An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot. J. Wood Brown
ship that bore him from Alexandria to Spain was passing between the isles of Lampadusa and Pantellaria.[73] However this may be, Philip of Tripoli dedicated his version of the Sirr-el-asrar, which he called the Secreta Secretorum, to the Bishop under whom he had hitherto lived and laboured: ‘Guidoni vere de Valentia, civitatis Tripolis glorioso pontifici’: a name and title little understood by the copyists, who have subjected them to strange corruptions.[74]
It is highly in favour of our identifying, as we have already done, Philip of Tripoli, the translator of the Secreta, with Philip of Salerno, the Clerk Register of Sicily, that we find Michael Scot, who stood in an undoubtedly close relation to the Clerk Register, showing an intimate acquaintance with the Secreta Secretorum. Foerster has given us a careful and exact account of several passages in different parts of the Physionomia of Scot, which have their correspondences in the works of Philip, so that it is beyond question that the Latin version of the Secreta was one of the sources from which Scot drew. Before leaving this part of the subject, we may notice that translations of Philip’s version into the vernacular languages of Italy, France, and England were made at an early date, both in prose and verse.[75] The English version of the Secreta came from the hand of the poet Lydgate.
Another treatise of the same school, to which Scot was also indebted, is to be found in the Physionomia ascribed, like the Secreta, to Aristotle. The Latin version of this apocryphal work was made, it is said, directly from a Greek original, by Bartholomew of Messina. This author wrote for Manfred of Sicily, and at a time which excludes the notion that Scot could have seen or employed his work. Yet several passages in the preface to Book II. of Scot’s Physionomia have evidently been borrowed from that of the Pseudo-Aristotle. As no Arabic version of the treatise is known to exist, the fact of this correspondence is one of the proofs on which we may rely in support of the conclusion that Scot must have known and used the Greek language in his studies.
The last two chapters of Book I. in the Physionomia of Scot show plainly that he had the Arabic version of Aristotle’s History of Animals before him as he wrote. We shall recur to this matter when we come to deal with the versions which Scot made expressly from these books. Meanwhile let us guard against the impression naturally arising from our analysis of the Physionomia, that it was a mere compilation. Many parts of the work show no correspondence with any other treatise on the subject that is known to us, and these must be held as the results of the author’s own observations. The arrangement of the whole is certainly original, nor can we better conclude our study of the Physionomia, than by giving a comprehensive view of its contents in their order. The work is divided into three books, each having its own introduction. The first expounds the mysteries of generation and birth, and reaches, as we have already remarked, even beyond humanity to a considerable part of the animal world so much studied by the Arabians. The second expounds the signs of the different complexions, as these become visible in any part of the body, or are discovered by dreams. The third examines the human frame member by member, explaining what signs of the inward nature may be read in each. The whole forms a very complete and interesting compendium of the art of physiognomy as then understood, and must have seemed not unworthy of the author, nor unsuitable as an offering to the young prince, who by marriage was about to enter on the great world of affairs, where knowledge of men would henceforth be all-important to his success and happiness. The book attained a wide popularity in manuscript, and the invention of printing contributed to increase its circulation in Europe:[76] no less than eighteen editions are said to have been printed between 1477 and 1660.[77]
In the copy preserved at Milan, the Physionomia is placed immediately after the Astronomia, or Liber Particularis. A similar arrangement is found in the Oxford manuscript. This fact is certainly in favour of the view we have adopted, and would seem to fix very plainly the date and relation of these works. They stand beside the Liber Introductorius, and, together with it, form the only remains we have of Scot’s first literary activity, being publications that were called out in the course of his scholastic duty to the King of Sicily. The Liber Introductorius opens this series. It is closely related by the nature of its subject-matter to the Astronomia, or Liber Particularis, while the Physionomia forms a fitting close to the others with which it is thus associated. In this last treatise Michael Scot sought to fulfil his charge by sending forth his pupil to the great world, not wholly unprovided with a guide to what is far more abstruse and incalculable than any celestial theorem, the mystery of human character and action.
In presenting the Physionomia to Frederick, Scot took what proved a long farewell of the Court; for many years passed before he saw the Emperor again. The great concourse of the Queen’s train, together with the assembly of Frederick’s subjects at Palermo, bred a pestilence under the dangerous heats of spring. A sudden horror fell on the masques and revels of these bright days, with the death of the Queen’s brother, Count Alfonso of Provence, and several others, so that soon the fair gardens and pleasant palace were emptied and deserted as a place where only the plague might dare to linger. The King and Queen, with five hundred Spanish knights and a great Sicilian following, passed eastward; to Cefalù first, and then on to Messina and Catania, as if they could not put too great a distance between themselves and the infected spot. Meanwhile Michael Scot, whose occupation in Palermo, and indeed about the King, was now gone, set sail in the opposite direction and sought the coast of Spain. Whether the idea of this voyage was his own, was the result of a royal commission, or had been suggested by some of the learned who came with Queen Constantia from her native land, it is now impossible to say. It was in any case a fortunate venture, which did much, not only for Scot’s personal fame, but for the general advantage in letters and in arts.
CHAPTER III
SCOT AT TOLEDO
In following the course which Michael Scot held in his voyage to Spain, we approach what was beyond all doubt the most important epoch in the life of that scholar. Hitherto we have seen him as the student preparing at Paris or Bologna for a brilliant future, or as the tutor of a youthful monarch, essaying some literary ventures, which justified the position he held in Sicily, and recommended him for future employment. But the moment was now come which put him at last in possession of an opportunity suitable to his training and talents. We are to see how he won in Spain his greatest reputation in connection with the most important literary enterprise of the age, and one which is indeed not the least remarkable of all time.
The part which the Arabs took in the intellectual awakening of Europe is a familiar theme of early mediæval history. That wonderful people, drawn from what was then an unknown land of the East, and acted on by the mighty sense of religion and nationality which Mohammed was able to communicate, fell like a flood upon the weak remains of older civilisations, and made huge inroads upon the Christian Empire of the East. Having reached this point in their career of conquest they became in their turn the conquered, not under force of arms indeed, but as subdued by the still vital intellectual power possessed by those whom they had in a material sense overcome. In their new seat by the streams of the Euphrates they learned from their Syrian subjects, now become their teachers, the treasures of Greek philosophy which had been translated into the Aramaic tongue. Led captive as by a spell, the Caliphs of the Abassid line, especially Al Mansour, Al Rachid, and Al Mamoun, encouraged with civil honours and rewards the labours of these learned men. Happy indeed was the Syrian who brought to life another relic of the mighty dead, or who gave to such works a new immortality by rendering them into the Arabic language.
Meanwhile the progress of the Ommiad arms, compelled to seek new conquests by the defeat they had sustained in the East from the victorious Abbassides, was carrying the Moors west and ever westward along the northern provinces of Africa. Egypt and Tripoli and Tunis successively fell before their victorious march; Algiers and Morocco shared the same fate, and at last, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, the Moors overran Spain, making a new Arabia of that western peninsula, which in position and physical features bore so great a likeness to the ancient cradle of their race.
It is true indeed that long ere the period of which we write the Moorish power in the West had received a severe check, and had, for at least a century, entered on its period of decay. The battle of Tours, fought in 732, had driven