Читать книгу An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot - J. Wood Brown - Страница 5

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All tradition assures us that the chief occupation of Scot’s life was found at the Court of Frederick II., King of Sicily, and afterwards Emperor of Germany: a Prince deservedly famous, not only for his own talent, but for the protection and encouragement he afforded to men of learning. A manuscript in the Laurentian Library,[31] hitherto unnoticed in this connection, seems to throw some light upon the time and manner of this employment: points that have always been very obscure. The volume is a collection of Occulta, and at p. 256 we find the following title, ‘An Experiment of Michael Scot the magician.’ What follows is of no serious importance: such as it has we shall consider in speaking of the Master’s legendary fame. The concluding words, however, are of great interest, especially when we observe that this part of the manuscript, though written between 1450 and 1500, is said[32] to have been copied ‘from a very ancient book.’ The colophon runs thus: ‘Here endeth the necromantic experiment of the most illustrious doctor, Master[33] Michael Scot, who among other scholars is known as the supreme Master; who was of Scotland, and servant to his most distinguished chief Don Philip,[34] the King of Sicily’s clerk;[35] which experiment he contrived[36] when he lay sick in the city of Cordova. Finis.’

Taking the persons here named in the order of their rank, we notice first the great Emperor Frederick II., the patron of Michael Scot. It is worth remark that he is styled simply ‘King of Sicily,’ a title which belongs to the time previous to 1215, when he obtained the Imperial crown. This is a touch which seems to give high originality and value to the colophon. We may feel sure that it was not composed by the fifteenth century scribe, who would certainly have described Frederick in the usual style as Emperor and Lord of the World. He must have copied it, and everything leads one to suppose that he was right in describing the source from which he drew as ‘very ancient.’

Next comes Don Philip, whom we have rightly described as the clerk of Sicily, for the word coronatus in its mediæval use is derived from corona in the sense of the priestly tonsure, so that Philippus coronatus is equivalent to Philippus clericus.[37] Of this distinguished man we find many traces in the historical documents of the period.[38] Two deeds passed the seals of Sicily in the year 1200 when the King, then a boy of five years old, was living under the care of his widowed mother the Queen Constantia. These are countersigned by the royal notary, who is described as ‘Philippus de Salerno, notarius et fidelis noster scriba.’ His name is found in the same way, apparently for the last time, in 1213. This date, and the particular designation of Philip the Notary as ‘of Salerno,’ connect themselves very naturally with the title of a manuscript belonging to the De Rossi collection.[39] It is as follows: ‘The Book of the Inspections of Urine according to the opinion of the Masters, Peter of Berenico, Constantine Damascenus, and Julius of Salerno; which was composed by command of the Emperor Frederick, Anno Domini 1212, in the month of February, and was revised by Master Philip of Tripoli and Master Gerard of Cremona at the orders of the King of Spain,’ etc. The person designed as Philip of Salerno was very likely to be put in charge of the revision of a medical treatise, and as he disappears from his duties as notary for some time after 1213 we may suppose that it was then he passed into the service of the King of Spain. This conjecture agrees also with the mention of Cordova in the Florence manuscript, and with other peculiarities it displays, such as the spelling of the name Philippus like Felipe, and the way in which the title Dominus is repeated, just as Don might be in the style of a Spaniard. There is, in short, every reason to conclude that Philip of Salerno and Philip of Tripoli were one and the same person. We may add that Philip was the author of the first complete version in Latin of the book called Secreta Secretorum, the preface of which describes him as a clericus of the See of Tripoli. As will presently appear, Michael Scot drew largely from this work in composing one of his own;[40] another proof that in confronting with each other these three names—Philippus coronatus or clericus; Philippus de Salerno, and Philippus Tripolitanus—and in concluding that they belong to one and the same person, we have a reasonable amount of evidence in our favour.

From what has just been said it is plain that three distinct periods must have composed the life of Philip so far as we know it: the first when he served as an ecclesiastic in Tripoli of Syria or its neighbourhood; the second when he came westward, and, not without a certain literary reputation, held the post of Clerk Register in Sicily; the last when Frederick sent him, in the height of his powers and the fulness of his fame, to that neighbouring country of Spain, then so full of attraction for every scholar. In which of these periods then was it that Michael Scot first came into those relations with Philip of which the Florentine manuscript speaks? The time of his residence in Spain, likely as it might seem on other accounts, would appear to be ruled out by the fact that it was too late for Philip to be then described as servant of the King of Sicily. Nor did he hold this office, so far as we can tell, until he had left Tripoli for the West. We must pronounce then for the Sicilian period, and precisely therefore for the years between 1200 and 1213. This conclusion, however, does not hinder us from supposing that the relation then first formally begun between Michael and Philip continued to bind them, in what may have been a friendly co-operation, during the time spent by both in Spain.

The period thus determined was that of the King’s boyhood, and this opens up another line of argument which may be trusted not only to confirm the results we have reached, but to afford a more exact view of Scot’s occupation in Sicily. Several of his works are dedicated to Frederick, from which it is natural to conclude that his employment was one which brought him closely in contact with the person of the King. When we examine their contents we are struck by the tone which Scot permits himself to use in addressing his royal master. There is familiarity when we should expect flattery, and the desire to impart instruction instead of the wish to display obsequiousness. Scot appears in fact as one careless to recommend himself for a position at Court, certain rather of one which must have been already his own. What can this position have been?

A tradition preserved by one of the commentaries on Dante[41] informs us that Michael Scot was employed as the Emperor’s tutor, and this explanation is one which we need feel no hesitation in adopting, as it clears up in a very convincing way all the difficulties of the case. His talents, already proved and crowned in Paris and Bologna, may well have commended him for such a position. The dedication of his books to Frederick, and the familiar style in which he addresses the young prince, are precisely what might be expected from the pen of a court schoolmaster engaged in compiling manuals in usum Delphini.[42] Nay the very title of ‘Master’ which Scot had won at Paris probably owed its chief confirmation and continued employment to the nature of his new charge. Since the fifth century there had prevailed in Spain the habit of committing children of position to the course of an ecclesiastical education.[43] They were trained by some discreet and grave person called the magister disciplinae, deputed by the Bishop to this office. Such would seem to have been the manner of Frederick’s studies. His guardian was the Pope; he lived at Palermo under charge of the Canons of that Cathedral,[44] and no doubt the ecclesiastical character of Michael Scot combined with his acknowledged talents to point him out as a suitable person to fill so important a charge. It was his first piece of preferment, and we may conceive that he drew salary for his services under some title given him in the royal registry. This would explain his connection with Philip, the chief notary, on which the Florentine manuscript insists. Such fictitious employments have always been a part of court fashion, and that they were common in Sicily at the time of which we write may be seen from the case of Werner and Philip de Bollanden, who, though in reality most trusted and confidential advisers of the Crown, were known at Court as the chief butler and baker, titles which they were proud to transmit to their descendants.[45]

It was at Palermo, then, that Michael Scot must have passed the opening years of the thirteenth century; now more than ever ‘Master,’ since he was engaged in a work which carried with it no light responsibility: the early education of a royal youth destined to play the first part on the European stage. The situation was one not without advantages of an uncommon kind for a scholar like Scot, eager to acquire knowledge in every department. Sicily was still, especially in its more remote and mountainous parts about Entella, Giato, and Platani, the refuge of a considerable Moorish population, whose language was therefore familiar in the island, and was heard even at Court; being, we are assured, one of those in which Frederick received instruction.[46] There can be little doubt that Scot availed himself of this opportunity, and laid a good foundation for his later work on Arabic texts by acquiring, in the years of his residence at Palermo, at least the vernacular language of the Moors.

The same may be said regarding the Greek tongue: a branch of study much neglected even by the learned of those times. We shall presently produce evidence which goes to show that Michael Scot worked upon Greek as well as Arabic texts,[47] and it was in all probability to his situation in Sicily that he owed the acquisition of what was then a very rare accomplishment. Bacon, who deplores the ignorance of Greek which prevailed in his days, recommends those who would learn this important language to go to Italy, where, he says, especially in the south, both clergy and people are still in many places purely Greek.[48] The reference to Magna Grecia is obvious, and to Sicily, whose Greek colonies preserved, even to Frederick’s time and beyond it, their nationality and language. So much was this the case, that it was thought necessary to make the study of Greek as well as of Arabic part of Frederick’s education. We can hardly err in supposing that Scot profited by this as well as by the other opportunity.

In point of general culture too a residence at Palermo offered many and varied advantages. Rare manuscripts abounded, some lately brought to the island, like that of the Secreta Secretorum, the prize of Philip the Clerk, which he carried with him when he came from Tripoli to Sicily, and treasured there, calling it his ‘precious pearl’;[49] others forming part of collections that had for some time been established in the capital. As early as the year 1143, George of Antioch, the Sicilian Admiral, had founded the Church of St. Maria della Martorana in Palermo, and had enriched it with a valuable library, no doubt brought in great part from the East.[50] A better opportunity for literary studies could hardly have been desired than that which the Prince’s Master now enjoyed.

The society and surroundings in which Michael Scot now found himself were such as must have communicated a powerful impulse to the mind. The Court was grave rather than gay, as had befitted the circumstances of a royal widow, and now of an orphan still under canonical protection and busied in serious study, but this allowed the wit and wisdom of learned men free scope, and thus invited and encouraged their residence. Already, probably, had begun that concourse and competition of talents, for which the Court of Frederick was afterwards so remarkable. Amid delicious gardens at evening, or by day in the cool shade of courtyards: those patios which the Moors had built so well and adorned with such fair arabesques, all that was rarest in learning and brightest in wit, held daily disputation, while the delicate fountains played and Monte Pellegrino looked down on the curving beauties of the bay and shore. A strange contrast truly to the arcades of Bologna, now heaped with winter snow and now baked by summer sun; to the squalor of mediæval Paris, and much more to the green hillsides and moist forest-clad vales of southern Scotland. Here at last the spirit of Michael Scot underwent a powerful and determining influence which left its mark on all his subsequent life.

As royal tutor, his peculiar duty would seem to have been that of instructing the young Prince in the different branches of mathematics. This we should naturally have conjectured from the fact that Scot’s fame as yet rested entirely upon the honours he had gained at Paris, and precisely in this department of learning; for ‘Michael the Mathematician’ was not likely to have been called to Palermo with any other purpose. We have direct evidence of it however in an early work which came from the Master’s pen, and one which would seem to have been designed for the use of his illustrious pupil. This was the Astronomia, or Liber Particularis, and in the Oxford copy,[51] the colophon of that treatise runs thus: ‘Here endeth the book of Michael Scot, astrologer to the Lord Frederick, Emperor of Rome, and ever August; which book he composed in simple style[52] at the desire of the aforesaid Emperor. And this he did, not so much considering his own reputation, as desiring to be serviceable and useful to young scholars, who, of their great love for wisdom, desire to learn in the Quadrivium the Art of Astronomy.’ The preface says that this was the second book which Scot composed for Frederick.

The science of Astronomy was so closely joined in those times with the art of Astrology, that it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between them as they were then understood. The one was but the practical application of the other, and in common use their names were often confused and used interchangeably. We are not surprised then to find the title of Imperial Astrologer given to Michael Scot in the colophon to his Astronomia; he was sure to be employed in this way, and the fact will help us to determine with probability what was the first book he wrote for the Emperor, that to which the Liber Particularis was a sequel. For there is actually extant under Scot’s name an astrological treatise bearing the significant name of the Liber Introductorius.[53] This title agrees exceedingly well with the position we are now inclined to give it, and an examination of the preface confirms our conjecture in a high degree. It commences thus: ‘Here beginneth the preface of the Liber Introductorius which was put forth by Michael Scot, Astrologer to the ever August Frederick, Emperor of the Romans, at whose desire he composed it concerning astrology,[54] in a simple style[55] for the sake of young scholars and those of weaker capacity, and this in the days of our Lord Pope Innocent IV.’[56] One cannot help noticing the close correspondence between this and the colophon of the Astronomia. The two treatises were the complement each of the other. They must have been composed about the same time, and were doubtless meant to serve as text-books to guide the studies of Frederick’s youth. That this royal pupil should have been led through astrology to the higher and more enduring wonders of astronomy need cause no surprise, for such a course was quite in accordance with the intellectual habits of the age. It may be doubted indeed whether the men of those times would have shown such perseverance in the observations and discoveries proper to a pure science of the heavens, had it not been for the practicable and profitable interest which its application in astrology furnished. Astronomy, such as it then was, formed the last and highest study in the Quadrivium.[57] It was here that Scot had carried off honours at Paris, and now in his Liber Introductorius and Astronomia, we see him imparting the ripe fruits of that diligence to his royal charge, whose education, so far as regarded formal study, was thereby brought to a close.