134 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



the writer of the Victorine manuscript asserted 

 that Averroes had commented on the De A nima in 

 Greek. 1 Taking it in this way the version of the 

 Nova Ethica would fall into line with the others 

 which Scot and Gerard of Cremona composed at 

 Toledo. But it deserves notice that none of the 

 manuscript collections usually considered to contain 

 the work of that school comprises among its con- 

 tents the Nova Ethica. We know, further, that a 

 Latin version of the Ethics with the commentary 

 of Averroes was made from the Arabic by Herman - 

 nus Alemannus. 2 This work was completed on the 

 third of June 1240, and we can hardly suppose 

 that it would have been entered on if Michael Scot 

 had already accomplished the same task but twenty 

 years earlier. These facts and considerations make 

 it very unlikely that the St. Omer fragment re- 

 presents a version of the Arabic text. 



Assuming then the literal truth of this inter- 

 esting colophon, we are confirmed in the conclusion 

 to which an examination of the De Partibus Ani- 

 malium in the Florence manuscript has already 

 inclined our minds. 3 Michael Scot, it must now be 

 held, did not confine his studies altogether to the 

 Arabian authors, but undertook to form trans- 

 lations directly from the Greek. These two versions, 

 and especially that of the Nova Ethica, open up 

 a new and striking view of the scholar's literary 

 activity. When Aquinas moved Pope Urban to 

 order a new translation of Aristotle from the original, 

 William of Moerbeka and those others who presently 



1 See ante, p. 125. 



2 Colophon to cod. Ixxix. 18 of the Lauren tian Library. 



3 See ante, p. 59. 



