‘Michael accordingly took his Magic Book, and the skin of a cat, and kindling some hempen fibre[325] in an earthen pot, he commenced to read his spells, which had such effect that the spirit of the young lady entered into the skin of the cat. In the form of that animal she then went about her business, while her body remained still in the chair where she was sitting. At her return the wizard read again in his book, whereupon the spirit of the new-made witch returned to her body as before. Michael gave her a book of this kind, and the skin he had used, and every night she turned herself into a witch, and became so wicked as to cast ill upon many children, and even on an infant brother of her own.
‘Thus the sorceress was hardly entered on her power ere she brought about the death of her rival’s child, and killed many others, but an end was presently put to these ill-doings. Her brother, whom she had bewitched out of jealousy, wasted away, and the parents were in despair, as none of the physicians whom they consulted could understand the case. One morning the child told them he had suffered much during the night from a cat, which leaped upon his bed, howled, and played the most frightful antics. They then began to suspect witchcraft, and resolved that the household should watch during the next night. On the stroke of twelve a cat was seen coming out of their daughter’s room. One of the servants gave chase, and another went into the room, fearing that the young lady had also been bewitched, and saw her lying on the bed as cold as marble. The cry arose that she was killed. The parents, mad with grief, made after the cat to destroy it, but with leaps and bounds, it kept them busy all night as if they had been huntsmen chasing a hare, and all in vain. As the bells began to sound for matins the cat ran into the young lady’s room, and the mother, beating her brow, exclaimed: “she who has bewitched my son is none other than his sister.” Rushing into the room they found her, no longer like a dead body, but all panting from the night-long chase. Her mother searched all the corners, and finding the book and earthen pot, bade throw them into the Arno. They then besought their daughter to undo the mischief she had wrought upon her brother, and so many more, and to promise she would never do the like again; but to nothing of this would she consent. Then they threw her out of window in fear and to the breaking of her bones. The servants came and took her up; laying her on her bed again; telling her to heal her brother. Not even in the last moments of life, however, would she repent. She could not die till Mengot had read for her a spell of loosing, and on him therefore she still lay crying. The servants told this to her parents, who bade put horses to the carriage and fetch the wizard, who was presently with them. First he commanded her to cure her brother, and then he read for her in his Magic Book that she might be loosed, and so she died. But when the skin and earthen pot were cast away, they sank straight underground. Thus the witch, who still came back every night to get the skin, and take the form of a cat, found all her magic art in vain; for Michael Scotti had taken her power away.’
‘Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne!’ To such vain and trivial conclusions has a reputation, justly renowned in its own day, been reduced in ours. Michael Scot, now become a troglodyte, lifts his head timidly and occasionally from a den in the Florence fields; he who, while alive, filled Europe with his fame, and, by his Averroës, ruled the schools of Padua as late as the seventeenth century. If a remedy is still to be had for this, the fruit of Guelphic rancour, it must be found in the direction we have sought to keep throughout these pages: that of a serious and impartial study of Scot’s life, and of those labours of his in philosophy and science which are so really, though remotely, connected with the intellectual attainments of our own times.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX I
✠ Experimentum Michaelis Scoti nigromantici.[326]