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.