In commenting upon Sacrobosco’s concluding passage concerning the miraculous eclipse at the time of Christ’s passion and the remark attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, “Either the God of nature suffers or the machine of the universe is dissolved,” Michael explains that ancient Athens was divided into three parts. One of these was the shore which was consecrated to Neptune, but in place of the plain and the mountains, Michael appears to take a leaf out of Plato’s Republic and mentions the region of the warriors, dedicated to Pallas, goddess of war, and the residential quarter of the philosophers, named the Areopagus from Ares meaning virtue and pagus meaning villa. According to Michael the altar to the unknown god was erected by Dionysius the Areopagite at the time of the darkness and earthquake accompanying Christ’s passion, and when Paul came and preached the Christ whom he ignorantly worshiped, Dionysius was converted, and became a missionary to the Gauls, bishop of Paris, and finally gained a martyr’s crown.
Alchemy.
In the Liber Introductorius Michael seemed to associate alchemy with the magic arts. In his Commentary on the Sphere his attitude is more favorable. After citing the fourth book of the Meteorology and other passages from Aristotle to the effect that no element can be corrupted and hence the transmutation striven after by the alchemists is impossible, Michael explains that the word element may be taken in two senses. As a part of the universe it is neither generable nor corruptible, but in so far as an element is mixed with active and passive qualities, it is both generable and corruptible.[1082]
Works of alchemy ascribed to Michael Scot.
Thanks perhaps to this passage the composition or translation of several works of alchemy is ascribed to Michael Scot in manuscripts or printed editions. The Quaestio curiosa de natura Solis et Lunae, which was printed as Michael’s in two editions of the Theatrum Chemicum,[1083] was apparently written after his death.[1084] A Palermo manuscript contains among other alchemical tracts a “Book of Master Michael Scot in which is contained the mastery.”[1085] In at least one manuscript Michael Scot is called the translator of the Liber luminis luminum, of which Rasis is elsewhere mentioned as the original author.[1086] In an Oxford manuscript a De alchemia is attributed to Michael Scot. It is addressed to “you, great Theophilus, king of the Saracens”[1087] rather than to the Emperor Frederick, and speaks of “the noble science” of alchemy as “almost entirely rejected among the Latins.” Michael Scot mentions himself by name in it rather too often for us to accept the treatise as his without question, while the allusions to “Brother Elias” the Franciscan as a fellow-worker in alchemy are perhaps also open to suspicion.
Brother Elias and alchemy.
We find, however, another suggestion of Brother Elias’s interest in alchemy and association therein with Michael Scot in the fact that in the same manuscript containing the translation of the Liber luminis luminum ascribed to Michael occurs another Liber lumen luminum which Brother Elias, General of the Friars Minor, edited in Latin for the Emperor Frederick.[1088] A brother Cyprian translated it from Arabic into Latin for him. In view of the later interest of another Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, in alchemy and the supposition which some have entertained that he was persecuted by his Order because of his experimental studies, this reputation of Brother Elias as an alchemist is interesting to note. One of St. Francis’s earliest followers, he succeeded him in 1226 as General of the Order. Deposed by the pope in 1230 on the charge of promoting schism in the Order, he was re-elected in 1236 and was again deposed by the pope in 1239, after which he joined the imperial party and was excommunicated from 1244 until just before his death in 1253.[1089] Brown suggested that his alchemical activities were alluded to by the pope on the occasion of his first deposition in the words “mutari color optimus auri ex quo caput erat compactum.”[1090] But if Elias was an alchemist, no open objection to this appears to have been made either by the pope or his Order. Indeed, many of the alchemists in Italy of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were clergy and even friars.[1091]
Liber luminis luminum and De alchemia.
Brown has already discussed the contents of the Liber luminis luminum and De alchemia (or, alchimia)[1092] but erroneously and from not quite the same standpoint as ours. He incorrectly interprets “the secrets of nature” which the writer says he has investigated as the title of a book which has formed his chief source.[1093] Brown also states that one of several features which distinguishes the De alchemia from the Liber luminis “is an early passage which refers to the correspondence between the metals and the planets.”[1094] But there is a similar passage connecting seven metals with the seven planets in the opening paragraph of his own printed text of the Liber luminis luminum.[1095] The latter treatise, brief as it is, divides into five parts dealing with salts, alums, vitriols, spirits, and the preparation of alums, and the employment of these in transmutation. The De alchemia is less orderly in arrangement and seems largely a brief collection of particular recipes for transmutation.
Their further characteristics.