J. Wood Brown

“ Such was south-eastern Scotland in the twelfth century: a country fitted to be the home of men of action rather than of thought; men whose joy should lie in the chase and the conflict with nature as yet unsubdued, who could track the savage creatures of the forest to their dens, and clear the land where it pleased them, and build, and dwell, and beget children in their own likeness, till by the labours of generations that country should become pastoral, peaceful, and fit for fertile tillage as we see it now. ”

“ No passage of all their texts was more bizarre and tortuous than the mass of intricate lanes which formed then, as they form to-day, the thoroughfares of communication in Toledo. No hidden jewel of knowledge and observation could surprise and reward the translator in the midst of his tedious labours with a flash of sudden light and glory more unexpectedly delicious than that felt by the traveller, when, after long wandering in that maze and labyrinth, he finds a wider air ”

“ Thus the traits of Scot’s youth fit well the picture we are now constrained to form, and the whole gives promise that here at last we may have touched upon the man himself as he was, physically, mentally, and spiritually. A slight worn body spent with arduous study, like a sheath which the sword has almost broken through; a soul possessed with the sense of Divine things, yet sad, and subject to strange illusions; a conscience morbidly awake and painfully scrupulous ”

“ BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY STUDIES OF MICHAEL SCOT
In the Borders of Scotland it is well known that any piece of hill pasture, if it be fenced in but for a little from the constant cropping of the sheep, will soon show springing shoots of forest trees indigenous to the soil, whose roots remain wherever the plough has not passed too deeply. Centuries ago, when nature had her way and was unrestrained, the whole south-eastern part of the country was covered with dense forests and filled with forest-dwellers; the wild creatures that form the prey of the snare and the quarry of the chase. ”

“ We are now in a position to understand, not only the nature and progress of the work in which Michael Scot took part, but the exact development which alchemy had reached in his day, and therefore the relation which his chemical publications bore to the general direction of study in this department of science. The time and care which our survey of the field has demanded need not be thought ill spent. It has prepared the way for a more intelligent appreciation of Scot’s labours as a chemist, and has furnished us with the means of coming to a true judgment regarding their authenticity and value. ”

“ Bacon, especially, seems to have lost no opportunity of blackening his character. To these men Michael Scot was a sciolist, a mere pretender to knowledge, ignorant even of Latin; the very charlatan of the schools. He was a plagiarist too; one who passed off the work of another man as his own; nay, darker than all, he was a heretic, or so Albert would make him; a philosopher who interpreted and exceeded the forbidden doctrines of Averroës. ”

“ Changed habits of thought, reaching and affecting every class of society, make it useless now to seek in Scotland for any new developments of the legend of Michael Scot. This is not so certainly true, however, of the South of Europe; of Italy, Sicily, and Spain, where he was once a familiar figure. There the slow progress of education has left the common people still in possession of much legendary lore, and even of the living faculty by which in past ages such tales have been formed. ”

“ Something of the Greek δεινότης, something terrible, superhuman almost, we discover in a spirit so fully roused and determined, and if we have read rightly the mind of Scot, no wonder that he and the Emperor were fully at one in regard to what they had to do. We have no means of knowing which of the two first conceived the idea of translating the works of Averroës: as master and servant they fairly share the fame of that great enterprise. ”

“ Nay more, when a man throws a stone, these teachers attribute the consequent motion not to the man but to the universal Agent, and thus deny any true human activity.
‘There is even a more astounding corollary of this doctrine; for if God can cause that which is not to enter into being, He can also reduce being to nothing; destruction, like generation, is God’s work, and Death itself has been created by Him. But in our way of thinking destruction is like generation. Each created thing contains in itself its own corruption, which is present with it potentially. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rather is it the case that between ancients and moderns, between the eastern [61] and western world, there is an entirely different understanding of the whole subject. A different principle of arrangement is at work, and results in the wide diversity of manner which strikes us as soon as we open the De Animalibus or the Abbreviatio. We find ourselves in the presence of a system of ideas, more or less abstract, which a wealth of facts derived from keen and wide observation of the world of nature is employed to illustrate. There is a finer division than with us. ”

“ How then did it come to pass that in a few years the theory of Rases became so popular in the West, and continued for so many ages to direct the progress of chemical study among the European nations with enduring power? We find the explanation of this sudden change in the fact that human thought has always been subject to the tyranny of ruling ideas. In our own day the place of direction is filled by a doctrine of development which is eagerly made use of in every department of knowledge. ”

“ One of the most striking incidents which marked the long funeral procession of Frederick II. through the southern provinces of Italy was furnished by the grief of a faithful band of Saracens, who, with dishevelled hair and cries of sorrow, accompanied the body of their great benefactor to its last resting-place. It is probable indeed that these people, of whom Frederick had not a few both in Sicily and in various colonies on the mainland, may have joined very heartily with their Christian neighbours in giving currency to the latest application of the Arthurian legend. ”

“ The name and fame of Aristotle, never quite forgotten even in the darkest age, [80] and now known and extolled among Moorish scholars, formed indeed the ground of that immense reputation which Arabian philosophy enjoyed in Europe. The Latin schools had long been familiar with the logical writings of Aristotle, but the modern spirit, soon to show [47] itself as it were precociously in Bacon and Albertus Magnus, was already awake, and under its influence men had begun to demand more than the mere training of the mind in abstract reasoning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From what has just been said it is plain that three distinct periods must have composed the life of Philip so far as we know it: the first when he served as an ecclesiastic in Tripoli of Syria or its neighbourhood; the second when he came westward, and, not without a certain literary reputation, held the post of Clerk Register in Sicily; the last when Frederick sent him, in the height of his powers and the fulness of his fame, to that neighbouring country of Spain, then so full of attraction for every scholar. ”

“ No wonder that those among whom Michael Scot lived found him somewhat of a mystery at all times, and, especially in these later days of his burdened spirit, took him for a Mage, weaving his dark sayings into regular prophecies. The Latin races have never been famous for their power to comprehend the northern character. ”

“ In the case of Michael Scot such evidence is forthcoming, but we may say at once that it proves upon examination to yield a distinctly negative result. His fame in those days was such that he is mentioned by several important writers of his own age, such as Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Vincent of Beauvais. None of these has a word to say of Scot’s reputation as a necromancer. Some may urge that an argument from silence is unsatisfactory; but does it not gain great force from the consideration that two of these witnesses are decidedly hostile to Scot? ”

“ Thus, at any rate, have the highest reputations in the world of art risen into their deserved and enduring fame.
Now, as it is certain that the Toledan School pursued similar methods in their literary labours, right requires that the reputation of its members should be judged by the same canons of criticism which we apply without hesitation to pictorial art. His own day unhesitatingly gave Scot the chief credit in the version of Averroës without inquiring too curiously what parts had been executed by the Cremonese, or other scholars, and what share belonged to Andrew the Jew. ”

“ Hence arose a whole system of magical practice, in which, from the circle of the sorcerer—a symbol representing on earth the motion of the upper spheres—the vapour of mingled herbs and minerals rose to heaven above the glowing brazier, accompanied by recited spells. It is curious to notice that when, after several ages, this essentially Eastern and theurgic necromancy [261] gave place to the witchcraft of the North, with its dark demonolatry, the essential idea of the Arabian magicians still survived. ”

“ But the Arabians themselves had derived their chemical science, at least in its first principles and primitive processes, from still older peoples. If we are to understand the progress of human thought in this science we must trace it from the beginning, following again that beaten track of tradition by which not physiognomy and alchemy alone, but almost all the secrets of early times, have reached the modern world.
Primitive chemistry was closely connected with the still older art of metallurgy, out of which it arose by a natural process of development. ”

“ There is much in these tales which lies apart from the course of a sober biography; belonging rather to that legendary and mystic fame of the philosopher which we shall immediately proceed to consider. Something, however, in which all these prophecies agree deserves our attention here, and that is their sombre and menacing character. ‘Ruinam predixit,’ says Pipini, referring to Scot’s verses on the Italian cities, and his thoughts, whether engaged with Frederick’s fate or his own, seem at this time to have followed the same dark and ominous course. ”

“ For many ages it has been the custom among Italian scholars, the attached dependants of a noble house, to offer on such occasions their homage to bride and bridegroom in the form of a learned treatise; any bookseller’s list of Nozze is enough to show that the habit exists even at the present day. This then was what Scot did; for there is every reason to think that the Physionomia, which he composed and dedicated to Frederick, was produced and presented at the time of the royal marriage. ”

“ A slight effort of fancy will find here the picturesque representation of Scot’s mental and physical state while at Cordova, and especially under the stress of the illness from which we are assured he then suffered. [161] What wonder if, in the vertigo of fever, he felt prisoned with swimming brain in magic circles; or is it strange that one so intent upon the doctrine of the departed Averroës should, in the height of his delirium, have planned to force [115] the grave itself, and summon the dead philosopher to tell the secret of his lost works? ”

“ He thus appears in his own pages, not merely as a keen sportsman, but as one who took no narrow interest in natural history. Clearly the dedication of the De Animalibus and the Abbreviatio Avicennae was no empty compliment as it flowed from the pen of Scot. He had directed his first labours from Toledo to one who could highly appreciate them, and to these works must be ascribed, in no small measure, the growth of the Emperor’s interest in a subject then very novel and little understood. ”

“ It will be observed that Satchells hesitates here between the title of knighthood which had been bestowed on Scot for a century past on the authority of Hector Boëce, and the more authentic dignity of Master which was really his. He also antedates the philosopher’s lifetime by more than a hundred years; so that plainly what we have in these verses is legend and tradition rather than history. ”

“ Here and there a baron’s lonely tower raised its grey horn on high, sheltering a troop of men-at-arms who made it their business to guard the land in war, and in peace to rid it of the savage forest-creatures that hindered the hind and herd in their labour and their hope. ”

“ Nature puts forth all these both orderly and with perfection, just as if guided by a controlling mind; though nature itself has no intelligence. The proportions and productive power which the elements owe to the motion of the sun and stars are what Plato called by the name of Ideas. According to Aristotle the Agent cannot create forms, for in that case something would be produced from nothing. ”

“ It is quite possible that there may be a measure of historic truth here, as well as the art which can seize or create an occasion, and which loves to contrast the triumph of arms with the more peaceful honours of literary fame. Frederick, we must remember, in a sort represented both. He was Maecenas as well as Caesar. In welcoming Michael Scot and doing him honour at these imperial banquets he was but crowning the success of an enterprise in which his own name and interest were deeply engaged. ”