An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot. J. Wood Brown
The Christian kingdoms of Spain itself had rallied their courage and their forces, and, in a scene of chivalry, which inspired many a tale and song, had freed at least the northern provinces of that country from the alien power. But weapons of war, as we have already seen in the case of the Arabs themselves, are not the only means of conquest. The surest title of the Moors to glory lies in the prevailing intellectual influence they were able to exert over that Christendom which, in a political sense, they had failed to subdue and dispossess. The scene we have just witnessed in the East was now repeated in Spain, but was repeated in an exactly opposite sense. The mental impulse received from the remains of Greek literature at Bagdad now became in its turn the motive power which not only sufficed to carry these forgotten treasures westward in the course of Moorish conquest, but succeeded, through that nation, in rousing the Latin races to a sense of their excellence, and a generous ambition to become possessed of all the culture and discipline they were capable of yielding.
The chief centre of this influence, as it was the chief scene of contact between the two races, naturally lay in Spain. During the ages of Moorish dominion the Christians of this country had lived in peace and prosperity under the generous protection of their foreign rulers. To a considerable extent indeed the Moors and Spaniards amalgamated by intermarriage. The language of the conquerors was familiarly employed by their Spanish subjects, and these frequented in numbers the famous schools of science and literature established by the Moors at Cordova, and in other cities of the kingdom. Proof of all this remains in the public acts of the Castiles, which continued to be written in Arabic as late as the fourteenth century, and were signed by Christian prelates in the same characters;[78] in the present language of Spain which retains so many words of eastern origin; but, above all, in the profound influence, now chiefly engaging our attention, which has left its mark upon almost every branch of our modern science, literature, and art.
This result was largely owing to a singular enterprise of the twelfth century with which the learned researches of Jourdain have made us familiar.[79] Scholars from other lands, such as Constantine, Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II., Adelard of Bath, Hermann, and Alfred and Daniel de Morlay, had indeed visited Spain during that age and the one which preceded it, and had, as individuals, made a number of translations from the Arabic, among which were various works in medicine and mathematics, as well as the first version of the Koran. But in the earlier half of the twelfth century, and precisely between the years 1130 and 1150, this desultory work was reduced to a system by the establishment of a regular school of translation in Toledo. The credit of this foundation, which did so much for mediæval science and letters, belongs to Don Raymon, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. This enlightened and liberal churchman was by origin a French monk, born at Agen, whom Bernard, a previous Primate, had brought southward in his train, as he returned from a journey beyond the Pyrenees. Don Raymon associated with himself his Archdeacon, Dominicus Gundisalvus, and a converted Jew commonly known as Johannes Hispalensis or John of Seville, whom Jourdain has identified with Johannes Avendeath: this latter being in all probability his proper name. These formed the heads of the Toledo school in its earliest period, and the enterprise was continued throughout the latter half of the century by other scholars, of whom Gherardus Cremonensis the elder was probably the chief. Versions of the voluminous works of Avicenna, as well as of several treatises by Algazel and Alpharabius, and of a number of medical writings, were the highly prized contribution of the Toledo school to the growing library of foreign authors now accessible in the Latin language.
It is probable that when Michael Scot left Sicily he did so with the purpose of joining this important enterprise. His movements naturally suggest such an idea, as he proceeded to Toledo, still the centre of these studies, and won, during the years of his residence there, the name by which he is best known in the world of letters, that of the chief exponent of the Arabo-Aristotelic philosophy in the West.
The name and fame of Aristotle, never quite forgotten even in the darkest age,[80] and now known and extolled among Moorish scholars, formed indeed the ground of that immense reputation which Arabian philosophy enjoyed in Europe. The Latin schools had long been familiar with the logical writings of Aristotle, but the modern spirit, soon to show itself as it were precociously in Bacon and Albertus Magnus, was already awake, and under its influence men had begun to demand more than the mere training of the mind in abstract reasoning. Even the application of dialectics to evolve or support systems of doctrine drawn from Holy Scripture could not content this new curiosity. Men were becoming alive to the larger book of nature which lay open around them, and, confounded at first by the complexity of unnumbered facts in sea and sky, in earth and air, they began to long for help from the great master of philosophy which might guide their first trembling footsteps in so strange and untrodden a realm of knowledge. Nor was the hope of such aid denied them. There was still a tradition concerning the lost works of Aristotle on physics. The Moors, it was found, boasted their possession, and even claimed to have enriched these priceless pages by comments which were still more precious than the original text itself.
The mere hope that it might be so was enough to beget a new crusade, when western scholars vied with each other in their efforts to recover these lost treasures and restore to the schools of Europe the impulse and guidance so eagerly desired. Such had, in fact, been the aim of Archbishop Raymon and the successive translators of the Toledan school. The important place they assigned to Avicenna among those whose works they rendered into Latin was due to the fact that this author had come to be regarded in the early part of the twelfth century as the chief exponent of Aristotle, whose spirit he had inherited, and on whose works he had founded his own.
The part of the Aristotelic writings to which Michael Scot first turned his attention would seem to have been the history of animals. This, in the Greek text, consisted of three distinct treatises: first the De Historiis Animalium in ten books; next the De Partibus Animalium in four books; and lastly, the De Generatione Animalium in five books. The Arabian scholars, however, who paid great attention to this part of natural philosophy and made many curious observations in it, were accustomed to group these three treatises under the general title De Animalibus, and to number their books or chapters consecutively from one to nineteen, probably for convenience in referring to them. As Scot’s work consisted of a translation from Arabic texts it naturally followed the form which had been sanctioned by the use and wont of the eastern commentators.
At least two versions of the De Animalibus appeared from the pen of Scot. These have sometimes been confounded with each other, but are really quite distinct, representing the labours of two different Arabian commentators on the text of Aristotle. We may best commence by examining that of which least is known, the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, as it is commonly called, and this the rather that there is good reason to suppose it represents the first Arabian work on Natural History which came into Scot’s hands.
Nothing is known certainly regarding the author of this commentary. Jourdain and Steinschneider conclude with reason that the text must have been an Arabic and not a Hebrew one, as Camus[81] and Wüstenfeld[82] contend. No one, however, has hitherto ventured any suggestion throwing light on the personality of the writer. The colophon to the copy of Scot’s version in the Bibliotheca Angelica of Rome contains the word Alphagiri, which would seem to stand for the proper name Al Faquir. But in all probability, as we shall presently show, this may be merely the name of the Spanish Jew who aided Michael Scot in the work of translation.
The expression ‘secundum extractionem Michaelis Scoti,’ which is used in the same colophon, would seem to indicate that this version, voluminous as it is, was no more than a compend of the original. The title of the manuscript too: ‘Incipit flos primi libri Aristotelis de Animalibus’ agrees curiously with this, and with the word Abbreviatio (Avicennae), used to describe Scot’s second version of the De Animalibus of which we are presently to speak. Are we then to suppose that in each case the translator exercised his faculty of selection, and that the form of these compends was due, not to Avicenna, nor to the unknown author of the text called in Scot’s version the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, but to Scot himself? The expressions just cited would seem to open the way for such a conclusion.
The contents of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem may be inferred from the Prologue which is as follows: ‘In Nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Omnipotentis Misericordis et Pii, translatio