An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot

by J. Wood Brown

It would not be easy to miss the meaning of this mistake. Michael Scot had probably written or translated a treatise on algebra. We may remember how well such a conjecture agrees with the tone of Pisano’s dedicatory letter to him, in which he submitted the Liber Abbaci to Scot’s revision, and acknowledged him as a supreme master in this branch of science. It is difficult to account for this fame save by supposing the existence of an unknown work by Michael Scot on the veritable Almuchabola, of which this pretended treatise on magic is all that now survives. The mistake that gave it so corrupted a form could hardly have been made as late as the seventeenth century, when such things were well understood. The manuscript, though dating from that time, is probably only a copy of one much older. The preface, indeed, mentions the year 1255 as the epoch of translation, and, although Michael Scot had then lain more than twenty years in his grave, this date would suit well as the birth-hour of a legend which, though certainly later than Scot’s own day, had yet made considerable progress in the popular mind before the close of the century. This explanation of the matter receives some indirect support from a remark of Bacon’s. ‘It is to be noticed,’ he says, ‘that many books are taken for magical works which are in reality nothing of the kind, but contain true and worthy wisdom.’[278] He adds that there are several ways of concealing one’s doctrine from the vulgar, such as the use of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic characters, and the Ars Notoria or shorthand. There is much reason to think it was in this very way that Michael Scot had suffered. A mistake like that indicated by Bacon was probably the real origin of his mysterious reputation as a magician.

As soon as the mistake had once been made, and the notion of Scot’s magical powers had fairly taken possession of the popular mind, it was greatly reinforced by the association of his name and memory with the still living and adaptable Arthurian legend. Alain de l’Isle, who lived as late as 1202, says that the tales proper to this romantic cycle were so heartily believed in Brittany that any one casting doubt upon Arthur’s return would have been stoned by the people.[279] From the Trouvères the legend passed to the Troubadours of the south of France. When the Normans established themselves in Sicily, these latter poets, represented, it is said, by Pietro Vidal, and Rambaldo di Vaqueiras, carried to this new home of their race the materia poetica which had so long engaged the best talents of France. The religious war which desolated Provence in the beginning of the thirteenth century completed the dispersion of the Troubadours. Many found a refuge in Italy and Sicily. They communicated an emotional impulse which led to the formation of the Italian language as a means of literary expression. Through them the inheritance of the Arthurian tales was secured to the people of the South, who soon began to localise the chief incidents of this romantic cycle in the island of Sicily.[280]

Gervase of Tilbury tells us that near the town of Catania lies the burning mountain of Etna, called by the people Mongibello, and famed among them as the abode of King Arthur, who, they said, had lately been seen there. The matter fell out thus. The Bishop of Catania’s palfrey escaped one day from his groom, and was lost. The man sought his charge everywhere, and at last ventured to enter an opening he perceived in the hollow part of the hill. Here he found a narrow winding path which led to a pleasant land within Etna, and to a palace, the home of Arthur. He entered the palace and found the King lying on a royal couch. Arthur bade him welcome, listened to his story, and called for the steed to be brought that the Bishop might have his own again. He further told his visitor that, having been wounded in battle with Modred and Childeric king of Saxony, he had come to this retreat that he might heal him of his mortal sickness. Gervase adds that Arthur, not content with restoring the horse, paid tithe to the Bishop as one of the dwellers in his diocese, ‘which was a wonder to all that heard it.’[281]

Caesar von Heisterbach has the same tale in his collection, but repeats it with some variations. In his pages the pleasant land of Avalon, with its peaceful palace, becomes a dark abode of fire, answering more nearly to the actual phenomena of the mountain. Arthur hence issues a dread summons to the owner of the palfrey, who in this tale is a Canon of Palermo, bidding him appear in that infernal region within a fortnight. The churchman obeys by dying at the time appointed.[282] The terror which enters into this form of the story is even heightened by Stephen of Bourbon when he comes to repeat it.[283] On the other hand the easy, pleasant, semi-pagan tone observed in Gervase of Tilbury lives again in the French romance of Florian and Florete.[284] Here we see the kingdom within Etna before Arthur came thither, and find it a land of faery, where the King’s sister Morgana holds her flowery court. The Fata Morgana, as she is called, is still remembered on these southern coasts. When the mirage appears in the Straits of Messina, and houses and castles are seen hanging in thin air, the people call them by the name of that mysterious princess. They think that the sides of Etna have become transparent, and that what they behold is the realm of faery with the Fata Morgana’s palace in the midst.

These legends show that Avalon, first dreamed of in the far North, had by this time been carried southward to find a new locality under Etna, and that already the mystic king, who dwelt with his court in the land of shadows till he should again return to earth, had taken a firm hold of the southern fancy. It was but a step more then, and one very easily taken, when men began to see in the Princes of the Hohenstaufen, and the chief figures of their court, the heirs of this legend in some of its most important features. Frederick Barbarossa, for example, was commonly said to pass the ages between death and life in a hollow hill. The Germans identified this abode with the Kyffhauser, and expected the Emperor’s return in the spirit of the tales told of Wodan, Frau Holda, and Frau Venus, in their national mythology.[285] It was even reported that a bold shepherd armed with the mysterious key-flower had forced the secret, entering these recesses of the hill and beholding Barbarossa as in life, with his red beard growing through the marble table at which he sat asleep. The romantic heritage next fell upon Barbarossa’s grandson Frederick II. It was long before the adherents of the Empire who had staked so much upon their great champion’s bold defiance of the Papacy could bring themselves to believe that he was really dead. In 1250 his corpse was carried in solemn procession from Fiorentino, where he died, to Palermo, the place appointed for his burial. There he soon lay in the ancient sarcophagus brought from Cefalù; his robe embroidered about the hem with Cufic characters, and the sceptre and apple of empire in his powerless hands;[286] but still the Ghibellines could not give up the hope that one day he would wake again, and lead them to the victory they looked for.

This expectation was much strengthened by a prophecy then current under the name of the Abbot Joachim. ‘There cometh an Eagle, at whose appearing the Lion shall be destroyed: yea a young Eagle who shall make his nest in the den of the Lion. Of the race of the Eagle shall arise another Eagle called Frederick. He shall reign indeed, and shall stretch his wings till they touch the ends of the earth. In his days shall the chief Pontiff and his clergy be despoiled and dispersed.’[287] On the other side a Guelf poet, whose name we do not know, associated Frederick II. with Arthur in the following lines:

‘Cominatur impius, dolens de jacturis

Cum suo Britonibus Arturo Venturis.’[288]

The collection called the Cento Novelle Antiche reflects this myth very plainly; for, in the strange tales then told of Frederick and his court, we seem to see these personages already transported to a kind of fairyland, where the laws of earthly life no longer hold good. The scene is unmistakably laid in the Avalon of Arthur and amid his shadowy court.