An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot. J. Wood Brown
and these were the prevailing conditions, under which Michael Scot was born. To the necessary and common impulse of Scottish scholars we are to trace the disposition of the great lines on which his life ran its remarkable and distinguished course. He is certainly one of the most notable, as he is among the earliest, examples of the student Scot abroad.
There can be little doubt regarding the nation where he had his birth. Disregarding for a moment the varying accounts of those who lived centuries after the age of Scot himself, let us make a commencement with one whose testimony is of the very highest value, being that of a contemporary. Roger Bacon, the famous scientist of the thirteenth century, introduces the name of Michael Scot in the following manner: ‘Unde, cum per Gerardum Cremonensem, et Michaelem Scotum, et Aluredum Anglicum, et Heremannum (Alemannum), et Willielmum Flemingum, data sit nobis copia translationum de omni scientia.’[3] In this passage the distinctive appellation of each author is plainly derived from that of his native country. That Bacon believed Michael to be of Scottish descent is therefore certain, and his opinion is all the more valuable since he was an Englishman, and not likely therefore to have confused the two nations of Great Britain as a foreigner might haply have done. To the same purpose is the testimony of Guido Bonatti, the astrologer, who also belonged to the age of Bacon and Scot. ‘Illi autem,’ he says,[4] ‘qui fuerunt in tempore meo, sicut fuit Hugo ab Alugant, Beneguardinus Davidbam, Joannes Papiensis, Dominicus Hispanus, Michael Scotus, Stephanus Francigena, Girardus de Sabloneta Cremonensis, et multi alii.’ Here also the significance of Scotus, as indicating nationality, is one that hardly admits of question. It was in all probability on these or similar authorities that Dempster relied when he said of Michael:[5] ‘The name Scot, however, is not a family one, but national,’ though he seems to have pressed the matter rather too far, it being plainly possible that Scotus might combine in itself both significations. In Scotland it might indicate that Michael belonged to the clan of Scott, as indeed has been generally supposed, while as employed by men of other nations, it might declare what they believed to have been this scholar’s native land.
At this point, however, a new difficulty suggests itself. It is well known that the lowland Scots were emigrants from the north of Ireland, and that in early times Scotus was used as a racial rather than a local designation. May not Michael have been an Irishman? Such is the question actually put by a recent writer,[6] and certainly it deserves a serious answer. We may commence by remarking that even on this understanding of it the name is an indefinite one as regards locality, and might therefore have been applied to one born in Scotland just as well as if he had first seen the light in the sister isle. So certainly is this the case that when we recall the name of John Scotus we find it was customary to add the appellative Erigena to determine his birthplace. At that time the separation of race was much less marked than it had become in Michael’s day, and it seems certain therefore that if Michael Scotus was thought a sufficient designation of the man by Bacon and Bonatti, they must have used it in the sense of indicating that he came of that part of the common stock which had crossed the sea and made their home in Scotland. But to find a conclusive answer to this difficulty we need only anticipate a little the course of our narrative by mentioning here a highly curious fact which will occupy our attention in its proper place. When Michael Scot was offered high ecclesiastical preferment in Ireland he declined it on the ground that he was ignorant of the vernacular tongue of that country.[7] This seems to supply anything that may have been wanting in the other arguments we have advanced, and the effect of the whole should be to assure our conviction that there need be now no further attempt made to deny Scotland the honour of having been the native land of so distinguished a scholar.
Nor are we altogether without the means of coming to what seems at least a probable conclusion regarding the very district of the Scottish lowlands where Michael Scot was born. Leland the antiquary tells us that he was informed on good authority that Scot came from the territory of Durham.[8] Taken literally this statement would make him an Englishman, but no one would think of quoting it as of sufficient value to disprove the testimony of Bacon and Bonatti who both believed Michael to have been born in Scotland. If, however, there should offer itself any way in which both these apparently contending opinions can be reconciled, we are surely bound to accept such an explanation of the difficulty, and in fact the solution we are about to propose not only meets the conditions of the problem, but will be found to narrow very considerably the limits of country within which the birthplace of Scot is to be looked for.
The See of Durham in that age, and for long afterwards, had a wide sphere of influence, extending over much of the south-eastern part of the Scottish Borders. Many deeds relating to this region of Scotland must be sought in the archives that belong to the English Cathedral. To be born in the territory of Durham then, as Leland says Scot had been, was not necessarily to be a native of England, and the anonymous Florentine commentator on Dante uses a remarkable expression which seems to confirm this solution as far as Scot is concerned. ‘This Michael,’ he says, ‘was of the Province of Scotland’;[9] and his words seem to point to that part of the Scottish lowlands adjacent to the See of Durham and in a sense its province, as subject to its influence, just as Provence, the analogous part of France, had its name from the similar relation it bore to Rome. The most likely opinion therefore that can now be formed on the subject leads us to believe that Scot was born somewhere in the valley of the Tweed; if we understand that geographical expression in the wide sense which makes it equivalent to the whole of the south-eastern borders of Scotland.
Nor is this so contrary as might at first appear to the tradition which makes Scot a descendant of the family of Balwearie in Fife. Hector Boëce, Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, who first gave currency to the story,[10] could hardly have meant to imply that Michael was actually born at Balwearie. It is to be presumed that he understood Scotus to have been a family name; and the Scotts, who became of Balwearie by marriage with the heiress of that estate, did not enter into possession of it till long after the close of the twelfth century.[11] To call Michael a son of Balwearie in the genealogical sense, however, is in perfect agreement with the conclusion regarding his origin which we have just reached; for the original home of the Scotts who afterwards held that famous property as their chef lieu, lay by the upper streams of Tweed in the very district which every probability has already indicated to us as that of Michael’s birthplace. In 1265 we find an entry of money paid by the Crown ‘to Michael Scot and Richard Rufus who have occupied the waste lands at Stuth,’ near Peebles.[12] Identification is here out of the question, as Michael the scholar, of whom we write, was by this time long in his grave, but the entry we have quoted shows that a family of this surname, who still used the Christian name of Michael, was flourishing in this part of Scotland during the second half of the thirteenth century.
It is to be remarked, too, that the Scottish tales of wonder relating to Michael Scot have a local colour that accords well with the other signs we have noticed. The hill which the sorcerer’s familiar spirit cleaves in sunder is the triple peak of Eildon; the water which he curbs is that of Tweed; from Oakwood he rides forth to try the witch of Falsehope, and in Oakwood tower may still be seen the Jingler’s room: a curious anachronism, for Oakwood is a building much more recent than the days of Michael Scot, yet one which fixes for us in a picturesque and memorable way the district of country where, according to the greatest number of converging probabilities, this remarkable man was born.
As to the date of his birth, it is difficult to be very precise. The probability that he died suddenly, and before he had completed the measure of an ordinary lifetime, prevents us from founding our calculations upon the date of his decease, which can be pretty accurately determined. A more certain argument may be derived from the fact that Scot had finished his youthful studies, made some figure in the world, and entered on the great occupation of his life as an author, as early as the year 1210.[13] Assuming then that thirty was the least age he could well have attained at the period in question, the year 1180 would be indicated as that of his birth, or rather as the latest date to which it can with probability be referred; 1175 being in every way a more likely approximation to the actual time of this event.
It is unfortunate that we find ourselves in the same position with regard to the interesting question of Scot’s early education, having only the suggestions derived from probable conjecture to offer on this subject also.