Unay and Melchia, who are quoted in the Liber Luminis, must have been Moors, for the corresponding passage of the Liber Dedali describes them as from ‘Lamacha of the Saracens.’ Both these texts agree in showing such familiarity with the process of refining sulphur that one is led to suppose the Secreta, their common original, may have been composed in Sicily. The Liber Luminis says of one of the alums that it is ‘brought from Spain:’ an expression agreeing well with the notion of a Sicilian author, who would naturally speak of Spain as a foreign land.

Leaving, however, these questions of origin and derivation, let us come to that of the chemical doctrine taught in the book which Michael Scot compiled, or at least translated. The title of the Liber Luminis Luminum is a significant one, and has a real relation to the contents of the work itself.[135] To discover the sense which it must be held to bear we have only to turn to the passage in which, speaking of alum, the author says: ‘sicut illuminat pannos, ita illuminat martem ut recipiat formam lunae. Ut enim lana illuminatur ita et metalla illuminantur.’[136] A distinction is clearly present in the writer’s mind between the substance and the form of the metals. He probably held that there existed but one common metallic substance, which assumed the appearance of iron, gold, or silver, according to the form which it had received. His employment of the title Liber Luminis Luminum was meant to indicate that the purpose of his book was that of teaching the student how metals might best be purified and improved. Their inferiority, when of the baser kind, he conceived as an impurity, manifesting itself in the imperfect forms of lead, iron, tin, and copper. He believed that this being removed or changed by art, they might be made to shine with the lustre and indeed possess the only distinctive quality of gold and silver. That we have rightly read the meaning of this title seems plain from a curious spelling which may be noticed in the Liber Dedali. ‘Illuminantur’ there appears as ‘aluminantur.’ The chemistry taught in these books did in fact prescribe the use of alum as a great means of purifying and refining the metals.

The preface of the Liber Luminis closes with a brief summary of the chapters which compose the work itself. The first of these deals with the different salts used in this chemistry: common salt; rock salt; alkali; sal ammoniac; nitre and others. The second treats in like manner of the various kinds of alum, the third describes the vitriols, and the fourth the powders or spirits, by which we are to understand those minerals which are capable of being sublimed or made volatile, such as sulphur, arsenic, and mercury. Two supplementary chapters, the one on the preparation of the salts, alums, and vitriols, and the other on that of the remaining class of chemicals, complete the whole book. This supplement seems genuinely such, as it is not mentioned in the general contents, as these appear in the preface. Perhaps we do not err if we suppose it to have embodied the result of Scot’s own experiments in alchemy.

It is indeed the practical nature of the alchemical doctrine taught in the Liber Luminis which strikes us most strongly when we read this book. A large part of it is taken up with exact descriptions of the minerals, according to their various forms and the countries from which they were derived. The rest consists of receipts for their employment in refining metals. Whatever we may think of the validity and use of these processes, we cannot fail to notice that they are described in a perfectly straightforward and simple style. Here are none of the mysteries, the riddles and ridiculous allegories so common in chemical works written at a later time. The truth of the matter may probably be that, in following the doctrine here set forth, Michael Scot and the alchemists of his time did obtain results which were then so surprising, as to excuse a certain exaggeration in those who described them. Tests that could touch and reveal the real nature of the metals under any change of outward appearance were not then so well known as now. Copper that had been made to shine like gold, or to assume the appearance of silver, was practically gold or silver to those who had no means of discovering that the real nature of the metal itself remained unchanged. Thus then are to be understood the assertions of the Liber Luminis regarding transmutation. They are plainly made in all good faith, and depend on the doctrine already mentioned, which held that the differences between the metals were an affair of the superficial form rather than of the underlying substance. To change the appearance of one metal to that of another, was therefore to effect a real transmutation: the only one conceivable by the philosophers of that time. When the Liber Luminis speaks of giving copper ‘a good colour,’ or preparing iron to ‘receive the appearance (formam) of silver,’ these expressions reveal with frank sincerity the conceptions of this alchemy and the results it endeavoured to obtain.

One other alchemical work attributed to the pen of Michael Scot remains to be noticed; the De Alchimia, contained in a manuscript of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[137] Tanner in his Bibliotheca has noticed this work in the following terms: ‘Chymica quaedam ex interpretatione Michaelis Scoti dedicata Theophilo regi Scotorum. Corpus Christi MS. 125. In eodem codice MS. fol. est haec nota “Explicit tractatus magistri Michaelis Scoti de aelchali,” huius vero tractatus, a priore diversi, hoc tantum fol. extat.’ This account is erroneous in several particulars. ‘Scotorum’ should be ‘Saracenorum,’ and ‘de aelchali’ is a misreading of ‘de alkimia,’ as a glance at the manuscript informs us. Nor is it the case that we have here to deal with two distinct works. The last leaf, to which Tanner more particularly refers (fol. 119, old numeration), shows a hand of the fourteenth century, and forms the only remainder of the original. The rest of the manuscript (fol. 116-118) has been supplied by a scribe of the fifteenth century, but the whole is perfectly continuous, as appears plainly when we notice that the first words of the original (fol. 119 recto), ‘et cum siccatus,’ have also been written by the later scribe at the bottom of page 118 verso.

In spite of the highly suspicious dedication, ‘Theophilo Regi Saracenorum,’ several reasons incline us to regard the De Alchimia as, in substance at least, a genuine work of Michael Scot. To begin with, it clearly belongs to a very early period; for, in the opening words of his preface, the author describes alchemy as a science, noble indeed, but as yet neglected and contemned by the Latins (‘apud Latinos penitus denegatam’). In the same sentence we find him referring to the secreta naturae, just as Scot does in the Liber Luminis, and declaring his purpose to furnish the world with a commentary on it in the work he now attempts (‘secreta naturae intelligentibus revelare’). In the opening paragraph of the book itself he seems to refer plainly to the Liber Luminis as a work written by him (‘notitia de salibus vel salium prout in aliquo libro a me translato dixi’). Nor should we overlook the distinctly ecclesiastical tone which is to be observed in the De Alchimia. Part of the preface is conceived almost in the form of a prayer, commencing thus: ‘Creator omnium rerum Deus qui cuncta ex nihilo condidit,’ and in at least one passage, a well-known text of Scripture is reproduced (‘et haec est res quae erigit de stercore pauperem et ipsum regibus equiparat’). This style is a noticeable characteristic of all the works of Michael Scot.

On the other hand, the De Alchimia shows several doubtful features which, on the supposition that it came from Scot’s pen, can only have been due to some interference with the text at a subsequent time. Such is the dedication to Theophilus, King of the Saracens, which we have already noticed, and the latter part of the preface shows a turgid passage (‘hic est puteus Salomonis et fimi acervus, et hic est fons in quo latet anguis cuius venenum omnia corpora interficit,’ etc.) that strongly recalls the fancies of the later alchemy.

The body of the work, however, is no doubt genuine, and offers matters of considerable interest. The first of these is perhaps the distinction drawn here between the greater and the lesser mystery (magisterium) of alchemy. The former, it seems, was the transmutation of Venus into the Sun; that is, of copper into gold. The latter comprehended the fixation of mercury and its transmutation into the Moon, or silver.

We soon notice too that the author addresses himself not, as one would at first expect, to ‘Theophilus,’ but to a certain Brother Elias (‘tibi Fratri Helya’)—another proof, if any were needed, that the dedication to the apocryphal King of the Saracens was due to some other and later hand. ‘Brother Elias,’ however, was far from being a merely imaginary personage. He was an Italian, born (for accounts vary) either at Bivillo near Assisi, Cellullae or Ursaria near Cortona, or in Piedmont. In 1211 he joined the Order of St. Francis, then just formed, thus becoming one of its earliest members. His history as a Franciscan was rather an eventful one. On the death of St. Francis in 1226 he succeeded the Founder as General of the Order, but was deposed by the Pope in 1230 on some suspicion that he favoured schism among his brethren. The Order re-elected him in 1236, but he was finally removed from office by Gregory three years later, and profited by the occasion to join himself openly to the party of the Emperor. For this he suffered excommunication in 1244, and was not restored to the privileges of the Church till 1253, when he lay on his death-bed at Cortona. There is no doubt that he had the reputation of possessing skill in alchemy, as a treatise is extant called the Liber Fratris Eliae de Alchimia.[138] This renown would not tend to his honour in religion. It seems indeed to invest with a cruel and pointed meaning the words used by the Pope on the occasion of his first deposition.[139] He is said to have been sent in early days on an embassy to the Emperor of the East. Perhaps this may have been the occasion when he first acquired a taste for those chemical studies which that nation still pursued. Michael Scot addresses him in the De Alchimia as a pupil (‘Et ego, Magister Michael Scotus, sum operatus super solem, et docui te, Fr. Elia, operari et tu mihi saepius retulisti te instabiliter multis viabus operasse’), while at the same confessing that he was not above learning some of the secrets of art from the well-known Franciscan. This relation between two such distinguished men has not hitherto been noticed, and is certainly a curious point in the history of the times.

The De Alchimia presents several features which distinguish it from the Liber Luminis. One of these is an early passage which refers to the correspondence between the metals and the planets, and explains that when the latter are named we must understand that the former are intended. Near the end of the treatise a description of the materia chemica occurs, but it would seem as if this had been written to supplement that given in the Liber Luminis, for it deals, not with salts, alums, vitriols, or volatile substances, but with the different varieties of what the author calls ‘gummae,’ which, however, are mineral substances;[140] and with ‘tuchia’ in all its various kinds.

Many words and phrases, however, might be cited to show how the strain of doctrine observable in the Liber Luminis is continued with scarcely any change in the De Alchimia. We have hardly read a line in the first receipt before we meet with the expression ‘sanguinem hominis rufi’ recalling the ‘sanguinem hominis rubei’ of the Liber Luminis. The ‘pulvis bufonis’ indeed is here replaced by another ingredient derived from the animal kingdom, the ‘sanguis bubonis’; but, reading a little further, we find the familiar ‘urina taxi’ again recommended as an almost universal solvent and detergent. Evidently both works proceeded from one and the same alchemical school. The number of Arabian chemists[141] cited in the De Alchimia seems to show that if these books came from a Greek source it was not that of ancient times, but some Byzantine school that had borrowed much from Eastern alchemists.

To give a substantial idea of the De Alchimia let us translate one of the formulae which it contains: ‘Medibibaz the Saracen of Africa used to change lead into gold [in the following manner]. Take lead and melt it thrice with caustic (‘comburenti’), red arsenic, sublimate of vitriol, sugar of alum, and with that red tuchia of India which is found on the shore of the Red Sea, and let the whole be again and again quenched in the juice of the Portulaca marina, the wild cucumber, a solution of sal ammoniac, and the urine of a young badger. Let all these ingredients then, when well mixed, be set on the fire, with the addition of some common salt, and well boiled until they be reduced to one-third of their original bulk, when you must proceed to distil them with care. Then take the marchasite of gold, prepared talc, roots of coral, some carcha-root, which is an herb very like the Portulaca marina; alum of cumae something red and saltish, Roman alum and vitriol, and let the latter be made red; sugar of alum, Cyprus earth, some of the red Barbary earth, for that gives a good colour; Cumaean earth of the red sort, African tuchia, which is a stone of variegated colours and being melted with copper changeth it into gold; Cumaean salt which is …; pure red arsenic, the blood of a ruddy man, red tartar, gumma of Barbary, which is red and worketh wonders in this art; salt of Sardinia which is like …. Let all these be beaten together in a brazen mortar, then sifted finely and made into a paste with the above water. Dry this paste, and again rub it fine on the marble slab. Then take the lead you have prepared as directed above, and melt it together with the powder, adding some red alum and some more of the various salts. This alum is found about Aleppo (‘Alapia’), and in Armenia, and will give your metal a good colour. When you have so done you shall see the lead changed into the finest gold, as good as what comes from Arabia. This have I, Michael Scot, often put to the proof and ever found it to be true.’

If such a receipt is valuable as indicating the chemical practice of those days, it is no less interesting as it throws light upon the life and occupations of Scot. He must have set up a complete chemical laboratory at Toledo, with crucibles for the melting of metals, and alembics for the distillation of the substances which his art required him to mix with them. His situation was one very favourable to these pursuits, not only because Spain was one of those countries where the doctrine of alchemy made its greatest progress, and attracted most powerfully the concourse of foreign adepts, but also from the facility with which the necessary materia chemica could there be procured. The sierras of that country were full of mineral wealth of all kinds, especially quicksilver, which was one of the substances most frequently chosen to become the subject of the transmuter’s art. In the Alpujarras, a mountainous district lying under the soft climate of Granada, grew plenty of these rare herbs employed in alchemy, as they were also in the medicine of the Arabians. Ibn Beithar of Malaga describes them in his botanical thesaurus, and it is said that after the Moors had lost that fair kingdom their herbalists, even as late as our own times, made yearly journeys from Africa to gather in these hills the plants which ancient science taught them to value highly. But the days of the ‘ultimo sospiro del Moro’ were yet in the far future, and meanwhile Michael Scot in his laboratory at Toledo could easily command all these treasures for the purposes of experiment. Nor was it in vain that he fanned his fires, and watched the metals melt and the menstruum distil in the process of the lesser or greater mystery. If he never saw Venus blush into the true substance of Sol, or Mercury, the fickle and obstinate, congeal into a veritable Luna, his chemical practice, and the records in which he has embodied it, mark none the less true and significant a moment in the history of scientific progress.

CHAPTER V
THE ASTRONOMICAL WRITINGS OF SCOT

The alchemy of the thirteenth century, to the progress of which Michael Scot contributed not a little, bore a close relation to the opinions then entertained in another branch of science: that of astronomy. We have already noticed how chemistry, as practised in Egypt, was largely influenced by Eastern theories regarding the stars and their power over earthly elements. That this connection and sympathy was still a matter of common belief at the time Scot wrote is not only probable but can readily be established by direct evidence. The treatise ‘Cum studii solertis indagine,’ already referred to,[142] has a curious passage which bears directly on the point in question. We find in the preface the following remarkable statement: ‘For the art of alchemy belongs to the deeper and more hidden physics, and in particular to that division thereof which … is called the lower astronomy,’ It is plain then that no chemist could in those days be considered fully competent for the task he undertook unless to a knowledge of the customary theories and processes of his art he added some acquaintance with the mysteries of the heavenly spheres as well.

To Michael Scot, even before he came to Toledo, the science of astronomy was already a beaten path. His progress in mathematical studies naturally led him to this, the highest sphere in which they could be exercised. At the court of Frederick he had made many an observation and cast many a horoscope. In the Liber Introductorius and Liber Particularis he had produced two manuals expounding in a popular way the twin sciences of astrology and astronomy; publications which no doubt reproduced pretty exactly the teaching he had given to the Emperor.

In Spain he not only kept up his interest in this subject but lost no opportunity of improving his past acquirements. He was constantly on the watch for new astronomical works. He read them, not only as a student eager to extend his knowledge, but as a translator anxious to find the opportunity of adding to the resources of other scholars by the production of some important book in a Latin dress.

As a resident in Toledo, Scot found himself very favourably situated for such studies. That city was now indeed to become what may be called the classic ground of Moorish astronomy. A Spanish author would have us believe that there presently assembled there an incredible number of astronomers drawn, not only from all parts of Spain, but from France as well, and especially from Paris. The king himself is said to have presided over this congress. The works of Ptolemy, with the commentaries of Montafan and Algazel, were translated into Latin for the use of those scholars who did not understand Arabic. Discussions were held in the Alcazar of Galiana upon the various theories of the heavenly bodies and their movements. These labours, which commenced in 1218, and are said to have lasted till 1262, resulted in a more exact series of observations than had hitherto been made. They were published, and became generally known as the Tables of Toledo.[143]

It was in such a direction indeed that the line of true progress lay. As alchemy rose into a real chemistry rather by the practice of the laboratory than by the theory of the schools, so it was with regard to astronomy. The scheme of Ptolemy with its various modifications necessarily held the field, imperfect and erroneous as it was, till wider and more exact observations, such as those for which the wise king of Castile thus provided had, in the course of after ages, furnished adequate ground for the magical and illuminative speculations of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton.

Favourable, however, as Scot’s situation in Toledo undoubtedly was, much of what we are considering lay beyond his reach, being yet in the womb of the future. The Moorish astronomers, and he doubtless with them, felt far from satisfied with the Ptolemaic system as expounded in the Almagest. While no one as yet ventured to interfere with its fundamental conception of the earth as the centre of the universe, every fresh observation, by bringing into view more of the delicacy and subtlety of the heavenly movements, made additions and modifications of that theory constantly necessary. Hence arose a series of Arabian works on the sphere, each superseding that which had preceded it, and reflecting the last results obtained with the astrolabe. Such a line of progress could not but lead to the time when the Ptolemaic theory no longer lent itself by any modification to the full explanation of ascertained facts. Then and then only arose the new astronomy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which is thus seen to be vitally connected, even in its highest reach and most splendid developments with the now forgotten theories of the Moorish schools.

Considering then the epoch at which he lived, and the incomplete material which existed in his days for a true science of the heavens, Michael Scot did all that could be reasonably expected of him. He sat at the feet of those who were then the best authorities on this subject. He used his opportunities at Toledo to make the last and most subtle theories of the Moors intelligible to those less fortunate scholars whose attention these must otherwise have escaped.

His services to astronomy appeared in the Latin version which he made from a treatise on the Sphere lately composed by Alpetrongi. This author’s name is said to have been, in its Arabic form, Nured-din el Patrugi. Munk, in his Mélanges, tells us that the latter designation was derived from a village called Petroches lying a little to the north of Cordova.[144] The Latins corrupted the name in different ways, so that among them it became Avenalpetrandi, Alpetrongi, or Alpetragius. The astronomer who bore it flourished about the year 1190, and is said to have been a renegade, and a scholar of the celebrated Ibn Tofail, the author of the curious Sufic romance called Hay Ibn Yokhdan.

In the preface to his book on the Sphere Alpetrongi begs to be excused if he has ventured to differ from the tradition of the ancients in his theory of the heavenly movements, and especially from Ptolemy the great master of this science. His apology reminds us that it may be well to examine more exactly than we have yet done the various advances which had been made up to this time by the Arabian astronomy.

As early as the ninth century the mathematicians of that nation had simplified the problems of the circle by discovering the way of measurement by sine and tangent instead of by the chord. This improvement is ascribed to Albategni who lived between the years 877 and 929. Calculation was soon made still easier by the invention of algebra. The year 820 is given as the age of Mohammed ben Moussa, surnamed Al Khowaresmi, who had the honour of this important discovery. From the surname of this mathematician the Latins afterwards formed by corruption their common noun Algorisma or Algorithmus, from which our word arithmetic is derived.

These improved methods of calculation were soon applied to astronomy. Al Mamun, whose reign commenced in the year 813, summoned an assembly of scholars learned in that science. They met in the great Babylonian plain, having chosen that place as suitable for their observations, and measured the declination of the ecliptic, which they determined to be 23° 33ʺ. About the same time the secular motion of the heavens began to attract attention. Albategni corrected the observations of Ptolemy here, and showed that the retrograde movement amounted to one degree, not in a century as the Greek philosopher had said, but in a shorter period which is variously stated as sixty-six or seventy years. Alfargan repeated this calculation, and amended that relating to the declination of the ecliptic, which he computed at 23° 35ʺ.

This was the progress and these the data which led the Moorish astronomers to abandon the earlier and simpler theories of the sphere as inconsistent with ascertained facts. They were aware of motions among the heavenly bodies not to be explained by the mere supposition that round the earth as a centre moved the concentric spheres on the axes of their poles. It is true that even Ptolemy himself had felt something of this difficulty and had endeavoured to meet it by a theory of eccentrics and epicycles. As knowledge increased, however, this primitive explanation was felt to be cumbrous and unsatisfactory. Aboasar[145] and Azarchel gained fame by boldly striking out in new paths, and later Moorish astronomers eagerly followed the lead thus given them, each adding some modification of his own.

Thus then we return to the preface of Alpetrongi prepared to understand his position when he declares himself obliged to depart from previous traditions. He proceeds to avow himself a scholar of Azarchel, but when we examine his work we find that the theory he proposes differs considerably even from that taught by his immediate master. It was one which, through the labours of Michael Scot, as translator of Alpetrongi, exercised no small influence on the study of astronomy among the Latins, and we may well spend a moment in considering the chief features which it presents.

One of the most important problems which called for solution at the hands of the Moorish astronomers was that of the recession of the heavenly bodies, by which, when observed at sufficient intervals of time, they were seen to fall short of the positions they might have been expected to reach. This recession, as we have remarked already, had been very accurately studied, and computed as exactly as the methods of the time allowed; but a reason for so remarkable a phenomenon was yet to seek. Alpetrongi boldly declared that the eastward motion was apparent only and not real. He explained that the source of power lay in the primum mobile or ninth sphere; that lying outside the sphere of the fixed stars. From hence the force producing circular motion was derived to the eighth, and so to the inferior spheres; each handing on a part of the impulse to that which lay beneath it. In the course of transmission, however, the prime force became gradually exhausted. Thus, said Alpetrongi, it happens that each sphere moves rather more slowly than the one above it, and so the apparent recession is accounted for in a way which shows it to be relative only and not absolute.

Another matter which exercised the minds of those who studied the heavens was the difference of elevation which the heavenly bodies showed according to the seasons of summer and winter. The sun, for example, at noonday of the summer solstice stood, they saw, at his highest point in the heavens, while he sank to his lowest on the shortest day of winter. Between these extremes he held gradually every intermediate position, and as he was meanwhile supposed to be moving in a circular path round the earth, his course came to be conceived of as a spiral alternately rising and declining. How was this spiral motion to be explained?

Each sphere, said Alpetrongi, has its own poles, which differ from those of the primum mobile, and thus each, while following the motion of the ninth sphere, accomplishes at the same time another revolution about its own proper poles. From the combination of these two movements arises one of the nature of a spiral which fully accounts for the seeming deviations of the heavenly bodies to north or south.[146]

Such were the contributions of this philosopher to the astronomy of his time. They were the fruit, he assures us, of patient study of the ancients, and specially of Aristotle and his commentators. He offered them to his age as a distinct improvement on the cumbrous theories of Ptolemy, and as an advance even upon that of Azarchel, whom, in the main, he acknowledges as his master in science. Antiquated and childish as his explanations may seem to us, we cannot help feeling that he had at least grasped firmly some of the chief problems of the sky. He stood in the line of that inquiry and patient progress which have issued in the marvellous discoveries of later times.

Scot’s version of the Sphere of Alpetrongi has reached us accompanied by the date of its composition; a distinction which belongs to only one other among his translations, that of the Abbreviatio Avicennae. M. Jourdain had the merit of being the first who drew attention to this fortunate circumstance,[147] and he did so by quoting the colophons of two manuscripts of the Sphere discovered by him in the Paris library.[148] One of these closes thus: ‘Praised be Jesus Christ who liveth for ever throughout all time:[149] on the eighteenth day of August, being Friday, at the third hour, cum aboleolente,[150] in the year one thousand two hundred and fifty-five.’ The other gives the date thus: ‘The year of the Incarnation of Christ twelve hundred and seventeen.’ These two epochs coincide exactly, as the apparent difference arises from the date being expressed in the first manuscript according to the era of Spain. It is therefore doubly certain that Scot’s version of the Sphere of Alpetrongi was made in the year 1217.[151]

In completing this translation Michael Scot anticipated by one year only the great astronomical congress which the King of Castile presently caused to assemble at Toledo. It may very possibly therefore have been one of the versions prepared with a view to this great occasion and designed for the use of the Latin astronomers who might come there. Certain it is that the author was not less fortunate in this than in his previous literary ventures. The text was well chosen, the time of publication opportune, and the Sphere of Alpetrongi as it came from Scot’s hand had a wide circulation and influenced profoundly the astronomical beliefs of the day.[152]

CHAPTER VI
SCOT TRANSLATES AVERROËS

We have already noticed how the commentaries of Avicenna on Aristotle had been translated into Latin at Toledo during the twelfth century, and how Michael Scot had completed that work by his version of the books relating to Natural History. Since the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, another Arabian author of the first rank had become the object of much curiosity in Europe. This was the famous Averroës of Cordova, whose history might fill a volume, so full was it of romantic adventure and literary interest.[153] He was but lately dead, having closed a long and laborious life on the 10th of December 1198, at Morocco, where his body was first laid to rest in the cemetery outside the gate of Tagazout. Born at Cordova in 1126, his name was closely associated with that of his native city, so that after three months had elapsed his corpse was brought thither from Africa, and given honourable and final burial in the tomb of his fathers at the cemetery of Ibn Abbas.

Two reasons combined to raise the fame of Averroës among the Latins, and to inspire them with a high curiosity regarding his works. He was known to have devoted his life to the study and exposition of Aristotle; then, as for many ages, the idol of the Christian schools. His philosophy was further understood to embody the strangest and most daring speculations regarding the origin of the universe and the nature of the soul. For these he had suffered severely at the hands of the Moslem orthodox. They had proscribed his works and compelled him to leave his employment and pass the most precious years of his life in exile.

These common impressions regarding Averroës were in the main correct. His labours had appeared in three forms; a paraphrase, and a lesser and greater commentary on the books of Aristotle, and the philosophy which these writings contained was undoubtedly Manichæan, if not in a measure Pantheistic. Like that of all the Arabian philosophers, to whose teaching Averroës gave its final and most characteristic form, this doctrine was really Greek: the Aristotelic scheme of the universe as it had been conceived anew by Porphyry of Alexandria. At the foundation lay a mighty Duality: that of the opposing powers of Good and Evil. With the notion of exalting Him above the possibility of blame, God, the Centre of the Universe, about whom all revolves, was declared to be the Absolute and unconditional Being; while over against Him was set Matter, also eternal, from which, in its stubborn resistance to the Divine Will, all evil had arisen. Any direct action of Deity upon matter could not be thought of; so the interval between them was conceived of as occupied by several Emanations proceeding from God, among which we may notice those of the Divine Wisdom and the Divine Power. This Wisdom was said to be impersonal; one common to all intelligent creatures; the Light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. This Power was regarded as supreme, seated high above the spheres, and, through the Primum Mobile, entering into touch with matter and deriving its force downward from one heavenly circle to another till it reaches earth itself.

The origin of created beings was a problem which received much attention from Averroës. His ideas on this subject will be seen when we come to speak of the important digression he wrote under the title of Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici.[154] In every man he perceived the existence of a passive intellect or reason, in relation to which the other Heavenly Intelligence, or Divine Wisdom, presented itself to him as the Active Reason: that in whose motions Thought was always accompanied by Power. The one was Impersonal and Eternal, the other individual and perishable, yet Averroës taught that a close relation subsisted between them, and a consequent sympathy and attraction, in which the passive intelligence strove to unite itself with the active and thus achieve eternity and immortality.[155]

This union was known as the ittisal: the supreme object of the wise man’s desire, and in connection with it emerged for the first time a distinction between Averroës and his predecessors. Ibn Badja, with whom he held the closest relation, had proposed a course of moral discipline as the best way of attaining the ittisal: the same ascetic practice which Ibn Tofail so remarkably illustrated and commended in his mystical romance Hay Ibn Yokhdan. Gazzali on the other hand, who was the sceptic of these schools, boldly declared that the ittisal was only to be reached by an intellectual and spiritual confusion attained in the zikr, or whirling dance of the Dervishes. It was left then for Averroës to vindicate once more the validity of human reason, and this he did by proclaiming that science, rightly understood, was the true way of entering into intellectual communion with the Deity. All, however, agreed in teaching that the soul of man was but an individual and temporary manifestation of the Divine, from which it had proceeded, and into which it would again be absorbed.

It is plain that the way to this consummation proposed by Averroës had much in common with the ancient theories of the Alexandrian Gnosis. The Albigenses and other sects of the time, especially that called the Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost, had already done much to familiarise the West with these essentially Eastern speculations. A taste for such flights of the mind had been formed, and, as soon as it became known that a new teacher had arisen to advocate a theory of this kind among the Moors, Christianity too was alive with curiosity to know what the doctrine of Averroës might be.

In these circumstances the anathema of the Church proved powerless to restrain so strong an impulse of the human spirit. The Council of Paris in 1209 had sounded the first note of warning and of censure. In 1215 Robert de Courçon published a statute in that university by which the name of Mauritius Hispanus, understood by Renan to mean Averroës, was associated with those of David of Dinant and Almaric of Bena the French Pantheists of the day, and all men were warned to have nothing to do with their writings under pain of censure. In spite of these enactments five years had not passed since the date of the latter proclamation, before the commentaries of Averroës were rendered into Latin and the secrets of his remarkable philosophy laid open to the scholastic world.

The credit of this bold and successful enterprise belongs, it would be hard to say in what proportions, to the Emperor Frederick II. and to Michael Scot his faithful servant. Frederick had indeed every reason to feel an interest in the works of Averroës. His mind was naturally keen and of a speculative cast. He showed little inclination to subject his curiosity to the restraints of custom or ecclesiastical authority, and was thus at least as likely as any of the wise and noble of his day to indulge his passion for what promised to be both original and curious. We are to remember also that he stood in close relation with the peculiar religious opinions already noticed, which were then so prevalent both in south-eastern France and the adjoining parts of Spain. His brother-in-law, who died so suddenly at Palermo, was Count of Provence, and, whatever place the unfortunate Alphonso may have held with regard to the heresy so common in his dominions, we may feel sure that among the host of Provençal knights who formed his train when he came to Sicily there must have been some at least who were adherents of the Albigensian party. No religious opinion ever made so striking a progress among the wealthy and noble as this, and none was ever commended in a way more fit to win the sympathy and interest of a youthful monarch inclined to letters and gallantry. The doctrine of the Albigenses was in fact a late revival of the Gnosis of Alexandria. It flattered the pride of those who desired distinction even in their religion. Its representatives and advocates were no repulsive monks or sour ascetics but men of birth and breeding, who excelled in manly exercises, and were famous for their success in the courts of love and in the gay saber. It would not have been wonderful if Frederick himself had become an Albigensian. He is known to have caught a taste for Provençal poetry if nothing more, and it is certain that he remained, to the close of his life, and even beyond it, a grateful and sympathetic figure among those who, after the great persecution, still represented Albigensian doctrine.[156] Something of this may have been due to the influence of his wife Constantia, whose father, Don Pedro of Aragon, had fallen gallantly in 1213 under the walls of Murel, during an expedition in which he led the Spanish chivalry to aid the Counts of Toulouse and Foix the champions of the Albigensian party.

The probability that the Emperor had early felt an interest in Averroës is confirmed by a curious statement of Gilles de Rome,[157] who tells us that the sons of the Moorish philosopher received a cordial welcome from Frederick and lived in honour at his Court. Renan indeed finds reason to doubt the truth of this statement,[158] yet we may remember that the chronicler could not in any case have ventured upon it unless the Emperor’s sympathy for Averroës had been matter of common knowledge.

As to Michael Scot we may feel sure that he was every whit as eager as his master could be to honour the philosopher’s memory and to gain a nearer acquaintance with his writings. The manuscript in the Laurentian library to which we have already referred[159] speaks, it will be remembered, of a visit paid by Scot to the city of Cordova. It is not difficult to determine with a high degree of probability the reason that may have led him thither. Had he lived three hundred years earlier indeed, the fame of Cordova as a centre of learning might well have proved a sufficient attraction to account for this journey. In the tenth century that city shone as the seat of a great Jewish school: one of those lately transferred to Spain from the eastern cities of Pombeditha and Sura. The Caliph Hakim, under whose protection this change took place, gave royal encouragement to the learned men who came to Cordova. Thousands of students assembled in the great Mosque, and Hakim collected for their use a magnificent library which was said to contain four hundred thousand volumes. Al Mansour, however, who succeeded to Hakim’s throne, fell under the influence of orthodox scruples. He burnt much of the great library, and the rest perished at the disastrous sack of Cordova in the following century. The ruin of the Rabbinical academies was completed a little later by the cruel edict of Abd-el-Mumen, who expelled the Jews from his realm. The most famous teachers of Cordova and Lucena then betook themselves to Castile. Alphonso VII. received them kindly and gave them liberty to settle in his capital. These events took place before 1150, and from that date the ancient schools which had given such fame to Cordova and Lucena became one of the chief attractions of Toledo.

The sole glory which Cordova still retained in the days when Scot visited it was the memory of departed greatness, and of Averroës, whose fame must yet have endured as a living tradition in the place of his birth and burial. We may therefore believe that it was as a pilgrim to the shrine of that illustrious name that the traveller came hither. As he wandered amid the countless columns of the great Mosque, or stayed his steps by the tomb of Ibn Abbas, he must have found a melancholy pleasure in recalling the mighty past, when these aisles were crowded with eager students and when, still later, the last scion of the Cordovan schools had appeared in the person of the Master whose writings were now the object of so much curiosity. It is quite possible that something of a practical purpose may have combined with these sentiments to determine the direction of Scot’s journey. Twenty years had not passed, we must remember, since the body of Averroës was laid in its last resting-place. What if those who directed and composed the solemn funeral procession from Morocco to Cordova had brought with them the books which the philosopher was engaged in completing at the time of his death? The hope of a great literary discovery could hardly have been absent from the mind of Michael Scot as he travelled southward to seek the white walls of the Moorish city.[160]

There is no reason to think that the story of the spell framed by Scot at Cordova was literally and historically true; it seems to belong rather to the department of his legendary fame as a necromancer. Yet, read as a parable, this conjuration is not without interest and perhaps importance. It professes to compel the appearance of spirits from the nether deep, and to command an answer to any question the sage or student might choose to ask. A slight effort of fancy will find here the picturesque representation of Scot’s mental and physical state while at Cordova, and especially under the stress of the illness from which we are assured he then suffered.[161] What wonder if, in the vertigo of fever, he felt prisoned with swimming brain in magic circles; or is it strange that one so intent upon the doctrine of the departed Averroës should, in the height of his delirium, have planned to force the grave itself, and summon the dead philosopher to tell the secret of his lost works? Something of the Greek δεινότης, something terrible, superhuman almost, we discover in a spirit so fully roused and determined, and if we have read rightly the mind of Scot, no wonder that he and the Emperor were fully at one in regard to what they had to do. We have no means of knowing which of the two first conceived the idea of translating the works of Averroës: as master and servant they fairly share the fame of that great enterprise. It was one which demanded, not only means, talent, and unwearied labour, but high courage as well, considering the suspect character of that philosophy and the censures under which it already lay. In the event indeed this proved to be a matter highly creditable to those who promoted it, but one which carried serious and far-reaching consequences both for Michael Scot and for the Emperor himself in the ecclesiastical and political sphere.

When Scot returned to Toledo it was not with the purpose of attempting single-handed a task for which not only time, but the co-operation of several scholars, was evidently necessary. There is reason to think that the Emperors commission conveyed some instruction to this effect; for, as a matter of fact, we know that at least two other hands were associated with Scot in the translation of Averroës.

One of these was Gerard of Cremona, not of course the Cremonese who died in 1187, but the younger scholar of the same name, perhaps a son or nephew of the elder. He is distinguished as Gherardus de Sabloneta Cremonensis. The Victorine manuscript[162] supplies evidence that he contributed to the work in which Michael Scot was now engaged.

It is not impossible that Philip of Tripoli may have joined in the new enterprise. His name does not indeed appear in any of the manuscripts which contain the Latin Averroës, but we have seen that he was certainly in Spain about this time and even at work with Gerard of Cremona.[163] His intimate relation to Michael Scot is also beyond question, and, upon the whole, it seems reasonable to suppose that the Emperor may have engaged him to help in the work now going forward.

However this may have been as regards the exact details of time and persons, we may regard it as a matter now for the first time brought to light and established, that in the years between 1217 and 1223 there existed a college of translators in Toledo just such as that which had done so much excellent work there a century before. In the new school Frederick II. held the honourable place of patron, as Archbishop Raymon had done in his day, while Michael Scot and Gerard of Cremona aided each other in completing the version of Averroës as Dominicus Gundisalvus had lent his help to form that of Avicenna. This view of the matter should be found very interesting, not only in itself, but with regard to the conclusions arrived at by Jourdain, whose discoveries in the literary history of the twelfth century it so remarkably repeats and extends to the following age.

This correspondence between the earlier and later schools of Toledo is even more close and exact than we have yet observed. It appears also in the fact that a Jewish interpreter was attached to each, and rendered important service as a member of the college. Under Don Raymon this place was held by Johannes Avendeath, or Johannes Hispalensis as he is commonly called, who worked along with the Archdeacon. ‘You have then,’ says Avendeath, addressing the Archbishop, ‘the book which has been translated from the Arabic according to your commands: I reading it word by word into the vernacular (Spanish), and Dominic the Archdeacon rendering my words one by one into Latin.’[164] The same division of labour seems to have been followed in the new school which Frederick promoted. The Emperor drew the attention of these learned men to Averroës, and signified his desire that a version of this author should be prepared like that which had been made from Avicenna. Michael Scot and Gerard of Cremona were responsible, the former probably in a special sense, both for the general conduct of the undertaking, and, in particular, for the accuracy of the Latin. Now these scholars also, like their predecessors, availed themselves of the help of a Jewish interpreter. This was one Andrew Alphagirus, who seems to have taken the same part that Avendeath had formerly done, by translating the Arabic of Averroës into current Spanish, which Scot and his coadjutor then rendered into Latin.

Such at least appear to be the suggestions which offer themselves naturally to one who peruses the colophon to the copy of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem preserved in the Bibliotheca Angelica of Rome. Thus it runs: ‘Here endeth the book of Aristotle concerning animals, according to the abbreviation of Michael Scot Alphagirus.’ The form of expression is curious, but may be exactly matched from the versions produced by the earlier Toledan translators: that is, if we are to believe Bartolocci. This author, in the first volume of his Bibliotheca Rabbinica, mentions a manuscript of the Fondo Urbinate in the Vatican which, he says, contains the four books of Avicenna on Physics translated by ‘Johannes Gundisalvi.’ This name has evidently, like that of ‘Scoti Alphagiri,’ been formed by composition from those of the two translators, Johannes Avendeath and Dominicus Gundisalvi who aided each other in the work.[165]

As to the personality of Alphagirus, the only ground of conjecture seems to be that supplied by Romanus de Higuera, who, speaking of the learned men assembled in 1218 at Toledo for the astronomical congress, mentions that one of them was ‘el Conhesso Alfaquir’ of Toledo.[166] The place, the date, and the similarity of name, are all in favour of our supposing these two to be one and the same person. Nay further, as Alfaquir was of Toledo, and did not need to be summoned thither in 1218, there is no reason why he should not, as the ‘Alphagirus’ of 1209, have assisted Michael Scot in producing the De Animalibus for Frederick.

It is from a remark made by Roger Bacon that we know the first name of the Toledan interpreter to have been Andrew, and that he was a Jew. Bacon gives us this information in no kindly spirit, but in order to lead up to the bitter conclusion that Scot’s work was not original, but borrowed from one whose labours and just fame he had appropriated. ‘Michael Scot,’ he says, ‘was ignorant of languages and science alike. Almost all that has appeared in his name was taken from a certain Jew called Andrew.’[167]

A sufficient answer to this serious accusation may be found in what we already know of the literary fashions of the day, and, in particular, of the traditional methods of work pursued by the Toledan translators. It was precisely thus that the Archdeacon Gundisalvus had used the aid of Avendeath. A little later too, we find the same system adopted in the translation of the Koran promoted by Peter the Venerable. That ecclesiastic thus expresses himself in sending a copy of his book to St. Bernard: ‘I had it translated by one skilled in both tongues; Master Peter of Toledo; but since he was not as much at home in the Latin, and did not know it as well as the Arabic, I appointed one to help him … Brother Peter our Notary.’ To his Koran Peter the Venerable joined a Summa Brevis of the Christian controversy with the Mohammedans. This work also came from the pen of Master Peter, and with regard to it he makes the following remarks: ‘By giving elegance and order to what had been rudely and confusedly stated by him (i.e. by Master Peter) he (i.e. Brother Peter the Notary) has completed an epistle, or rather a short treatise, which, as I believe, will be very useful to many.’[168]

This correspondence throws a clear light upon the case of Michael Scot in regard to the charge of plagiarism. Like Master Peter, he was familiar with both the Latin and the Arabic language. His weak point, however, we may suppose to have made itself felt with regard to the latter, which he probably knew better in its colloquial than its literary form, and this must have been the reason why he availed himself of the aid of a Spanish Jew to secure the accuracy of his work. Such collaboration seems to have produced nearly all the previous versions which came from Toledo, and it is obvious that the honour due to the various contributors who combined in forming these translations can only be determined by those who have it in their power to make a careful and unprejudiced valuation of their individual labours in each case. We may gravely doubt whether this was what Bacon did before he sat down to pen his sharp censure on Michael Scot. Certainly such an estimate is now out of the question. We can only affirm the undoubted fact that the critic was wrong when he said Scot did not know Arabic. The contrary appears, not only from the probability we have already drawn from his Sicilian residence, but by actual testimony of a very honourable kind.[169] Nor must we forget to notice that the openness with which this copartnery was carried on affords a proof that no deceit could have been thought of in the matter. Considering the past history of the Toledan School, it must have been taken for granted that every version which came from thence under the name of a Christian scholar owed something to the care of his Moorish scribe.

Even had we not been able to make such an appeal to the use and wont of the times in vindication of Scot’s method of work, might not a little consideration of what was natural and inevitable in such a task have served to explain what Bacon found so objectionable? The scholars from distant lands who came to Toledo could not, as a rule, afford to spend much time there, and were anxious to use every moment of their stay to the best advantage. They naturally therefore secured on their arrival the services of a Jew or Moor for the purpose of learning Arabic. Needing a knowledge of that tongue not so much in its colloquial as its literary dialect, they must have been engaged from the first in the study of a text rather than in conversing with their teachers. What then could have been more suitable than that these scholars should begin by attacking the very books of which they desired to furnish a Latin version? This method had the merit of gaining two objects at once. The students learned to read Arabic, following the text as it was translated to them by the interpreter. Writing in Latin from his vernacular, and polishing as they wrote, they engaged from the day of their arrival in the very work of translation which had brought them to Spain. It is plain too that any modification of this method which the case of Michael Scot might demand would depend on the knowledge of Arabic he already possessed. It must therefore have been such as left him more and not less credit in the result of his labours than that which commonly belonged to the Christian translators in Toledo.

The whole matter of these versions, and of the fame belonging to Michael Scot in connection with them, seems to receive some further light when we compare the Toledan practice with that which distinguished the most famous schools of painting. It would surely be a strange freak of criticism which should deny to any of the great masters his well-earned fame because of the ground on which it was raised, or the numerous scholars whom it attracted to his studio. Yet we know well what this relation between the master and his school implied in the palmy days of pictorial art. There were apprentices who stretched canvas, mixed colours, and pricked and pounced designs. There were pupils, to whom, according to their talents and proficiency, varied parts of the execution were assigned. To the master alone belonged the oversight and responsibility of the whole. Giving a general design, were it only in a sketch from his hand, he watched the progress of the work with jealous eye, and caught the decisive moment to interpose by executing with his own pencil such parts of the painting as might give a distinctive character, a cachet, to the whole. Not till he was satisfied that the desired effect had been secured might the picture leave his studio, and who shall say that he did wrong to sign his name to works produced in such a way? Thus, at any rate, have the highest reputations in the world of art risen into their deserved and enduring fame.

Now, as it is certain that the Toledan School pursued similar methods in their literary labours, right requires that the reputation of its members should be judged by the same canons of criticism which we apply without hesitation to pictorial art. His own day unhesitatingly gave Scot the chief credit in the version of Averroës without inquiring too curiously what parts had been executed by the Cremonese, or other scholars, and what share belonged to Andrew the Jew. It may make us the more ready to accept this verdict and adopt it as our own when we remember the intellectual qualities of the Emperor for whom this work was done. It is certainly out of the question to suppose that a reputation in letters, such as Michael Scot undoubtedly enjoyed at the court of Frederick II., could have been gained by any but legitimate and honourable means.

Coming to an examination then of the various versions which came from the new Toledan School, we find that two of them expressly bear to have been the work of Scot himself. The first of these is the treatise commencing ‘Maxima cognitio naturae et scientiae.’ It is the commentary of Averroës on the De Coelo et Mundo of Aristotle,[170] and Scot has prefaced it by an introduction conceived as follows: ‘To thee, Stephen de Pruvino, I, Michael Scot, specially commend this work, which I have rendered into Latin from the sayings of Aristotle. And should Aristotle have delivered somewhat in an incomplete form concerning the fabric of the world in this book, thou mayest have what is wanting to complete it from that of Alpetragius which I have likewise rendered into Latin; and, indeed, it is one with which thou art well acquainted.’ As we know when the version of Alpetrongi on the Sphere was produced, this fortunate reference to that previous work enables us to determine, at least approximately, that of the De Coelo et Mundo, and hence of these translations of Averroës in general. The year 1217 is the first limit, before which they cannot have appeared, and 1223 is the last; for by that time Michael Scot had already left Spain. Between these two dates then, and probably nearer the former than the latter, must his labours and those of his coadjutors have been devoted to this important work.

Stephanus de Provino has been happily identified by M. Bourquelot with a somewhat notable ecclesiastic of the Church of Nôtre Dame du Val de Provins, whose name occurs in various documents dated between the years 1211 and 1233. Renan conjectures that he may be the same as a certain Etienne de Rheims, who, it seems, was born at Provins.[171] Perhaps he is the Stephanus Francigena of Guido Bonatti.[172] Scot’s friendship with him, to which the dedication of the De Coelo et Mundo bears witness, was probably begun in their student days at Paris.

The second version bearing the name of Scot is that which commences with the words: ‘Intendit per subtilitatem demonstrare;’ being the commentary of Averroës on the De Anima of Aristotle.[173] In the Victorine manuscript this treatise offers a curious title: ‘Here beginneth the Commentary of the Book of Aristotle the Philosopher concerning the Soul, which Averroës commented on in Greek, and Michael Scot translated into Latin.’

In the same manuscript the version of Averroës’s Commentary on the various books which compose the Parva Naturalia of Aristotle is ascribed to Gerard of Cremona. Renan observes that this ascription does not occur in any other copy, and supposes it to have been a mistake. He seems influenced in this conclusion by the fact that Gerard of Cremona died in 1187. It is curious to find such an eminent scholar forgetful of the existence of a younger Cremonese; and he is not alone in this error, for it has been repeated even of late years. Yet in 1851 Prince Baldassare Boncompagni had distinguished well between the elder and younger Gerard of Cremona in an excellent monograph on the subject.[174] Even had this work not been published, the learned world had already reason enough to suspect the truth. In a well-known passage of his Compendium Studii,[175] Roger Bacon speaks of Gerard of Cremona as a contemporary of Michael Scot, Alured of England, William the Fleming, and Herman the German, adding that those who were still young had nevertheless known Gerard, who was the eldest of this company of scholars. Now the Compendium Studii is commonly assigned to the year 1292, but even if we carry this passage back to 1267, when the most of Bacon’s works were written, it still appears evidently impossible that any one still young in that year could have seen a man who died in 1187. Boncompagni, as we have said, explains the difficulty by acquainting us with the younger Gerard, called de Sabloneta Cremonensis. He was undoubtedly a contemporary of Michael Scot, and the De Rossi manuscript, already referred to,[176] shows that he was in Spain about this time. There is therefore no reason to distrust the testimony of the Victorine codex when it gives Gerard the honour of having translated Averroës on the Parva Naturalia. In accomplishing this work he vindicated his right to the place we have already ventured to assign him as a member of the Toledan College.

The manuscript collections where the De Coelo et Mundo, the De Anima, and the Parva Naturalia of Averroës are found in a Latin dress, contain also versions of several other commentaries by the same author: those concerning the De Generatione et Corruptione, the four books of the Meteora, the De Substantia Orbis, and the Physica and Metaphysica of Aristotle.[177] We may safely ascribe them to the Toledo College. They were translated either by Michael Scot, Gerard of Cremona, or some other scholar who worked under these masters.

Renan, relying on the authority of Haureau,[178] has shown good reason to believe that at least the commentaries on the Physica and Metaphysica in their Latin versions came from the pen of Scot. Albertus Magnus, in a passage of high censure, delivers himself in the following terms: ‘Vile opinions are to be found in the book called Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici. I have been wont to say that the author of it was not Nicholas but Michael Scot, who in very deed knew not natural philosophy, nor rightly understood the books of Aristotle.’[179] The doctrine thus condemned is undoubtedly that of Averroës on the Physica and Metaphysica. A manuscript of the Paris library has a treatise commencing thus: ‘Haec sunt extracta de libro Nicolai Peripatetici,’ and it seems that a close correspondence exists between this and a certain digression in the commentary by Averroës on the twelfth book of the Metaphysics. This digression, says Renan, often occurs in the manuscripts as a separate treatise called ‘Sermo de quaestionibus quas accepimus a Nicolao et nos dicemus in his secundum nostrum posse.’ These words have been omitted from the printed editions of the Commentaries of Averroës, and thus the identity of this treatise with the book censured by Albertus Magnus was not recognised till Haureau discovered it.

The only result then of this sharp criticism is to assure us that the versions of the Physica and Metaphysica must also be reckoned to the credit of Michael Scot. For undoubtedly the opinions to which Albert took such exception were those of Averroës, and not of the translator. But if so, then what becomes of the censure passed upon Scot? The truth is that if he was more original than Bacon gave him credit for, on the other hand he escapes the force of Albert’s blame by proving to have been less original than the latter critic had supposed. His was indeed a hard case. He could not form versions from the Arabic but either he was accused of plagiarism or else held up to the indignation of Christianity as if he had been the author of the opinions he rendered into Latin. This steady determination to find fault overreaches itself. We begin to discover in it the bitter fruit of some odium philosophicum, and of that envy which even a just reputation seldom fails to excite.

Some curiosity may be felt with regard to the doctrine contained in the Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici which gave ground for such adverse opinions. M. Renan’s résumé of this treatise is clear and sufficient,[180] and we may reproduce it here, as it will afford a useful supplement to the account already given of the philosophy of Averroës. ‘As to the origin of the different kinds of being,’ says Averroës, ‘there are two exactly opposite opinions, as well as others occupying an intermediate position. The one explains the world by a theory of development, the other by creation. Those who hold the former say that generation is nothing but the outcome and in a sense the multiplication of being; the Agent, according to this hypothesis, doing no more than extricate being from being and make a distinction between them,[181] so that the Agent, thus conceived, has the function of a mere motive power. As to those who hold the hypothesis of creation, they say that the Agent produces being without having any recourse to pre-existent matter. This is the view taken by our Motecallemin, and by the followers of the Christian religion: for example, by Johannes Christianus (Philopon), who asserts that the possibility of creation lies in the Agent alone.’

‘The intermediate views may be reduced to two only, though the first of these admits several subdivisions which show considerable differences. These opinions agree in affirming that generation is only a change of substance; that all generation implies a subject; and that everything begets in its own likeness. The first opinion asserts, however, that the part of the Agent is to create form, and to impress it upon already existent matter. Some of those who hold this view, as Ibn Sina,[182] make an entire separation between matter in generation and the Agent, calling the latter the source of form, while others, among whom we may notice Themistius and perhaps Alfarabi, maintain that the Agent is in some cases conjoined with matter, as when fire produces fire, or man begets man; and in others separate from it, as in the generation of creeping things and plants, i.e. those not produced from seed,[183] which all owe their being to causes that are unlike themselves.’

‘The third theory is that of Aristotle, who holds that the Agent produces at once both form and substance, by impressing motion on matter, and begetting a change therein which rouses its latent powers to action. In this way of thinking the function of the Agent is only to make active that which already existed potentially, and to realise a union between matter and form. Thus all creation is reduced to motion of which heat is the principle. This heat, shed abroad in the waters and in the earth, begets both the animals and the plants which are not produced by seed. Nature puts forth all these both orderly and with perfection, just as if guided by a controlling mind; though nature itself has no intelligence. The proportions and productive power which the elements owe to the motion of the sun and stars are what Plato called by the name of Ideas. According to Aristotle the Agent cannot create forms, for in that case something would be produced from nothing.

‘It is, in fact, the notion that forms could be created which has led some philosophers to suppose that forms have a substantive existence of their own, and that there is a separate source of these. The same error has infected all the three religions of our day,[184] leading their divines to assert that nothing can produce something. Starting from this principle our theologians have supposed the existence of one Agent producing without intermediary all kinds of creatures; an Agent whose action proceeds by an infinity of opposite and contradictory acts done simultaneously. In this way of thinking it is not fire that burns, nor water that moistens; all proceeds by a direct act of the Creator. Nay more, when a man throws a stone, these teachers attribute the consequent motion not to the man but to the universal Agent, and thus deny any true human activity.

‘There is even a more astounding corollary of this doctrine; for if God can cause that which is not to enter into being, He can also reduce being to nothing; destruction, like generation, is God’s work, and Death itself has been created by Him. But in our way of thinking destruction is like generation. Each created thing contains in itself its own corruption, which is present with it potentially. In order to destroy, just as to create, it is only necessary for the Agent to call this potentiality into activity. We must in short maintain as co-ordinate principles both the Agent and these potential powers. Were one of the two wanting, nothing could exist at all, or else all being would reduce itself to action; either of which consequences is as absurd as the other.’

We cannot wonder that Albertus Magnus, and all who held the Christian faith, were alarmed by doctrine of this kind and fiercely opposed it. The orthodox beliefs of Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans alike were declared false by this bold writer, whom several expressions which we have embodied in the above summary show clearly to have been Averroës, and not Michael Scot. In one passage indeed we seem to discover what may have suggested the widely spread fable that Frederick II., or Scot, or some other of their company and party, had produced an atheistic work called De Tribus Impostoribus. The imputation was a false one, yet most natural were the feelings of prejudice which the publication of this philosophy aroused against the great Emperor and Michael Scot who had acted as his agent in the matter.

Pursuing our investigation of the works which came from the Toledan College we discover that these were not confined to the books of Aristotle already noticed, but that the translators took a wider range in their labours. The Venice manuscript of Averroës,[185] besides the De Coelo et Mundo, the De Anima, the Meteora, the De Substantia Orbis, the De Generatione et Corruptione, and the Parva Naturalia, contains several other treatises that deserve attention. Two of these were compositions of Averroës; the one a commentary on the book of Proclus, De Causis, then commonly ascribed to Aristotle,[186] and the other an independent work, as it would seem, bearing the following title: ‘Qualiter intellectus naturalis conjungitur Intelligentiae abstractae,’ in short a treatise on the ittisal. The volume also contains the Latin version of a book by the Rabbi Moses Maimonides, entitled ‘De Deo Benedicto, quod non est Corpus, nec Virtus in Corpore.’[187] Maimonides, like Averroës, was a native of Cordova, and hence no doubt arose the interest that was felt in his works by the Toledan translators.

That the Venice manuscript is to be understood as a collection of the versions which came from that school appears plainly in the dedication to Stephen of Provins. This is generally prefixed to the De Coelo et Mundo, thus forming an introduction to the versions which follow; but here it has been placed at the end of the volume, occurring immediately after the short article De Vita Aristotelis which closes the whole series. We may see in this fact a certain probability that some at least of these additional versions may have been the work of Michael Scot himself. Nor will the five years which he spent at Toledo appear too scant a space of time for the production of the whole body of the Latin Averroës and something more, when we remember the ample and able assistance he enjoyed in the prosecution of his labours as a translator.

There is one other version of which we must speak before leaving the subject which has engaged our attention so long. The library of St. Omer contains a manuscript collection of the works of Aristotle in Latin which was written during the thirteenth century.[188] The fly-leaf at the commencement of this volume shows the same handwriting as the other pages, and has proved upon examination to be the last relic of a work which has unfortunately perished. What that work was may be seen from the closing words, which are as follows: ‘Here end the Nova Ethica of Aristotle, which Master Michael Scot translated from the Greek language into the Latin.’ This colophon opens a curious question. Are we to consider that the scribe wrote Greek when he should rather have said Arabic? It was by a mistake of such a kind that the writer of the Victorine manuscript asserted that Averroës had commented on the De Anima in Greek.[189] Taking it in this way the version of the Nova Ethica would fall into line with the others which Scot and Gerard of Cremona composed at Toledo. But it deserves notice that none of the manuscript collections usually considered to contain the work of that school comprises among its contents the Nova Ethica. We know, further, that a Latin version of the Ethics with the commentary of Averroës was made from the Arabic by Hermannus Alemannus.[190] This work was completed on the third of June 1240, and we can hardly suppose that it would have been entered on if Michael Scot had already accomplished the same task but twenty years earlier. These facts and considerations make it very unlikely that the St. Omer fragment represents a version of the Arabic text.

Assuming then the literal truth of this interesting colophon, we are confirmed in the conclusion to which an examination of the De Partibus Animalium in the Florence manuscript has already inclined our minds.[191] Michael Scot, it must now be held, did not confine his studies altogether to the Arabian authors, but undertook to form translations directly from the Greek. These two versions, and especially that of the Nova Ethica, open up a new and striking view of the scholar’s literary activity. When Aquinas moved Pope Urban to order a new translation of Aristotle from the original, William of Moerbeka and those others who presently entered upon this work were tilling no virgin soil, but a familiar field in which the plough of Scot at least had left deep furrows. Even the renowned Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, who executed a version of the Ethica from the Greek about 1250, was but following in the path which this earlier master had opened up. Michael Scot here takes rank with Boëthius and Jacobus de Venetiis, who were among the first to seek these pure and original sources of Aristotelic doctrine. He appears as one who not only completed the knowledge of his time with regard to the Arabian philosophy by translating Averroës, but who gave some help at least to lay the foundation of a more exact acquaintance with the works of Aristotle by opening a direct way to the Greek text. We may even see a sign of this remarkable position in the place of honour given, perhaps accidentally, to Scot’s version of the Nova Ethica at the opening of the St. Omer manuscript. He stands between two ages, and lays a hand of power upon each.

It is hardly necessary to add that in this he shines all the more brightly when compared with his great detractor. Roger Bacon, secure in the consciousness of his commanding abilities, attacks with a rare self-confidence, not Michael Scot alone, but all the scholars of his time. Not four of them, he says, know Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.[192] Those who pretend to translate from these tongues are ignorant even of Latin, not to speak of the sciences treated of in the books which they pretend to render intelligible. Busy in penning these diatribes, Bacon does not seem to have reflected that the best way of reproving the imperfections of which he complained would have been to shame these scholars to some purpose by producing better versions on his own account. But the truth of the matter lies here, that Bacon was no linguist. This appears plainly from the tale he tells against himself in the Compendium Studii; how a hard word in Aristotle had baffled him till one day there came some outlandish students to hear him lecture, who laughed at his perplexity, telling him it was good Spanish for the plant called Henbane.[193] ‘Hinc illae lachrymae’ then, and a plague on Michael Scot and all his tribe, who know Spanish so well they will not put a plain Latin word for the puzzled professor to understand. No wonder that to Scot rather than to Bacon, for all his genius, that age owed the chief part of the first translation of Aristotle and a good beginning of the second.

CHAPTER VII
SCOT AGAIN AT COURT

The return of Michael Scot from Spain to the Imperial Court was doubtless a striking moment, not only in the life of the philosopher himself, but in the history of letters. He then appeared fresh from a great enterprise, and bringing with him the proofs of its success in the form of the Latin Averroës. We cannot doubt that his reception was worthy of the occasion and of one who had served his master so faithfully.

Frederick was now returned to his dominions in the south. He had established his imperial rights in Germany at the cost of a campaign in which the pretensions of Otho were successfully overcome, and, on his return homeward in 1220, he had received the crown once more in Rome at the hands of the supreme ecclesiastical authority. His progress was indeed a continual scene of triumph. Arrived at Palermo, the court gave itself up to feasting and gaiety of every kind.

Two ancient romantic authorities[194] choose with dramatic instinct this moment, and these gay and voluptuous surroundings, as the mise en scène amid which they show us Scot again appearing to resume the place he had quitted more than ten years before. It is quite possible that there may be a measure of historic truth here, as well as the art which can seize or create an occasion, and which loves to contrast the triumph of arms with the more peaceful honours of literary fame. Frederick, we must remember, in a sort represented both. He was Maecenas as well as Caesar. In welcoming Michael Scot and doing him honour at these imperial banquets he was but crowning the success of an enterprise in which his own name and interest were deeply engaged.

Traces of the impression made by this highly significant incident have been preserved in the arts of poetry and painting as well as in that of prose romance. Dante, who wrote his Divine Comedy less than a century later than the time of Scot, has given the philosopher a place in his poem, describing him as:

‘Quell’altro, che ne’ fianchi è così poco,

Michele Scotto fu.’[195]

The commentators, with great reason, refer the epithet ‘poco’ to the manner of Scot’s dress. It would seem that the Spaniards of those days differed from the other European nations in their habit. They wore a close girdle about the waist, like the hhezum of the East; and indeed they had probably taken the fashion from long familiarity with their Moorish masters and neighbours.[196] Scot must have adopted such a dress while at Toledo, and thus, when he returned to Palermo, the singularity of his appearance struck the eyes of the court at once. The impression proved a remarkably enduring one, since, even in Dante’s day, it still persisted, offering itself, as we have seen, to the poet as a picturesque means of presenting the famous scholar to the world, not without a hidden reference to what was certainly one of the crowning moments of his life.

We may suspect indeed that the fashion of Scot’s dress was more than simply Spanish; for the mode of Aragon at least must surely have been too familiar at Frederick’s court to excite so much attention. The philosopher had lived long in close company with the Moors of Toledo and Cordova. What he wore was probably no mere fragment of Eastern fashion but the complete costume of an Arabian sage. The flowing robes, the close-girt waist, the pointed cap, were not unknown in Sicily where there was still a considerable Moorish population, yet they must have sat strangely enough upon Scot when once he declared himself for what he was: the reverend ecclesiastic, the Master of Paris, the native of the far north.

There is a fresco on the south wall[197] of the Spanish Chapel in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella of Florence which contains a figure answering nearly to this conjecture regarding Scot’s appearance. It is that of a man in the prime of life, slight and dark, with a short brown beard trimmed to a point. He wears a long close-fitting robe of a reddish colour, noticeably narrow at the waist, with a falling girdle. On his head is a tall red pointed cap from which the ringlets of his dark hair escape on each side. He stands among the converts of the Dominican preachers and bends towards the spectator with an intense expression and action as he tears the leaves out of a heretical book[198] that rests on his knee. It would be too much to assert that the figure we have described was meant as a portrait of Michael Scot, yet considering the place he holds in the Divine Comedy, it is not impossible that such an idea may have crossed the artist’s mind and left these traces in his work. Certainly no better pictorial illustration can be found, at once of Dante’s lines, and of the somewhat equivocal reputation which began to haunt Scot from the time of his return to court. There was indeed a singular fitness in the Moslem dress considered as the daily wear of one who, though a Christian and a Churchman, had just done more than any living scholar to introduce the Moorish science and philosophy in the West. His choice of such a fashion is evidence that Michael Scot possessed a ready adaptability to his circumstances, and even a vein of aesthetic and dramatic instinct which we might not otherwise have suspected. But it is not to be forgotten that his versions of Averroës were already condemned by the Church, and that the very manner of Scot’s appearance when he brought them from Spain must have heightened the suspicions of heresy which began to attach themselves to the translator of these forbidden works. The only hope for such a man was that he might be induced to tear his book and turn to less dangerous pursuits. This is exactly the idea which the painter of the Spanish Chapel has expressed, and in a form which accords so remarkably with the picturesque description of Michael Scot by Dante.[199]

If the philosopher did not actually take such extreme measures with the creatures of his brain and pen, the versions he brought to Sicily were at least suppressed in the meantime, being concealed in the imperial closet till a more suitable opportunity should occur for their publication. This done, their author devoted himself to pursuits less likely to attract unfavourable notice than those in which he had been lately engaged.

The place and duty which most naturally offered themselves to Scot were those of the Court Astrologer. We have seen him occupied in this way already, before he left Palermo for Spain, and there seems no reason to doubt the tradition which says that such was indeed the standing occupation of his life, and one which he resumed at once on his return. To this application of celestial science the opinion of the times attached no sinister interpretation, and Scot, finding himself the object of suspicion on account of his late studies and achievements, must have fallen back with a sense of security, strange as it may seem, upon the casting of horoscopes and the forming of presages founded on the flight of birds and the motion of animals.[200]

It is therefore in all likelihood to this period in his life that we are to ascribe several works on astrology and kindred subjects which bear the name of Scot. They may have come from his pen by way of supplement to the doctrine which he had expounded so many years before in the Liber Introductorius.[201] Such are the Astrologia of the Munich Library,[202] and a curious volume preserved in the Hof-Bibliothek of Vienna with the following title: ‘Michaelis Scoti Capitulum de iis quae generaliter significantur in partibus duodecim Caeli, sive Domibus.’[203] The De Presagiis Stellarum et Elementaribus, and the Notitia convinctionis Mundi terrestris cum Coelesti, cited by the writer on Scot in the Encyclopedia Britannica, belong apparently to the same class.

We shall probably commit no error in assuming that the astrological views of Scot at this period were substantially the same as those embodied in his earlier writings on that subject.[204] In after ages they were severely censured by Pico della Mirandola, who says of Scot’s doctrine concerning the stellar images: ‘These invisible forms can be discerned neither by the senses nor by right reason, and there is no agreement regarding them by their inventors, who were not the Chaldeans or Indians but only the Arabs.’ … ‘Michael Scot mentions all these (images) as things most effectual, and with him agree many astrologers, both Arabian and Latin. I had heard somewhat of this doctrine, and thought at first that it was meant merely as a convenient means of mapping out the sky, and not that these figures actually existed in the heavens.…’ ‘From the Greeks astrology passed to the Arabs and was taught with ever-growing assurance.…’ ‘Aboasar, a grammarian and historical writer, took this science from the Greeks, corrupting it with countless trifling fables, and made thereof an astrology much worse than that of Ptolemy.…’ ‘In those days the study of mathematics, like that of philosophy in general, made great progress in Spain under King Alphonso, a keen student in the calculus, especially as applied to the movements of the heavenly bodies. He had also a taste for the vain arts of the Diviner, having learned no better; and to please him in this many of the most important treatises of that kind, both Greek and Arabic, have been handed down to our own day, chiefly by the labours of Johannes Hispalensis and Michael Scot, the latter of whom was an author of no weight and full of superstition. Albertus Magnus at first was somewhat carried away with this doctrine, for it came with the power of novelty to his inexperienced youth, but I rather think that his opinions suffered change in later life.’[205] Mirandola belonged to another age than that of Scot, when purer conceptions of astronomical science were already beginning to prevail, but the very opinions he condemned held a real relation to that progress. They encouraged in early times, as may be seen in the case of Alphonso himself, a study of the heavenly motions without which no true advance could have been made.

A story told by the chronicler Salimbene may, if rightly understood, show us that Michael Scot too, for all his astrological dreams, was a clever calculator and thus stood well in the line on which true advance in astronomy was even then proceeding. The Emperor asked him one day to determine the distance of the coelum, which probably means the height of the roof, in a certain hall of the palace where they happened to be standing together. The calculation having been made and the result given, Frederick took occasion to send Scot on a distant journey, and, while he was away, the proportions of the room were slightly but sufficiently altered. On his return the Emperor led him where they had been before and asked that he should repeat his solution of the problem. Scot unhesitatingly affirmed that a change had taken place; either the floor was higher or the coelum lower than before: an answer which made all men marvel at his skill.[206] Greek science had taught the art of measuring inaccessible distances by means of angular observations, and this art was well understood by the Arabs. The Optica of Ptolemy were already translated into Latin from an Arabic version by Eugenio, admiral to King Robert of Sicily during the twelfth century,[207] and mathematical instruments were known in that kingdom whereby angles could be taken and measured with some nicety. Scot must have possessed such an astrolabe and the skill to use it with great delicacy, if we have rightly read the terms of the problem he solved so unhesitatingly. There is no cause for wonder then in the fact that, where pure and legitimate astronomy was concerned, this philosopher, who had won fame in his student days as the mathematician of Paris, who was now widely known as the translator of Alpetrongi, and who as a keen observer and ready calculator was well qualified for original research, should have taken a high place in these studies on his own account, and should have come to be acknowledged as a master in them. Even Bacon, who blamed Michael Scot so bitterly when language or philosophy were in question, speaks in a different way here, calling him a ‘notable inquirer into matter, motion, and the course of the constellations.’

This well-earned celebrity may have been owing in no small degree to a mathematical and astronomical work produced by the philosopher after his return to court. Sacrobosco, the famous English astronomer, had just risen into notice by his treatise on the Sphere. This book was not indeed very remarkable in itself, but it obtained an extraordinary currency during the Middle Ages, and after the invention of printing as well as before it:[208] a popularity chiefly due, we may believe, to its suggestiveness, which caused many of the learned to enrich the Sphere of Sacrobosco with their own notes and observations. One of the first to do so was Michael Scot. His commentary on the work of Holywood contains several subtle inquiries and determinations regarding the source of heat, the sphericity of the heavenly bodies, and other matters, which have been repeated by Libri with the remark that their author must have been far in advance of his times.[209]

We may notice here a curious legend of Naples to which Sir Walter Scott has drawn attention in the account he gives of his great namesake.[210] It would seem to suggest that this age, perhaps by means of Michael Scot, was acquainted with philosophical instruments rarer if not more useful than the astrolabe. The romance of Vergilius tells how that hero founded ‘in the middes of the see a fayer towne, with great landes belongynge to it; … and called it Napells. And the fandacyon of it was of egges, and in that towne of Napells he made a tower with iiii corners, and in the toppe he set an apell upon an yron yarde, and no man culd pull away that apell without he brake it; and thoroughe that yren set he a bolte, and in that bolte set he a egge. And he henge the apell by the stauke upon a cheyne, and so hangeth it still. And when the egge styrreth, so shoulde the towne of Napells quake; and when the egge brake, then shulde the towne sinke,’ The reference here is of course to the Castel del Ovo at Naples, a fortress which we know to have been built, or at least strengthened, by Frederick II. What if the rest of the legend embalm, like a fly in amber, the tradition, strangely altered, of some instrument set up there to measure the force of the earthquakes so prevalent in that part of Italy?

Such a notion is not the pure matter of conjecture it may at first sight seem to be. Frederick was in relation with those who might well have put him in possession of this among other secrets. When the Tartars stormed the Vulture’s Nest, as it was called, in the Syrian castle of Alamout, they found an observatory well supplied with instruments of precision, and that of all kinds.[211] Now this place was the last refuge of the Assassins, that strange sect who owned obedience to the Old Man of the Mountain. Frederick II. when in the East paid these people a visit,[212] and again at Melfi, in his own dominions, he received their ambassadors and entertained them at a great banquet.[213] Considering then the Emperor’s well-known curiosity in all matters of physical science, we may feel sure he would profit by any improvements or discoveries the observers at Alamout could communicate. If the contrivance set up at Naples was really a seismometer, this would furnish a curious comment on Bacon’s statement that Michael Scot excelled in investigating the movements of matter.[214]

Passing to what rests on more certain evidence, we find Scot’s fame in those days attested by one of his most distinguished contemporaries, and that in a way which makes him appear as an honoured master in the science of algebra, then lately introduced from the Moorish schools. This improvement and testimony were both of them due to a certain Leonardo of the Bonacci family of Pisa, who was, perhaps, the first to bring the new method of calculation to the knowledge of his countrymen. His father had been overseer of the customs at Bougie, in Barbary,[215] on behalf of the Pisan merchants who traded thither. Observing the superior way of reckoning used by the Moors in that country, he sent home for his son that the boy might be trained in this admirable way of counting. Leonardo perfected his art in after years by travel and study in Egypt, Syria, and Greece, as well as in Sicily and Provence. The ripe fruit of this knowledge saw the light in 1222, when he published for the first time his famous Liber Abbaci. It consisted of fifteen chapters, in which the author declared the secret of the Indian numerals as well as the fundamental processes of algebra.[216]

This brief account of one who must ever hold an honourable place in the history of mathematical science may enable us to value at its true worth the praise which Leonardo bestowed on Michael Scot. It seems that the first edition of the Liber Abbaci was not entirely satisfactory. Scot wrote a letter to the author which possibly contained strictures on the work, and asked that a copy of the emended edition should be sent him. Pisano replied by dedicating the book to his correspondent. It appeared in 1228, and contained a prefatory letter, in which the author addresses Scot in the highest terms of respect, calling him by that title of Supreme Master which he had won at Paris, and submitting the Liber Abbaci, even in this its final form, to his further emendation. This laudari a laudato must have been most grateful to the philosopher, and it enables us to see the standing he had among the mathematicians of his time. One would almost be disposed to infer, from the respect Pisano paid him, that Scot himself had composed or translated some lost work on algebra. In another connection we shall find reason to think that this conjecture may be well founded.[217]

Besides the practice of astrology and his deeper researches in astronomy and mathematics, Michael Scot devoted himself to another profession, that of medicine. This was then a science very imperfectly understood, yet here too, in the years that followed his return to court, Scot made a name for himself as a physician, and contributed something to the advancement of human knowledge in one of its most important branches. The healing art in Europe had only just begun to emerge from that primitive state in which savage peoples still possess it; overlaid by charms and incantations; the peculiar department of the wise woman, the sorcerer, and the priest. Among the Latin races the lady of the castle and the bella donna of the village still cared for rich and poor in their various accidents and sicknesses, as indeed they continued to do for several ages more. Only crowned heads, the wealthiest of the nobility, or the rich merchants of the cities, began to require and employ the services of regular physicians. These were generally Jews, sometimes Moors;[218] and thus fashion and experience alike began to make popular among our ancestors the superior claims of science in medicine. Such science had undoubtedly survived from the days and in the works of Hippocrates, Galen, and Celsus, and was now preserved in the theory and practice of the Arabian schools.

This point once reached, a further advance soon became inevitable. Attention had been called to a deeper source of medical knowledge than that generally possessed in the West. Learned men, whose tastes led them this way, naturally sought to inform their minds by procuring translations of the Arabic works on medicine. The just fame of Salerno, a medical school which had been founded in the closing years of the eleventh century by Robert Guiscard, depended on the intelligent zeal with which this plan of research was then pursued.[219] The kingdom of Sicily indeed occupies as important a place in the progress of the healing art as Spain itself does with regard to the history of philosophy and of science in general.

Frederick II., as might have been expected, did much to encourage and regulate these useful studies. We have already noticed the bent of his mind towards comparative physiology, and the daring experiments he carried out, in corpore vili et vivo. One of the first literary and scientific works which he commanded, or at least accepted when it was dedicated to him, was a compilation from three ancient authors upon a medical subject.[220] He was then but eighteen years of age. As time went on his interest in this science continued, and became the motive to a liberal and enlightened policy. He regarded medicine as a matter of national importance, and strove by wise laws to make the practice of that profession as intelligent and useful as possible. He protected the faculty at Salerno and created that of Naples. None might lecture elsewhere in the Sicilies, and every physician in the kingdom must hold testimonials from one or other of these schools, as well as a government licence to practise. The course preliminary to qualification consisted of three years in arts and five in medicine and surgery. As a guide to the professors, the doctrine of Hippocrates and Galen was declared normal in the schools; yet, lest this should become merely formal and traditional, directions were given that the students should have practice in anatomy. Regarding the related trade of the apothecary, the laws denounced the adulteration of drugs. Physicians might not claim a greater fee than half a taren of gold per diem, which gave the patient a right to be visited thrice in the day. The poor were to be attended free of charge. We have thought it right to be particular in these details, as they throw light on the times, and on Scot’s own practice as a physician. Considering indeed the place he held about the Emperor’s person, and the high estimation in which his master held him, it seems not at all improbable that his may have been the hand which drew these wise enactments, or his at least the suggestion which commended them to Frederick. They must in any case have been the rules under which he carried on his work as a doctor of medicine.

This branch of Michael Scot’s activity relates itself easily and naturally to what we already know of his acquirements and familiarity with the Arabian authors. It was from the De Medicina of Rases that he borrowed so much material for his Physionomia. The Abbreviatio Avicennae too, which he translated for Frederick in 1210, was in no small part a treatise on comparative anatomy and physiology, nor is it likely that he can have missed reading the famous canon of the same author, in which Avicenna expounds a complete body of practical medicine. We need not wonder then to find that, on Scot’s return to court, his work on Averroës done, he added the practice of physic to his duties as Imperial Astrologer. This new profession must have offered itself to him as another means of securing a general forgetfulness of the questionable direction in which his philosophical studies had lately carried him.

He seems in fact to have won almost as much fame in medicine as he had made for himself in the study of mathematics. Lesley says ‘he gained much praise as a philosopher, astronomer, and physician.’ Dempster speaks of his ‘singular skill,’ calling him ‘one of the first physicians for learning’[221] and adding that Camperius[222] had the highest opinion of him. An anonymous writer, De claris Doctrina Scotis, is even more precise, telling us that Scot was noted for the cures he effected in difficult cases, and that he excelled in the treatment of leprosy, gout, and dropsy.[223]

Some slight remains of this skill are to be found in the libraries of Europe; for Michael Scot was a writer on the science of his art as well as a practising physician. The chief of these relics is a considerable work on the urine. This subject had been widely, if not deeply, studied by the more ancient medical authorities, whose investigations appear in the Ketab Albaul of Al Kairouani,[224] and in a book to which we have already more than once referred: the De Urinis compiled for Frederick in 1212.[225] The same title belongs to one of the treatises by Avicenna, which has been reprinted in the present century.[226]

The De Urinis of Michael Scot seems now extant in the form of an Italian translation alone. The exact title is as follows: ‘Della notitia e prognosticatione dell’orine, secondo Michele Scoto, così de’ sani, come delli infermi,’ or, more briefly, ‘El trattato de le urine secondo Michaele Scoto.’[227] The author enumerates no less than nineteen divisions of his subject, which he seems to have studied very exactly. This work long remained an authority in the medical schools, as appears, not only from the two translations we have noticed, but also in the fact that large use was made of it in a later collection which commences thus: ‘In the name of the Lord, Amen. These are certain recipes taken from the book of Master Michael Scot, Physician to the Emperor Frederick, and from the works of other Doctors.’[228]

There has also come down to us a prescription called Pillulae Magistri Michaelis Scoti.[229] It enumerates about a dozen ingredients and the scribe has added an extravagant commendation of its healing powers. Mineral medicines were evidently not in fashion in those days; for the recipe speaks only of simples derived from herbs of different kinds. It is to be observed that this agrees exactly with the practice of Salerno, as the Materia Medica of that school was chiefly drawn from the botany of Dioscorides afterwards expounded by Ibn Beithar of Malaga, the great Moorish authority on the healing virtues of plants. There is no reason then to doubt the truth of the title which ascribes the prescription for these pills to Michael Scot. It is in any case a curious relic of early medical practice.

It is possible that the great plague which fell upon Palermo at the time of Frederick’s marriage may have been, in part at least, the occasion of that interest which both the Emperor and his astrologer took in the healing art. These epidemics, which in several of their most fatal forms are now only known by tradition, were the dreaded scourge of the Middle Ages; their prevalence being no doubt due to the rude and insanitary habits of life which were then universal. We read of another infectious sickness which attacked Frederick and his crusaders when they were on the point of sailing from Brindisi in 1227. The season was one of terrible heat, so great indeed that one chronicle says the rays of the sun melted solid metal! Lying in the confinement of their galleys on an unhealthy coast the troops suffered severely. At last rain fell, but immediately poisonous damps arose from the steaming soil, and the plague began to show itself. Two bishops and the Landgrave of Thuringia were among the victims of the pestilence, and very many of the crusaders died. Frederick himself ran considerable risk of his life. Against the advice of his physician he had exposed himself to the sun in the course of his journey to Brindisi. After three days with the fleet he was obliged to return on account of the state of his health, when he at once went to the waters at Pozzuoli, which proved a successful cure. Michael Scot must have entered into these affairs with a large concern and responsibility for his master’s health, and we shall think much of the importance and consequence he enjoyed at this time when we remember that the chief object of his care as a physician was the life of one on whom interests that were more than European then depended.

CHAPTER VIII
THE LAST DAYS OF MICHAEL SCOT

The various occupations in which Michael Scot engaged upon his return to court were not without their due and, as we believe, designed effect. The part he had taken in producing the Latin Averroës was soon forgotten when it appeared that no immediate publication of these proscribed works was intended by the Emperor. Scot now stood boldly before the world in no suspicious character; distinguished only by his great learning and the fidelity with which he discharged his offices of astrologer and physician about the Imperial person.

This rehabilitation of his fame opened the way to further honours and emoluments which Frederick soon began to seek on his servant’s behalf. Scot had never quite lost character as a churchman, and the member of a great religious Order, though his studies had carried him far from the somewhat narrow and beaten track of an ordinary ecclesiastical education. Like Philip of Tripoli, he was probably in holy orders, and even held a benefice, while, as we see from the dedication of his De Coelo et Mundo to Stephen of Provins, he was careful, even in the wildest heats of his work on Averroës, to keep in touch with those who held high positions in the Church. Soon after his return from Spain a resolute and repeated attempt was made to secure for him some ecclesiastical preferment.

Honorius III. then sat in the Chair of St. Peter. In 1223 a dispensation was granted by the Curia allowing Michael Scot to hold a plurality. At the same time the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton the Primate of England, desiring that Scot should be preferred to the first suitable place which might fall vacant in that country.[230] Honorius was then at peace with the Emperor, and we may believe that it was in consequence of some strong representation made by Frederick that he took such an interest in the fortunes of this Imperial protégé.

The application to Canterbury was entirely in accordance with the habits of the time; for England was then the constant resource of the Popes when they wished to confer a favour on any of their clergy. Many and deep were the complaints which this practice awakened among the priesthood of the north. A like abuse of influence appeared in Scotland as well. Theiner reports the case of a clerk named Peter, the son of Count George of Cabaliaca, on whose behalf the Pope wrote in 1259 to the Canons of St. Andrews, desiring that he might be reinstated in his benefice of Chinachim (Kennoway in Fife) which he had forfeited as an adherent of the Empire.[231] It is only fair, however, to notice that there were instances of the contrary practice. In 1218, for example, one Matthew, a Scot, was recommended by Honorius to the University of Paris for the degree of Doctor, that he might teach there in the faculty of Divinity.