III
MICHAEL SCOT
The name of Michael Scot is principally familiar to English readers through Sir Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel. Shakespeare’s Tempest and Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel are probably the two, best-known works among English classics which breathe throughout the weird and fascinating atmosphere of mediæval magic. Prospero is a magician, and the whole plot of the Tempest is based upon his magical practices and their consequences. The Lady of Branksome in the Lay of the Last Minstrel has also learned from her father the “forbidden art.”
In order the more effectually to accomplish her purposes, she dispatches her staunch henchman, William of Deloraine, to Melrose Abbey, where lies buried the wizard, Michael Scot, and buried with him, the Book of Might, which contains those potent spells whereby the great wizard had achieved his world-wide celebrity. “The Monk of St Mary’s Aisle,” now an ecclesiastical veteran of some hundred summers, had in earlier days fought the Moslem on the fields of Spain, and had there met and become an intimate friend of the much dreaded wizard. He had attended him at his death-bed, and had himself buried him in Melrose Abbey, receiving injunctions from him in his last hours never to allow the Book of Might to be disinterred “save at his chief of Branksome’s need.” For Michael Scot himself was a native of Teviot Dale, though his life had been spent in Italy, in Spain, and at Palermo in Sicily in attendance at the court of the Emperor Frederick II., whose fame became in a curious way linked with his own. The date of Michael Scot’s departure from Sicily for Spain was approximately 1210 A.D., and coincided with the turning-point of that long war of centuries which ended in the ejection of the Moorish conquerors from the Spanish peninsula. 1212 A.D. was the date of the decisive battle of Las Navas, which resulted in a crushing defeat for the Moorish forces, and led within fifty years to their retirement from all parts of Spain with the exception of the province of Granada. Scot was at this time in Spain pursuing his studies in Alchemy, Astrology, and the forbidden arts generally, and translating the works of the learned Arabians, Avicenna, Averroes, and Geber, and rewriting their paraphrases of Aristotle in the Latin tongue, which was then the universal medium for the dissemination of all scientific and philosophic knowledge throughout Europe.
We may imagine the monk of St Mary’s Aisle in his early days fighting the Moorish hosts in Spain and engaged, perhaps, in the great battle of Las Navas, which sealed their doom. Here he is represented by the poet as striking up a firm friendship with the student and philosopher, Michael Scot, and learning from him the secret of his magical practices. The monk is represented as telling William of Deloraine:
These achievements, according to the legend, were attributed to Michael Scot’s “familiar,” to whom he entrusted first one task and then another, but finding his energies too tireless, and fearing he might engage in some mischief which would react detrimentally on himself, finally sent him to spin ropes of sand at the mouth of the Tweed. This operation being an unending one, is said to be still in progress, and as his biographer relates, the successive attempts and failures of the spirit are pointed out as every tide casts up or, receding, uncovers the ever-shifting sands of Berwick bar. The reference to bridling the Tweed with a curb of stone, is an allusion to the basaltic dyke which crosses the bed of the river near Ednam. Michael, according to the tale, enjoyed that complete mastery of words of power which in the traditions of ancient magic is so potent a force in the working of wonders. As the monk records in his conversation with the knight of Branksome:
The monk was not unnaturally alarmed at the power that this archworker of spells might have given to the fiends of darkness, and took precaution to bury him
so that the cross of his patron saint reflected by the light of the moon from the emblazoned window pane might fall on the spot which was chosen for his grave. Once again on this fateful night the Red Cross was reflected on the sepulchral stone, and the opportunity which this offered to take possession of the Book of Might undisturbed by the hosts of darkness, must be taken without delay. Within the grave was one of those ever-burning lamps, for the existence of which there seems to be some historical evidence, and which was to serve in the present instance as a further protection for the wizard against the fiends of night. Deloraine’s task achieved “by dint of passing strength” with the aid of a bar of iron handed him by the monk, the light
William of Deloraine hesitated to perform what seemed very like an act of sacrilege. He was used to battlefields, but panic seized him in this strange scene, and the monk was eventually compelled to warn him that delay in such circumstances was dangerous.
How the knight and priest withdrew from the chapel after the tombstone had been replaced, in the redoubled gloom of the night, “with wavering steps and with dizzy brain,” imagining the walls of the chapel echoing with fiendish laughter as they retreated, is recounted dramatically enough by the bard of the Scottish border. We are, perhaps, more interested to know what manner of man this Michael Scot was, and how far these records of his magical powers are based on anything more than unauthenticated tradition. The facts we possess with regard to Michael Scot’s career convince us indeed that he was a man of the greatest erudition and learning, and far in advance of his contemporaries in these respects. He was a noted mathematician, and not content with gaining the highest honours in the schools of Paris of that day, he subsequently pursued his studies at the fountain-head of mathematical and alchemical research at Toledo in Spain. For it must be remembered that we owe the basis of our mathematical knowledge primarily to the Arabs who introduced to Europe not only the Arabic numerals in place of the cumbrous Roman figures, but also the study of Algebra, itself an Arabic word. To the Arabs, too, we owe the basis of our Chemistry—a word that is, of course, synonymous with Alchemy, which again bears the stamp of its Arabian origin. It is curious indeed to note how far the civilisation of the Arab was in advance of that of the greater part of Europe in those days. Five hundred years before Michael Scot took ship from Sicily for Spain, the Arabs had advanced across the whole of Northern Africa, conquering Egypt, Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco in turn, and finally crossing to Spain and there establishing a separate kaliphate in the eighth century of the Christian era. The invasion of Spain by the Arabs introduced into the Iberian peninsula a literary culture of a kind till then quite unknown. Under the sway of the Moorish sovereigns the arts and architecture flourished, and science found a welcome which it met with nowhere else in Christianised Europe.
It was to the Moorish capital that students of the medical art repaired who desired to master the latest discoveries and most modern methods in the treatment of the human body. Irrigation with the Moors had become an applied science, and was employed extensively throughout the Iberian peninsula with the most advantageous results in enhancing the fertility of the soil. Nowhere else in Europe did the land yield such rich harvests, and nowhere else was the science of agriculture so fully understood. The fertile fields of those days are in many cases replaced by barren deserts and the towns with teeming populations by ruins and uninhabited wastes. The ignorant peasantry that has taken the place of the cultivated sons of Arabia are still in the matter of civilisation and commercial activity hundreds of years behind the busy and intelligent population whom in the latter part of the fifteenth century they finally drove over the seas after subjecting them to the most cruel persecution for adhering to the faith of their fathers. Three million Moors are said to have been ejected from Spanish soil at the bidding of the civil power, instigated by ecclesiastical tyranny. Civilisation has not yet rallied from the so-called “triumph of the Cross” in Spain. This ejection of the Moors from the west of Europe coincided, as it happened, with the advent of the Turk at Constantinople; but here, by a curious contradiction, the Turk as the champion of Mohammedanism represented not progress but the triumph of the sword. The case was inverted, but in each instance it represented the victory of barbarism over civilisation, whether the Mohammedan made headway in the east or the Christian in the west. In the east the effete remnant of the Eastern Empire was swept away before the advancing hosts of Islam. In the west a far more highly developed and industrial population was wiped out at the bidding of the myrmidons of the Papal See.
For five hundred years the Moors had ruled all but the northernmost portion of Spain, and for another 250 they retained the province of Granada. Countless examples of their ornate and characteristic semi-oriental architecture remain behind as a record of their artistic culture, and much also of their language intermingled with that of the race which they at first conquered and which in the days of their luxury and decadence reconquered them in turn. But the intellectual life of Moorish Spain, which was for so long like a beacon light in the darkness of Mediæval Europe, has passed, never to return. The Inquisition marked the high-water mark of the reaction of Christian bigotry against the tolerant and broad-minded intellectuality which had flourished under the fostering dominion of a race whose glories to-day are but a memory of the far-distant past.
Scot as a mathematician, alchemist, and astrologer, had this been his sole life’s work, would have merited no insignificant niche in the temple of Science; but in addition to this, he exercised, though in an entirely indirect manner, a marked influence on the history of Europe. His talents and learning commended him for the position of tutor to Frederick II., at that time king only of Sicily, but afterwards “Emperor of the Romans.” Frederick was an orphan, having lost both his parents in early childhood, and the receptive mind of the ardent boy responded sympathetically to the instructions of his broad-minded and accomplished tutor, who was destined subsequently to become his confidant and friend.
Michael Scot’s first efforts as an author had for their aim the education of his royal pupil. For this purpose he first wrote the Liber Introductorius, and afterwards the Liber Particularis and the Physionomia. The first two of these books dealt with astronomy and astrology, and the latter with physiognomy and the reading of character from the physical appearance.
Marriages were arranged early in those days, and Frederick, when a boy of but fourteen, was united in wedlock, at the Pope’s desire, with Constance, daughter of the King of Aragon, and widow of the King of Hungary, who was some ten years his senior. This brought the attendance of Michael Scot at the court at Palermo, temporarily at least, to an end, and led to his setting sail, as already narrated, for the coasts of Spain. It appears that the Physionomia was his parting gift on his marriage to his illustrious pupil. On his arrival in Spain, Scot betook himself to the headquarters of the scientific activities of those days, the renowned city of Toledo. Here, towards the middle of the twelfth century, a regular school for translations from the Arabic had been established, and it was work of this kind on which Scot himself embarked. Here he translated the Abbreviatio Avicennæ with a dedication to the Emperor Frederick in the following terms: “O! Frederick, Lord of the World, and Emperor, receive with devotion this book of Michael Scot, that it may be a grace unto thy head and a chain about thy neck”—no empty compliment as such phrases generally are, nor one unappreciated by its distinguished recipient. Here, too, he pursued his studies in alchemy, chemistry, medicine, and astrology. Alchemy in those days was a special bone of contention, one school maintaining its feasibility, and the other denouncing it, after the manner of nineteenth century scientists, as a mere will-o’-the-wisp. The belief in it which later on took hold of Mediæval Europe had not yet met with any general sort of acceptance, though the Arabian school in the main adopted it, and there seems little doubt that it was held by Michael Scot himself. One book indeed on this particular subject, De Alchimia, is attributed to his pen. The book is contained in a manuscript in possession of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. If, however, the main part of the work is genuine, which is somewhat uncertain, the dedication to Theophilus, King of the Scots, is certainly not so. We have in this book a curious formula for turning lead into gold, which runs as follows:
Medibibaz, the Saracen of Africa, used it to change lead into gold in the following manner:—Take lead and melt it thrice with caustic (comburenti), red arsenic, sublimate of vitriol, sugar of alum, and with that red tuchia of India which is found on the shore of the Red Sea, and let the whole be again and again quenched in the juice of the Portulaca marina, the wild cucumber, a solution of sal ammoniac, and the urine of a young badger. Let all these ingredients then, when well mixed, be set on the fire, with the addition of some common salt, and well boiled until they be reduced to one-third of their original bulk, when you must proceed to distil them with care. Then take the marchasite of gold, prepared talc, roots of coral, some carcharoot, which is an herb very like the Portulaca marina; alum of Cumæ, something red and saltish, Roman alum and vitriol, and let the latter be made red; sugar of alum, Cyprus earth, some of the red Barbary earth, for that gives a good colour; Cumæan earth of the red sort, African tuchia, which is a stone of variegated colours and being melted with copper changeth it into gold; Cumæan salt which is pure red arsenic, the blood of a ruddy man, red tartar, gumma of Barbary, which is red and worketh wonders in this art; salt of Sardinia which is like.... Let all these be beaten together in a brazen mortar, then sifted finely and made into a paste with the above water. Dry this paste, and again rub it fine on the marble slab. Then take the lead you have prepared as directed above, and melt it together with the powder, adding some red alum, and some more of the various salts. This alum is found about Aleppo (Alapia), and in Armenia, and will give your metal a good colour. When you have so done you shall see the lead changed into the finest gold, as good as what comes from Arabia. This have I, Michael Scot, often put to the proof and ever found it to be true.
Whether the statement appearing in the manuscript under his name, that Michael Scot worked on this recipe, be true or not, one would not envy the task of the modern chemist who was called upon to compound the prescription. The basic idea of alchemy which, since the discovery of radium, is looked upon with some favour by certain advanced scientists, that all metals are reducible to a single substance, and therefore theoretically interchangeable, does not seem to find much place in this curious prescription, which suggests the idea of what we should call to-day a gold-substitute, rather than the genuine metal itself, in spite of the fact that we are told that the gold in question would prove “as good as what comes from Arabia.”
The greatest work of Scot as translator was his reproduction in Latin of the commentary of Averroes on the De Anima of Aristotle. This book, which expounded views on theological problems which were the reverse of orthodox, was long held back from publication by Scot’s patron, the Emperor Frederick, who hesitated to incur obloquy, and in especial the hostility of the Pope by reason of its publication. Friction, however, between the Papal See and the Emperor became so acute in the end that it appeared useless to attempt to placate papal bigotry further, and the publication in question was thus finally given to the world.
The study of the writings of Averroes had indeed taken very strong hold on Scot’s imagination, and if the story may be accepted as authentic, he even went so far as to attempt to evoke the spirit of the great Arabian, presumably with a view to securing his assistance in the work which he had in hand. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in the supposition that Scott practised or experimented in such methods of evocation. Averroes had only been dead some twenty years when Scot was in Spain, and holding the views he did, he may well have thought that the philosopher’s spirit had not passed so far from the physical plane that some form of necromantic conjuration of his conscious personality would be ineffectual. Here, as elsewhere, it seems impossible to draw the line between record of fact and that fabric of legend and tradition which has been woven round the story of his life.
A number of the tales told of Scot’s magical achievements reduce themselves in the light of modern knowledge to the results of highly developed hypnotic powers. It is familiar knowledge that such achievements are not unknown in India at the present day. A Florentine authority gives us one of these anecdotes. Scot’s guests at dinner, we are told, once asked him to show them a new marvel. The month was January. Yet in spite of the season he caused vines with fresh shoots and ripe grapes to appear on the table. The company were bidden each of them to choose a bunch, but their host warned them not to put forth their hands till he should give the sign. At the word “Cut!” lo, the grapes disappeared, and the guests found themselves each with a knife in the one hand and in the other his neighbour’s sleeve. Another story of a more or less similar character is told of a feast given by the Emperor to celebrate his coronation at Rome, which took place on November 22, 1220.
The pages were still on foot with ewers and basins of perfumed water and embroidered towels, when suddenly Michael Scot appeared with a companion, both of them dressed in Eastern robes, and offered to show the guests a marvel. The weather was oppressively warm, so Frederick asked him to procure them a shower of rain which might bring coolness. This the magician did accordingly, raising a great storm, which as suddenly vanished again at their pleasure. Being required by the Emperor to name his reward, Scot asked leave to choose one of the company to be the champion of himself and his friend against certain enemies of theirs. This being freely granted, their choice fell on Ulfo, a German baron. As it seemed to Ulfo, they set off at once on their expedition, leaving the coasts of Sicily in two great galleys, and with a mighty following of armed men. They sailed through the Gulf of Lyons, and passed by the Pillars of Hercules, into the unknown and western sea. Here they found smiling coasts, received a welcome from the strange people, and joined themselves to the army of the place; Ulfo taking the supreme command. Two pitched battles and a successful siege formed the incidents of the campaign. Ulfo killed the hostile king, married his lovely daughter, and reigned in his stead; Michael and his companion having left to seek other adventures. Of this marriage sons and daughters were begotten, and twenty years passed like a dream ere the magicians returned, and invited their champion to revisit the Sicilian court. Ulfo went back with them, but what was his amazement, on entering the palace of Palermo, to find everything just as it had been at the moment of their departure so long before; even the pages were still holding rounds with water for the hands of the Emperor’s guests. This prodigy performed, Michael and the other withdrew and were seen no more; but Ulfo, it is said, remained ever inconsolable for the lost land of loveliness, and the joys of wedded life he had left behind for ever, in a dream not to be repeated.
On Scot’s return to the court of Frederick II., after his sojourn in Sicily, he added the study and practice of the medical art to his other activities. Lesley states that he “gained much praise as a philosopher, astronomer, and physician,” and Dempster speaks of him as “one of the first physicians for learning.” He appears to have treated cases which would not yield to the ordinary medical pharmacopœia, and in particular he specialised in leprosy, gout, and dropsy. Acting apparently under his advice, Frederick II. instituted various reforms in the practice of medicine. It was stipulated that the course preliminary to qualification should consist of three years in arts, and five in medicine and surgery. Laws were passed forbidding the adulteration of drugs, while physicians were prohibited from demanding a greater fee than half a taren of gold per day, and this gave the patient the right to be visited three times in the course of the twenty-four hours. It was stipulated that the poor should be attended free of charge. Certain recipes of Michael Scot’s are still extant, and can be studied in Latin in the British Museum. One of these bears the name of the Pillulæ Magistri Michaelis Scoti. They seem to be something in the nature of a universal panacea, and perhaps if the prescription were taken up by some enterprising modern chemist, they might rival the fame of the celebrated Beecham’s Pills!
It appears that Scot had ambitions in the way of ecclesiastical preferment; but though the Emperor put himself out to secure his favourite the position which he coveted, and in fact appealed to the Pope on his behalf, nothing practical came of these representations. Probably Scot’s fame was of too dubious a kind to recommend him to the heads of the orthodox Church, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom the Pope applied in his interest, does not seem to have responded in any friendly fashion. Finally, an offer was made to Michael Scot of the Archbishopric of Cashel in Ireland, but in those days the Irish were little better than a barbarous race, and they spoke the language of Erse, which was a sealed book to their prospective bishop. In any case, though the Chapter had actually elected him to the post, he decided to decline. He apparently had too much principle to accept the position of an absentee bishop, and a home among a wild and uncultured race would hardly have been to the liking of a man who had associated with the most intellectual minds of Europe. These hopes of ecclesiastical preferment having fallen through, Frederick, after long delay, decided to take steps for the publication of the translation of the works of Averroes, and certain books of Aristotle, with the commentaries thereon of the Arabian philosophers. He issued an imperial circular announcing the appearance of these, and sent Michael Scot as his emissary to arrange for their publication in the principal European centres of learning. Finally, after visiting Bologna and Paris, Scot made his way to England, where he appears to have visited Oxford about the year 1230. Tradition says that he journeyed thence to his native land of Scotland. But shortly after this we lose sight of him altogether, and though there is no authoritative evidence with regard to his death, he seems to have passed away by or before the year 1232. In this year the Abbreviatio Avicennæ was published at Melfi, in the Latin version which Scot had translated. Henry of Colonia was selected by Frederick to transcribe the work from the imperial copy, and Scot’s biographer is probably right in regarding this work as a wreath laid by his imperial friend on his grave. The matter would assuredly have been placed in Scot’s own hands if he were still alive.
Scot is related to have foretold that his death would take place by the blow of a stone falling on his head, and tradition says that being in church one day with head uncovered at the sacring of the mass, a stone, shaken from the tower by the motion of the bell rope, fell upon his head, mortally wounding him. Presumably this incident occurred in Scotland; if, that is, there is any truth at all in the story.
Another prediction is also attributed to Michael Scot by the same chronicler—Pipini. He states that he foretold the manner also of the Emperor’s death, which he declared would take place “ad portas ferreas”; that is, “at the iron gates,” and in a town named after Flora. Frederick, it is said, interpreted this as referring to Florence, which city he accordingly made a point of avoiding. During his last campaign, however, in the year 1250, he fell ill at Florentino, in Apulia, where he slept in a chamber of the castle. His bed, says the story, stood against a wall recently built to fill up the ancient gateway of the tower, the iron staples on which the gate had been hung still forming part of the wall. It is stated that the Emperor, learning these particulars, and calling to mind Michael Scot’s prediction, exclaimed, “This is the place where I shall make an end, as it was told me. The will of God be done, for here I shall die.” A few days later the great Emperor passed to his rest.
Of Michael Scot’s learning and erudition there can be no question, in spite of the unfavourable criticisms of Roger Bacon with regard to his knowledge of languages, which are the less worthy of notice in view of the fact that Bacon’s own accomplishments in this direction were far inferior to those of Scot. A fairer criticism of his work would be based on its lack of originality, and the fact that the greater part of his literary output was borrowed either from the Arabians or the Greeks. His talents as a past master of mathematics were never in dispute, and his researches into the problems presented by astronomy enjoyed a great vogue in his own day.
While there is no evidence but that of highly-coloured tradition to suggest that Michael Scot was the adept he is represented as being in magical spells and incantations, there is nothing in our historical knowledge of his career which renders the practice of such arts by him at all incredible, or indeed unlikely. Legend has magnified this portion of his many-sided activities to the exclusion of that branch of his labours which might well, one would have thought, have earned for him more enduring fame. The lovers of the marvellous have thus surrounded with a mysterious and semi-sinister halo the name of a man whose chief work in life lay in the paths of philosophy, astronomy, and medical research. It seems not improbable that the last of these pursuits led this daring thinker into the investigation and practice of what to-day we term hypnotism, and its employment to the bewilderment of his acquaintances in the creation of illusions, the source of which we now recognise in the power of a master mind to mould by sheer force of will the plastic imagination and subjective consciousness of his audience.