CHAPTER II. Scot At the Court of Sicily

SCOT AT THE COURT OF SICILY

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, 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 to have been copied ‘from a very ancient book.’ The colophon runs thus: ‘Here endeth the necromantic experiment of the most illustrious doctor, Master 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, the King of Sicily’s clerk; which experiment he contrived 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. Of this distinguished man we find many traces in the historical documents of the period. 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. 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; 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 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. 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. 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, 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.

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. 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, 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. 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’; 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. 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, 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 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. 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, in a simple style for the sake of young scholars and those of weaker capacity, and this in the days of our Lord Pope Innocent IV.’ 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. 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.

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, 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, 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. 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, 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 of Rases.

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 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.

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. 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, 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 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 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. But Foerster shows that caution is needed here. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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: no less than eighteen editions are said to have been printed between 1477 and 1660.

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.