An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot

by J. Wood Brown

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]