An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot

by J. Wood Brown

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.