One of the most important problems which called for solution at the hands of the Moorish astronomers was that of the recession of the heavenly bodies, by which, when observed at sufficient intervals of time, they were seen to fall short of the positions they might have been expected to reach. This recession, as we have remarked already, had been very accurately studied, and computed as exactly as the methods of the time allowed; but a reason for so remarkable a phenomenon was yet to seek. Alpetrongi boldly declared that the eastward motion was apparent only and not real. He explained that the source of power lay in the primum mobile or ninth sphere; that lying outside the sphere of the fixed stars. From hence the force producing circular motion was derived to the eighth, and so to the inferior spheres; each handing on a part of the impulse to that which lay beneath it. In the course of transmission, however, the prime force became gradually exhausted. Thus, said Alpetrongi, it happens that each sphere moves rather more slowly than the one above it, and so the apparent recession is accounted for in a way which shows it to be relative only and not absolute.
Another matter which exercised the minds of those who studied the heavens was the difference of elevation which the heavenly bodies showed according to the seasons of summer and winter. The sun, for example, at noonday of the summer solstice stood, they saw, at his highest point in the heavens, while he sank to his lowest on the shortest day of winter. Between these extremes he held gradually every intermediate position, and as he was meanwhile supposed to be moving in a circular path round the earth, his course came to be conceived of as a spiral alternately rising and declining. How was this spiral motion to be explained?
Each sphere, said Alpetrongi, has its own poles, which differ from those of the primum mobile, and thus each, while following the motion of the ninth sphere, accomplishes at the same time another revolution about its own proper poles. From the combination of these two movements arises one of the nature of a spiral which fully accounts for the seeming deviations of the heavenly bodies to north or south.[146]
Such were the contributions of this philosopher to the astronomy of his time. They were the fruit, he assures us, of patient study of the ancients, and specially of Aristotle and his commentators. He offered them to his age as a distinct improvement on the cumbrous theories of Ptolemy, and as an advance even upon that of Azarchel, whom, in the main, he acknowledges as his master in science. Antiquated and childish as his explanations may seem to us, we cannot help feeling that he had at least grasped firmly some of the chief problems of the sky. He stood in the line of that inquiry and patient progress which have issued in the marvellous discoveries of later times.
Scot’s version of the Sphere of Alpetrongi has reached us accompanied by the date of its composition; a distinction which belongs to only one other among his translations, that of the Abbreviatio Avicennae. M. Jourdain had the merit of being the first who drew attention to this fortunate circumstance,[147] and he did so by quoting the colophons of two manuscripts of the Sphere discovered by him in the Paris library.[148] One of these closes thus: ‘Praised be Jesus Christ who liveth for ever throughout all time:[149] on the eighteenth day of August, being Friday, at the third hour, cum aboleolente,[150] in the year one thousand two hundred and fifty-five.’ The other gives the date thus: ‘The year of the Incarnation of Christ twelve hundred and seventeen.’ These two epochs coincide exactly, as the apparent difference arises from the date being expressed in the first manuscript according to the era of Spain. It is therefore doubly certain that Scot’s version of the Sphere of Alpetrongi was made in the year 1217.[151]
In completing this translation Michael Scot anticipated by one year only the great astronomical congress which the King of Castile presently caused to assemble at Toledo. It may very possibly therefore have been one of the versions prepared with a view to this great occasion and designed for the use of the Latin astronomers who might come there. Certain it is that the author was not less fortunate in this than in his previous literary ventures. The text was well chosen, the time of publication opportune, and the Sphere of Alpetrongi as it came from Scot’s hand had a wide circulation and influenced profoundly the astronomical beliefs of the day.[152]
We have already noticed how the commentaries of Avicenna on Aristotle had been translated into Latin at Toledo during the twelfth century, and how Michael Scot had completed that work by his version of the books relating to Natural History. Since the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, another Arabian author of the first rank had become the object of much curiosity in Europe. This was the famous Averroës of Cordova, whose history might fill a volume, so full was it of romantic adventure and literary interest.[153] He was but lately dead, having closed a long and laborious life on the 10th of December 1198, at Morocco, where his body was first laid to rest in the cemetery outside the gate of Tagazout. Born at Cordova in 1126, his name was closely associated with that of his native city, so that after three months had elapsed his corpse was brought thither from Africa, and given honourable and final burial in the tomb of his fathers at the cemetery of Ibn Abbas.
Two reasons combined to raise the fame of Averroës among the Latins, and to inspire them with a high curiosity regarding his works. He was known to have devoted his life to the study and exposition of Aristotle; then, as for many ages, the idol of the Christian schools. His philosophy was further understood to embody the strangest and most daring speculations regarding the origin of the universe and the nature of the soul. For these he had suffered severely at the hands of the Moslem orthodox. They had proscribed his works and compelled him to leave his employment and pass the most precious years of his life in exile.
These common impressions regarding Averroës were in the main correct. His labours had appeared in three forms; a paraphrase, and a lesser and greater commentary on the books of Aristotle, and the philosophy which these writings contained was undoubtedly Manichæan, if not in a measure Pantheistic. Like that of all the Arabian philosophers, to whose teaching Averroës gave its final and most characteristic form, this doctrine was really Greek: the Aristotelic scheme of the universe as it had been conceived anew by Porphyry of Alexandria. At the foundation lay a mighty Duality: that of the opposing powers of Good and Evil. With the notion of exalting Him above the possibility of blame, God, the Centre of the Universe, about whom all revolves, was declared to be the Absolute and unconditional Being; while over against Him was set Matter, also eternal, from which, in its stubborn resistance to the Divine Will, all evil had arisen. Any direct action of Deity upon matter could not be thought of; so the interval between them was conceived of as occupied by several Emanations proceeding from God, among which we may notice those of the Divine Wisdom and the Divine Power. This Wisdom was said to be impersonal; one common to all intelligent creatures; the Light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. This Power was regarded as supreme, seated high above the spheres, and, through the Primum Mobile, entering into touch with matter and deriving its force downward from one heavenly circle to another till it reaches earth itself.
The origin of created beings was a problem which received much attention from Averroës. His ideas on this subject will be seen when we come to speak of the important digression he wrote under the title of Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici.[154] In every man he perceived the existence of a passive intellect or reason, in relation to which the other Heavenly Intelligence, or Divine Wisdom, presented itself to him as the Active Reason: that in whose motions Thought was always accompanied by Power. The one was Impersonal and Eternal, the other individual and perishable, yet Averroës taught that a close relation subsisted between them, and a consequent sympathy and attraction, in which the passive intelligence strove to unite itself with the active and thus achieve eternity and immortality.[155]
This union was known as the ittisal: the supreme object of the wise man’s desire, and in connection with it emerged for the first time a distinction between Averroës and his predecessors. Ibn Badja, with whom he held the closest relation, had proposed a course of moral discipline as the best way of attaining the ittisal: the same ascetic practice which Ibn Tofail so remarkably illustrated and commended in his mystical romance Hay Ibn Yokhdan. Gazzali on the other hand, who was the sceptic of these schools, boldly declared that the ittisal was only to be reached by an intellectual and spiritual confusion attained in the zikr, or whirling dance of the Dervishes. It was left then for Averroës to vindicate once more the validity of human reason, and this he did by proclaiming that science, rightly understood, was the true way of entering into intellectual communion with the Deity. All, however, agreed in teaching that the soul of man was but an individual and temporary manifestation of the Divine, from which it had proceeded, and into which it would again be absorbed.
It is plain that the way to this consummation proposed by Averroës had much in common with the ancient theories of the Alexandrian Gnosis. The Albigenses and other sects of the time, especially that called the Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost, had already done much to familiarise the West with these essentially Eastern speculations. A taste for such flights of the mind had been formed, and, as soon as it became known that a new teacher had arisen to advocate a theory of this kind among the Moors, Christianity too was alive with curiosity to know what the doctrine of Averroës might be.
In these circumstances the anathema of the Church proved powerless to restrain so strong an impulse of the human spirit. The Council of Paris in 1209 had sounded the first note of warning and of censure. In 1215 Robert de Courçon published a statute in that university by which the name of Mauritius Hispanus, understood by Renan to mean Averroës, was associated with those of David of Dinant and Almaric of Bena the French Pantheists of the day, and all men were warned to have nothing to do with their writings under pain of censure. In spite of these enactments five years had not passed since the date of the latter proclamation, before the commentaries of Averroës were rendered into Latin and the secrets of his remarkable philosophy laid open to the scholastic world.
The credit of this bold and successful enterprise belongs, it would be hard to say in what proportions, to the Emperor Frederick II. and to Michael Scot his faithful servant. Frederick had indeed every reason to feel an interest in the works of Averroës. His mind was naturally keen and of a speculative cast. He showed little inclination to subject his curiosity to the restraints of custom or ecclesiastical authority, and was thus at least as likely as any of the wise and noble of his day to indulge his passion for what promised to be both original and curious. We are to remember also that he stood in close relation with the peculiar religious opinions already noticed, which were then so prevalent both in south-eastern France and the adjoining parts of Spain. His brother-in-law, who died so suddenly at Palermo, was Count of Provence, and, whatever place the unfortunate Alphonso may have held with regard to the heresy so common in his dominions, we may feel sure that among the host of Provençal knights who formed his train when he came to Sicily there must have been some at least who were adherents of the Albigensian party. No religious opinion ever made so striking a progress among the wealthy and noble as this, and none was ever commended in a way more fit to win the sympathy and interest of a youthful monarch inclined to letters and gallantry. The doctrine of the Albigenses was in fact a late revival of the Gnosis of Alexandria. It flattered the pride of those who desired distinction even in their religion. Its representatives and advocates were no repulsive monks or sour ascetics but men of birth and breeding, who excelled in manly exercises, and were famous for their success in the courts of love and in the gay saber. It would not have been wonderful if Frederick himself had become an Albigensian. He is known to have caught a taste for Provençal poetry if nothing more, and it is certain that he remained, to the close of his life, and even beyond it, a grateful and sympathetic figure among those who, after the great persecution, still represented Albigensian doctrine.[156] Something of this may have been due to the influence of his wife Constantia, whose father, Don Pedro of Aragon, had fallen gallantly in 1213 under the walls of Murel, during an expedition in which he led the Spanish chivalry to aid the Counts of Toulouse and Foix the champions of the Albigensian party.
The probability that the Emperor had early felt an interest in Averroës is confirmed by a curious statement of Gilles de Rome,[157] who tells us that the sons of the Moorish philosopher received a cordial welcome from Frederick and lived in honour at his Court. Renan indeed finds reason to doubt the truth of this statement,[158] yet we may remember that the chronicler could not in any case have ventured upon it unless the Emperor’s sympathy for Averroës had been matter of common knowledge.
As to Michael Scot we may feel sure that he was every whit as eager as his master could be to honour the philosopher’s memory and to gain a nearer acquaintance with his writings. The manuscript in the Laurentian library to which we have already referred[159] speaks, it will be remembered, of a visit paid by Scot to the city of Cordova. It is not difficult to determine with a high degree of probability the reason that may have led him thither. Had he lived three hundred years earlier indeed, the fame of Cordova as a centre of learning might well have proved a sufficient attraction to account for this journey. In the tenth century that city shone as the seat of a great Jewish school: one of those lately transferred to Spain from the eastern cities of Pombeditha and Sura. The Caliph Hakim, under whose protection this change took place, gave royal encouragement to the learned men who came to Cordova. Thousands of students assembled in the great Mosque, and Hakim collected for their use a magnificent library which was said to contain four hundred thousand volumes. Al Mansour, however, who succeeded to Hakim’s throne, fell under the influence of orthodox scruples. He burnt much of the great library, and the rest perished at the disastrous sack of Cordova in the following century. The ruin of the Rabbinical academies was completed a little later by the cruel edict of Abd-el-Mumen, who expelled the Jews from his realm. The most famous teachers of Cordova and Lucena then betook themselves to Castile. Alphonso VII. received them kindly and gave them liberty to settle in his capital. These events took place before 1150, and from that date the ancient schools which had given such fame to Cordova and Lucena became one of the chief attractions of Toledo.
The sole glory which Cordova still retained in the days when Scot visited it was the memory of departed greatness, and of Averroës, whose fame must yet have endured as a living tradition in the place of his birth and burial. We may therefore believe that it was as a pilgrim to the shrine of that illustrious name that the traveller came hither. As he wandered amid the countless columns of the great Mosque, or stayed his steps by the tomb of Ibn Abbas, he must have found a melancholy pleasure in recalling the mighty past, when these aisles were crowded with eager students and when, still later, the last scion of the Cordovan schools had appeared in the person of the Master whose writings were now the object of so much curiosity. It is quite possible that something of a practical purpose may have combined with these sentiments to determine the direction of Scot’s journey. Twenty years had not passed, we must remember, since the body of Averroës was laid in its last resting-place. What if those who directed and composed the solemn funeral procession from Morocco to Cordova had brought with them the books which the philosopher was engaged in completing at the time of his death? The hope of a great literary discovery could hardly have been absent from the mind of Michael Scot as he travelled southward to seek the white walls of the Moorish city.[160]
There is no reason to think that the story of the spell framed by Scot at Cordova was literally and historically true; it seems to belong rather to the department of his legendary fame as a necromancer. Yet, read as a parable, this conjuration is not without interest and perhaps importance. It professes to compel the appearance of spirits from the nether deep, and to command an answer to any question the sage or student might choose to ask. 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 the grave itself, and summon the dead philosopher to tell the secret of his lost works? 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. It was one which demanded, not only means, talent, and unwearied labour, but high courage as well, considering the suspect character of that philosophy and the censures under which it already lay. In the event indeed this proved to be a matter highly creditable to those who promoted it, but one which carried serious and far-reaching consequences both for Michael Scot and for the Emperor himself in the ecclesiastical and political sphere.
When Scot returned to Toledo it was not with the purpose of attempting single-handed a task for which not only time, but the co-operation of several scholars, was evidently necessary. There is reason to think that the Emperors commission conveyed some instruction to this effect; for, as a matter of fact, we know that at least two other hands were associated with Scot in the translation of Averroës.
One of these was Gerard of Cremona, not of course the Cremonese who died in 1187, but the younger scholar of the same name, perhaps a son or nephew of the elder. He is distinguished as Gherardus de Sabloneta Cremonensis. The Victorine manuscript[162] supplies evidence that he contributed to the work in which Michael Scot was now engaged.
It is not impossible that Philip of Tripoli may have joined in the new enterprise. His name does not indeed appear in any of the manuscripts which contain the Latin Averroës, but we have seen that he was certainly in Spain about this time and even at work with Gerard of Cremona.[163] His intimate relation to Michael Scot is also beyond question, and, upon the whole, it seems reasonable to suppose that the Emperor may have engaged him to help in the work now going forward.
However this may have been as regards the exact details of time and persons, we may regard it as a matter now for the first time brought to light and established, that in the years between 1217 and 1223 there existed a college of translators in Toledo just such as that which had done so much excellent work there a century before. In the new school Frederick II. held the honourable place of patron, as Archbishop Raymon had done in his day, while Michael Scot and Gerard of Cremona aided each other in completing the version of Averroës as Dominicus Gundisalvus had lent his help to form that of Avicenna. This view of the matter should be found very interesting, not only in itself, but with regard to the conclusions arrived at by Jourdain, whose discoveries in the literary history of the twelfth century it so remarkably repeats and extends to the following age.
This correspondence between the earlier and later schools of Toledo is even more close and exact than we have yet observed. It appears also in the fact that a Jewish interpreter was attached to each, and rendered important service as a member of the college. Under Don Raymon this place was held by Johannes Avendeath, or Johannes Hispalensis as he is commonly called, who worked along with the Archdeacon. ‘You have then,’ says Avendeath, addressing the Archbishop, ‘the book which has been translated from the Arabic according to your commands: I reading it word by word into the vernacular (Spanish), and Dominic the Archdeacon rendering my words one by one into Latin.’[164] The same division of labour seems to have been followed in the new school which Frederick promoted. The Emperor drew the attention of these learned men to Averroës, and signified his desire that a version of this author should be prepared like that which had been made from Avicenna. Michael Scot and Gerard of Cremona were responsible, the former probably in a special sense, both for the general conduct of the undertaking, and, in particular, for the accuracy of the Latin. Now these scholars also, like their predecessors, availed themselves of the help of a Jewish interpreter. This was one Andrew Alphagirus, who seems to have taken the same part that Avendeath had formerly done, by translating the Arabic of Averroës into current Spanish, which Scot and his coadjutor then rendered into Latin.
Such at least appear to be the suggestions which offer themselves naturally to one who peruses the colophon to the copy of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem preserved in the Bibliotheca Angelica of Rome. Thus it runs: ‘Here endeth the book of Aristotle concerning animals, according to the abbreviation of Michael Scot Alphagirus.’ The form of expression is curious, but may be exactly matched from the versions produced by the earlier Toledan translators: that is, if we are to believe Bartolocci. This author, in the first volume of his Bibliotheca Rabbinica, mentions a manuscript of the Fondo Urbinate in the Vatican which, he says, contains the four books of Avicenna on Physics translated by ‘Johannes Gundisalvi.’ This name has evidently, like that of ‘Scoti Alphagiri,’ been formed by composition from those of the two translators, Johannes Avendeath and Dominicus Gundisalvi who aided each other in the work.[165]
As to the personality of Alphagirus, the only ground of conjecture seems to be that supplied by Romanus de Higuera, who, speaking of the learned men assembled in 1218 at Toledo for the astronomical congress, mentions that one of them was ‘el Conhesso Alfaquir’ of Toledo.[166] The place, the date, and the similarity of name, are all in favour of our supposing these two to be one and the same person. Nay further, as Alfaquir was of Toledo, and did not need to be summoned thither in 1218, there is no reason why he should not, as the ‘Alphagirus’ of 1209, have assisted Michael Scot in producing the De Animalibus for Frederick.
It is from a remark made by Roger Bacon that we know the first name of the Toledan interpreter to have been Andrew, and that he was a Jew. Bacon gives us this information in no kindly spirit, but in order to lead up to the bitter conclusion that Scot’s work was not original, but borrowed from one whose labours and just fame he had appropriated. ‘Michael Scot,’ he says, ‘was ignorant of languages and science alike. Almost all that has appeared in his name was taken from a certain Jew called Andrew.’[167]
A sufficient answer to this serious accusation may be found in what we already know of the literary fashions of the day, and, in particular, of the traditional methods of work pursued by the Toledan translators. It was precisely thus that the Archdeacon Gundisalvus had used the aid of Avendeath. A little later too, we find the same system adopted in the translation of the Koran promoted by Peter the Venerable. That ecclesiastic thus expresses himself in sending a copy of his book to St. Bernard: ‘I had it translated by one skilled in both tongues; Master Peter of Toledo; but since he was not as much at home in the Latin, and did not know it as well as the Arabic, I appointed one to help him … Brother Peter our Notary.’ To his Koran Peter the Venerable joined a Summa Brevis of the Christian controversy with the Mohammedans. This work also came from the pen of Master Peter, and with regard to it he makes the following remarks: ‘By giving elegance and order to what had been rudely and confusedly stated by him (i.e. by Master Peter) he (i.e. Brother Peter the Notary) has completed an epistle, or rather a short treatise, which, as I believe, will be very useful to many.’[168]
This correspondence throws a clear light upon the case of Michael Scot in regard to the charge of plagiarism. Like Master Peter, he was familiar with both the Latin and the Arabic language. His weak point, however, we may suppose to have made itself felt with regard to the latter, which he probably knew better in its colloquial than its literary form, and this must have been the reason why he availed himself of the aid of a Spanish Jew to secure the accuracy of his work. Such collaboration seems to have produced nearly all the previous versions which came from Toledo, and it is obvious that the honour due to the various contributors who combined in forming these translations can only be determined by those who have it in their power to make a careful and unprejudiced valuation of their individual labours in each case. We may gravely doubt whether this was what Bacon did before he sat down to pen his sharp censure on Michael Scot. Certainly such an estimate is now out of the question. We can only affirm the undoubted fact that the critic was wrong when he said Scot did not know Arabic. The contrary appears, not only from the probability we have already drawn from his Sicilian residence, but by actual testimony of a very honourable kind.[169] Nor must we forget to notice that the openness with which this copartnery was carried on affords a proof that no deceit could have been thought of in the matter. Considering the past history of the Toledan School, it must have been taken for granted that every version which came from thence under the name of a Christian scholar owed something to the care of his Moorish scribe.
Even had we not been able to make such an appeal to the use and wont of the times in vindication of Scot’s method of work, might not a little consideration of what was natural and inevitable in such a task have served to explain what Bacon found so objectionable? The scholars from distant lands who came to Toledo could not, as a rule, afford to spend much time there, and were anxious to use every moment of their stay to the best advantage. They naturally therefore secured on their arrival the services of a Jew or Moor for the purpose of learning Arabic. Needing a knowledge of that tongue not so much in its colloquial as its literary dialect, they must have been engaged from the first in the study of a text rather than in conversing with their teachers. What then could have been more suitable than that these scholars should begin by attacking the very books of which they desired to furnish a Latin version? This method had the merit of gaining two objects at once. The students learned to read Arabic, following the text as it was translated to them by the interpreter. Writing in Latin from his vernacular, and polishing as they wrote, they engaged from the day of their arrival in the very work of translation which had brought them to Spain. It is plain too that any modification of this method which the case of Michael Scot might demand would depend on the knowledge of Arabic he already possessed. It must therefore have been such as left him more and not less credit in the result of his labours than that which commonly belonged to the Christian translators in Toledo.
The whole matter of these versions, and of the fame belonging to Michael Scot in connection with them, seems to receive some further light when we compare the Toledan practice with that which distinguished the most famous schools of painting. It would surely be a strange freak of criticism which should deny to any of the great masters his well-earned fame because of the ground on which it was raised, or the numerous scholars whom it attracted to his studio. Yet we know well what this relation between the master and his school implied in the palmy days of pictorial art. There were apprentices who stretched canvas, mixed colours, and pricked and pounced designs. There were pupils, to whom, according to their talents and proficiency, varied parts of the execution were assigned. To the master alone belonged the oversight and responsibility of the whole. Giving a general design, were it only in a sketch from his hand, he watched the progress of the work with jealous eye, and caught the decisive moment to interpose by executing with his own pencil such parts of the painting as might give a distinctive character, a cachet, to the whole. Not till he was satisfied that the desired effect had been secured might the picture leave his studio, and who shall say that he did wrong to sign his name to works produced in such a way? 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. It may make us the more ready to accept this verdict and adopt it as our own when we remember the intellectual qualities of the Emperor for whom this work was done. It is certainly out of the question to suppose that a reputation in letters, such as Michael Scot undoubtedly enjoyed at the court of Frederick II., could have been gained by any but legitimate and honourable means.
Coming to an examination then of the various versions which came from the new Toledan School, we find that two of them expressly bear to have been the work of Scot himself. The first of these is the treatise commencing ‘Maxima cognitio naturae et scientiae.’ It is the commentary of Averroës on the De Coelo et Mundo of Aristotle,[170] and Scot has prefaced it by an introduction conceived as follows: ‘To thee, Stephen de Pruvino, I, Michael Scot, specially commend this work, which I have rendered into Latin from the sayings of Aristotle. And should Aristotle have delivered somewhat in an incomplete form concerning the fabric of the world in this book, thou mayest have what is wanting to complete it from that of Alpetragius which I have likewise rendered into Latin; and, indeed, it is one with which thou art well acquainted.’ As we know when the version of Alpetrongi on the Sphere was produced, this fortunate reference to that previous work enables us to determine, at least approximately, that of the De Coelo et Mundo, and hence of these translations of Averroës in general. The year 1217 is the first limit, before which they cannot have appeared, and 1223 is the last; for by that time Michael Scot had already left Spain. Between these two dates then, and probably nearer the former than the latter, must his labours and those of his coadjutors have been devoted to this important work.
Stephanus de Provino has been happily identified by M. Bourquelot with a somewhat notable ecclesiastic of the Church of Nôtre Dame du Val de Provins, whose name occurs in various documents dated between the years 1211 and 1233. Renan conjectures that he may be the same as a certain Etienne de Rheims, who, it seems, was born at Provins.[171] Perhaps he is the Stephanus Francigena of Guido Bonatti.[172] Scot’s friendship with him, to which the dedication of the De Coelo et Mundo bears witness, was probably begun in their student days at Paris.
The second version bearing the name of Scot is that which commences with the words: ‘Intendit per subtilitatem demonstrare;’ being the commentary of Averroës on the De Anima of Aristotle.[173] In the Victorine manuscript this treatise offers a curious title: ‘Here beginneth the Commentary of the Book of Aristotle the Philosopher concerning the Soul, which Averroës commented on in Greek, and Michael Scot translated into Latin.’
In the same manuscript the version of Averroës’s Commentary on the various books which compose the Parva Naturalia of Aristotle is ascribed to Gerard of Cremona. Renan observes that this ascription does not occur in any other copy, and supposes it to have been a mistake. He seems influenced in this conclusion by the fact that Gerard of Cremona died in 1187. It is curious to find such an eminent scholar forgetful of the existence of a younger Cremonese; and he is not alone in this error, for it has been repeated even of late years. Yet in 1851 Prince Baldassare Boncompagni had distinguished well between the elder and younger Gerard of Cremona in an excellent monograph on the subject.[174] Even had this work not been published, the learned world had already reason enough to suspect the truth. In a well-known passage of his Compendium Studii,[175] Roger Bacon speaks of Gerard of Cremona as a contemporary of Michael Scot, Alured of England, William the Fleming, and Herman the German, adding that those who were still young had nevertheless known Gerard, who was the eldest of this company of scholars. Now the Compendium Studii is commonly assigned to the year 1292, but even if we carry this passage back to 1267, when the most of Bacon’s works were written, it still appears evidently impossible that any one still young in that year could have seen a man who died in 1187. Boncompagni, as we have said, explains the difficulty by acquainting us with the younger Gerard, called de Sabloneta Cremonensis. He was undoubtedly a contemporary of Michael Scot, and the De Rossi manuscript, already referred to,[176] shows that he was in Spain about this time. There is therefore no reason to distrust the testimony of the Victorine codex when it gives Gerard the honour of having translated Averroës on the Parva Naturalia. In accomplishing this work he vindicated his right to the place we have already ventured to assign him as a member of the Toledan College.
The manuscript collections where the De Coelo et Mundo, the De Anima, and the Parva Naturalia of Averroës are found in a Latin dress, contain also versions of several other commentaries by the same author: those concerning the De Generatione et Corruptione, the four books of the Meteora, the De Substantia Orbis, and the Physica and Metaphysica of Aristotle.[177] We may safely ascribe them to the Toledo College. They were translated either by Michael Scot, Gerard of Cremona, or some other scholar who worked under these masters.
Renan, relying on the authority of Haureau,[178] has shown good reason to believe that at least the commentaries on the Physica and Metaphysica in their Latin versions came from the pen of Scot. Albertus Magnus, in a passage of high censure, delivers himself in the following terms: ‘Vile opinions are to be found in the book called Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici. I have been wont to say that the author of it was not Nicholas but Michael Scot, who in very deed knew not natural philosophy, nor rightly understood the books of Aristotle.’[179] The doctrine thus condemned is undoubtedly that of Averroës on the Physica and Metaphysica. A manuscript of the Paris library has a treatise commencing thus: ‘Haec sunt extracta de libro Nicolai Peripatetici,’ and it seems that a close correspondence exists between this and a certain digression in the commentary by Averroës on the twelfth book of the Metaphysics. This digression, says Renan, often occurs in the manuscripts as a separate treatise called ‘Sermo de quaestionibus quas accepimus a Nicolao et nos dicemus in his secundum nostrum posse.’ These words have been omitted from the printed editions of the Commentaries of Averroës, and thus the identity of this treatise with the book censured by Albertus Magnus was not recognised till Haureau discovered it.
The only result then of this sharp criticism is to assure us that the versions of the Physica and Metaphysica must also be reckoned to the credit of Michael Scot. For undoubtedly the opinions to which Albert took such exception were those of Averroës, and not of the translator. But if so, then what becomes of the censure passed upon Scot? The truth is that if he was more original than Bacon gave him credit for, on the other hand he escapes the force of Albert’s blame by proving to have been less original than the latter critic had supposed. His was indeed a hard case. He could not form versions from the Arabic but either he was accused of plagiarism or else held up to the indignation of Christianity as if he had been the author of the opinions he rendered into Latin. This steady determination to find fault overreaches itself. We begin to discover in it the bitter fruit of some odium philosophicum, and of that envy which even a just reputation seldom fails to excite.
Some curiosity may be felt with regard to the doctrine contained in the Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici which gave ground for such adverse opinions. M. Renan’s résumé of this treatise is clear and sufficient,[180] and we may reproduce it here, as it will afford a useful supplement to the account already given of the philosophy of Averroës. ‘As to the origin of the different kinds of being,’ says Averroës, ‘there are two exactly opposite opinions, as well as others occupying an intermediate position. The one explains the world by a theory of development, the other by creation. Those who hold the former say that generation is nothing but the outcome and in a sense the multiplication of being; the Agent, according to this hypothesis, doing no more than extricate being from being and make a distinction between them,[181] so that the Agent, thus conceived, has the function of a mere motive power. As to those who hold the hypothesis of creation, they say that the Agent produces being without having any recourse to pre-existent matter. This is the view taken by our Motecallemin, and by the followers of the Christian religion: for example, by Johannes Christianus (Philopon), who asserts that the possibility of creation lies in the Agent alone.’
‘The intermediate views may be reduced to two only, though the first of these admits several subdivisions which show considerable differences. These opinions agree in affirming that generation is only a change of substance; that all generation implies a subject; and that everything begets in its own likeness. The first opinion asserts, however, that the part of the Agent is to create form, and to impress it upon already existent matter. Some of those who hold this view, as Ibn Sina,[182] make an entire separation between matter in generation and the Agent, calling the latter the source of form, while others, among whom we may notice Themistius and perhaps Alfarabi, maintain that the Agent is in some cases conjoined with matter, as when fire produces fire, or man begets man; and in others separate from it, as in the generation of creeping things and plants, i.e. those not produced from seed,[183] which all owe their being to causes that are unlike themselves.’
‘The third theory is that of Aristotle, who holds that the Agent produces at once both form and substance, by impressing motion on matter, and begetting a change therein which rouses its latent powers to action. In this way of thinking the function of the Agent is only to make active that which already existed potentially, and to realise a union between matter and form. Thus all creation is reduced to motion of which heat is the principle. This heat, shed abroad in the waters and in the earth, begets both the animals and the plants which are not produced by seed. 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, in fact, the notion that forms could be created which has led some philosophers to suppose that forms have a substantive existence of their own, and that there is a separate source of these. The same error has infected all the three religions of our day,[184] leading their divines to assert that nothing can produce something. Starting from this principle our theologians have supposed the existence of one Agent producing without intermediary all kinds of creatures; an Agent whose action proceeds by an infinity of opposite and contradictory acts done simultaneously. In this way of thinking it is not fire that burns, nor water that moistens; all proceeds by a direct act of the Creator. 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. In order to destroy, just as to create, it is only necessary for the Agent to call this potentiality into activity. We must in short maintain as co-ordinate principles both the Agent and these potential powers. Were one of the two wanting, nothing could exist at all, or else all being would reduce itself to action; either of which consequences is as absurd as the other.’
We cannot wonder that Albertus Magnus, and all who held the Christian faith, were alarmed by doctrine of this kind and fiercely opposed it. The orthodox beliefs of Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans alike were declared false by this bold writer, whom several expressions which we have embodied in the above summary show clearly to have been Averroës, and not Michael Scot. In one passage indeed we seem to discover what may have suggested the widely spread fable that Frederick II., or Scot, or some other of their company and party, had produced an atheistic work called De Tribus Impostoribus. The imputation was a false one, yet most natural were the feelings of prejudice which the publication of this philosophy aroused against the great Emperor and Michael Scot who had acted as his agent in the matter.
Pursuing our investigation of the works which came from the Toledan College we discover that these were not confined to the books of Aristotle already noticed, but that the translators took a wider range in their labours. The Venice manuscript of Averroës,[185] besides the De Coelo et Mundo, the De Anima, the Meteora, the De Substantia Orbis, the De Generatione et Corruptione, and the Parva Naturalia, contains several other treatises that deserve attention. Two of these were compositions of Averroës; the one a commentary on the book of Proclus, De Causis, then commonly ascribed to Aristotle,[186] and the other an independent work, as it would seem, bearing the following title: ‘Qualiter intellectus naturalis conjungitur Intelligentiae abstractae,’ in short a treatise on the ittisal. The volume also contains the Latin version of a book by the Rabbi Moses Maimonides, entitled ‘De Deo Benedicto, quod non est Corpus, nec Virtus in Corpore.’[187] Maimonides, like Averroës, was a native of Cordova, and hence no doubt arose the interest that was felt in his works by the Toledan translators.
That the Venice manuscript is to be understood as a collection of the versions which came from that school appears plainly in the dedication to Stephen of Provins. This is generally prefixed to the De Coelo et Mundo, thus forming an introduction to the versions which follow; but here it has been placed at the end of the volume, occurring immediately after the short article De Vita Aristotelis which closes the whole series. We may see in this fact a certain probability that some at least of these additional versions may have been the work of Michael Scot himself. Nor will the five years which he spent at Toledo appear too scant a space of time for the production of the whole body of the Latin Averroës and something more, when we remember the ample and able assistance he enjoyed in the prosecution of his labours as a translator.
There is one other version of which we must speak before leaving the subject which has engaged our attention so long. The library of St. Omer contains a manuscript collection of the works of Aristotle in Latin which was written during the thirteenth century.[188] The fly-leaf at the commencement of this volume shows the same handwriting as the other pages, and has proved upon examination to be the last relic of a work which has unfortunately perished. What that work was may be seen from the closing words, which are as follows: ‘Here end the Nova Ethica of Aristotle, which Master Michael Scot translated from the Greek language into the Latin.’ This colophon opens a curious question. Are we to consider that the scribe wrote Greek when he should rather have said Arabic? It was by a mistake of such a kind that the writer of the Victorine manuscript asserted that Averroës had commented on the De Anima in Greek.[189] Taking it in this way the version of the Nova Ethica would fall into line with the others which Scot and Gerard of Cremona composed at Toledo. But it deserves notice that none of the manuscript collections usually considered to contain the work of that school comprises among its contents the Nova Ethica. We know, further, that a Latin version of the Ethics with the commentary of Averroës was made from the Arabic by Hermannus Alemannus.[190] This work was completed on the third of June 1240, and we can hardly suppose that it would have been entered on if Michael Scot had already accomplished the same task but twenty years earlier. These facts and considerations make it very unlikely that the St. Omer fragment represents a version of the Arabic text.
Assuming then the literal truth of this interesting colophon, we are confirmed in the conclusion to which an examination of the De Partibus Animalium in the Florence manuscript has already inclined our minds.[191] Michael Scot, it must now be held, did not confine his studies altogether to the Arabian authors, but undertook to form translations directly from the Greek. These two versions, and especially that of the Nova Ethica, open up a new and striking view of the scholar’s literary activity. When Aquinas moved Pope Urban to order a new translation of Aristotle from the original, William of Moerbeka and those others who presently entered upon this work were tilling no virgin soil, but a familiar field in which the plough of Scot at least had left deep furrows. Even the renowned Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, who executed a version of the Ethica from the Greek about 1250, was but following in the path which this earlier master had opened up. Michael Scot here takes rank with Boëthius and Jacobus de Venetiis, who were among the first to seek these pure and original sources of Aristotelic doctrine. He appears as one who not only completed the knowledge of his time with regard to the Arabian philosophy by translating Averroës, but who gave some help at least to lay the foundation of a more exact acquaintance with the works of Aristotle by opening a direct way to the Greek text. We may even see a sign of this remarkable position in the place of honour given, perhaps accidentally, to Scot’s version of the Nova Ethica at the opening of the St. Omer manuscript. He stands between two ages, and lays a hand of power upon each.
It is hardly necessary to add that in this he shines all the more brightly when compared with his great detractor. Roger Bacon, secure in the consciousness of his commanding abilities, attacks with a rare self-confidence, not Michael Scot alone, but all the scholars of his time. Not four of them, he says, know Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.[192] Those who pretend to translate from these tongues are ignorant even of Latin, not to speak of the sciences treated of in the books which they pretend to render intelligible. Busy in penning these diatribes, Bacon does not seem to have reflected that the best way of reproving the imperfections of which he complained would have been to shame these scholars to some purpose by producing better versions on his own account. But the truth of the matter lies here, that Bacon was no linguist. This appears plainly from the tale he tells against himself in the Compendium Studii; how a hard word in Aristotle had baffled him till one day there came some outlandish students to hear him lecture, who laughed at his perplexity, telling him it was good Spanish for the plant called Henbane.[193] ‘Hinc illae lachrymae’ then, and a plague on Michael Scot and all his tribe, who know Spanish so well they will not put a plain Latin word for the puzzled professor to understand. No wonder that to Scot rather than to Bacon, for all his genius, that age owed the chief part of the first translation of Aristotle and a good beginning of the second.
The return of Michael Scot from Spain to the Imperial Court was doubtless a striking moment, not only in the life of the philosopher himself, but in the history of letters. He then appeared fresh from a great enterprise, and bringing with him the proofs of its success in the form of the Latin Averroës. We cannot doubt that his reception was worthy of the occasion and of one who had served his master so faithfully.
Frederick was now returned to his dominions in the south. He had established his imperial rights in Germany at the cost of a campaign in which the pretensions of Otho were successfully overcome, and, on his return homeward in 1220, he had received the crown once more in Rome at the hands of the supreme ecclesiastical authority. His progress was indeed a continual scene of triumph. Arrived at Palermo, the court gave itself up to feasting and gaiety of every kind.
Two ancient romantic authorities[194] choose with dramatic instinct this moment, and these gay and voluptuous surroundings, as the mise en scène amid which they show us Scot again appearing to resume the place he had quitted more than ten years before. 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.
Traces of the impression made by this highly significant incident have been preserved in the arts of poetry and painting as well as in that of prose romance. Dante, who wrote his Divine Comedy less than a century later than the time of Scot, has given the philosopher a place in his poem, describing him as: