SCOT TRANSLATES AVERROES 135 



ntered upon this work were tilling no virgin soil, 

 it a familiar field in which the plough of Scot at 

 ast had left deep furrows. Even the renowned 

 roste'te, Bishop of Lincoln, who executed a version 

 the Eihica from the Greek about 1250, was but 

 llowing in the path which this earlier master 

 id opened up. Michael Scot here takes rank with 

 Dethius and Jacobus de Yenetiis, who were among 

 e first to seek these pure and original sources of 

 ristotelic doctrine. He appears as one who not 

 Jy completed the knowledge of his time with 

 gard to the Arabian philosophy by translating 

 verroes, but who gave some help at least to lay 

 ie foundation of a more exact acquaintance with 

 ic works of Aristotle by opening a direct way to 

 te Greek text. We may even see a sign of this 

 markable position in the place of honour given, 

 jrhaps accidentally, to Scot's version of the Nova 

 thica at the opening of the St. Omer manuscript, 

 e stands between two ages, and lays a hand of 

 >wer upon each. 



It is hardly necessary to add that in this he 

 lines all the more brightly when compared with 

 s great detractor. Roger Bacon, secure in the 

 nsciousness of his commanding abilities, attacks 

 ith a rare self-confidence, not Michael Scot alone, 

 lit all the scholars of his time. Not four of them, 

 I says, know Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic. 1 Those 

 |ao pretend to translate from these tongues are 

 fnorant even of Latin, not to speak of the sciences 

 tsated of in the books which they pretend to 

 ruder intelligible. Busy in penning these diatribes, 

 I icon does not seem to have reflected that the best 



1 Opus Tertiun^ Master of the Eolls ed. p. 91. 



