Читать книгу An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot - J. Wood Brown - Страница 4

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In the Borders of Scotland it is well known that any piece of hill pasture, if it be fenced in but for a little from the constant cropping of the sheep, will soon show springing shoots of forest trees indigenous to the soil, whose roots remain wherever the plough has not passed too deeply. Centuries ago, when nature had her way and was unrestrained, the whole south-eastern part of the country was covered with dense forests and filled with forest-dwellers; the wild creatures that form the prey of the snare and the quarry of the chase. In the deep valleys, and by the streams of Tweed and Teviot, and many another river of that well-watered land, stood the great ranks and masses of the oak and beech as captains and patriarchs of the forest, mingled with the humbler whitethorn which made a dense undergrowth wherever the sun could reach. On the heights grew the sombre firs; their gnarled and ruddy branches crowned with masses of bluish-green foliage, while the alders followed the water-courses, and, aided by the shelter of these secret valleys, all but reached the last summits of the hills, which alone, in many a varied slope and peak and swelling breast, rose eminent and commanding over these dark and almost unbroken woodlands.

Such was south-eastern Scotland in the twelfth century: a country fitted to be the home of men of action rather than of thought; men whose joy should lie in the chase and the conflict with nature as yet unsubdued, who could track the savage creatures of the forest to their dens, and clear the land where it pleased them, and build, and dwell, and beget children in their own likeness, till by the labours of generations that country should become pastoral, peaceful, and fit for fertile tillage as we see it now.

Already, at the early time of which we speak, something of this work had been begun. There were gaps in the high forest where it lay well to the sun: little clearings marked by the ridge and furrow of a rude agriculture. Here and there a baron’s lonely tower raised its grey horn on high, sheltering a troop of men-at-arms who made it their business to guard the land in war, and in peace to rid it of the savage forest-creatures that hindered the hind and herd in their labour and their hope. In the main valleys more than one great monastery was rising, or already built, by the waters of Tweed and Teviot. The inmates of these religious houses took their share in the whole duty of peaceful Scottish men by following trades at home or superintending the labours of an army of hinds who broke in and made profitable the wide abbey lands scattered here and there over many a lowland county. All was energy, action, and progress: a form of life which left but little room for the enterprises of the mind, the conflicts and conquests which can alone be known and won in the world of thought within.

These conditions we know to have reared and trained generations of men well fitted to follow the pursuits of hardy and active life, yet they cannot have been so constraining as to hinder the birth of some at least who possessed an altogether different temper of mind and body. The lowland Scots were even then of a mixed race: the ancestry which tends more than any other to the production of life-eddies, where thought rather than activity naturally forms and dwells, while the current of the main stream sweeps past in its ordinary course. Grant the appearance of such natures here and there in these early times, and it is easy to see much in the only life then possible that was fit to foster their natural tendencies. The deep woodlands were not only scenes of labour where sturdy arms found constant employment, they were homes of mystery in which the young imagination loved to dwell; peopling them with half-human shapes more graceful than their stateliest trees, and half-brutal monsters more terrible than the fiercest wolf or bear. The distant sun and stars were more than a heavenly horologe set to mark the hours for labour or vigil, they were an unexplored scene of wonder which patient and brooding thought alone could reach and interpret. The trivial flight and annual return of birds, tracing like the wild geese a mysterious wedge against the sky of winter, gave more than a signal for the chase, which was all that ordinary men saw in it. To these finer natures it brought the awakening which those know who have learned to ask the mighty questions—Why? Whence? and Whither? demands which will not be denied till they have touched the heights and fathomed the depths of human life itself. Our life is a bird, said one in these early ages, which flies by night, and, entering lighted hall at one end, swiftly passeth out at the other. So come we, who knoweth whence, and so pass we, who knoweth whither? From the darkness we come and to the darkness we go, and the brief light that is meanwhile ours cannot make the mystery plain.

But though the nature of this primitive life in early Scottish days could not hinder the appearance of men of thought, and even helped their development as soon as they began to show the movements of active intellect, yet on the other hand Scotland had not reached that culture which affords such natures their due and full opportunity. Centuries were yet to pass before the foundation of St. Andrews as the first Scottish university. The grammar-schools of the country[2] were but a step to the studies of some foreign seat of learning. The churchmen who filled considerable positions at home were either Italians, or had at least been trained abroad, so that everything in those days pointed to that path of foreign study which has since been trodden by so many generations of Scottish students. The bright example of Scotus Erigena, who had reached such a high place in France under Charles the Bald, was an incitement to the northern world of letters. Young men of parts and promise naturally sought their opportunity to go abroad in the hope of finding like honourable employment, or, better still, of returning crowned with the honours of the schools to occupy some distinguished ecclesiastical position in their native country.

This then was the age, 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. Du Boulay indeed, in his account of the University of Paris,[14] pretends to supply a pretty complete account of the schools which Scot attended, but, as he adds that this was the usual course of study in those days, we find reason to think that he may have been guided in his assertions, rather by the probabilities of the case, than by any exact evidence. Nor is it likely that any more satisfactory assurance can now be had on this point: the time being too remote and the want of early material for Scot’s biography defeating in this respect all the care and attention that can now be given to the subject.

We know, however, that there was a somewhat famous grammar-school at Roxburgh in the twelfth century,[15] and considering the rarity of such an opportunity at so early a period, and the proximity of this place to the district in which Scot was born, we may venture to fancy that here he may have learned his rudiments, thus laying the foundation of those deeper studies, which he afterwards carried to such a height.

With regard to Durham, the matter may be considered to stand on firmer ground. The name of Michael Scot, as we have already seen, has for many ages been associated with this ancient Cathedral city by the Wear. If the question of his birthplace be regarded as now determined in favour of Scotland, no reason remains for this association so convincing as that which would derive it from the fact that he pursued his education there. The Cathedral School of Durham was a famous one, which no doubt exerted a strong attraction upon studious youths throughout the whole of that province. In Scot’s case the advantages it offered may well have seemed a desirable step to further advances; his means, as one of a family already distinguished from the common people, allowing him to plan a complete course of study, and his ambition prompting him to follow it.

The common tradition asserts that when he left Durham, Scot proceeded to Oxford. This is not unlikely, considering the fame of that University, and the number of students drawn from all parts of the land who assembled there.[16] The only matters, however, which offer themselves in support of this bare conjecture are not, it must be said, very convincing. Roger Bacon shows great familiarity with Scot, and Bacon was an Oxford scholar, though his studies at that University were not begun till long after the time when Scot could possibly have been a student there. It is quite possible, however, that the interest shown by Bacon in Scot’s labours and high reputation—not by any means of a kindly sort—may have been awakened by traditions that were still current in the Schools of Oxford when the younger student came there. Near the end of his life, Scot visited in a public capacity the chief Universities of Europe, and brought them philosophic treasures that were highly thought of by the learned. It seems most probable, from the terms in which Bacon speaks of this journey,[17] that it may have included a visit to Oxford. This might of course be matter of mere duty and policy, but one cannot help observing how well it agrees with the tradition that these schools were already familiar to Scot. As a recognised alumnus of Oxford, he would be highly acceptable there, being one whose European fame shed no small lustre upon the scene of his early studies.

As to Paris, the next stage in Scot’s educational progress, the historian of that University becomes much more convincing when he claims for Lutetia the honour of having contributed in a special sense to the formation of this scholar’s mind. For here tradition has preserved one of those sobriquets which are almost invariably authentic. Scot, it seems, gained here the name of Michael the Mathematician,[18] and this corresponds, not only with what is known concerning the character of his studies, but also with the nature of the course for which Paris was then famous. There is another circumstance which seems to point strongly in the same direction. Every one must have noticed how invariably the name of Scot is honoured by the prefix of Master. This is the case not only in his printed works, but also in popular tradition, as may be seen in the well-known rhyme:—‘Maister Michael Scot’s man.’[19] A Florence manuscript, to which we shall presently refer more fully, throws some light upon the meaning of this title, by describing Scot as that scholar, ‘who among the rest is known as the chief Master.’[20] It is matter of common knowledge, that this degree had special reference to the studies of the Trivium and Quadrivium, being the scholastic crown reserved for those who had made satisfactory progress in the liberal arts. Scot then, according to the testimony of early times, was the supreme Master in this department of knowledge. But it is also certain that Paris was then recognised as the chief school of the Trivium and Quadrivium, just as Bologna had a like reputation for Law, and Salerno for Medicine.[21] We are therefore warranted to conclude that Michael Scot could never have been saluted in European schools as ‘Supreme Master,’ had he not studied long in the French capital, and carried off the highly esteemed honours of Paris.

Another branch of study which tradition says Scot followed with success at Paris was that of theology. Du Boulay declares, indeed, that he reached the dignity of doctor in that faculty, and there is some reason to think that this may actually have been the case. There can be no doubt that an ecclesiastical career then offered the surest road to wealth and fame in the case of all who aspired to literary honours. That Scot took holy orders[22] seems very probable. He may well have done so even before he came to Paris, for Bacon makes it one of his reproaches against the corruption of the times, that men were ordained far too readily, and before they had reached the canonical age: from their tenth to their twentieth year, he says.[23] It is difficult to verify Dempster’s assertion that Scot’s renown as a theologian is referred to by Baconthorpe the famous Carmelite of the following century.[24] This author was commonly known as the Princeps Averroïstarum. If he really mentions Michael, and does not mean Duns Scotus, as there is some reason to suspect, his praise may have been given quite as much on the ground of profane as of religious philosophy. On the other hand we find abounding and unmistakable references to Scripture, the Liturgy, and ascetic counsels in the writings of Scot, from which it may safely be concluded that he had not merely embraced the ecclesiastical profession as a means of livelihood or of advancement, but had seriously devoted himself to sacred studies. It is true that we cannot point to any instance in which he receives the title of doctor, but this omission may be explained without seriously shaking our belief in the tradition that Scot gained this honour at Lutetia. During the twelfth century the Bishop of Paris forbade the doctors of theology to profess that faculty in any other University.[25] Scot may well, therefore, have been one of those philosophical divines who taught entre les deux ponts, as the same statute commanded they should, though in other lands and during his after-life, he came to be known simply as the ‘Great Master’: the brightest of all those choice spirits of the schools on which Paris set her stamp.

At this point we may surely hazard a further conjecture. Bacon tells us that in those days it was the study of law, ecclesiastical and civil, rather than of theology, which opened the way to honour and preferment in the Church.[26] Now Paris was not more eminently and distinctly the seat of arts than Bologna was the school of laws.[27] May not Michael Scot have passed from the French to the Italian University? Such a conjecture would be worth little were it not for the support which it undoubtedly receives from credible tradition. Boccaccio in one of his tales[28] mentions Michael Scot, and tells how he used to live in Bologna. Many of the commentators on the Divine Comedy of Dante dwell on the theme, and enrich it with superstitious wonders.[29] It would be difficult to find a period in the scholar’s life which suits better with such a residence than that we are now considering. On all accounts it seems likely that he left Paris for Bologna, and found in the latter city a highly favourable opening, which led directly to the honours and successes of his after-life.

He was now to leave the schools and enter a wider sphere, not without the promise of high and enduring fame. A child of the mist and the hill, he had come from the deep woods and wild outland life of the Scottish Border to what was already no inconsiderable position. He knew Paris, not, need it be said, the gay capital of modern days, but Paris of the closing years of the twelfth century, Lutetia Parisiorum: her low-browed houses of wood and mud; her winding streets, noisome even by day, and by night still darker and more perilous; her vast Latin Quarter, then far more preponderant than now—a true cosmopolis, where fur-clad barbarians from the home of the north wind sharpened wits with the Latin races haply trained in southern schools by some keen-browed Moor or Jew. And Paris knew him, watched his course, applauded his success, crowned his fame by that coveted title of Master, which he shared with many others, but which the world of letters made peculiarly his own by creating for him a singular and individual propriety in it. From Paris we may follow him in fancy to Bologna, yet it is not hard to believe he must have left half his heart behind, enchained in that remarkable devotion which Lutetia could so well inspire in her children.[30] Bologna might be, as we have represented it, the gate to a new Eden, that of Scot’s Italian and Spanish life, yet how could he enter it without casting many a longing glance behind to the Paradise he had quitted for ever when he left the banks of the Seine?