SCOT AGAIN AT COURT 145 



e Arabs. The Optica of Ptolemy were already 

 instated into Latin from an Arabic version by 

 igenio, admiral to King Robert of Sicily during 

 e twelfth century, 1 and mathematical instruments 

 jre known in that kingdom whereby angles could 

 taken and measured with some nicety. Scot 

 ist have possessed such an astrolabe and the 

 ill to use it with great delicacy, if we have 

 ;htly read the terms of the problem he solved so 

 hesitatingly. There is no cause for wonder 

 n in the fact that, where pure and legitimate 

 -ronomy was concerned, this philosopher, who 

 won fame in his student days as the mathe- 

 .tician of Paris, who was now widely known as 

 translator of Alpetrongi, and who as a keen 

 erver and ready calculator was well qualified for 

 al research, should have taken a high place in 

 se studies on his own account, and should have 

 e to be acknowledged as a master in them, 

 n Bacon, who blamed Michael Scot so bitterly 

 n language or philosophy were in question, 

 in a different way here, calling him a 

 table inquirer into matter, motion, and the 



e of the constellations.' 



This well-earned celebrity may have been owing 

 no small degree to a mathematical and astro- 

 ical work produced by the philosopher after his 

 rn to court. Sacrobosco, the famous English 

 'onomer, had just risen into notice by his 

 tAtise on the Sphere. This book was not indeed 

 remarkable in itself, but it obtained an extra- 

 omnary currency during the Middle Ages, and after 



JMSS. of this work are in Paris, Ancien Fonds, 7310; Milan, 

 jrosiana, T. 100 ; Florence, Bibl. Xaz. xi. D. 64, n. ii. 35. and 

 |, Fondo Vaticano, 2975. 



K 



