SCOT AGAIN AT COURT 143 



ola, who says of Scot's doctrine concerning the 

 liar images : ' These invisible forms can be dis- 

 erned neither by the senses nor by right reason, 

 nd there is no agreement regarding them by their 

 ventors, who were not the Chaldeans or Indians 

 t only the Arabs.' . . . ' Michael Scot mentions 

 these (images) as things most effectual, and with 

 |im agree many astrologers, both Arabian and Latin, 

 had heard somewhat of this doctrine, and thought 

 first that it was meant merely as a convenient 

 cans of mapping out the sky, and not that these 

 ?ures actually existed in the heavens. . . .' 

 jrom the Greeks astrology passed to the Arabs 

 d was taught with ever-growing assurance. . . .' 

 .boasar, a grammarian and historical writer, took 

 science from the Greeks, corrupting it with 

 untless trifling fables, and made thereof an 

 trology much worse than that of Ptolemy. . . .' 

 n those days the study of mathematics, like that 

 philosophy in general, made great progress in 

 am under King Alphonso, a keen student in the 

 culus, especially as applied to the movements of 

 heavenly bodies. He had also a taste for the 

 arts of the Diviner, having learned no better ; 

 to please him in this many of the most im- 

 ant treatises of that kind, both Greek and 

 bic, have been handed down to our own day, 

 efly by the labours of Johannes Hispalensis and 

 chael Scot, the latter of whom was an author 

 no weight and fall of superstition. Albertus 

 gnus at first was somewhat carried away with 

 doctrine, for it came with the power of 

 elty to his inexperienced youth, but I rather 

 nk that his opinions suffered change in later 



