104 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



reached us accompanied by the date of its com- 

 position ; a distinction which belongs to only one 

 other among his translations, that of the Ahhreviatio 

 Avicennae. M. Jourdain had the merit of being 

 the first who drew attention to this fortunate 

 circumstance,^ and he did so by quoting the colo- 

 phons of two manuscripts of the Sphere discovered 

 by him in the Paris library.^ One of these closes 

 thus : ' Praised be Jesus Christ who liveth for ever 

 throughout alltime:^ on the eighteenthday of August, 

 being Friday, at the third hour, cum aholeolente,^ 

 in the year one thousand two hundred and fifty- 

 five.' The other gives the date thus : ' The year of 

 the Incarnation of Christ twelve hundred and 

 seventeen.' These two epochs coincide exactly, as 

 the apparent difference arises from the date being 

 expressed in the first manuscript according to the 

 era of Spain. It is therefore doubly certain that 

 Scot's version of the Sphere of Alpetrongi was made 

 in the year 1217.^ 



In completing this translation Michael Scot 

 anticipated by one year only the great astrono- 

 mical congress which the King of Castile presently 

 caused to assemble at Toledo. It may very possibly 

 therefore have been one of the versions prepared 

 with a view to this great occasion and designed for 

 the use of the Latin astronomers who might come 



1 Eecherches, i^. 133. 



^ These are Ancien Fonda 7399 and Foncls de tiorhonne 1820. 



3 ' Qui vivit in aeternum per tempora.' 



* There is a copy in the Barberini library (ix. 25 in fol. chart, saec. 

 XV.) which reads ' cum abuteo lenite.' Another at Paris, mss. lat. 1665 

 (dim Sorbonicus) has ' c. Abuteo Levite.' It would be rash to conjec- 

 ture the sense of this curious phrase. It is evidently a sign of tmie, 

 and perhaps astrological 



^ The Barberini ms. (ix. 25) gives 1221 as the date of the version, 

 but the consensus of the other copies shows this to be a mistake. 

 Almost ail the mss. mention that the work was done at Toledoj \ 



