12G THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



Roger Bacon speaks of Gerard of Cremona as a 

 contemporary of Michael Scot, Alured of England, 

 William the Fleming, and Herman the German, 

 adding that those who were still young had never- 

 theless known Gerard, who was the eldest of this 

 company of scholars. Now the Compendium Studii 

 is commonly assigned to the year 1292, but even 

 if we carry this passage back to 1267, when the 

 most of Bacon's works were written, it still appears 

 evidently impossible that any one still young in 

 that year could have seen a man who died in 

 1187. Boncompagni, as we have said, explains the 

 difficulty by acquainting us with the younger 

 Gerard, called de Sahloneta Cremonensis. He was 

 undoubtedly a contemporary of Michael Scot, and 

 the De Bossi manuscript, already referred to,^ shows 

 that he w^as in Spain about this time. There is 

 therefore no reason to distrust the testimony of the 

 Victorine codex when it gives Gerard the honour 

 of having translated Averroes on the Parva Natu- 

 rcdia. In accomplishing this work he vindicated 

 his right to the place we have already ventured to 

 assign him as a member of the Toledan College. 



The manuscript collections where the De Coelo et 

 Mundo, the De Anima, and the Parva Naturalia 

 of Averroes are found in a Latin dress, contain also 

 versions of several other commentaries by the same 

 author : those concerning the De Generatione et 

 Cor7niptione, the four books of the Meteora, the De 

 Sid)stantia Orhis, and the Physica and Metaphysica 

 of Aristotle." We may safely ascribe them to the 

 Toledo College. They were translated either by 



' No. 354 ; see ante, pp. 20, 116. 



^ See the list of Mss. already given, p. 123. 



