THE LEGEXD OF MICHAEL SCOT CONCLUSION 207 



aanding supernatural power woven by his party 

 ,bout the name of Scot. There is. however, a strong 

 lement of contempt and reproof in his lines, and 

 his must be explained by a point of view which 

 vas peculiar to himself. The Commcdia, and 

 ^specially the Inferno, where this passage occurs, is 

 lothing if not a retrospect of the past. In it 

 Dante calls up the mighty dead and subjects them 

 o review ; his principle of judgment being largely, 

 )ut by no means solely, drawn from political con- 

 iderations. Even more decidedly was it moral, 

 jid thus, while in not a few instances he displays 

 -he working of party-spirit, in others he permits 

 limself to part altogether with the current Ghibel- 

 ine views. 



His reference to Michael Scot, then, is un- 

 loubtedly a case of the latter kind. As a seer 

 vhose attention was fixed on the past he was 

 laturally impatient of those who pretended to 

 infold the future. Scot, as the author of pro- 

 ohetical verses, seemed to Dante a fair object for 

 :ensure, as one who had degraded the sacred art 

 of the bard to serve the purpose of a charlatan. 

 Ele placed him with Amphiareus, with Teiresias 

 ind the other diviners, who, because they sought 

 ;o pry into the future, appeared to the poet with 

 ;heir heads turned backward in punishment of 

 /heir presumption. An additional proof that this 

 vas in fact the reason for Dante's harsh dealing 

 vith Scot may be seen in the Dittamondo of Fazio 

 legli Uberti. This poem, composed towards the 

 md of the fourteenth century, was modelled on the 

 Divine Comedy, and expressly formed to expound 

 t. Here are the lines which correspond in the 



