Читать книгу An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot - J. Wood Brown - Страница 6

In the year 1209, when Frederick was but fourteen years of age, the quiet study and seclusion in which he still lived with those who taught him was brought to an abrupt and, one must think, premature conclusion. The boy was married, and to a lady ten years his senior, Constance, daughter of the King of Aragon, and already widow of the King of Hungary. It is not hard to see that such a union must have been purely a matter of arrangement. The Prince of Palermo, undergrown and delicate as he was,[58] promised to be, as King of Sicily and possibly Emperor, the noblest husband of his time. Pope Innocent III., his guardian, foresaw this, and chose a daughter of Spain as most fit to occupy the proud position of Frederick’s wife, queen, and perhaps empress. Had the wishes of Rome prevailed at the Court of Aragon from the first, this marriage would have taken place even earlier than it did. The delay seems to have been owing, not to any reluctance on the part of the bride’s parents, but solely to the doubt which of two sisters, elder or younger, widow or maid, should accept the coveted honour.

It was in spring, the loveliest season of the year in that climate, that the fleet of Spain, sent to bear the bride and her suite, rose slowly over the sea rim and dropped anchor in the Bay of Palermo. Constantia came with many in her company, the flower of Catalan and Provençal chivalry, led by her brother, Count Alfonso. The Bishop of Mazara, too, was among them, bearing a commission to represent the Pope in these negotiations and festivities. And now the stately Moorish palace, with its courtyard, its fountains, and its gardens, became once more a scene of gaiety, as—in the great hall of forty pillars, beneath a roof such as Arabian artists alone could frame, carved like a snow cave, or stained with rich and lovely colour like a mass of jewels set in gold—the officers of the royal household passed solemnly on to offer homage before their Prince and his bride. In the six great apartments of state the frescoed forms of Christian art: Patriarchs in their histories, Moses and David in their exploits, and the last wild charge of Barbarossa’s Crusade,[59] looked down upon a moving throng of nobles and commons who came to present their congratulations, while the plaintive music of lute, of pipe, and tabor, sighed upon the air, and skilful dancers swam before the delighted guests in all the fascination of the voluptuous East.

What part could Michael Scot, the grave ecclesiastic, and now doubly the ‘Master’ as Frederick’s trusted tutor, play in the gay scene of his pupil’s marriage? For many ages it has been the custom among Italian scholars, the attached dependants of a noble house, to offer on such occasions their homage to bride and bridegroom in the form of a learned treatise; any bookseller’s list of Nozze is enough to show that the habit exists even at the present day. This then was what Scot did; for there is every reason to think that the Physionomia, which he composed and dedicated to Frederick, was produced and presented at the time of the royal marriage. No date suits this publication so well as 1209, and nothing but the urgent desire of Court and people that the marriage should prove fruitful can explain, one might add excuse, some passages of almost fescennine licence which it contains.[60] We seem to find in the advice of the preface that Frederick should study man, encouraging the learned to dispute in his presence what may well have been the last word of a master who saw his pupil passing to scenes of larger and more active life at an unusually early age, and before he could be fully trusted to take his due place in the great world of European politics.

The Physionomia, however, is too important a work to be dismissed in a paragraph. Both the subject itself, and the sources from which Scot drew, deserve longer consideration. The science of physiognomy, as its name imports, was derived from the Greeks. Achinas, a contemporary of the Hippocratic school, and Philemon, who is mentioned in the introduction to Scot’s treatise, seem to have been the earliest writers in this department of philosophy. It was a spiritual medicine,[61] and formed part of the singular doctrine of signatures, teaching as it did that the inward dispositions of the soul might be read in visible characters upon the bodily frame. The Alexandrian school made a speciality of physiognomy. In Egypt it attained a further development, and various writings in Greek which expounded the system passed current during the early centuries of our era under the names of Aristotle and Polemon. Through the common channel of the Syriac schools and language it reached the Arabs, and in the ninth century had the fortune to be taken up warmly by Rases and his followers, who made it a characteristic part of their medical system. From this source then Scot drew largely; chapters xxiv.-xxv. in Book II. of his Physionomia correspond closely with the De Medicina ad Regem Al Mansorem[62] of Rases.[63]

Among ancient texts on physiognomy, however, perhaps the most famous was the Sirr-el-asrar, or Secreta Secretorum, which was ascribed to Aristotle. Its origin, like that of other pseudo-Aristotelic writings, seems to have been Egyptian. When the conquests of Alexander the Great had opened the way for a new relation between East and West, Egypt, and especially its capital, Alexandria, became the focus of a new philosophic influence. The sect of the Essenes, transported hither, had given rise to the school of the Therapeutae, where Greek theories developed in a startling direction under the power of Oriental speculation. The Therapeutae were sun-worshippers, and eager students of ancient and occult writings, as Josephus[64] tells us the Essenes had been. We find in the Abraxas gems, of which so large a number has been preserved, an enduring memorial of these people and their system of thought.[65]

The preface to the Sirr-el-asrar affords several matters which agree admirably with what we know of the Therapeutae. The precious volume was the prize of a scholar on his travels, who found it in the possession of an aged recluse dwelling in the penetralia of a sun-temple built by Æsculapius.[66] All this is characteristic enough, and when we examine the substance of the treatise it appears distinctly Therapeutic. Much of it is devoted to bodily disease, to the regimen of the health, and to that science of physiognomy which professed to reveal, as in a spiritual diagnosis, the infirmities of the soul. The ascription of the work to Aristotle, Alexander’s tutor, seems quite in accordance with this theory; in short, there is no reason to doubt that it first appeared in Egypt, where it probably formed one of the most cherished texts of the Therapeutae.

The preface to the Sirr-el-asrar throws light not only upon the origin of the treatise but also upon its subsequent fortunes. It is said to have been rendered from the Greek into Chaldee or Syriac,[67] and thence into Arabic, the usual channel by which the remains of ancient learning have reached the modern world. The translator’s name is given as Johannes filius Bitricii, but this can hardly have been the well-known Ibn-el-Bitriq, the freedman of Mamoun. To this latter author indeed, the Fihrist, composed in 987, ascribes the Arabic version of Aristotle’s De Cœlo et Mundo, and of Plato’s Timaeus, so that his literary faculty would seem to accord very well with the task of translating the Sirr-el-asrar. But Foerster has observed[68] that we find no trace of this book in Arabian literature before the eleventh century. Now the famous Ibn-el-Bitriq lived in the ninth, as appears from several considerations. His works were revised by Honain ibn Ishaq (873), and, if we believe in the authenticity of the El Hawi, where he is mentioned by name, then he must have belonged to an age at least as early as that of Rases who wrote it. In these perplexing circumstances, Foerster gives up the attempt to determine who may have been the translator of the Sirr-el-asrar, contenting himself with the conjecture that some unknown scholar had assumed the name of El Bitriq to give importance to the production of his pen. We may be excused, however, if we direct attention to two manuscripts of the British Museum[69] which do not seem to have been noticed by those who have devoted attention to this obscure subject. One of these, which is written in a hand of the thirteenth century, informs us that the man who transcribed it was a certain Said Ibn Butrus ibn Mansur, a Maronite priest of Lebanon in the diocese of Tripolis, a prisoner for twelve years in the place where the royal standards were kept (? at Cairo), who was released from that confinement in the time of al Malik an Nazir. The other—a mere fragment—contains a notice of the priest Yahyā, or Yuhannā, ibn Butrus, who died in the year 1217 A.D. It is not unlikely that some confusion might arise between the names Patrick and Peter, often used interchangeably. ‘Filius Patricii’ then may have been no assumed designation, but the equivalent of Ibn Butrus, the real name of this priest of Tripoli, who was perhaps the translator of the Sirr-el-asrar at the close of the twelfth century.

Those chapters of the Sirr-el-asrar which relate to regimen were translated into Latin by Johannes Hispalensis. Jourdain identifies this author with John Avendeath, who worked for the Archbishop of Toledo between the years 1130 and 1150.[70] But Foerster shows that caution is needed here.[71] The Latin version was dedicated to Tarasia, Queen of Spain. A queen of this name certainly lived contemporaneously with John Avendeath, but she was Queen of Portugal. Another Tarasia, however, was Queen of Leon from 1176 to 1180. We may observe that this latter epoch agrees well enough with the lifetime of Ibn Butrus, who died in 1217, and we find trace of another Johannes Hispanus, who was a monk of Mount Tabor in 1175. Such a man, who from his situation in Syria could scarcely have been ignorant of Arabic, and whose nationality agrees so well with a dedication to the Queen of Spain, and who was a contemporary of Tarasia of Leon, may well have translated the Sirr-el-asrar into Latin. That part of the book thus made public in the West appeared under the following title: ‘De conservatione corporis humani, ad Alexandrum.’ It is found in several manuscripts of the Laurentian Library in Florence.[72]

Soon afterwards, and probably in the opening years of the thirteenth century, the whole book was published in a Latin version by the same Philippus Clericus, with whom we have already become acquainted. We may recall the fact that he belonged to the diocese of Tripoli, as Ibn Butrus also did, and as Johannes Hispanus was also a monk of Syria, these three scholars are seen to be joined by a link of locality highly increasing the probability that they actually co-operated in the publication of this hitherto unknown text. In his preface, Philip speaks of the Arabic manuscript as a precious pearl, discovered while he was still in Syria. This leads us to think that his work in translating it was done after he had left the East, and possibly in the course of his voyage westward. We know that the Hebrew version of Aristotle’s Meteora was produced in similar circumstances. Samuel ben Juda ben Tibbun says he completed that translation in the year 1210, while the 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.