Beelzebub et Ashtaroth proprios Penates,
Tenebrarum consulens per suos Potestates
Spreverat Ecclesiam, et mundi Magnates.’
When we remember that Michael Scot was the man whom Frederick loved to consult and employ, we understand what effect this depreciation of the master’s fame must have had on that of his servant. If the Emperor made Beelzebub and Ashtaroth his gods, Scot must soon have been recognised as the go-between in this infernal business.
Such an impression would naturally be heightened by the recollection of the years which had been spent by Michael Scot at Toledo and Cordova. We have already noticed the dark reputation which attached to the former of these places. It is only needful here to add that Scot’s ecclesiastical character would by no means hinder the unfavourable inference that must have been drawn from his lengthened residence in the chief seat of magical study. St. Giles before his conversion, and Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II., were commonly reported to have learned the black art at Toledo. As to Cordova, the Picatrix mentions the discovery of a magic book in the Church there,[268] which shows that the supernatural fame of Toledo attached itself also to this city.
It is far from improbable that the nature of Scot’s studies in these places may have inclined men to believe in the stories told of him as a necromancer. He spent his time upon Arabic texts, and, with the fanatical clergy, not to speak of the common people whom they taught, the Moors and all their works were accursed. No one could meddle much with them save at the cost of such accusations of diabolic dealing. Nor was it merely the language but also the very subject of Scot’s studies that was suspicious. Since the days of the Alexandrian school there had grown up round the name of Aristotle a strange legend which represented him as a magician; none other than the great sorcerer Nectanebus of Egypt, the true father, by an infamous sleight, of Alexander of Macedon.[269]
Nectanebus, so the tale ran, was King of Egypt, and learned in all the magic arts of that mysterious land. When war threatened he would fill a vessel with water and float upon it enchanted ships of clay. Thus could he divine the success or failure of his country’s arms. One day, however, as he was busy in this spell, the old gods appeared to guide the craft he had designed as models of the hostile fleet. Nectanebus gave up all for lost, shaved his head, and in the disguise of a philosopher, fled to Pella in Macedonia, where he lived by practising the arts of an astrologer and prophet. Olympias consulted him to know whether she might hope to give an heir to her husband Philip, then absent from his capital. Nectanebus bade her expect the honour of a visit from Jupiter Ammon himself, and, dressing in the horns and hieratic robe proper to the character he assumed, became, by her whom he seduced, the father of Alexander the Great. The child was born amid thunder and lightning, and was soon committed to the care of Nectanebus who became his tutor: a clear point of connection with Aristotle, who really filled that office. One day tutor and pupil walked on the edge of a cliff, when the philosopher uttered a prophecy to the effect that Alexander was fated to kill his own father. The boy, who fancied that Philip was meant, took the words so ill that he flung his tutor over the rock, and thus instantly fulfilled the prediction. This tale can be traced from its appearance in the Pseudo-Callisthenes through the series of Byzantine chroniclers—Syncellus, Glycas, John Malala, and the author of the Chronicon Pascale—to the later romances where it is repeated and amplified. The whole Middle Age believed it. Not till the fourteenth century did a doubt of its truth appear,[270] and that it was current in the west of Europe at the time of which we write appears plainly in the preface to the Secreta Secretorum, which has the following significant remark, ‘which Alexander is said to have had two horns.’[271] The real meaning of the legend probably lay in a patriotic desire to vindicate for Egypt, though subdued by Alexander, the honour of having originated the Greek philosophy.[272] The thirteenth century, however, knew nothing of such explanations; cherishing the tale rather on account of the wild mystery which it breathes. No wonder then if the labours of Michael Scot as an exponent of Aristotle gave some force to the popular idea that he dealt in forbidden arts.
Need we point out that the same may be said of his fame as a Master in astrology and alchemy? We have seen how close was the relation in which these sciences stood to the magic of the day. As to mathematics, for which Scot was so renowned, it is to be observed that the kind of divination called Geomancy, which was performed by casting figures in a box filled with sand, was remarkably like the method of working sums which is still practised among the Moors.[273] We may add that the facility with which difficult problems could be solved by the new methods of calculation borrowed from that people must have seemed little less than supernatural to those as yet unacquainted with the secrets of algebra.
It seems probable indeed that at least one starting-point of Michael Scot’s legendary and romantic fame may be looked for in the very quarter to which we have just begun to direct our attention. There is in the author’s possession a manuscript which promises to throw some light on the obscurity of this matter.[274] It consists of sixteen quarto pages written on parchment in a hand of the seventeenth century, and contains a short preface, followed by two distinct works. One of these professes to be an Arabic original, and the other a version of the same in Latin, said to come from the pen of Michael Scot. The title of the work deserves special attention. It is as follows: ‘Almuchabola Absegalim Alkakib Albaon; i.e. Compendium Magia Innaturalis Nigrae.’ Now, although the so-called Arabic of the manuscript quite defies the best efforts of scholarship to decipher it, this word almuchabola is perfectly authentic, familiar even, being the common term in that language for what we call algebra.[275]
This then seems to afford an actual example of the way in which the Moorish science of numbers might be mistaken for something magical. When we examine the manuscript more closely the suggestion which its title affords becomes still stronger. Here and there, amid the strange characters of an unknown tongue,[276] are designs of a curious kind; parallelograms enclosed in bounding lines of red, and containing erratic figures also in red, that show luridly against the black background with which the outlines are filled. The Latin version explains that these are the signs of the demons whom the accompanying spells have power to summon or dismiss. No one, however, who compares them with the graphic statements of mathematical problems in the margin of the Liber Abbaci can fail to be struck with the resemblance.[277] The one book seems, in regard of these figures, but a degenerate copy of the other, made by some scribe who did not understand the matter he had in hand, and who darkened the ground of his designs to heighten the fancied terrors of the subject.